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May 9, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:16
Ep. 535 - Trump Wrecks Obama’s Legacy | Ep. 535
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President Trump kills the Iran deal.
The West Virginia primary ends Don Blankenship's wild hopes.
And Michael Cohen could be even more hot water.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of news breaking yesterday and today.
And we'll go through all of it first.
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Okay, so, the big news from yesterday is that President Trump has now revoked the Iran deal.
And this, of course, was supposed to end the world.
All of human life would be ended by President Trump pulling out of one of the crappier deals of all time.
We'll go through the Obama team's wild Dismay at all of this.
The crying, the sobbing could be heard for miles around from President Obama's house in Georgetown.
And my leftist tears tumbler just started filling up right to the top, magically.
It just started filling up because of the leftist tears that were happening because of President Trump revoking the Iran deal.
A strong move by President Trump, a correct move by President Trump.
Here was President Trump, what it looked like yesterday, what it sounded like when he was revoking the Iran deal.
Not only does the deal fail to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it also fails to address the regime's development of ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads.
The Iran deal is defective at its core.
If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.
In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons.
Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
Okay, so here's the reason why this is great.
Okay, what President Trump is basically doing is he's saying, listen Iran, you can have a nuclear program, or hopes, aspirations toward a nuclear program, or you can have an economy, you cannot have both.
Because what this effectively is going to do is snap back sanctions.
It's possible Congress may have to pass new sanctions, but that will happen.
Congress will pass new sanctions against Iran.
Already, foreign companies that do business with Iran are being put in the crosshairs of the U.S.
financial system.
The companies like Boeing that have just signed major contracts with Iran, those contracts are going to have to be revoked as well.
They should be.
Iran has been using billions of dollars provided to them by the United States in order to pursue terrorism around the world.
Iran has been using all that money to build up its nuclear program, their missile program more specifically.
Their nuclear program has sort of been on hold, but they've maintained all of their technology, and they were just going to relaunch that as soon as the deadline was up, which was going to happen in 2025 anyway.
So Iran has been—they've built up their military, I believe, 40 percent since the Iran deal, all despite a massive decline in their economy.
All of which goes to show that these were not a bunch of moderates.
The lie that we were sold by the Obama administration is that there were a bunch of moderates in Iran.
And if we could just reach out to those moderates in the Iranian administration, and if we could give them something, like money, if we could just give them money, then maybe they would be emboldened to make friends with us.
Maybe they would become friendly.
Maybe they would stop everything they've been doing with this nuclear program.
And this is the lie that the Obama administration sold.
And it was a lie.
Ben Rhodes admitted it as much.
He admitted there are no moderates in the Iranian administration.
Hassan Rouhani is not a moderate.
And the fact that the Obama administration lied about it allowed the deal to go through.
Well, Obama told a bunch of lies about this yesterday.
He was very upset because his signal foreign policy achievement, really his only foreign policy achievement, was this Iran deal.
And here is what he said.
He said, "The reality is clear.
"The JCPOA is working.
"That is a view shared by our European allies, "independent experts, "and the current U.S. Secretary of Defense.
"The JCPOA," that's the joint coalition agreement, is in America's interest and has significantly rolled back Iran's nuclear program.
It has not significantly rolled back Iran's nuclear program.
All it has done is put it on hold briefly while Iran takes all of that money and builds up all of their other capabilities.
Obama made sure that the Iran deal did not include restrictions on funding of terrorism or development of ballistic missile technology.
Those are the two technologies that when hooked up to the bomb, boom, you have a nuclear weapon and at least two delivery mechanisms, ballistic missiles and terrorist groups funded by Iran.
Obama then added that some of the countries of Europe have signed on to the deal in the belief that the Iranians can be trusted.
Quote, walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America's closest allies and an agreement that our country's leading diplomats, scientists and intelligence professionals negotiated.
Okay, first of all, no one liked the deal when it was signed.
The polls showed Americans did not like the Iran deal when it was signed.
He could not get a majority of Congress to approve his deal.
This was not a treaty because he could not get 60 senators to approve of the JCPOA.
As for the notion that the Iran deal's abandonment turns our back on American allies, that's kind of weird because it seems like all of our allies in the region, like our actual allies in the region, are pretty excited that we're walking away from the deal.
Here, for example, is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.
Here was his response to the announcement.
Israel fully supports President Trump's bold decision today to reject the disastrous nuclear deal with the terrorist regime in Tehran.
Israel has opposed the nuclear deal from the start.
Because we said that rather than blocking Iran's path to a bomb, the deal actually paves Iran's path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs, and this within a few years' time.
Okay, and this of course is exactly true.
By the way, it's not just Israel who supports Trump's move here.
Saudi Arabia supports Trump's move here.
The UAE supports Trump's move here.
Egypt will support Trump's move here.
Jordan will support Trump's move here.
Obama built an anti-Iranian alliance because he was so pro-Iran.
This was the unintended consequence of Obama's foreign policy.
From 2007 on, Barack Obama was pursuing a foreign policy, he wanted a foreign policy, that made Iran a regional power.
This caused Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan to look at Israel and say, we might need to make common cause with the Jews in order to fight off the Iranians.
And that's exactly what has happened.
Okay, Obama is still out there defending the deal, of course.
He says that the agreement was an agreement between my administration and the Iranian government, and look at all these other countries who are mad.
Well, how about the fact that this was an agreement that was not approved by Congress in the first place?
Again, a treaty must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.
Okay, it is not something that can be done just because the President of the United States signs a piece of paper, which is the reason that Trump could simply come out and rip up the piece of paper in the first place.
Obama also argued that the JCPOA had worked in rolling back Iran's nuclear program.
That is not true in the slightest.
David Albright is the president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security.
He told Bloomberg after Israeli intelligence retrieved a warehouse full of documents related to the Iranian nuclear program, quote, the most significant thing is that this is a warehouse collection intended to be used later for reconstitution.
They could have destroyed those documents, but these were being carefully protected and hidden with the intention to reuse them when they launched their weapons program.
In other words, Iran is already looking at the possibility of ramping up their nuclear program.
And as soon as this deal was killed, as soon as Trump said the deal was over, the Iranians immediately responded by suggesting that they were going to restart their nuclear program and also fund more terrorism.
So that sort of gives the light of the idea these were a bunch of moderates who had been emboldened by Trump.
If they're really moderates, If they're really moderates, then what you would have expected is that Trump kills the deal, and they say, oh, well, that's really terrible.
You know, I really think that we should get rid of our nuclear program anyway, because we're moderate.
Let's reach out to the Obama—let's reach out to the Trump administration, rather, and let's try to cut a new deal with the Trump administration.
Instead, they said, nope, you know what, going to ramp that nuclear program right back up.
Here was their actual response.
Here's clip 13.
Here's their actual response of Iranian members of parliament, which is a shadow parliament, doesn't really exist anyway.
Burning a U.S.
flag on the floor of the Iranian parliament and chanting death to America in Farsi.
And what you're watching here, what you're hearing, is the sound of them trying to use a lighter to light a flag and then they're chanting death to America.
The entire parliament, chanting death to America.
Okay, so number one, as Ben Dominick points out, they are garbage with lighters.
They just don't know how they work, apparently, in the Iranian parliament.
But second of all, these were the moderates, right?
These are the people in parliament.
These are the people that Obama supposedly wanted to elevate to power.
Pretty amazing.
Pretty amazing.
So, again, these are the folks that we are supposed to trust with all this.
But Obama thinks that they are trustworthy.
He thinks they're great.
He says that Iran is complying with the agreement.
He says that the U.S.
intelligence community has continued to find that Iran is meeting its responsibilities under the deal.
Again, the point being that the deal itself was so fatally flawed that Iran could fund Hezbollah, Iran could fund Hamas, Iran could fund Al Qaeda, Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
None of that would have violated the deal because Obama signed a garbage deal because Obama was a garbage president.
Finally, Obama argues that the JCPOA does not expire.
Here's just a lie.
He says, Yeah, except that that's a complete lie.
Everybody knows that as soon as this deal is up in ten years, which really means in eight years at this point, Iran was going to rush to build a nuclear weapon.
And again, they say that that's exactly what they are going to do right now.
It's not just Barack Obama making these idiotic claims.
It's also members of his administration.
The Pod Save Tehran crowd is very upset about all of this.
All the people over at Pod Save America.
I've invited people from Pod Save America on this program before, by the way.
They are not interested.
I'm not surprised.
But it's not just Obama.
It's all of his former lackeys.
Who are very, very upset about this.
Samantha Power tweeted, she's the former UN ambassador.
She tweeted, quote, "I will never forget the dark cloud that hung over the White House in the years Iran was advancing nuclear program and Obama was briefed on all the risks of using military force.
Trump has demolished America's credibility and paved the way for Iran to restart its nuclear program." First of all, there's this really weird nostalgia that Samantha Power is talking about where, you know, there was a dark and terrible time when Iran was a threat to the world.
And then, then came the Iran deal and the Iran deal solved all the problems.
Okay, let's be real about this for a second.
Samantha Power is a person who wrote a book, it made her famous, all about why the U.S.
could not stand idly by during genocides.
She then presided over a Syrian policy that resulted in the slaughter of half a million human beings in Syria, and she strengthened the regime that backed the Syrian regime, namely the Iranian regime.
So, oh, how terrible.
Those dark days when Iran was a threat.
Iran's still a threat to the world.
Iran's been more of a threat to the world since the JCPOA than they were before the JCPOA.
Iran has increased its development of ballistic missile technology.
They've increased their funding of terrorism.
They've increased their military budget.
They've continued to back Assad.
They've taken over Lebanon.
They've pushed Hamas into prominence again.
They've pushed, in Yemen, Iranian-backed parties into power.
And yet, Samantha Power thinks that Trump is the real problem here.
Then there's Ben Rhodes, the former Obama national security aide.
He tweeted, quote, First of all, Ben Rhodes is a former fiction writer who wrote fiction on the Iran deal.
I mean, he's the one who went out and admitted to the American public that he lied over and over and over about the Iran deal and that so had Obama talking about moderates in Iran.
In a second, I'm going to play you the inspiring words of John Kerry, whose face is in a stage of full-on collapse.
It's like, as a former friend of mine used to say, his face looks like it's a mudslide in the Hollywood Hills.
Well, we'll get the latest from John Kerry in just a second.
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Okay, so John Kerry, who had been spending the last couple of weeks running around the globe trying to gin up support for this garbage deal.
He was very upset yesterday, and here he was ripping into President Trump.
John Kerry reporting for duty.
What the president has done by withdrawing unilaterally is placed the United States in breach of this agreement.
He has literally taken a situation where there was no crisis and created crisis by transferring to Iran sanctions that were meant with respect to the nuclear agreement itself.
What the president has done Okay, you garbage piece of crap Secretary of State.
I mean, he's just a terrible Secretary of State.
Trump had every right to do this.
You know why?
Because you and your garbage administration decided to push this agreement through without the approval of the American public or the Congress.
End of story.
Okay, Congress has final say on treaties.
You decided to go it alone.
And guess what?
That's how it works.
If you sign an executive order, Trump can reverse that executive order.
And if you sign an agreement without the permission of Congress, then Trump can revoke that too.
And that's exactly what Trump did yesterday.
So good for Trump.
Good for Trump.
And John Kerry, by the way, is one of the worst secretaries of state in American history.
Just really an awful secretary of state.
Look at the breakdown on the global stage of America's credibility.
Trump restored that credibility yesterday.
He didn't finish that credibility.
He didn't hurt that credibility.
He helped restore that credibility in the first place.
The reason he helped restore that credibility is very simple.
America's credibility was shot.
We had lied to our own people in order to promote Tehran.
And now Trump said, no more.
And you can see the effect of this, OK?
And I'll show you that you can see the effect of this.
Here's how.
OK.
Today, Mike Pompeo is going to return to the United States with several detainees from North Korea.
So the line was supposed to be that Donald Trump was going to blow up the world.
Donald Trump was going to lead to nuclear proliferation everywhere.
Donald Trump was going to lead to conflagrations that would consume millions of human beings.
And the latest indicator of this was that he pulled out of the Iran deal and that North Korea would therefore say, well, we can't trust the United States to keep a deal we signed with them.
Therefore, we must pursue nuclear weapons right now.
Except that's not what's happening, is it?
That's not what's happening in the slightest.
Instead, it turns out that North Korea is trying to cut a deal with President Trump.
You know that crazy President Trump?
That threatening President Trump?
That President Trump who just pulled out of the Iran deal?
And North Korea is now trying to cut some sort of deal with President Trump.
The latest evidence being that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, a good Secretary of State, unlike John Kerry, is on his way to North Korea and he is expected to return with three Americans detained in North Korea.
Two of the detainees, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-sung, have been held since 2017.
The third detainee, Dong Chul Kim, was arrested in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labor for espionage.
Pompeo said he'd be meeting with senior North Korean leaders.
He didn't know if he'd be meeting with Kim.
He said, we're prepared to meet with anyone who is speaking on behalf of the North Korean government and can give a solid answer, so we're prepared.
I do have to say that the funniest part of this particular story is that that third detainee, Dong Chul Kim, he was arrested in October 2015.
And he's presumably been held in solitary confinement.
He's been held away from the world.
Imagine his reaction when he arrives in the United States and is met on the tarmac by President Donald Trump.
Right?
He has no idea that Trump is president.
It's going to be amazing.
He's going to get off the plane, and Donald Trump's going to be like, hello, I'm the president now.
And he's just going to be like, what?
But that's the guy who freed him.
That's the guy who got him free.
And again, this is the entire point.
All the foreign policy geniuses, all the diplomats, they said, Donald Trump is gonna blow up the world.
Just like George W. Bush, they're all cowboys, all these cowboys.
The only two, the only example in the recent past, maybe it's North Korea now, that'd be the other one.
The only example in the recent past of a country voluntarily giving up its nuclear weapons would be Libya during the Bush administration.
The reason they gave up their nuclear weapons is because George W. Bush invaded Iraq and took down Saddam Hussein and the American military destroyed Saddam Hussein's military in three weeks.
And Muammar Gaddafi said, oh boy, that's scary.
What if I just hand over this yellow cake to you right now?
And the United States said, all right, sure.
It turns out that dictators who are scared operate in ways that are much more conducive to the American public interest than dictators who are emboldened.
Do you think the Iran deal emboldened dictators?
Or do you think that the Iran deal made them more afraid of American military might?
Do you think that it made them afraid of America's commitment?
Or do you think that it made them seek America's pusillanimous Surrender.
Pretty obvious which is which.
Because if you were a country pursuing nuclear weapons, you would look at Iran and say, look, I'm going to pursue nuclear weapons as well, because Barack Obama will sign any deal with me.
I can make any lie that I want.
He will hand me any amount of money.
And then in 10 years, I can do what I want anyway.
So why the hell not?
You think that North Korea wouldn't accept Obama's deal if Obama had put his deal on the table for North Korea?
You think that North Korea wouldn't have said, listen, you lift all the sanctions, you give us hundreds of billions of dollars, and we'll promise, we'll cross our fingers and hope to die, we'll cross our hearts and hope to die, that we'll get rid of that nuclear program, Mr. President.
Don't worry, we'll take care of it.
Do you think that they wouldn't have accepted that deal?
Of course they would have accepted that deal, and they would have been lying.
They accepted the same deal from Clinton, they accepted the same deal from George W. Bush, and they would have accepted it from Obama anyway.
But, with Trump, they don't get to accept that deal.
I hope.
We hope that President Trump is a stalwart with regard to North Korea, as he has been with regard to Iran.
But it's pretty clear the North Koreans think that they're going to have to do something to please President Trump, which is the reason that they just released three North Koreans.
Remember, I mean, the three American citizens from North Korea.
Remember, that's three American citizens released from North Korea under President Trump.
Remember, that Otto Warmbier was killed in North Korea.
President Trump was the president.
I mean, President Obama was the president when Otto Warmbier was taken into custody in North Korea, and he did nothing.
Zero things.
None.
Okay, Otto Warmbier was given back to the United States after he was effectively brain dead.
You know, only after Trump took office.
So clearly, there's a bit of a math change here.
Trump has changed something.
And you know that I'm not a guy who idly gives credit to President Trump, but he gets a lot of credit for what he just did on the Iran deal.
And so far, what he's been doing on North Korea, it's showing results.
Now, I'm still skeptical that something great comes out of it, but we will find out.
At least his strategy is a lot better than President Obama's.
I'm gonna surrender it the first available opportunity to anyone who shows adverse interest to the United States.
Okay, meanwhile, last night in West Virginia, there was a primary.
And that primary in West Virginia was, shall we say, amusing.
There was a guy named Don Blankenship, and Don Blankenship, you shall recall, was this crazed mine owner who just, his probation literally ended the day of the election.
So he'd been on probation.
The reason he'd been on probation is because there was a mine collapse in which he was found negligent and he had to do prison time.
So that was pretty great.
And in just a second, I'm going to explain to you how that West Virginia primary went down First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at PolicyGenius.
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Okay, so as I mentioned, the West Virginia primary happens yesterday, and Don Blankenship goes down in absolute flames.
So Don Blankenship was, of course, this mine owner in West Virginia who had cut an ad suggesting that Mitch McConnell was, in fact, Cocaine Mitch, which would be amazing.
If Mitch McConnell were on coke, that is the least effective coke of all time.
I mean, just saying.
Mitch McConnell.
That dude's a turtle.
And if you think that Mitch McConnell is—if that's Mitch McConnell on a high, I'd really hate—I mean, he'd be dead, right?
I mean, then the answer would be that without cocaine, he'd be dead, if you're really Cocaine Mitch.
But in any case, Don Blankenship had called him Cocaine Mitch, and then he had suggested that McConnell's campaign was funded by China people, which was great.
There was a debate in which Blankenship apparently did pretty well, and there were a couple of polls that were leaked to the press.
Now, the problem was that the polls leaked to the press about Blankenship didn't have any underlying details.
So it's quite possible that it was Blankenship's rivals in the race who were leaking those polls out in order to drive down Blankenship's numbers, saying, OK, well, Blankenship might win.
That means everybody has to show up because Blankenship is a crazy person.
Well, Blankenship got blown out by double digits.
He finished with about 20% of the vote.
And this led Mitch McConnell to actually tweet out, it's pretty funny, to actually tweet this out.
Thanks for playing, Don.
And it's a picture of Mitch McConnell surrounded by cocaine.
To understand this joke, you have to have seen the show Narcos on Netflix, because here's the actual poster for the show Narcos on Netflix.
So Narcos is about the distribution of cocaine by Pablo Escobar.
So they just photoshopped Mitch McConnell into Pablo Escobar's body, basically.
The slogan for Narcos, by the way, is there's no business like blow business.
So Mitch McConnell trolling Don Blankenship.
Now, is it appropriate for Mitch McConnell to do that?
Probably not.
Is it funny?
Yeah, it's kind of funny.
And again, I can't blame Mitch McConnell too much since Don Blankenship had suggested that Mitch McConnell's wife was a China person.
I don't even know what that means.
But there are a couple of instructive things about the Blankenship race.
OK, so number one, Blankenship lost for a couple of reasons.
One is, clearly not, but also, it is true that Blankenship had no shot of winning in a general election.
Now, people said the same thing about Roy Moore, but the truth is that sans the allegations about Roy Moore in Alabama of going after 14-year-old girls, Roy Moore would have won that race walking away, despite all of his toxic views, despite all of the things that he had said in the past.
Don Blankenship, it was pretty clear that he wasn't going anywhere.
Roy Moore probably was going somewhere if it had not been for that late-breaking scandal.
Yeah, so Blankenship, let's put it this way, the Republican primary voter has not suddenly rediscovered moderation or sober republicanism.
It's just that the Republican primary voter still understands that there are some candidates who are bound to lose because they're just too crazy for school.
Roy Moore apparently does not break that barrier, but Don Blankenship did.
Now, what is also hilarious is there's this one guy, and I have to analyze what he had to say, he's a West Virginia guy.
His relatives died in the Blankenship mine disaster, and he said that he voted for Don Blankenship anyway.
Why did he vote for Don Blankenship?
Because this.
You had cousins who died in that mine disaster.
Three of them.
Three of them.
Three of your cousins died in that mine disaster, and you're gonna vote for Blankenship.
Exactly.
I want an honest crook and that's blankenship.
Okay, so I think there's a lot to this.
I want an honest crook and that's blankenship.
Americans are so cynical about politics right now that they would rather have somebody who is obviously a gangster in a position of power than somebody who pretends to be genteel and they think is secretly doing something on the sly.
So they'd rather have somebody who's just a crook outright than somebody who they think is hiding the ball.
I think that this is the 2016 election in a nutshell.
I think a lot of people saw that Donald Trump was Donald Trump, and they were like, okay, at least the guy's an honest crook, or at least Donald Trump is an honest Donald Trump.
If not a crook, then Donald Trump's Donald Trump.
Like, the guy is the guy.
But Hillary Clinton, you know, you don't know what she's doing behind closed doors because everything she says is a lie.
So, honesty, authenticity now go a long way in American politics.
The question is whether we've gone so far that utter cynicism means that nobody, even a sincere, decent person running for political office can be trusted.
And we may be on the brink of that.
We may be at the point in American politics where anyone who is decent is seen as insincere.
That anyone who is not a crook is seen as actually a crook in disguise.
If that's the case, if we really go on that fire in American politics, it's going to be very difficult to elect anyone of decency ever again.
And I think it's a misread.
I think there are politicians who are honest.
I mean, off the top of my head, I think Senator Mike Lee from Utah is an honest guy.
I think he's not a crook, and I think he's a sincere guy.
And I think there are a bunch of people in Congress like this.
I don't think they're all bad folks.
I think the lie that everyone in Congress is obviously corrupt, and they're all hiding, and they're all attempting to gain personally, I don't think that's true.
And the problem with an honest crook is that an honest crook is still a crook.
An honest crook is still going to screw you.
You can trust that they're going to screw you, actually.
Bill Clinton was an honest crook.
He did exactly that, right?
He was happy doing exactly that.
The widespread feeling of corruption has some pretty significant impacts on American politics.
It also leads to suspicion where none may be warranted.
If you think everybody is corrupt, Donald Trump was fond of saying this during the campaign.
He used to say, he had this sort of world-weary attitude toward politics.
If you've ever seen The Godfather Part 1, There's the scene where Michael Corleone comes back from Italy, and he had formerly dated Kay, Diane Keaton, the worst actress in human history, and he had formerly dated Kay, and he comes back, and he's having a conversation with Kay, and he's talking about how he wants her to marry him, and she says, but you're a gangster, and he says, well, Kay, senators have people, she says, senators don't have people killed.
Presidents don't have people killed.
And Michael says, don't be so naive, Kay.
OK, well, you know, it's a good line, but it's also not true.
Senators don't routinely have people killed.
OK, the reality is that when a senator does kill someone like Teddy Kennedy, it has pretty significant impacts on their public life.
Senators do not have the power to have people killed.
Governors generally do not have the power to have people killed.
Huey Long might have been maybe the one exception, but it's not a typical thing in American politics.
That would be crook Russian gangster politics.
It is not true in the United States that you have to worry about you oppose Senator Kamala Harris in California, and there's going to be a dead fish on your doorstep the next day.
But Donald Trump had this view of politics.
The problem is, if all of America has that view of politics, then everybody is going to assume that there's corruption behind everything.
And that actually redounds to Donald Trump's detriment now that he is a politician, now that he's President of the United States.
So as an example, Michael Cohen is Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
And there are a bunch of allegations out today from Michael Avenatti, Michael Avenatti is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, that Donald Trump's personal lawyer engaged in something deeply corrupt.
Now I'm going to tell you the details.
There's no evidence that any of this was actually corrupt.
There isn't.
Okay?
You can think that it was corrupt.
You can suspect that it was corrupt.
Maybe further evidence will show that it was corrupt.
But everybody immediately jumps to conclusions that there was corruption going on, even when there is no actual line connecting the dots.
So here is what we know.
The Daily Beast has now confirmed that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company connected to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Okay, so this guy is apparently connected to Vladimir Putin.
The allegations were initially made by Michael Avenetti, that Stormy Daniels is his lawyer.
Apparently, a source familiar with the matter confirmed it.
There's a dossier published by Avenetti on Tuesday evening, and here's what it said.
And his cousin, Mr. Andrew Entrader, routed eight payments to Mr. Cohen through a company called Columbus Nova LLC beginning in January 2017 and continuing until at least August 2017.
The funds Avenatti suggested may have been used to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.
Now, that's a dot that has not been connected.
OK, so there are a couple of dots here that have not been connected.
One, is this group Columbus Nova LLC a Russian front group?
And two, were they paying Michael Cohen so that Michael Cohen would pay off Donald Trump's bills?
Was it a bribe to Donald Trump, essentially, from a Russian source?
We have three separate dots, and there are no lines connecting any of these dots.
So you have dot number one, which is that there was a payment that was made by a company to Michael Cohen.
Dot number two is that that company supposedly had to do with the Russians.
And dot number three is that that money was used to pay off Stormy Daniels.
But there's no actual lines connecting these dots, right?
Because the only facts that we do know is that Michael Cohen got $500,000 from this company, Columbus Nova LLC.
We don't have any of the other information confirmed, none of it.
There's a serious ongoing debate over whether that company actually is a Russian front group or not, because Entrader was a donor to the RNC.
In June 2017, Entrader donated $35,000 to a joint fundraising committee for the RNC and Trump's re-election campaign.
He also gave a quarter million bucks to Trump's inaugural committee.
So, Entrader and Vexelberg have been active participants in the U.S.
technology and media sectors.
So, here's an example.
Columbus Nova Technology Partners.
They were the first and only outside investor in Gawker Media.
Columbus also backed the record label of former Def Jam boss Lior Cohen, invested in the streaming music pioneer Rhapsody, and put money behind a gig economy site, a genetic risk firm, and a company called Tomfoolery Incorporated.
This is an actual company, OK?
It's not just a cutout that is being used by the Russians.
and Columbus Nova lawyer Richard Owens of Latham & Watkins, which is a highly respected law firm, insisted that Vexelberg did not have a controlling interest in the firm.
Quote, reports today that Victor Vexelberg used Columbus Nova as a consuit for payments to Michael Cohen are false.
The claim that Victor Vexelberg was involved in or provided any funding for Columbus Nova's engagement of Michael Cohen is patently untrue.
Neither Vexelberg nor anyone else outside of Columbus Nova was involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement.
Columbus Nova's own website until Tuesday night said that the company was the U.S.
investment vehicle for the Renova Group, which is Vexelberg's asset management firm.
But it is a U.S.
investment vehicle for the Renova Group.
It doesn't mean that they don't have other money coming in.
The site also noted that Intrader is a former director and current member of the executive board of Renova.
Apparently the page of the site was removed Wednesday morning.
So it's possible that Avenetti's theory is correct.
Vexelberg was recently questioned by federal agents working with Robert Mueller, by the way.
CNN reported that the queries involved the oligarch's payments to Cohen, but there's no hard evidence that this connection has actually been made yet.
But because everybody assumes the worst about everybody in politics, the assumption has to be that Michael Cohen did something deeply, deeply wrong.
Okay, in just a second...
I'm going to show how this also hurts Michael Cohen with regard to AT&T, which is supposedly paying Michael Cohen as well.
First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Legacy Box.
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Okay, so.
Before I go any further on the Michael Cohen latest, first, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire, rather.
So for $9.99 a month, you get the rest of this show live, the rest of Michael Nolte's show live.
Apparently, Michael was on fire yesterday.
Not because I set him on fire, but apparently because he did a really good show yesterday, so you should go check it out.
And by the way, you also can ask Michael questions, because The Conversation is coming up on Tuesday, May 15th.
Michael's gonna sit there for an hour, answer your questions at 2.30 p.m.
Pacific, 5.30 p.m.
Eastern, and I don't know why you think he has answers, but if you think he does, then you can go check it out, and you can ask him questions live, but only if you are a subscriber.
The way it works is you can watch it live at YouTube or at Facebook, but you can only ask a question if you subscribe.
To ask questions as a subscriber, you go over to dailywire.com.
And then you go over to the page where you would watch a show, and you just type it into the chat box, and Elisha Krauss will sit there and curate the questions and ensure that he has asked all of your best questions.
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It is cheaper than the monthly.
It is $99 a year, and it is well worth the price because, as I say, after that Iran deal thing, it just fills up.
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So as I say, there's a lot of speculation going on with regard to Michael Cohen and this payment from a supposed Russian source.
According to the Daily Beast, if Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' lawyer, if his analysis is correct and the payments violated federal banking law, then Cohen could be in serious legal jeopardy.
There are reportedly concerns in the president's inner circle that Cohen could begin cooperating with investigators and maybe he would flip on Trump.
Now, what would he have to say about Trump if he flipped on Trump?
Who knows.
I mean, the answer is, who knows.
I mean, there were rumors yesterday from New York Magazine that seem not completely illogical that the story about Elliot Broidy, who is the former RNC chair, that Elliot Broidy, you recall he was also using Michael Cohen as a lawyer, and the suggestion was that he had paid off a Playboy Playmate $1.6 million to go get an abortion.
He had to resign his slot at the RNC, and he had used Michael Cohen as the go-between.
There was a story from New York Magazine suggesting that maybe it wasn't actually Broidy at all.
Maybe Broidy was taking the fall as a cover-up for Trump.
I don't know that that's supported.
I don't see any evidence to support that as of yet.
But if Cohen flips, that could be a serious problem.
But again, I don't know that the evidence is there yet that Cohen was actually paid off by the Russians to help out Trump or anything like that or that he did anything illegal.
Speaking of other non-illegal activity that is apparently deeply disturbing to everyone, AT&T confirmed Tuesday evening that it paid Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in 2017.
for, quote, "insights into understanding the new administration." The payments were revealed in a document published by Stormy Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, Tuesday afternoon.
Avenatti alleged that Essential Consultant, a shell company set up by Cohen before the election to pay Daniels, was paid by several corporations, including AT&T.
At the time, AT&T was seeking government approval for its acquisition of Time Warner, CNN's parent company.
A document released by Avenatti stated that Essential received 200 grand in four separate payments of 50 grand in late 2017 and early 2018 from AT&T.
AT&T said no.
Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration.
They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.
Okay, but here is one of the problems.
All of this may not be illegal.
It may turn out that none of this is illegal, that paying Trump's lawyer to talk to them about what Trump thinks is not illegal, but it does stink, doesn't it?
I mean, there's something about this that stinks to high heaven.
The AT&T thing, to me, is more disturbing than the reports about this firm paying Michael Cohen $500,000 until we know more about the firm and whether it, in fact, was a Russian front group.
But AT&T handing over $200,000, and apparently that number might be higher, to Michael Cohen for nothing better than, please advise us on how President Trump thinks, You can buy Newt Gingrich's book for $11.
Like, no, you don't need Michael Cohen to do that.
This looks like influence peddling by Michael Cohen.
Now, does that count formally as bribery?
No, it doesn't.
But it is certainly swampy stuff.
It is swampy stuff.
And it's precisely the sort of stuff that Trump used to rail against when he said that he was there to drain the swamp.
So Michael Cohen is a swamp creature.
President Trump needs to extricate himself from the swamp as fast as humanly possible.
I know that he's used to operating inside a different sort of swamp, the swamp of New York real estate, where you have to cut deals with With concrete manufacturers, wink, wink, nod, nod, in New Jersey in order to get things done.
But it is time for Trump to cut the cord on all these folks.
He should have cut the cord on Michael Cohen a long time ago.
And the fact that Michael Cohen was taking a bunch of money from AT&T while AT&T was under the scrutiny of the Trump administration does not look good.
It's not a good look for Michael Cohen.
Again, that doesn't mean that everything here was illegal.
But it does mean that there's some stuff here that should, at the very least, be somewhat troubling if you believe in honest, open government that is anti-swamp government.
That would be, I think, something to point out.
By the way, it is worth noting here that Michael Avenatti, who distributed all this information, not clear where he got the information.
He could have violated the law himself in order to get all of this information, because where the hell did he get it?
Right?
Did Avendetti get it from the court?
Did he get it from the prosecutors?
Was he complicit in a crime in getting these documents in the first place?
Everything here is deeply suspicious.
Okay.
Meanwhile...
Yesterday, there was an article at the New York Times that was, I thought, really interesting.
It was an article by Barry Weiss, with whom I am friendly.
She's an opinion columnist at the New York Times.
And she, of course, has been put under heavy scrutiny because she happens to be not a lefty.
So she is, I think you could best describe her as slightly right of center, Barry.
But that's questionable.
She might just be center-center.
But she is anti-identity politics, and she is not in favor of yelling at everyone who disagrees with her and calling them a racist.
So she wrote a piece yesterday about the so-called intellectual dark web.
The intellectual dark web is a group of people, people like me, Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, A bunch of people who you're going to hear from in the future.
Dave Rubin, people you're going to hear from in the future on this show, right, on our Sunday special.
This is the intellectual dark web.
People who disagree about everything.
People like Michael Shermer, who is an atheist who is slightly to the right of center.
People like Brett Weinstein, who is an atheist who is all the way to the left.
We're all part of this so-called intellectual dark web.
The only thing that unites us is we don't like identity politics.
We want to have conversations with each other.
We don't want conversations shut down by calls of racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia.
We are not racist, sexist, bigots, or homophobes, by the way.
And we are tired of all conversation being stifled by this.
So Barry wrote a long piece about this.
And this was her entire point, is that this intellectual dark web exists out there.
Again, the term was coined by Eric Weinstein, who's a former Harvard mathematician.
So this led to Barry appearing on MSNBC.
And on MSNBC, she got into a conversation With one of the guests, and this guest happens to be a professor at Princeton.
This professor at Princeton is a chair of African American Studies.
He's Eddie Glaude Jr.
And Weiss starts talking, Barry starts talking about all the various members of the intellectual dark web, and listen to how Eddie Glaude responds.
You wonder why the audience for shows like mine, shows like Sam's, shows like Jordan's, why the audience is increasing?
It's because if you keep calling everyone you disagree with racially biased and racially motivated, a bunch of people are going to turn off.
And they're going to instead turn to people who are honest about issues.
So here's Barry, and watch what Eddie Glaude says, because this is a great window into the mind of the left.
When you talk about Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro in one sentence, I could see the connection between those two.
Which is?
Having something to do with how they think about race.
Having something to do with how they think about diversity in the country and the ways in which that diversity is talked about, right?
The way in which they think about political correctness.
I could see the way that could... Yeah, they're anti-identity politics for sure.
Identity politics is a phrase that kind of is a red herring.
Identity politics is just simply questions of justice, right?
No, I don't think so.
No, absolutely.
So is the question, is it... That's not how I think about it.
Okay, let me help you think about it then.
So if it's the case... Okay.
If it's the case... Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on a second.
Here, right here.
No, no, no.
I gotta step in.
Eddie...
You have just made Barry Weiss's point that you disagree with the way Barry Weiss views the world, so you're going to help her view the world more the way you view the world.
The entire purpose of the exercise is To have honest conversations with people and to not question their morality or their wisdom just because they don't view the world exactly the same way that you do.
This is the way that people think who do not want to have a conversation.
They say that identity politics, which says we can judge you by the nature of your ethnicity, by the nature of your skin color, that this is just a question of justice.
And anyone who disagrees with that principle, anyone who says that race is something that should be irrelevant to the vast majority of discussions, that reason should be the basis of discussion, not experience, your personal life experience, anybody who says that is apparently now anti-justice.
People like me and Sam, that's what we have in common, is that we're anti-justice.
Good for Joe Scarborough, that's exactly right.
The reason that the intellectual dark web exists is because the left has forced everyone into a box together.
And so fine, if all the reasonable thinkers who disagree on everything are going to talk with one another, that's going to make the country better.
Maybe they won't feature us on mainstream media all that often.
Maybe they just do an occasional piece in the New York Times on us.
Maybe we don't all have slots at MSNBC or CNN.
But I do think that what's happening is changing the country, and I think it's making a very, very big difference.
OK.
Time for some things I like and some things I hate, and then we'll get to a bit of Bible talk.
Renewed Bible talk.
Yay.
OK, so things that I like.
I think it was yesterday.
I talked about this awful video of a black dude who was knocking a Jewish kid.
It wasn't in Crown Heights.
I guess it was in Williamsburg, New York.
It was a Hasidic kid, and the kid had a kind of odd haircut.
He's kind of close-shaven on top, and then he had the side locks coming down, and he was wearing a yarmulke.
And the kid may have been three years old, and this black guy was mocking the kid.
And I ripped into the black guy.
I said, you know, this is just inappropriate.
Well, this guy now came out, and he has apologized, and he gave what I thought was a great apology, so good for him.
Good for him.
When you do something wrong, this is how you apologize.
The guy is known on Twitter as Kai James, and he says in the video that he's truly sorry for his actions, and he says there's no excuse for it.
Good for him.
This is what it looks like when you do something wrong and you're supposed to fix it.
Here is Kai James apologizing.
I recently posted online a video of me coming at a little kid in regards to his haircut.
Off rip, I just want to sincerely apologize to that young boy and his family.
I never meant for anybody to get hurt or for this to be taken the wrong way.
It was just a joke.
And I'm sorry.
Like, I'm truly sorry.
Like, I think about it every day now.
Like, that was really, like, if it was my little brother, you're right.
I don't want this to be like a race thing.
I have nothing against Jewish people.
I have friends that are Jewish.
My babysitter growing up was Jewish.
It's nothing like I have nothing against Jewish people.
That honestly right there was just in regards to the haircut only.
That was my opinion on the haircut.
I have nothing against them.
Trust me.
They done been through too much, too much.
We've been through as much as they've been through.
They've been through worse.
I don't have no issues with Jewish people.
I respect them 100 percent.
They do what they do.
They grind.
They get it how they get it.
But right there, that was just me being real immature.
That was one of the most immature videos I probably ever recorded, posted online.
Okay, good for him.
Okay, this is what an apology looks like, and that's good.
And apology accepted.
Like, he knows he wasn't supposed to do that.
He knows it was egregious.
And you gotta give a guy credit when he recognizes that he did something wrong.
Hopefully that's something we can all take to heart.
Okay, time for a thing I hate.
Now, speaking of egregious behavior, OK, people who should apologize, the Denver mayor has a son, OK?
And the mayor of Denver's son was stopped by a traffic cop.
And he did one thing that you're not supposed to do.
The son of the Denver mayor, his name is Michael Hancock.
And the son is named Jordan Hancock.
He starts threatening an Aurora police officer who stopped him for speeding.
And here is what he had to say to the police officer.
Yeah, exactly.
Don't worry about it.
Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah, exactly, and guess what? - I'm about to fight you.
- Oh, yeah, for what?
- Yeah, exactly, don't worry about it.
- Hey, being booed, whatever.
- Yeah, okay.
- Yeah, whatever. - I see your dad's gonna be fried.
- Exactly, and I got my whole . - Okay, so he calls the cop an effing bleep, and then he slurred for a gay person.
He says, I'm about to get you fired, you effing b-word.
So here's Mayor Hancock's office in a statement.
Quote, we addressed this matter with Jordan and he has apologized to the officer.
While we do not support nor condone his inexcusable actions and words during this traffic stop, we love our son dearly and support him.
What is that last sentence supposed to mean?
Like, we love our son and support him in what?
Calling a cop an f-word?
Like, what?
Okay, how about this?
How about, our son acted like a jerk.
He apologized as well he should.
He's in timeout.
How about that?
But instead, I guess now we have to defend our kids even when our kids do garbage things.
The footage was leaked to the local television station.
The Aurora police didn't release the full video and they said in a statement, we will be conducting an internal investigation into this matter to determine the circumstances under which the video was released.
Any member who is found to have violated departmental policies will be held accountable.
So great.
Now the police are going to investigate the cop for releasing the video, but the kid is going to go completely free, no problem, for cursing out a cop this way during a traffic stop, for abusing a cop this way.
Just, just wonderful that yet our standards aren't dropping at all in this country.
Okay, time for a bit of Bible talk.
So, I've decided that, you know, we went through, about six months ago, we finished up going through the entire five books of Moses, partial by partial.
Every week, the Jews read a portion of the Bible, of the Old Testament, and we went through the five books of Moses.
So, I've decided that it's time to start going through the prophets and the writings.
So, we'll start with chapter one of the book of Joshua.
So, as you recall, when last we left our story, Moses had died on top of a mountain, and the Jews were about to enter the land of Israel.
They were looking for a new leader, and Joshua was appointed by God.
He, of course, was Moses' right-hand man, which is interesting, of course, because Moses actually had a couple of sons, and they were passed over.
God did not actually choose them because they were not the tool that God needed at the time.
So, in Joshua 1, 7 through 10, Joshua gives a lecture to the Jewish people before they go into the land.
He says, "Be strong and very courageous.
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you.
Do not turn from it to the right or to the left that you may be successful wherever you go.
Keep this book of law always on your lips.
Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.
Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be discouraged.
For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." And then Joshua orders the officers of the people, go through the camp and tell the people, get your provisions ready.
Three days from now you're going to cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land your Lord, the Lord your God, is giving you for your own.
Now what's interesting about this is that everybody always says that Judaism is a theocracy, which Is true of virtually every religion.
Anytime you have a religion that is also involved in governance, that is a theocracy, technically.
But this is more like a constitutional monarchy.
So the monarchy in Judaism doesn't arise until King Saul, which is significantly later than this portion of time.
There's a whole book of Judges in which there's essentially a rotating cast of leaders who are put into power.
But the one thing that is true, and this is true even when there is a king in Israel, is that those people are held to the standard.
They're held to the standard of the Bible.
They're held to God's moral standard.
So, it was not an absolute dictatorship.
It was more of a constitutional monarchy than anything else.
And Joshua, who was the leader of the Jewish people there, is held to the same standard.
The law above all else.
Okay, and that concept of the law above all else, including the power of the leaders to change the law, is a unique one in the history of Western civilization, and has significant ramifications all the way down to our own day, when there are people who say that the law should be shifted to accommodate particularly powerful people, as opposed to the law ruling people and not man.
Okay.
We'll be back here tomorrow with much more.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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