North Korea and South Korea meet, and we check the mailbag.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So there's a lot of news today.
Some of it, I think, quite frustrating.
I'm more frustrated with the news, I think, today than a lot of other people are on the right.
I'll explain why that is in just a second.
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Okay, so.
The latest in the Alfie Evans case from Great Britain.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about a counter-argument that's being made with regard to Alfie Evans.
You'll recall that Alfie Evans is a 23-month-old baby who has an undiagnosed brain condition, a degenerative brain condition, that has left him with apparently 30% brain function.
And his parents want to take him out of Great Britain and bring him to Italy for experimental treatment.
And the British government has said, no, he must die here in this hospital.
They have now removed him from life support.
He's now going on, I believe, three days without life support.
They said he was gonna die right away.
And now he's still alive, right?
He's still breathing.
Apparently, his dad has been giving him mouth to mouth in the hospital.
Let's just start with this.
If mom and dad were at home and they had a kid with a brain condition and they were deliberately refusing that kid water, they would be brought up on charges of child abuse and possible homicide.
Instead, because this is being done in a hospital, everybody says that it's okay.
But now Alfie's family has issued a statement, okay?
The statement is this note to supporters asking them to stand down as they negotiate with the hospital.
Why?
Because apparently, according to the UK Telegraph, Alfie's doctors told reporters that Alfie's parents must make a sea change in their attitude toward the medical system holding their son hostage.
Quote, instead, the judge said the best Alfie's parents could hope for was to explore the options of removing him from intensive care to either a ward, a hospice, or his home.
But a doctor treating Alfie, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that for Alfie to be allowed home would require a sea change in attitude from the child's family, and they feared that in the worst case, they would try to take the boy abroad.
I mean, this is an astonishing claim that somehow the parents have to evidence a sea change in their attitude.
It's their kid who's dying.
When Alfie dies, which he probably will, when Alfie dies, it will not be any of these doctors visiting his grave.
It will not be any of the bureaucrats or the judges visiting his grave.
It will be Alfie Evans' parents who are going there to bring flowers and pray for him.
They're apparently devout Catholics.
This idea...
that they have to change their attitude toward the government demonstrates once again that this is all about treating the government as God, not at all about the best interests of the child.
So Alfie's parents have now told media on Thursday afternoon they plan to meet with Alfie's doctors as soon as possible.
Alder Heye Hospital withdrew Alfie's life support on Monday.
The child has survived breathing on his own with only minimal help since then.
So according to the statement from Kate James and Tom Evans, the parents say, I wish to make a statement on behalf of myself and Kate.
Our lives have been turned upside down by the intense focus on Alfie and his situation.
Our little family, along with Alder Heye, has become the center of attention for many people around the world.
It has meant we have not been able to live our lives as we would like.
We are very grateful and we appreciate all the support we've received from around the world, including from our Italian and Polish supporters who have dedicated their time and support to our incredible fight.
We would now ask you to return back to your everyday lives and allow myself, Kate, and Elder Hay to form a relationship, build a bridge, and walk across.
It sounds like a hostage statement.
It sounds like a hostage statement.
The UK healthcare system is holding this kid hostage and holding the parents hostage unless they're nice about things.
So what is the counter case?
Let's try and take the best possible counter case being presented by the medical left in Britain.
So their case is that Alfie is suffering by being alive and the best thing that can happen for him is to die Quickly and quietly in the most humane possible fashion, right?
This is really the case that they are making.
They're making the case for euthanasia of Alfie, or at least the case for removing him from life support.
The difference between euthanasia and removal from life support is, of course, the level of activity undertaken by the doctors.
In euthanasia, then they give you a cocktail of drugs and you die.
In this particular case, they're withdrawing life support and hoping that Alfie dies quickly.
I mean, I don't mean that facetiously.
They are hoping that Alfie dies quickly and in as little pain as possible.
There's a phrase that's been kicked around by a lot of folks on the medical left and in the bureaucracy in Britain.
And it's a phrase that's been repeated now by the judge in this particular case.
It's been repeated by the staff at Elder Hay Hospital.
It's been repeated by NHS doctors writing for the UK Guardian.
And that is death with dignity, which is a euthanasia phrase, death with dignity.
So, for example, the hospital said that their goal was to kill Alfie with dignity, to Judge Hayden, who's the presiding judge in this case, talked similarly of dignity.
An NHS doctor named Rachel Clark wrote in an op-ed for the UK Guardian, quote, "Withdrawal of care is neither killing nor murder, "but enables a patient to die with comfort and dignity." So we have to actually distinguish between two particular terms.
One is comfort and the other is dignity.
Now, it is possible to objectively determine whether someone is going to die in more or less comfort.
I can tell that as a third party.
And my wife, who works at a hospital, we were talking about this case yesterday, and she was talking about some of the ways that she's seen people die, and they are horrific.
They're absolutely horrendous.
I mean, there are certainly cases in which people would have died with more comfort if they had been moved to a hospice two weeks before their death and then been given morphine as they transition from life, right?
I mean, that would be—there's no question that people die in a myriad range of unfortunate and horrifying ways.
So, if your top priority is somebody dying with comfort, then you can say, okay, we want Alfie to die with comfort, and the experimental treatment will be too painful, and so we're arguing with the parents that they are not keeping the best interests of the child at heart, because what they really are doing is extending the, they're not extending his chances of getting better, they're making him suffer more, and we don't want him to suffer more, so our best interests are more aligned with the best interests of the child.
That argument, I don't think, is a dispositive one.
I don't even think it's a particularly good one.
But I do think that it's an argument that has some merit.
And it has some weight.
Because, again, I can assess as a third party whether you are in comfort or whether you are not in comfort.
Anyone can tell that.
But dignity is a different thing.
And the left has been equating comfort and dignity for a while.
And this is a materialistic conception of what life constitutes.
If you believe that comfort in life and dignity in life are the same thing, or comfort and death and dignity and death are the same thing, then that's a pretty materialistic vision of what exactly life is.
Because dignity then is boiled down to the level of physical comfort you are experiencing at any given time.
That if you are a person who is on your deathbed and you choose to suffer all the way through your last moments because you want to cling to life, because you think life is just that important, and you think that it is important that your children know that you struggled all the way to your last breath because you think that life is worth clinging to and you should never give up even when the situation is hopeless, If that's a lack of dignity, according to some people on the left, because the most dignified thing would be just die in comfort, because comfort and dignity are the same thing.
But obviously, they are not the same thing.
A death with comfort, again, is something that can be objectively determined.
We can know that a woman who's dying of bowel obstruction and is choking on her own stool, we know that that person is dying with less comfort.
But can you honestly say that person is dying with less dignity?
I'm not sure that you can because dignity is a state of mind relative to both yourself and to others.
If you treat yourself in dignified fashion, that means that you are acting in accordance with your own personal values.
That's, I think, the definition of dignity with regard to yourself, that you have a set of values and you are standing by those no matter what the risk.
That is the definition of dignity in accordance with yourself.
Dignity with regard to others is how well you maintain your standard of stolidity in the face of serious pain.
Whenever we talk about the kind of stiff British upper lip, that's what they're talking about.
They're talking about that sort of dignity.
They're not talking about comfort.
They're talking about how much suffering can you take without actually becoming a burden on others.
I'm talking about an emotional burden on others.
But to equate comfort and dignity is a real mistake because great men and women die in horrible agony on a regular basis.
Great men and women very often are trying to make a point by dying in agony.
That they don't actually want to give up on life.
Life is more than just the level of physical comfort they're experiencing at a given time.
Dying with comfort might be a term that's applicable to this baby, to Alfie.
You might say that maybe Alfie should die in more comfort than his parents want him to die in.
Dying with dignity doesn't apply, because Alfie is 23 months old.
He doesn't have the capacity to act in accordance with his own virtuous ideas, because Alfie's a baby.
So that means that he can't act in accordance with that.
And as far as dignity with regard to others, that also doesn't really apply to Alfie.
Because the question now is whether his parents or the state get to determine what dignity looks like.
Does the state get to determine that its version of dignity, i.e.
comfort, is the governing standard, or do his parents get to determine what dignity looks like?
Maybe they think dignity looks like you fight for life all the way until the end of your life, no matter what the consequences.
OK, well, that is certainly an open question.
That's certainly a question that's subjective in nature.
There's no hard standard as to whether the state is right or whether his parents are right in their definition of dignity.
And when in doubt, you've got to go with the parents, because the parents, again, are the ones who care more about Alfie.
There's a famous story about Phil Graham.
Phil Graham is a former senator from Texas in the United States.
And Phil Graham apparently had an exchange he liked to tell about with this one leftist woman where he was saying to her, listen, the basis for my entire politics is that I care more about my children than you do.
And the woman said, that's not true.
And he said, really?
What are their names?
That is certainly applicable here.
As much as the judge says that he cares about the child, as a parent, there's no one on earth who cares as much about my child as my wife and I do.
No one.
Not grandparents, not siblings, no one.
Until you've been a parent and experienced the bond that comes along with having a child, for anyone to step in between that bond for a subjective reason, like your definition of dignity, is just absurd, and it's also fascistic.
Again, there's a reason that advocates of euthanasia like to use death with dignity rather than death with comfort, because they understand that if they use death with dignity, then they're making the implicit argument that you choosing to go out on morphine is a more dignified death, that it's morally superior.
Death with comfort is a morally neutral term, because comfort is morally neutral.
We know people who live in comfort.
Some are bad people, some are good people.
Comfort is not a moral status.
Dignity is.
And there's a reason why the left keeps using that misnomer with regard to cases like Alfie Evans.
They really should not.
They really, really should not.
It's a huge, huge mistake.
So, again, I think that there's no question that this should be left to the parents and it's an egregious miscarriage of justice that it's not.
Particularly because, again, the doctors are assessing the situation.
They don't even know what's wrong with Alfie.
So that's the second factor here.
I'm saying even if you assume Alfie's going to die, this should be left to the parents.
The state doesn't even know that Alfie's going to die.
They say they do, but they really don't know because he's been on off-lifes a part longer than they thought he would be.
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OK, so meanwhile, in other news today, Bill Cosby has now been convicted, which I think is a good thing.
Obviously, Bill Cosby was accused of essentially drugging and raping dozens of women and 62 known women.
The conviction was about, I guess, was about Andrea Constand.
So he was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault against Andrea Constand.
And a bunch of people were celebrating this.
One of his alleged victims is a woman named Lily Bernard.
And she talked about sexual assault and the Cosby verdict.
Here's what she had to say.
I stand here in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but today it has bent towards justice.
Last year, when I was sitting in the courtroom of the first trial, and the verdict was hung, I left with such a tremendous sense of disappointment.
And it became evident to me that the justice system is light years behind modern culture.
But today, this jury has shown that the Me Too, what the Me Too movement has saying is that women are worthy of being believed.
Obviously, I think this is a very good thing.
I think the evidence against Bill Cosby was quite strong.
There are some people who dissent.
They say, well, it was a he said, she said.
Right, but there's a lot of credibility when you have this many victims who can testify against Bill Cosby, and it's the same story over and over and over and over again.
It's also important to note here that this is the kind of stuff that Me Too was made for, right?
Me Too was not made for the woman who says that she went on a date with a guy and she had sex with the guy and then she felt bad later.
It's not made for a cat person.
You know, that essay from The New Yorker, the woman who said that she gave every signal to the guy that she wanted to have sex with him and then she cut him off on texting and then he was mean to her.
And this is like a Me Too moment.
It's not made for Stormy Daniels.
Stormy Daniels is not a Me Too story.
Stormy Daniels was not sexually assaulted.
She was not sexually harassed.
Stormy Daniels had consensual sex with President Trump.
Okay, what Me Too was made for was cases like this where women are abused and then silenced and stay silent, and then when they come forward en masse, then the question is, do we believe them or not?
And the answer is that, yeah, we should believe them, especially when the supporting evidence is there.
Now, there's another issue with Bill Cosby here that I think is worth noting, and that is that, obviously, Bill Cosby is famous because he was the biggest television star on television, maybe in television history.
The Cosby Show was one of the big hits in the history of TV, and of course, he was the first Sort of.
Not the first, but he was one of the first major black characters to be portrayed not as a blue-collar guy, but as a white-collar guy, or he's a doctor.
And Cliff Huxtable was an icon for millions of Americans, and made the implicit promise that if you worked hard in America, you could actually get ahead.
There are a bunch of people who are trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater now, saying that you should never watch The Cosby Show again, or Cliff Huxtable as a character, Was a terrible thing.
Wesley Morris at the New York Times writes a piece today.
He says, if a sexual predator wanted to come up with a smoke screen for his ghastly conquest, he couldn't do better than Cliff Huxtable.
Cliff was affable, patient, wise, and where Mrs. Huxtable was concerned, justly deferential.
His wit was quick, his sweaters roomy and kaleidoscopic.
He could be romantic.
Cliff should have been the envy of any father ever to appear on a sitcom.
He was vertiginously deadly.
Okay?
Cliff is the reason for the cognitive dissonance we've been experiencing the last three or four years.
He seemed inseparable from the man who portrayed him.
And then he suggests that the Huxtables were wonderful.
Bill Cosby was, of course, not.
And he says that the hard thing about this verdict is the sorting of the ironies has been left to us.
Mr. Cosby made blackness palatable to a country historically conditioned to the worst of black people.
To pull that off, he had to find a morally impeccable presentation of himself.
If you really think that a lot of people are going to throw away the image of Cliff Huxtable because of Bill Cosby, I think that's completely wrong.
wealth to become the predator that white America mythologized in a campaign to terrorize, torture, and kill black people for a century.
Mr. Cosby told lots of jokes.
This was his sickest one.
If you really think that a lot of people are going to throw away the image of Cliff Huxtable because of Bill Cosby, I think that's completely wrong.
People watch TV, they identify with the characters, not with the actors.
So the evils of Bill Cosby do not, I think in any way, sully the character of Cliff Huxtable, who after all was a character on TV.
I think people are smart enough to recognize that.
Okay, meanwhile...
There's a lot of hubbub today over the situation in North Korea.
So, a historic moment, because the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, who is indeed a human piece of debris, just a piece of crap, who has been, he and his family for three generations now, have been forcibly imprisoning Millions of people in a giant gulag.
The average South Korean is, I believe, three inches taller than the average North Korean, despite a common genetic heritage, because of malnutrition and starvation in North Korea.
Hundreds of thousands of people in North Korea have been passed through prison camps.
Hundreds of thousands of people have starved to death over the tenure of the Kim family.
Well, Kim Jong-un met with the new prime minister, new president of South Korea.
And this was a historic moment because this is the first time that anyone from North Korea has actually stepped across the border of South Korea for a long time.
The South Korean president is Moon Jae-in.
He's a member of what they call a Sunshine Cabinet, which means that they want to make a deal with North Korea.
Kim Jong-un finally crosses the border, and this is being hailed as a historic moment for diplomatic relations between the two countries.
But as we look at this picture, it cannot be overstated the historic nature of what we are witnessing now.
These pictures coming to us outside the Peace House on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries.
There you see the two leaders of North Korea and South Korea shaking hands in a demonstration of certainly attempted unity here.
Okay, so people think this is like a major step forward, and you're seeing a lot of people today celebrating President Trump, saying President Trump made this happen.
Okay, now, President Trump has been very harsh with the North Koreans.
I think that is a good thing.
They're feeling the pressure.
The Chinese have, in turn, been very harsh with the North Koreans, which is a good thing.
I think they're feeling the pressure.
The real truth here is that the reason that Kim Jong-un is shaking the hand of Moon Jae-in is because Moon Jae-in is dedicated to the idea that he wants to get American troops off South Korean soil if he can.
And he and Kim Jong-un share that priority.
Moon Jae-in is a guy who is of the South Korean left.
He is very much of the idea that Kim Jong-un should retain power.
He wants to make nice with Kim Jong-un, in other words.
Kim's news agency said earlier Friday, the leader would open-heartedly discuss with Moon all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations.
Moon's senior spokesman said Kim joked that he would make sure not to interrupt Moon's sleep anymore, apparently referring to the North series of early morning missile tests last year, according to CBS News.
Moon's spokesman says Kim also made a reference to a South Korean island that became a target of the North Korean artillery attack that killed four in 2010.
Kim says the residents of Yeonpyeong Island, who have been living under the fear of North Korean artillery attacks and also families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, have high hopes for the intra-Korean talks to help heal past scars.
Apparently, they're going to sign a formal end to the Korean War.
That does not mean demilitarization, of course.
There are a lot of people, again, hailing this as a giant victory.
I am somewhat more skeptical.
So, before I explain why I am somewhat more skeptical, Well, I first want to give you a brief history of the Korean War, because people really don't know very much about this war.
They tend to forget this war.
It's a forgotten war in the United States, unlike the Vietnam War, which is, of course, championed by the left as an example of America losing, and they think that's great.
Or World War II, which is an example of the United States intervening to stop a genocide.
The Korean War is largely forgotten, even though the United States lost tens of thousands of troops in the Korean War.
The Korean War started because essentially what happened is after World War II, the Russians occupied the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and the United States occupied the southern half.
And then two flunkies at the State Department drew a parallel, the 38th parallel, and they said, OK, well, we're going to say that above this is North Korea and below this is South Korea.
It was a completely arbitrary division.
The Russians quickly turned North Korea into a communist proxy state, and the United States Was working with the with the more free market dictatorship that was existing in South Korea at the time in 1950, thanks to the United States, his failures to stop the rise of communist China.
Which was largely due to both the FDR and the Truman administrations.
Then the North Koreans walked across the border.
They attacked across the border.
They sent tens of thousands of troops across the 38th parallel.
And the United States was quickly enmeshed in war.
That was June 25th, 1950.
And 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, according to history.com.
It was the first military action of the Cold War.
By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea's behalf.
And the North Koreans, backed by the Chinese, backed by the Russians, had been pushed all the way down into the very end of the Incheon Peninsula.
Then Douglas MacArthur came up with a brilliant strategy to retake most of South Korea and restore the demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel.
MacArthur wanted to go farther.
He actually wanted to attack the Chinese and go to the root of the problem, but Truman stopped him and deposed him.
In 1953, the war finally came to an end.
So in a second, I'm gonna explain why it is that I'm skeptical of what's happening right now on the Korean Peninsula, But first, I want to say thanks to our new sponsors over at eHarmony.
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Okay, so.
Why am I skeptical of what is happening in North Korea?
The reason I'm skeptical is because there are lots of these sorts of historic meetings, and some of them end well, and some of them do not end well.
There are lots of cases in which the West has been played in situations like this.
So, here's what could go wrong in this meeting.
What could go wrong is that Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un come to an agreement.
And the agreement is that Kim Jong-un is going to denuclearize the peninsula.
He's going to stop developing nuclear weapons, or he's going to quote-unquote give up his nuclear weapons.
There's no real way that he's going to do a verification regime that allows for anything like that.
And Moon Jae-in says, well, in return for that, We don't need the American troops here anymore, because if we denuclearize the peninsula, then we don't need the American trigger force that would bring the United States into the war, because obviously you're not going to nuke us.
If there's a conventional war, there's a conventional war, I guess, but we have warm relations, so we're really not too worried about a conventional war.
At which point, President Trump, who has been saying over and over and over that he wants to get troops home and out of places like South Korea, he says, OK, you know what?
We'll go along with that.
We'll remove the troops from South Korea.
And the next thing you know, we have a replay of the Korean War in which the North Koreans say, OK, well, now that the Americans aren't here, let's start making some moves on the border.
Let's see if we can push that border further south.
Let's see if we can launch a sneak attack.
That's a possibility, especially given the instability of the North Korean regime and the fact that they are resource short.
Because they're a giant gulag state.
That's a serious problem.
And there is a history of this sort of thing.
Many of the meetings that have been championed by the West among historic belligerents.
I've ended incredibly poorly.
I'm not even talking about the Yalta Conference, in which the United States and Russia and Britain basically got played by Russia.
Basically, Stalin played Churchill and played FDR, and the United States gave up far too much in the Yalta Agreement, leading to things like the Korean War, leading to the rise of a powerful USSR that had half of Europe under its thumb.
It's not just issues like that.
It's also, for example, we don't know whether this is a Begin Sadat moment or whether this is a Yasser Arafat Yitzhak Rabin moment.
So in 1980, or 1979, Menachem Begin met with Anwar Sadat.
Anwar Sadat was the dictator of Egypt, and he met with Menachem Begin, and he was later assassinated for doing this.
But the deal they came to is that Israel would give up the Sinai Peninsula, at least parts of the Sinai Peninsula, and in return, Egypt would sign a basic peace agreement with Israel, and they'd leave each other alone.
And that peace has actually lasted now for 40 years.
So that was a good agreement.
But I remember all the way back to 1993, when on the lawn of the White House, Yitzhak Rabin was, The Israeli Prime Minister was shaking hands with an actual terrorist, Yasser Arafat, an evil terrorist, one of the worst terrorists of the 20th century.
And Yasser Arafat then used the concessions that he had gained from Israel, backed by the United States, in order to stage a series of violent attacks against Israel that has lasted to the present day.
That has not resulted in any sort of lasting peace.
It's actually led to the rise of terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority, which is still a terrorist group and led by now Mahmoud Abbas, is the Next step in the evolution of Yasser Arafat's terror group.
That obviously didn't solve anything.
And I remember, I'm old enough to remember, I was I think nine at the time, I'm old enough to remember them shaking hands and the media swooning.
Oh, look at this.
It's finally happening.
Oh, peace is going to come to the Middle East.
Peace didn't come to the Middle East because there were no common interests.
So, the question is, is the West going to take a strong stand and require things of Kim Jong-un in this peace?
Or is this just going to be Kim Jong-un's latest move in order to get a bunch of concessions from the West, and in return, the West gets very little, right?
The West gets a promise.
This is exactly what happened with Iran, okay?
The United States made a deal with Iran, and now we are stuck with that deal with Iran, at least for the foreseeable future, because Barack Obama decided it was more important to have the photo op between the Iranian foreign minister and John Kerry than it was to actually uphold sanctions against an evil state on the brink of nuclear destruction, on the brink of having nuclear weaponry.
The JCPOA, the Iran deal, is such a disaster, and you can see that this is This could be a similar disaster.
You could see a situation in which the United States or South Korea offers a very similar deal to the North Koreans, and everybody proclaims victory.
And within five years, the North Koreans are back making their nuclear weapons, except this time there are no troops on the South Korean peninsula.
It could be a disaster.
I'm not saying it will be a disaster.
Maybe it works out great.
But before everybody says, this is a wonderful thing, look what Trump has wrought, let's wait to see the result.
People shaking hands and doing photo ops is not an actual result.
Now, that said, the media, if this had been under Obama, would have been fawning over it.
It would have been, oh my god, look what Obama has done.
It's so great.
They said this about the Iran deal.
And it does demonstrate the lack of veracity in the media, or at least the lack of credibility in the media.
The media are so biased that Trump gets no mention in what is, in fact, a historic summit that's happening between the two Koreas.
But by the same token, they would have been orgasming over this if this had been President Obama, no question.
Still, as a conservative, I'm just saying it might be worthwhile to withhold judgment for just a little bit.
Now, meanwhile, James Comey appeared last night with Brett Baier, and James Comey just looks worse and worse.
If you're a Democrat, you have to think at this point that James Comey needs to be put to the side because he is not helping your case in the slightest.
Over and over, James Comey made contentions last night that were just unsupportable.
So, this one actually, I believe, was not on Fox News.
He was, he was asking how, how possibly this is on CNN.
He was asking, how can Trump supporters explain to their grandchildren that they traded the rule of law for tax cuts?
This is James Comey doing his best virtue signaling on CNN.
Then he meets Brett Barron and things go wildly wrong for him.
My question for the Republicans is, so where is that?
Where is that commitment to character and values?
And if people have convinced themselves, well, we'll trade it temporarily for a tax cut or a Supreme Court justice, as I say in the book, that's a fool's bargain.
Because those values are all that you have.
There'll always be another Supreme Court justice, always another tax bill.
You lose this, exactly what are you?
Again, this sort of language, well, they've traded rule of law for tax cuts.
Have any Republicans said that rule of law should not be upheld here?
There are Republicans who have said they will vote for impeachment if Robert Mueller is fired.
Jeff Sessions has been standing for the rule of law.
I really believe that.
Jeff Sessions has said, if you get rid of Rod Rosenstein, I will leave too.
So, I'll take off.
None of this suggests that the Republicans have abandoned rule of law, but James Comey identifies himself with rule of law, and therefore he is the only person that ought to be listened to, obviously.
Then he goes on Bret Baier, and things go wildly wrong for him.
So this whole perspective of James Comey as great law bringer goes completely by the wayside because it turns out James Comey doesn't know basics about his own behavior.
So James Comey testified that he handed over material to a friend of his that was probably classified to hand out to the media.
And he's asked about it by Brett Baier.
Did you leak?
Watch James Comey futz around for an answer.
So the story of that briefing leaks out almost immediately after you do it.
CNN and others run the story of this unverified dossier.
Did you or your subordinates leak that?
No.
Did James Clapper?
No, not to my knowledge.
No.
John Brennan?
I don't know who leaked it.
I had no part in any leaking of it.
It was about four or five days later that it leaked, but I remember because President-elect called me about it.
Did you ever try to find out?
Who leaked an unclassified public document?
No.
Apparently, he never tried to find out who leaked the news of him informing Trump of the dossier to the press, which was used as the news hook by BuzzFeed to actually release the entire dossier.
No, he never bothered to look into that.
He was also asked, did you leak?
Did you leak?
When you leaked after you're firing all of your memos, your friend, was that a leak?
And he said, well, I don't think so.
I mean, I don't know.
And Brett Baier was like, well, it kind of was, wasn't it?
Isn't that sort of the definition of a leak?
And Comey had no answer for that.
Comey admitted.
That he said he didn't know that Democrats funded the Steele dossier, which is insane.
Of course he knew that Democrats funded the Steele dossier.
Watch him futz around on this one.
Yeah, I still don't know that for a fact.
What do you mean?
I've only seen it in the media.
I never knew exactly which Democrats had funded— I knew it was funded first by Republicans, opposed to Donald— But that's not true.
I'm sorry?
That's not true, that the dossier that Christopher Steele worked on was funded by Republicans?
My understanding was his work started, funded by—as oppo research, funded by Republicans, So, Free Beacon said that they had Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS on account of a retainer, but they did not fund the Christopher Steele memo or the dossier.
That was initiated by Democrats.
Okay, my understanding was the activity was begun that Steele was hired to look into.
It was first funded by Republicans, then picked up—the important thing was—picked up by Democrats opposed to Donald Trump's.
Okay, so I like how even here he's futzing around.
I mean, he really looked bad last night, and well, he should have, because he, again, is making a fool of himself.
The fact the media keep trotting him out, I think they're undercutting their own credibility here.
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So mailbag times.
Let's jump right in.
So, Alex says, Hi Ben, with Paul Ryan gone next term, who would you like to see as Speaker of the House?
Also, who would you like to see as Majority Leader of the Senate?
Thanks and love the show.
So, as Speaker of the House, I do like Jim Jordan.
I think Jim Jordan would be very good at that.
Well, you do need somebody who's going to be militant, particularly because they have to stand up to both Mitch McConnell, if they're in the majority, or the Democrats if they're in the minority.
I think that Paul Ryan is a wonk.
I think that he's a guy who is, yeah, I think he knows what he believes.
I think that he is a principled person, but I think that he's in the wrong position.
If you're the head of the House majority, or if you're the head of the House minority, You have to be a knife fighter, somebody who's willing to manipulate.
You have to be somebody who's willing to get dirty.
I don't think Ryan is necessarily that guy.
You have to be able to exert leverage on your own members, which Ryan obviously was not willing to do.
You also, at some point, have to stand up to your own Senate if the Senate won't do it and say, listen, we're not going to pass anything.
All right, Mitch, if you don't want the blame falling on you, you're going to have to do better.
I'm not sure that Paul Ryan did that a whole hell of a lot.
I think Jim Jordan would.
So I like the idea of Jim Jordan as majority leader or as a Speaker of the House or as minority leader.
Mark says, as far as, sorry, majority leader of the Senate.
I think that, you know, Senator Cruz has made a good case for why he should be Majority Leader of the Senate.
I think there are probably some less controversial figures who would be similarly good.
I mean, I'd love to see Mike Lee as Majority Leader of the Senate, but they're all my favorite senators who I'd like to see as Majority Leader of the Senate because I think those people would hold the line a little bit better than Mitch McConnell has.
McConnell is a deal guy, right?
He's a guy who kind of, in the future, he'll be seen more as a Tip O'Neill type, you know, a guy who sort of got things done by using his various methodologies, but I'm not sure that Mitch McConnell is a lot to speak about when it comes to principled leadership.
Mark says, Ben, a few days ago, Jordan Peterson asked Bill Maher's panel, if Trump is impeached, what are your plans to heal the rift between the left and the right?
Of course, they didn't answer his question.
So if Trump is impeached, how could the rift be healed?
Well, it depends what he's impeached over.
So if Trump were actually impeached over something that's legitimate, let's say that Trump committed an actual crime as president of the United States, a serious crime as president of the United States, and he is impeached.
Then the rift would be healed by Mike Pence coming forward, becoming president, and saying, listen, criminal activity is not acceptable on either side of the aisle.
And the left saying, you know what?
you're right, we're good now, right?
That's the way that this would be healed.
If he's impeached for no reason, if he's impeached because Democrats hate him, it's going to be very difficult to rectify that breach because Republicans are rightly going to say the Democrats have been misusing the tools of government in order to go after particular people they don't like in government, which only exacerbates the belief that Democrats should never Now, there is a conciliation possible there, too, and that is both sides eventually acknowledge that there should be no power of government over a wide variety of issues because we can't trust the other side with the power.
A libertarian consensus, in other words.
You can see that happening, but I think that that's a little ways away, and I don't think this cast of characters, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, I don't think this cast of characters is capable of getting that done.
Well, I think that's usually true in argument.
This is why I like to argue first principles.
Data can be used to support first principles, but I think that most people are convinced on the basis of moral argumentation and first principles arguments, not on the basis of data.
can quote data or research, but nobody really cares.
It seems the values are more important than data used to support them.
Well, I think that's usually true in argument.
This is why I like to argue first principles.
Data can be used to support first principles, but I think that most people are convinced on the basis of moral argumentation and first principles arguments, not on the basis of data.
But the data do have to support your first principles.
So data are a necessary bulwark for a good argument, but I'm not sure that data themselves make the argument.
Data can provide the foundation for an argument, but even below that foundation there's a bedrock, and the bedrock is the value system that you're trying to promote.
Joe says, "Hey Ben, my brother thinks the United States "is not the best country in the world.
"He refers to the UN Human Development Ranking "and claims that Norway is a better country "than the United States.
"How would you counter his argument "considering he's actually loaded with statistics?" Okay, so first of all, Norway is living on the basis of an extraordinarily large oil fine.
And they've been living off the basis of that oil production for a long time.
I did an entire episode where I discussed what Norway's economy looks like.
Second of all, Norway is essentially ethnically homogenous.
There's not a lot of ethnic diversity in Norway.
So, claiming that Norway is better than the United States, you have to consider the kind of folks who are living in Norway, and then you have to say, well, is it really comparable even?
You'd also have to look at, for example, the level of economic mobility in places like Norway without state intervention.
You have to look at the fact that the United States is the most powerful economy on Earth.
If the United States did not exist, would Norway still be a powerful country economically?
The answer is no.
Yeah, again, is it possible that you'd enjoy living in Norway more than the United States?
Only if you enjoy 60% taxes and living in a small apartment.
But is it possible that you'd like Norway better?
Maybe.
I mean, if that's what floats your boat.
If that's what floats your boat.
But to suggest that Norway is, for example, more tolerant than the United States, they don't have to deal with the same problems that the United States does in terms of trying to integrate so many different ethnicities.
That's both a problem and a wonderful thing about the United States, obviously.
Is Norway better than the United States in terms of the economy?
Again, not if you want to get rich.
Is Norway better than the United States in terms of and the treatment of individuals, you'd have to talk to the various individuals involved.
I treat people as individuals.
I think some individuals in Norway probably have it tough.
Some individuals in the United States probably have it tough.
So you'd have to actually look at which metric you're talking about.
If you're talking about GDP per capita, Norway is higher than the United States.
That's easy to verify.
But again, a lot of that is based on the government essentially gathering an enormous amount of oil and then putting all the money from it into a state pension fund.
Hal says, Ben, private specific charities exist in much higher numbers than in biblical times.
Do you still believe we should tithe 10% or can some of those funds be given to private charities?
So my question is, My understanding is that most people who are religious believe that when you give to a private charity, that counts as part of your tithing, I think.
It's one of the reasons why I think that if you're going to have a quote-unquote welfare state in the United States, instead of the government just seizing an enormous amount of cash from you and then using it through government means for redistributionism, if you're going to do something like this, you ought to mandate that people give a certain amount of their money to charity, and then they should be able to pick the charity the money goes to.
Okay, let's see.
David says, in a show I was watching they're referencing the 25th amendment to remove the president, but I read it only takes away his powers.
Can you please clarify?
Sure.
So the 25th amendment removes the power from the president.
To actually exercise his power.
The 25th Amendment says a few things.
Section 1 says, in the case of removal of the president from office or of his death or resignation, then the vice president becomes president.
But the part that they are usually talking about in the 25th Amendment is the part about if the president loses his capacity.
So the president can regain capacity under the 25th Amendment.
So here's the way that it works.
I'll read you the whole thing.
thing.
It says, whenever the vice president and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or such other body as Congress may by law provide transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the president is unable to discharge his duties, the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president. the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties So in order for that to happen, the VP and a majority of either the principal offices of the executive departments, a majority of the cabinet and the VP, or another body that Congress has to create,
have to transmit a ruling to the president pro temp of the Senate and the speaker of the House, a declaration that the president is unable to discharge the duties. have to transmit a ruling to the president pro temp But If the president transmits to the president pro tem and the speaker of the house his written declaration that there is no inability, then he resumes the powers and duties of his office unless either the VP or majority of the principal officers of the executive department or that body provided by Congress transmit within four days to the president pro tem or the speaker of the house their written declaration that the president is unable then he resumes the powers and duties of his office unless either the VP or majority of the principal
So in other words, VP and cabinet say to Congress, President Trump can't handle it.
Pence becomes president until Trump sends a note to Congress saying, hey, no, I'm fine.
Everything's cool.
This is just a power grab.
At which point they have, and he has four days to do that.
And then the VP, well, actually he transmitted right away.
Then the VP and the majority transmit within four days, another written declaration that he's unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
At that point, Congress decides the issue and they have to assemble within 48 hours.
So, in other words, the president doesn't become not the president.
after the receipt of the latter written declaration, or if Congress is not in session within 21 days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two thirds vote of both houses, the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
Then the VP continues to discharge the same as acting president.
So in other words, the president doesn't become not the president.
He's just incapacitated for the period in which he's incapacitated.
Okay, but it takes a two thirds vote of each house to actually declare the president incapacitated to the level that he cannot regain his power if he attempts to regain his power.
So Mark, as I said earlier on the show, I do think we should appreciate his contributions to comedy.
I'm not somebody who believes that the art is completely inseparable from the artist.
Or is this situation different?
So Mark, as I said earlier on the show, I do think we should appreciate his contributions to comedy.
I'm not somebody who believes that the art is completely inseparable from the artist.
There have been lots of awful people who have been great artists, lots of awful people who have created great human developments, and we should recognize their great human developments, and we should also recognize what awful people they were.
So I love the comedy, particularly the early comedy of Bill Cosby.
I think Cosby shows a great show.
I still think that listening to his albums is okay, and I still think that he's a piece of crap.
So I think all of these things can be held true at the same time.
How many comics, by the way, are not pieces of crap, as it turns out?
It turns out a lot of them really are.
Frank says, Dear Ben, do you have any advice for future musicians or actors who want to be public with their conservative opinions?
Big fan of the show.
My first advice is, if you want to be successful, apparently you have to remain silent up to the point where you're successful, then you can come out as conservative and be okay.
That's at least the rule in Hollywood.
If you start off as conservative, you're shutting an enormous number of doors, unless you're in the music industry, like the country music industry, but even Shania Twain gets raked over the coals if she says she's going to back Trump.
Unfortunately, we live in a system in which people are routinely discriminated against on the basis of their politics, so I think that it is well worthwhile for you to Keep your politics as close to the vest as possible until you are successful enough that you don't have to worry about the blowback.
Right?
Kanye's not really going to have to worry about the blowback, but that's because Kanye is Kanye.
Okay.
Rachel says, "Hi Ben.
Should parents be required under threat of losing custody to subject their children to chemotherapy if the child has a cancer diagnosis and the prevailing medical advice treatment is chemo?" Thanks Rachel.
So my answer is I believe yes, because I do think that there is a difference between doctors deciding that they have life-saving treatment they want to provide to a child and the parents saying no, and parents deciding that they want their child to live and doctors saying no, right?
This is the The Alfie Evans case is the reverse.
The Alfie Evans case is, parents say, we think we can save the kid, and the doctors say, no you can't, he has to die, which is evil.
There's a case that comes up a lot with regard to, there's certain parents who say they don't want their kids to have medical treatment for simple diseases.
And we're not even talking about chemotherapy for cancer, but their parents will say that they don't want kids to have simple blood transfusions because they think that it violates certain principles, and the kid will die without the blood transfusion.
To me, that's child endangerment, and at that point, the state has the right to say, you don't get to decide for your kid that your kid has to die.
Sky says Ben, I'm a 10th grader and in my history class, my teacher asked what is the common barrier to modern day democracy in America?
Most people said racism and sexism.
What is your opinion?
Well, I think that the biggest barrier to, if we're gonna say, first of all, I don't think there's a barrier to modern day democracy.
I think America is a republic, and people vote in that republic, and there are no serious barriers to people voting in the United States.
If the idea is, what's the barrier to us all getting along, and they said racism and sexism, I would say tribalism more than racism or sexism.
I don't think that women are being barred from office.
I don't think black people are being barred from office.
We had a black president.
We almost had a female president.
We've had female secretaries of state several times.
There are many female members of the Supreme Court.
There are black members of the Supreme Court.
I don't think that racism and sexism are the biggest obstacles to the country at this point.
What should I ask?
Well, dude, you made it.
So apparently you didn't have to submit a good question.
Good for you.
And thanks to my producers for putting that up there, you jerks.
Clay says, Hi Ben, I've been a listener for over a year now and you've been very influential in my beliefs about conservatism.
I've spoken out a lot this year during my college classes, either during student presentations or unsolicited professor virtue signaling.
Well, hey, I'd have Kanye on the show today.
I mean, I think that'd be a lot of fun.
ideology, am I obligated as a conservative to provide the counter to that opinion so long as I'm well-versed in research?
Also, when you plan on having Kanye on the show, regards Clay.
Well, hey, I'd have Kanye on the show today.
I mean, I think that'd be a lot of fun.
And in a little while, I will tell you all about my inculcation into rap and how I got into rap.
But first, but as far as whether you're obligated, no, you're never obligated to say anything with regard to your politics.
I think that as a moral human being, you should probably speak up when you are capable of speaking up.
But if you are in a situation where your grades are going to suffer, I never tell students that it's their job to lose a grade because they have to speak up to no apparent purpose.
OK, final question, and then we'll do a thing I like.
Moshe says, hi, Ben.
If we get self-driving cars in the future, should we allow law enforcement to override the car's computer to bring people with warrants out for their arrest to the police station?
Does an unconvicted person with an arrest warrant have a right to avoid being arrested?
Well, no.
I mean, if they have the right to break into your house to effectuate an arrest warrant, then they have the right to take control of your car and bring you home.
Interesting idea, by the way.
Very, very minority report.
So I kind of like this.
OK.
So, time for a quick thing I like and then we'll do a quick thing that I hate.
So, thing I like.
So as I said earlier this week, jokingly on Twitter, I am now apparently a rap maven because Kanye West, everyone on the right has now been legally obligated to like rap because Kanye West has come out and said that he likes President Trump.
I'm just joking, of course.
I still think rap is largely garbage.
But my first inculcation into rap, the first song that really brought me, I think, into the world of R&B and rap and all of it, I think was probably This particular song.
It's just an amazing example, example of the true artistry and verbal acuity of so many of our nation's rappers.
As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain, I take a look at my wife and realize she's very plain.
But that's just perfect for an Amish like me.
You know I shun fancy things like electricity.
Okay, what's amazing about this particular music video, aside from the fact that Weird Al is the best, the best, okay, is that if you actually go back and watch the Gangster's Paradise video, there's so many great references to it.
So, the best reference, of course, in the Gangster's Paradise video, it shows, I can't remember, which rapper does Gangster's Paradise?
I can't even...
Sorry?
Who is it?
Coolio, thank you.
So there's a close-up shot in profile of Coolio sweating.
As the song goes on, he starts to sweat more and more because it's so intense.
And so Weird Al, throughout the song, there are cutaway shots of him in profile, and he just starts sweating.
It's like pouring off his face, just like from an airplane.
It's just great.
I will say this about Weird Al.
Weird Al is one of the great unappreciated artists of our time.
Weird Al Yankovic is the best.
All of his songs are better than the originals.
All of them.
If you have a choice between listening to Amish Paradise and Gangster's Paradise, Amish Paradise is significantly better.
If you have a choice between listening to the actual Hamilton soundtrack and listening to Weird Al's mashup on accordion of the Hamilton soundtrack, it is much better.
Okay, Weird Al is much better.
He's actually a pretty good musician.
And he's really, really funny.
So yeah, this is what got me into rap.
Also, white nerdy, which is just spectacular.
So kudos to Weird Al.
This is not a racial thing.
If Weird Al were black, I would still love his stuff.
Okay, it's not just that I like white rappers.
I think Eminem's... I dislike Eminem.
But, you know, Weird Al's the best.
I have no more words.
Okay, this is how I got into rap.
Weird Al Yankovic.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So, Republicans in Congress.
Just because people are popular on the interwebs, OK, just because people are popular on the interwebs, Republicans in Congress, does not mean that you actually have to have them to Congress to say silly things.
So Diamond and Silk are very popular on the interwebs.
Diamond and Silk are, of course, sisters who are black and are big fans of President Trump.
They gained a lot of credibility on the right because they were so pro-Trump and because they're conservative in some ways.
Well, they had said that Facebook had shut down their page and prevented them from distributing their message.
Uh, there is a fair bit of counter evidence to suggest that that may not, in fact, be wholly the case.
Uh, what they say is that they reached out to Facebook, Facebook didn't reach out to them, Facebook says we did reach out to them, and they've ignored us.
Okay, listen, I think the Facebook algorithm change is a disaster, and I think that it is, at least in part, politically motivated, even if the people who made it don't believe that it's politically motivated, but Diamond and Silk were testifying before Congress, and at one point they were, it was asked about them, it was asked of them, whether they had been paid by the Trump administration at any point, or the Trump campaign at any point.
The answer is yes, okay?
According to FEC filings, Diamond and Silk were paid about $1,200 at some point during the campaign.
Diamond and Silk instead denied this under oath, which is in fact perjury, and you can just see that this thing just went sideways right out the gate.
Ms.
Holloway, I think you stated on the record today, at least three times, quote, we were not Paid by the Trump campaign, is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay.
Now, are you aware that your testimony today is under oath, subject to the penalty of perjury?
Yes, we are aware of that.
Okay.
Now the FEC report dated May 12, 2017, states that on November 22, 2016, the campaign of Donald J. Trump for President Incorporated paid the campaign of Donald J. Trump for President Incorporated paid diamond and silk $1,000, $1,274.94 for field consulting.
Mm-hm.
Are you familiar with that?
We're familiar with that particular library.
We can see that you do look at fake news.
What happened is, and what should have happened is, you should have come to our mouths to see what exactly happened before a false narrative was put out there about the $1,274.94.
So let me explain right now to you and the world.
Hold on one second, because I want to give you the opportunity to explain, which is why I'm asking the question.
Right.
I'm actually trying to figure, are you calling this FEC document fake?
Well, actually, let me get some clarity.
No, we're not calling it fake.
I'm going to give you an opportunity to respond.
Okay.
I'm just really trying, I'm struggling.
I'm really just trying to figure out, right?
Because you have an FEC document that clearly indicates that the two of you were paid for field consulting by the Trump campaign.
That's just one document.
There may be others that are out here.
And presumably, This was a document filed with genuineness and authenticity by the campaign of the president that you so love.
And so I'm just trying to figure out who is lying here.
Is it the Trump campaign or is someone not telling the truth?
So they claim that Facebook censored them for six months.
They answer yes when they were blocked, asked if they were blocked on Facebook.
It's not clear they were blocked on Facebook.
The algorithm may have been used to demote them on Facebook, which is not quite the same thing.
And they said, we've never been paid by the Trump campaign, except that they were paid, in fact, by the Trump campaign.
And then when they were asked about the FEC filing by the Trump campaign, they called it fake news.
Guys, just because people are famous on the internet does not mean that they are great for the conservative cause on every issue.
I think Diamond and Silk can say some really great stuff, some really effective stuff, but this is not the place to be doing it.
It just, I thought that this is an entire hearing that backfired in pretty significant fashion.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So Tom Brokaw has now been accused of sexual misconduct, or rather, Ron Brokaw has been accused of sexual harassment.
Apparently, he's been accused of sexually harassing Linda Vester, who's of course a famous war correspondent.
Variety said Brokaw physically tried to force her to kiss him on two separate occasions, groped her in an NBC conference room, and showed up at her hotel room uninvited.
And apparently there's another allegation against Brokaw from an anonymous woman.
I have to say, dudes, famous dudes, what in the world?
What?
Okay, like, why is it that every famous dude for the last 30 years, apparently, who's on TV has been groping women?
And you can pretty much name on one hand the people who have not been accused of things over the last 30 years.
It's just incredible.
And it goes to show you that all of the leftist posturing about how they are not sexist, how many of these people are on the left?
A lot of people are on the left.
All of which suggests that human nature, there are a lot of men who give in to the human nature of being horrible to women.
And that's why you need a civilization filled with men who are trained not only not to do these things, but also to protect women, is why the leftist view that being on the left somehow makes you a purer human being, your politics define your purity as a human being, this is not true and it's something the right has never actually believed.
Okay, so we'll be back here on Monday with much, much more.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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