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May 22, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

47:12

The Spy Who Hated Me | Ep. 543

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	President Trump sicks the DOJ and the FBI.
	Leftists cry foul.
	And did the Pope just actually shift Catholic policy on homosexuality?
	We'll talk about all of it.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Oh, yes, and I am so happy to be back.
	I had a wonderful three-day weekend because it was the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which meant that I was barred from electronics and couldn't travel and all that, which meant I got to spend time with my family and read, which are my two favorite things in the world.
	So I'm in a very good mood.
	And then I checked the news last night and I'm in less of a good mood.
	So we'll talk about why I'm in less of a good mood.
	After checking all of the news last night.
	I do want to remind everybody, by the way, that we do have upcoming events happening in Dallas and Phoenix.
	Those are coming up in August, and you can go to dailywire.com slash events if you want to get tickets for that.
	We're nearly sold out, I believe, in both places.
	We're approaching sellout proportions, certainly, in both places right now.
	It's only been open to the general public for a couple of days here, so you got to rush to get those tickets in right now.
	Dallas and Phoenix coming up in August.
	Check it out at dailywire.com slash events.
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	Alrighty, so.
	The big news, of course, is this blow up between President Trump and the FBI.
	So President Trump over the weekend tweeted out that the FBI had been surveilling his campaign during the campaign based on stories that broke late last week from the New York Times that there was an informant who'd been working within the Trump campaign to bring information about supposed collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
	And Trump pointed back to his tweet early in 2016 in which he said that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower.
	Trump himself was not wiretapped to Trump Tower.
	However, he did allege that he was surveilled during the campaign.
	It's not clear that Trump personally was surveilled during the campaign, but there were members of his campaign who were surveilled during the campaign.
	So the reason that I want to clarify all of this is because what you're hearing from both left and right, I think, are overbroad versions of the stories that are actually worth telling.
	So from the right, what you're hearing is there was a deep Okay, we'll go through the evidence for that and demonstrate what's true about that and what is not true about that.
	when it wasn't even clear he was gonna be the nominee.
	All the way back in March, 2016, the FBI was going after Trump's campaign, trying to sink him from the inside.
	Okay, we'll go through the evidence for that and demonstrate what's true about that and what is not true about that.
	What you're hearing from the left is Trump obviously colluded with Russia.
	The members of the Trump team were in bed with Vladimir Putin and Putin was actually calling the shots from the Kremlin And he was deciding how exactly Trump should campaign.
	He was deciding how the campaign would go.
	So everything was totally above board by the FBI.
	OK, so we're going to go through all of the evidence here and we're going to discuss what is real and what is not.
	Here is what happened over the last 24 hours.
	So according to The New York Times.
	White House Chief of Staff John Kelly plans to convene a meeting between top law enforcement and intelligence officials and GOP congressional leaders to quote-unquote review highly classified and other information the lawmakers have requested about the FBI's use of a confidential source to aid an investigation of the Trump campaign, a White House spokeswoman said Monday.
	President Trump met for an hour Monday with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
	The meeting came a day after the DOJ asked its Inspector General to investigate Trump's claim that his campaign may have been infiltrated by the FBI source for political purposes and amid continued demands from GOP lawmakers that the department produce materials on the person.
	White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that at a meeting, it was agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with other FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with congressional leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.
	The significance of that was not immediately clear.
	DOJ leaders have fought vigorously against revealing to Congress materials on the source.
	They say that if they reveal who the informant was, that will leak to the press.
	The press basically has already come up with who the informant was.
	It has not been fully confirmed yet, so I'm not going to mention the name of the informant on the show.
	It's pretty obvious who this informant was through basic Google searches.
	You can get the person's name.
	It was not clear whether they had backed down from their position and would now allow GOP leaders to look at the documents or whether there would simply be a follow-up meeting for more discussion.
	So, according to Republicans, there have been two big boo-boos.
	And these two big boo-boos demonstrate ill will toward the Trump campaign and demonstrate that the Obama-run FBI was actually attempting to get Trump all the way back during the Republican primaries.
	So these two boo-boos supposedly were the use of an informant to go after George Papadopoulos and to go after Carter Page, two Trump foreign policy aides.
	Papadopoulos had met in, I believe, April in London with a Russian cutout who was a professor in London who had close ties with the Russians and who had suggested that the Russian government could get information about Hillary Clinton's emails to the Trump campaign.
	Papadopoulos had run that up the chain.
	Nothing had happened because of it, but Papadopoulos Obviously, he was apparently bragging about it in front of the Australian ambassador.
	The Australian ambassador called the FBI.
	The FBI decided to put an informant on Papadopoulos.
	It's sort of how the timeline there goes.
	The implication here by Republicans is that all of that was useless, not only useless, counterproductive, not only counterproductive, politically motivated.
	That if Papadopoulos had been working for Hillary Clinton, nobody would have even attempted such a thing.
	Okay, that is claim number one.
	Claim number two is that the Carter Page FISA Warrant, which was gotten late in the years, like September 2016, the Carter Page FISA Warrant was ill-gotten.
	That it was gotten on the basis of the Steele dossier.
	Now, you recall the Steele dossier, I know this all gets complicated, but I'm trying to break it down.
	The Steele dossier, as you recall, was originally a dossier funded by the Washington Free Beacon that was supposed to uncover OPPO research about President Trump.
	The Washington Free Beacon was working through a firm called Fusion GPS.
	Before Christopher Steele, a British spy, signed on, the Washington Free Beacon dropped all of this and they said, we're not interested in doing this anymore.
	And so the Fusion GPS group went and got Hillary Clinton's campaign to fund it.
	At that point, Christopher Steele, who's a British spy, signed on and provided all of this information about Trump.
	Some of it surely false.
	Some of it likely false.
	Some of it may be true about Trump and Russia.
	Okay, and Christopher Steele's dossier was supposedly used as the basis for the FISA warrants against Carter Page.
	Now, Carter Page had been, again, a low-level foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign since 2013.
	Carter Page had been in the eye of the intelligence community.
	People in the intelligence community were afraid that maybe he was a Russian spy.
	He'd been going around basically soliciting money from the Russians, apparently, allegedly.
	And so they looked at this and they said, OK, well, let's let's get wiretap on Carter Page.
	Let's go out and let's get all the information on Carter Page.
	The accusation being made by Representative Devin Nunes at the House Intelligence Committee.
	He's the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that the Carter Page FISA warrant was basically trumped up by Democrats in order to get the Trump campaign.
	So there are two claims, two separate claims about two separate people that say that the Trump campaign was targeted in ill in ill conceived fashion, in corrupt fashion.
	One was the FISA warrant on Carter Page, which comes about later in 2016.
	And one is the earlier use of an informant against George Papadopoulos and maybe Carter Page as well at the time.
	OK, with all of that in mind.
	President Trump calls the DOJ on the carpet and he says, guys, I need you to investigate what is going on with the FBI.
	You need to tell me what's going on.
	Were they in fact targeting me?
	Now, the New York Times, of course, has the New York Times has suggested that even by Trump going to his own DOJ and asking for an investigation, that this is obstruction.
	Nonsense.
	The President of the United States has plenary power over the executive branch.
	The executive branch includes the FBI and the DOJ.
	If the President of the United States wants to meet with his DOJ in order for them to investigate something, he certainly can do that.
	What he can't do, maybe, is tell them what outcome to come up with in an investigation.
	So he can actually tell the DOJ to drop an investigation, that is within his legal power.
	He can also Fire people from inside the DOJ.
	He could fire James Comey at the FBI.
	All of that is within his legal power.
	What could look like obstruction of justice, criminal obstruction of justice, is if President Trump were to come forward and to say something like, I know that you're about to find me guilty of obstruction or you're about to indict me on obstruction.
	I order you to clear me on obstruction instead.
	That he cannot do, but anything else he can pretty much do.
	So the New York Times is whining about this.
	this.
	Charlie Savage of the New York Times says, when President Trump publicly demanded that the DOJ open an investigation into the FBI's scrutiny of his campaign contacts with Russia, he inched further toward breaching an established constraint on executive power.
	The White House does not make decisions about individual law enforcement investigations.
	Okay, well, yeah, not so much.
	It was pretty obvious from the outset of the Hillary investigation that Barack Obama was never going to allow the DOJ to actually prosecute Hillary Clinton.
	He said that he wasn't going to interfere, Loretta Lynch said she wasn't going to interfere, and then she was meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton in the middle of the investigation.
	Barack Obama was going on national television saying he didn't see any evidence that Hillary ought to be indicted.
	None of this spoke to the independence of the DOJ.
	Eric Holder was calling Barack Obama, he was saying that he was Barack Obama's wingman.
	During his actual service as Attorney General on the DOJ.
	So the idea that the DOJ is a completely independent agency has no basis in law or fact.
	Nonetheless, the New York Times says that Trump is doing something unprecedented.
	Rebecca Roife is a professor at New York Law School who helped write a coming scholarly article on the limits of presidential control over the Justice Department.
	She says it's an incredible historical moment.
	Mr. Trump's move is the culmination of a lot of moments in which he has chipped away at prosecutorial independence.
	But this is a direct assault.
	It is not a direct assault.
	There's nothing new about the President calling the DOJ in and saying, I want you to investigate X, Y, or Z. He is allowed to do that.
	It is an executive branch agency.
	It is not an independent agency.
	The U.S.
	government does not have independent agencies.
	There are agencies that are under the legislative auspices, there are agencies that are under the judicial auspices, and there are agencies that are under the executive auspices.
	The DOJ is a constitutional position filled by the President of the United States.
	He has complete power over the DOJ.
	Nonetheless, the New York Times is very upset about this.
	They say almost since he took office, Mr. Trump has battered his Justice Department's independence indirectly, lamenting its failure to reopen a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton that found a wrongdoing and openly complaining that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia inquiry.
	But he had also acknowledged that as president, I'm not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department.
	As part of that pattern, he has also denied the account by James Comey, an FBI director he abruptly fired, that the president privately urged him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser.
	Now, here it is important to recognize a distinction.
	Trump is not telling anybody to drop the Mueller investigation.
	He is not telling Rod Rosenstein to actually fire James Comey.
	I mean, to actually fire Robert Mueller.
	He's not telling anybody to shut down the SDNY investigation into Michael Cohen.
	He's saying, open an additional investigation into something I find corrupt.
	This is utterly and completely within his power.
	He is allowed to do this.
	There's no question he is allowed to do this.
	So it is not obstruction for Trump to meet with his own Department of Justice.
	So that's number one.
	Number two, it's not obstruction for Trump to actually order the DOJ to investigate the FBI's 2016 conduct.
	This is not the same investigation, as I say, as the Mueller investigation.
	He's not interfering in that.
	He's not interfering into the SDNY investigation, into Michael Cohen, the Southern District of New York investigation, into his personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
	Okay, so for all the talk about this is Trump muddying the waters, interfering, doing something.
	No.
	Okay, all of this is perfectly allowed.
	Now, I will tell you where I think that My feelings about the kind of conservative narrative here are different than you might hear from some other conservative commentators.
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	Okay, so again, it is within Trump's purview to talk to the DOJ about this.
	It's within Trump's purview to launch an investigation.
	And in fact, I'm not saying there's no grounds to launch the investigation.
	It's possible there are grounds.
	Another former Trump campaign aide named Michael Caputo, he came forward, he said that another informant approached me.
	So he's saying that there was one, the reports are there was one informant that approached Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
	Now they're saying there's a second informant that approached Michael Caputo during the campaign.
	Let me tell you something that I know for a fact.
	This informant, this person that they tried to plant into the campaign and even into the administration, if you believe Axios, he's not the only person that came at the campaign.
	And the FBI is not the only Obama agency that came at the campaign.
	I know because they came at me.
	And I'm looking for clearance from my attorney to reveal this to the public.
	This is just the beginning.
	Okay, so if it turns out that pretty much everyone in the Trump campaign, whether or not they were involved in suspicious contact, was being targeted by informants, then it starts to look a lot more like the conspiracy theory is true.
	That the Obama FBI was targeting the Trump campaign in the very early stages.
	Mike Pence is saying that Trump is very grateful the DOJ is looking into surveillance.
	Makes sense.
	The President, I think, is grateful that the Department of Justice is going to have the Inspector General look into it and determine and ensure that there was no surveillance done for political purposes against our campaign.
	I think it would be very troubling to millions of Americans if that took place, but we're very confident.
	Now if there was, in fact, a politically motivated attempt to take out the Trump campaign by the Obama FBI, that is, in fact, worse than Watergate.
	that by adding their focus to this, that we'll get to the bottom of it 'cause the American people have a right to know. - Now, if there was in fact a politically motivated attempt to take out the Trump campaign by the Obama FBI, that is in fact worse than Watergate.
	Remember the Watergate scandal involved members of the Nixon campaign, Not the government.
	Members of the Nixon campaign who broke into the Watergate Hotel in an attempt to bug George McGovern's campaign in 1972.
	And then there was a subsequent cover-up.
	What we're talking about here is the use of American government officials to go into the Trump campaign and destroy the Trump campaign.
	So it's significantly worse than Watergate are the accusations that are being made right now.
	And it's no wonder that so many top Republican officials who suspect that this is the case are very upset over it.
	And there would be prosecutions over it and people would go to jail over it.
	Hey, so, Devin Nunes, as I say, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, he comes forward, he says, listen, there's a red line here, okay?
	If the DOJ or the FBI funded a spy inside the Trump campaign, then what we're talking about is certainly an area where people would have to go to jail.
	We don't have any documents.
	We can't confirm whether there's an informant or not an informant because we've never been told nor given documents.
	And in fact, we've never even asked for the name of any informants or any sources whatsoever.
	If any of that is true, if they ran a spy ring or an informant ring and they were paying people within the Trump campaign, if any of that is true, that is an absolute red line.
	Okay, and these are like really serious accusations.
	We're not talking about the full politicization of our law enforcement agencies in a serious way.
	Jonathan Turley, who's a lawyer at George Washington University, he says, look, Trump was pretty right when he said that he was surveilled.
	What I think is being a case of willful blindness here is that we have confirmation that Trump apparently was correct when he said over a year ago that he had people in his campaign that were under surveillance.
	It turns out that it was much broader than we thought, even though people like Clapper and others in the Obama administration denied it.
	It does appear to be a surveillance program.
	It does appear to be an investigation.
	So that means that the serious question here is, even if the FBI was putting informants into the Trump campaign, the question is, was the investigation legit from the beginning?
	This is really the key question.
	The key question is not whether the FBI put an informant against somebody in the Trump campaign.
	The question is, was that justified?
	Now here is the case that it was justified.
	Okay, I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
	Here is the case that it was justified.
	I think that this is not a terrible case.
	The case that it was justified is that George Papadopoulos, again, met with a Russian cutout in London and then bragged about meeting with the Russian cutout in London to the Australian ambassador.
	That would be suspicious.
	If that had happened inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, Republicans would have wanted the FBI to investigate.
	Donald Trump Jr.
	had a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian cutout who was promising information about Hillary Clinton.
	If that had been Chelsea Clinton meeting at the Clinton Foundation with a Russian proxy saying they had information about Trump, you would want that investigated.
	Carter Page had a long-standing relationship with the Russian government, apparently.
	Paul Manafort had a long-standing relationship with the Russian government.
	Michael Flynn, the incoming National Security Advisor, had been paid by Russia Today, which is a Russian propaganda outlet, and it sat next to Vladimir Putin.
	If any of this had happened under Barack Obama or under Hillary Clinton, people on the right would have said that this deserved to be investigated.
	So that becomes the question.
	The question was, did the FBI have decent grounds for looking into this stuff?
	Because the question is not whether they used an informant.
	Police use informants all the time, and they use informants knowing that people are not guilty, or at least suspecting that they might not be guilty.
	People use informants to gather information.
	When the police launch an investigation into someone, they don't know the person's guilty yet, but they have to investigate.
	That's what investigations are for.
	That's why they investigate.
	If you knew somebody was guilty, no investigation is necessary.
	But the key question is the one Alan Dershowitz is asking.
	Was the investigation legit from the beginning, or was this a politically motivated hit put out on the Trump campaign?
	I want to know what the evidence was.
	No judge has found probable cause.
	I think the American public has to be assured that there was a basis.
	It's not enough for Jeffrey Toobin to say there was collusion already at that time.
	I want to know what the facts were that justify that.
	And here is the bottom line in all of this.
	And here's why I'm suspicious of the conservative narrative that this was a giant conspiracy.
	There are two inconvenient facts that make me suspicious that this was not a giant collusion, a giant conspiracy between members of the FBI and the Obama DOJ to get Trump.
	Okay, piece of evidence number one.
	None of this stuff broke during the campaign.
	If you are actually going to target President Trump's campaign, why not break this stuff during the campaign?
	Why not break that there were meetings between Trump officials and low-level Russian officials?
	Why not break the Donald Trump Jr.
	meeting?
	Why not let any of this stuff leak?
	The FBI knew about it.
	If this were all a conspiracy to take down Trump, why didn't break?
	Piece of evidence number two I think is even more damning for the for the conservative case.
	President Trump, as I say, has plenary power over the executive branch.
	He has the ability to declassify any and all of this.
	He can declassify the Carter Page warrant, the FISA warrant.
	He can declassify it right now, today, and we can find out whether it was trumped up or whether there was additional material in that FISA warrant.
	We can know that, like now.
	President Trump can declassify all of the materials from the FBI concerning this so-called informant.
	The spy inside the campaign.
	He can do that now.
	Why isn't he doing that now?
	I assume somebody has briefed him on the material.
	I assume somebody has told him what's in it.
	So if that's the case, why doesn't he just release it?
	Why doesn't he just release it?
	So in just a second, I'm going to explain why President Trump might not release it.
	Maybe there's a decent explanation.
	But we'll talk about that in just a second.
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	So, why isn't President Trump actually releasing these Supporting documents.
	Why doesn't he release the FISA warrant?
	Why doesn't he release all the information surrounding what the FBI is doing?
	A couple possible explanations.
	He hasn't been fully briefed.
	He suspects stuff.
	He throws off half-cocked tweets.
	And then people have to come in and backfill what he's talking about.
	Very possible, because the president is not a guy who sits around and makes considered decisions.
	Quite possible.
	Second possibility is more cynical.
	He knows what's in the documents.
	He doesn't actually want them released in full, because if they're released in full, it undercuts his case that he has been targeted by the FBI and the Obama DOJ.
	Possibility number three, he doesn't want to look like he's interfering too much in the system, and so instead he's going to call for an investigation by an inspector general.
	The inspector general is independent of the Trump The Trump White House.
	And so the Inspector General is sort of a non-political appointee, not somebody appointed by President Trump, and that person can go through and do the full investigation.
	Whatever it is, I assume eventually this information will come out and then we'll know whether or not this was a corrupt investigation into Trump or whether there were grounds for the investigation into Trump.
	One thing is certainly true.
	When the left cries foul, when the left suggests that Trump using the DOJ to investigate these issues, that that's completely illegitimate, They have no grounds to stand on here.
	So Adam Schiff was making this case.
	He was saying that the congressman from California who lives, literally lives, at the media center near the White House and he's actually set up a pup tent there and every morning he gets up and he takes his thermos and he fills it with coffee and then he goes and gets a bowl of cereal then he sits right back down in the pup tent until he's called into the CNN or NBC briefing room.
	So Schiff, he says this is a Saturday night massacre in slow motion.
	Well, it certainly looks like a Saturday night massacre in slow motion.
	We have seen the erosion of the independence of the Justice Department, which alarms me.
	We saw it in the lifting of the gag rule on the witness in Uranium One.
	We saw it in the acceleration of the investigation against Andrew McCabe so that he could be fired before his pension vested.
	And now we see it in the president ordering an investigation of his own investigators.
	OK, so no, no, it's not a set.
	No one's being fired.
	So if it's a slow motion Saturday Night Massacre, you actually have to massacre people and people actually have to get capped.
	That's not happening here.
	The Saturday Night Massacre, by the way, was a Watergate massacre.
	Basically, what happened is that President Nixon wanted the Watergate investigation to end.
	He ordered the special.
	There was a special investigator named Archibald Cox.
	He ordered his Attorney General to fire Archibald Cox.
	The Attorney General refused to fire Archibald Cox, so he fired his Attorney General, replaced him with Robert Bork, who then fired Archibald Cox.
	That's what the Saturday Night Massacre was.
	None of that has happened here.
	He has not fired Jeff Sessions.
	He has not fired Rosenstein.
	He has not fired any of these people.
	So, none of that is in evidence at all.
	Nonetheless, Democrats are very excited.
	Democrats are hoping that Trump makes a big mistake here.
	They are hoping that President Trump doesn't use the law enforcement methods at his disposal, that he just precipitously goes and fires a bunch of people inside his own administration and then they can claim that it was obstruction.
	So here is a congressman named Eric Swalwell who says, maybe this will lead to impeachment.
	We can hope, we can hope.
	He's governing the wrong country.
	He's obstructing an investigation into his campaign where he is potentially a suspect.
	The consequences, of course, are removal from office.
	We're not helpless here.
	Okay, so yes, you are not going to be impeaching him, okay?
	Like, this is all crazy talk, but I hope the Democrats continue to pursue the crazy talk, because it is indeed crazy.
	Sally Yates, you'll recall, was an associate attorney.
	She was the deputy attorney general, I believe.
	The acting attorney general.
	Uh, in the Russia investigation after Jeff Sessions recused himself and she was fired when she refused to defend President Trump's travel ban in court, which is not her job.
	She's supposed to do the bidding of the president of the United States.
	She does work for the DOJ.
	Well, now she's on Morning Joe and she's claiming that the the DOJ has been corrupted by President Trump and she claims that Trump has taken his assaults to a new low.
	But you know, I think what we're seeing here is the president has just taken his all-out assault on the rule of law to a new level.
	And this time, he is ordering up an investigation of the investigators who are examining his own campaign.
	Here's the great irony of what she's saying there.
	So here's the great irony.
	It's shocking.
	It's terrible.
	So let's get this straight.
	We're supposed to trust the investigators of President Trump's campaign, but we're not supposed to trust the investigators of the investigators of President Trump's campaign because those investigators were run by President Trump while the first investigators were run by President Obama.
	None of this washes.
	Here's the bottom line.
	I know this is the most unpopular stance you can take in political talk, but I'm going to make it right now.
	We don't know what's going on.
	There isn't enough evidence on any of this.
	We don't know whether the conspiracy from the right is true.
	We don't know whether the conspiracy from the left is true.
	We don't know if any of that is true.
	Here's what we do know.
	We do know that there have been devastating leaks about this investigation from members of the so-called Deep State after President Trump was elected.
	That's the part where I agree with the Republican conspiracy theory.
	There I do think that there are members of the FBI, who are Obama holdovers, who are attempting to leak out information.
	Members of the DOJ, who are Obama holdovers, who are attempting to leak out information.
	Now, is it possible that the conspiracy theories about Trump's campaign being targeted by Obama are true?
	It's possible.
	I'm not going to say it's impossible because it's not impossible.
	Am I suspicious that it is not true?
	I am suspicious.
	I don't think the evidence lines up in that direction at this point in time.
	Is it also true that there was no Russian collusion?
	Yes, I have seen no evidence that there was active Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
	So lots of things can be true at one time.
	Lots of things can be true at one time.
	One more twist that we need to add on this particular story, and that is there have been a bunch of stories lately regarding the possibility that the so-called Steele dossier, that dossier that I discussed earlier, That was funded by Fusion GPS, which in turn was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
	This would be the P-Tape dossier.
	The reason that that was leaked to the press is it was leaked by James Clapper and members of Team Obama to the press.
	Very, very possible.
	Very possible that it was leaked to the press.
	However, the going theory now is that there are a series of text messages and emails between top members of the Obama DOJ and the Obama FBI talking about the possibility that this dossier was going to be leaked.
	And that this was all a setup because, in reality, what was happening is that CNN was waiting to leak the Steele dossier, to reveal the Steele dossier, until they had a news hook.
	So James Comey went to the White House, informed President Trump, this became the news hook, and then CNN released the dossier.
	Okay, that's possible.
	It is also quite possible that CNN called up all of these top officials about the dossier, and they knew CNN was going to break the dossier, and so then they went and informed Trump.
	Because if they had broken the dossier and Trump didn't know about the dossier, then Trump would have gotten mad at them.
	In other words, there are a lot of possibilities out there.
	We don't have the evidence for any of them that is strong enough yet to be all outraged about anything that has happened.
	I'm not outraged that Trump is investigating it.
	I'm not outraged about the FBI's conduct during the campaign yet, except with regard to Hillary Clinton, whom they should have indicted.
	I'm not outraged about anything except for the FBI's conduct with regard to Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is outrageous, and the FBI's conduct after the election, the leaks that have been coming from the DOJ and the FBI after the election.
	Everything else, I think, it's still up in the air.
	It's still up in the air.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, the fallout from this awful shooting in Texas continues.
	Ten dead in this terrible shooting in which a 17-year-old junior at the high school walked into the Santa Fe High School.
	and shot it up.
	I will explain the latest on that in just a second.
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	So speaking of this Texas shooting, 10 dead, 17-year-old junior walked into the school wearing a trench coat in 88 degree weather and was carrying a 38 pistol as well as a shotgun, I believe is the latest.
	He got those guns from his dad.
	It was legal for his dad to own the guns.
	There's been some discussion over whether the dad should be held legally liable for allowing the son to get into the gun safe.
	I think that's a little bit tough.
	It's a little bit tough when the kid is 17 because you've taught your kids to use the guns, you want your kids to be able to know how to defend the house when you're not there.
	The reality is that, barring red flags, there are certain of these incidents that are going to be very difficult to prevent unless you actually harden the barriers around these schools.
	I've been saying for literally years at this point that kids at schools should be guarded like we guard banks.
	Or like we guard an airport.
	Okay, the fact is that There's no reason why, you know, I went to a private school.
	We had hard barriers around our private school.
	You had to check in, you had to be buzzed into the school.
	And we had, for a school of maybe 300 kids, we had five or six different security guards who were armed on the school premises.
	It seems to me this should be the very least that we can do for our public schools as well.
	I promise, if you had 20 or 30 armed security for 1,500 students, it would be a lot better than if you had four or five just because there are too many gaps in the security.
	Plus, you actually have to have a hard security barrier Metal detectors would be useful.
	Listen, if this sort of stuff is going to continue to happen, we do need to guard our schools better.
	There's a very good piece by David French, who's good on these topics, over at National Review, in which he writes about Malcolm Gladwell's theory that the reason that it seems like we're seeing an uptick in school shootings right now is because the barrier to entry for school shootings has become so much lower.
	The barrier to media coverage is lower now.
	With each individual shooting, it looks like it's becoming more common.
	And so people think that it's happening a lot.
	Um, even though statistically speaking it's really not happening particularly much.
	22, you know, the CNN was reporting there have been 22 school shootings this year.
	That's a lie.
	There have been something like 5 or 6.
	Each one of those is an individual tragedy and an individual horror, an individual act of evil.
	But, the point that Gladwell is making is the more common these things appear to be, the more common they will become.
	And that means that we have to do what we can to deter these things from happening in the first place.
	One thing that certainly does not help.
	It does not help in any way is the language that you see thrown around in political circles with regard to these sorts of issues.
	So Bernie Sanders, he's just awful.
	The socialist senator from Vermont, he says that it is unspeakable for Congress to do nothing about gun violence.
	Have you guys done enough?
	Have you guys done enough in the Senate?
	Of course not!
	Of course not, but it's like every other issue.
	The American people are united.
	Overwhelmingly.
	Gun owners, non-gun owners, on common sense gun safety legislation.
	Okay, you know, everyone is united on all these things except for when you get down to the brass tacks, people are not united on these things.
	When people hear gun show loophole, they say, we oppose the gun show loophole.
	When they hear that means that every private transaction that happens in the United States is basically barred unless it goes through a gun store.
	Then people suddenly say, well, hold on a second.
	I want to give my gun to my kid.
	Why can't I do that without going to a gun store?
	So here's part of the problem.
	I was on a radio show the other day in a major metropolitan area.
	And one of the hosts on that particular radio show was saying, why can't Congress get things done?
	Why don't they seem to care?
	Why don't they care?
	And I said, well, have you ever met these legislators?
	Have you met these legislators?
	She said, yes.
	And I said, well, did that person seem like an evil person to you?
	A really dark and evil person.
	And she said, no.
	I said, well, what makes you think they don't care about dead kids?
	There's this disconnect that happens when we label people and we don't actually make clear whom we are talking about.
	The number of people in Congress who legitimately do not care about school shootings, I would put at zero.
	Even people I disagree with politically.
	I do not think there are a lot of people in Congress who legit don't care about school shootings, who sit around every day and they go, you know what?
	If 100 kids have to get shot, then fine.
	100 kids get shot.
	I do not think that that's the case.
	I think there are significant disagreements on policy, and these disagreements on policy are important and have ramifications, which is why we need to talk them through.
	But what is not useful is creating this broad class of people, this group of faceless, nameless people, and then you say, well, you know, Congress just doesn't care.
	Republicans just don't care.
	The NRA, they just don't care.
	How many people who say the NRA are terrorists have ever talked to an NRA member?
	How many people who say that NRA members don't care about dead kids have ever spent time with NRA leadership?
	And when my friend Dana Lash is talking about the measures she thinks are useful in preventing school violence and gun violence at schools, does anyone really think, anybody who's spent time with Dana really think that Dana doesn't care about kids who are getting shot on campuses?
	And yet this is used as such a convenient club and it completely undermines and destroys our politics.
	If you actually believe that the people you're talking to Have no sympathy for you whatsoever.
	It makes it incredibly difficult to come to a deal.
	And it's also not true.
	It's just not true.
	Now, the reason that I mention this is not just because this is in the news, but because there's another story in the news today that I think is being completely miscovered.
	So the pope, Pope Francis.
	He apparently told a gay man that God loves him during a private meeting.
	OK, so this is according to the UK Sun.
	In a private dialogue, the pontiff is understood to have told Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, that God loves gay people and it is fine to be homosexual.
	The comments are the most striking public acceptance about homosexuality ever made by the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
	The remarks were made during a private meeting at the Vatican between the pair, in which the Pope offered a heartfelt apology.
	So, Cruz was a victim of a pedophile priest named Fernando Caradima.
	Caradima is aged 87.
	He was found guilty of sexual abuse by the Vatican in 2011.
	Cruz claims his suffering was ignored by a number of Latin American bishops who used his homosexuality to brand him a liar when he spoke out.
	And then, speaking to the Spanish newspaper, Cruz said, the Pope told me, quote, Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter.
	God made you like this and loves you like this, and I don't care.
	The Pope loves you like this.
	You have to be happy with who you are.
	Okay, so.
	Let's make clear a distinction.
	Religious people of all stripes love gay people.
	Okay?
	Religious Jews, I know gay people.
	They're people in my life who I'm close friends with who are gay.
	Okay?
	I love a lot of gay people.
	And what they choose to do with their own lives, from a governmental perspective, is their business.
	Does this mean that I think that homosexual activity is not a sin?
	No, I'm a religious Jew.
	Of course I believe it's a sin.
	But a religious person, including the Pope, can believe that homosexual orientation could be implanted within you and also believe that homosexual acts could be a sin and still love you for who you are.
	I love that the left has attempted to say that if you think homosexual sex is a sin, that therefore you hate gay people, these two things are not related.
	These two things are not related.
	And this goes right back to that original argument that was being made about guns, which is, just because you disagree with someone about activities that people ought to engage in or not engage in, does not mean that these people are engaged in hate.
	It does not mean that these people hate you.
	And labeling them as haters is just a way for you to disregard their opinion and avoid having a conversation in the first place.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, We have to discuss this new Starbucks policy.
	So, the stupidity of leftism on full display in the Starbucks policy.
	So, as you recall, there's this big blow-up over at Starbucks when it turns out that there are these two black guys who are sitting at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, and supposedly, the manager of the Starbucks would not give them permission to use the bathroom, and then when they would not buy anything, ask them to leave, and then when they would not leave, call the police on them.
	And the implication was that she was a giant racist.
	A story I have found hard to believe and hard to confirm.
	This lady, according to members of my own audience who know her, is an SJW leftist.
	Somebody who has chided people on the proper use of pronouns.
	There are several cameras in the establishment.
	We still have not seen full tape of what happened in that Philadelphia establishment.
	Well, thanks to the outrage over that supposed racist event, Again, this is weird, because there are actual racist events that have taken place in the United States.
	You don't hear about those, because when everybody recognizes something is racist, the media has nothing to talk about.
	The media purposefully pick instances where there's a plausible story that nothing racist happened, and then they use these as flashpoints.
	If you don't immediately bend to the narrative they wish to purvey, then this means that you don't take racism seriously enough.
	In any case, Starbucks reacted to the Philadelphia story by telling everybody that they had to get retrained on implicit bias, which is just sheer nonsense, and then they changed their policy.
	Okay, they changed their policy, and their policy was that anyone who came into a Starbucks could now use the restroom.
	The problem was that there are Starbucks on every corner, and lots of homeless people go into Starbucks, and they go into the bathrooms, and there they proceed to set up shop or do drugs.
	So what did Starbucks have to do?
	Well, now they have to clarify their policy toward non-paying guests.
	The Seattle-based retailer on Saturday, this is according to the Wall Street Journal, had said it would allow all guests in its U.S.
	company-owned stores to use its cafes, including its restrooms, whether or not they make a purchase.
	Again, this would be idiotic policy if you just allow people to sit down in your chairs and sit there all day.
	How in the world are you actually going to sell anything at Starbucks?
	That announcement, which attracted some support, also drew complaints that cafes would not have enough seats for paying customers and would turn into homeless shelters and drug havens.
	This is certainly true in Seattle, which has experienced a massive upsurge in the number of homeless people in the city.
	Well, on Monday, Starbucks revealed more about the policy.
	They told the Wall Street Journal that employees now have detailed instructions on what to do if someone is behaving in a disruptive manner, such as smoking, using drugs or alcohol, using restrooms improperly, or sleeping.
	At issue, in essence, is whether Starbucks views itself as a business that caters to customers or a quasi-public place generally welcome to all.
	It is idiotic.
	Of course, they are a business catering to customers.
	They could not make any money if they were a quasi-public business, public place generally welcome to all.
	People would set up shop and they would continue to occupy all of the tables.
	So other restrooms and retailers also must manage the issue of lingering customers and non-paying guests.
	Starbucks has promoted itself as providing a third place between home and work where people can freely exchange ideas.
	It essentially pioneered the idea that is now generating controversies.
	McDonald's, Panera Bread, they now offer free Wi-Fi.
	They encourage customers to linger.
	Panera didn't respond to a request for comment.
	This is all true.
	But if you sit there for too long without buying something, I've known for years, like I've worked for many coffee shops over my years because I always work from a laptop.
	Well, I know going in that you are supposed to walk up to the counter and buy a thing, right?
	Who doesn't know that?
	Everybody knows you're supposed to do this.
	But now Starbucks has changed its policy in response to the stupidity of political correctness.
	And it is indeed highly stupid.
	Businesses cannot operate so long as they make political correctness their first priority.
	And it's amazing to watch all these social justice warrior-led companies that built themselves on the basis of free market capitalism and a willingness to do business with customers now try to shift their policy because they want to appear kinder and gentler to the public.
	You saw the same thing over at Google with James Damore.
	James Damore said, well, maybe the reason there aren't enough female engineers here is because you haven't created a conducive work environment with cooperative tasks.
	And also because there are fewer women who are applying in STEM jobs.
	Not STEM jobs.
	There are fewer women who are applying in science, technology, engineering and math because there are fewer women who have a predilection to go into those jobs.
	And also because what the bell curve tends to show with regard to performance in sciences and math is that women tend to be closer to the center of the bell curve.
	Men tend to be at the tail.
	So men either are really bad at math or really good at math.
	And that means that when you go up to the upper level, there are more men than women on a proportional basis.
	James Damore, his memo prompted his firing, and then Google put out a memo suggesting to all of its managers that things like meritocracy were white constructs.
	Well, if Google had operated off that premise, Google would not be a multi-billion dollar company, obviously.
	All the things that made businesses successful, they're now willing to dump on the side of the road in order to make nice with the press and politically correct idiocy.
	The good news there, I guess, is that new capitalist businesses that don't abide by the politically correct idiocy will now be able to make their way in the marketplace.
	If Starbucks is gonna be dumb, there'll be other coffee shops that rise to the occasion.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	Over Shavuot, which is the Jewish celebration of the giving of the Torah at Sinai, I was able to do a lot of reading.
	I spoke at a school recently that was a Chabad school.
	Chabad, for people who don't know Chabad, you've seen Chabad.
	Chabad are the people who are lighting menorahs in public areas.
	They're the people who are offering to, they ask you if you're Jewish, and then if you are Jewish, then they will wrap tefillin on you.
	Tefillin are the phylacteries that you wear on your arm and on your head if you're an Orthodox Jew.
	And that movement, the Lubavitch movement, was led by what is known as the Rebbe.
	The Rebbe was Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and Schneerson died in 1994.
	There's a very good biography of him by Joseph Tlushkin.
	Tlushkin has co-written a bunch of books with Dennis Prager, my friend, and this book is really Entertaining.
	It's really good.
	And it is a portrait of a person who is fully devoted to the care of other human beings.
	He worked not only insane hours, but he met with an enormous number of people, ranging from politicians to just normal folks.
	He used to meet with people every night, pretty much, from like 10 p.m.
	to 2 a.m.
	on like a 10-minute rotating basis and try and have talks with them about how to improve their lives.
	Religion can be an awful force for good.
	It can be an awful force or it can be a good force.
	And the Rebbe made religion a very good force in a number of ways.
	You should read his biography.
	It's well worth reading.
	It's just a leadership guide for anyone.
	Joseph Telushkin's book.
	I'm Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
	Check it out.
	Rebbe.
	It's called Rebbe.
	Okay, so, time for a thing that I hate.
	Alrighty, so the thing that I hate today, this is another manufactured stupid controversy.
	So Kendrick Lamar, who is apparently a rapper of some sort, demonstrating my full knowledge of the pop cultural range, I believe he's a rapper.
	So Kendrick Lamar had, he was doing a concert, and he invited a fan on stage to sing.
	And then he asked the fan, who's a white woman, to sing the lyrics of his song, Mad City, which is M-A-A-D City, which is not how you spell mad, but sure.
	Okay.
	And then she, one of the lyrics in here uses the N word.
	Okay.
	Here's the video of what it looked like.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Am I not cool enough for you?
	- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. - Am I not cool enough for you?
	What's up, bro?
	What's up?
	My boy Rohan kinda knew the rules a little bit.
	Will's just really cool, bro.
	You have to work.
	You gotta bleep one single word, though.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Did I do it?
	Yeah, you did.
	I'm so sorry.
	Oh my God.
	Should she stay up here, y'all?
	OK, I mean, just what the hell's wrong with this guy?
	Like, he knows what the lyrics to his own song are.
	That is not her fault.
	I'm sorry.
	That is not the fault of the white lady who gets up there.
	It's not like he said to her beforehand, you know, go easy on the lyrics of my song.
	You wrote them there, dude.
	You don't want somebody actually reading the lyrics of your song or doing the lyrics to your song.
	Don't write the lyrics in there or ask the lady up.
	If you've got a problem with a white lady rapping your song as you wrote it, then maybe you should have invited a black lady up there to rap your song as you wrote it.
	You've got plenty of black fans there.
	It's just, it's absurd.
	And I think people caught on to it.
	So a lot of folks on Twitter were like, this is just a setup.
	They brought a fan up to sing and then flipped when she said the N-word.
	And he knew what he was doing.
	This woman's life is going to be ruined on social media now.
	She's going to be claimed to be a racist when she just wanted to go to a concert and sing, presumably with someone she was a fan of.
	It's just ridiculous.
	Lamar was evidently under the impression that Delaney would censor herself and skip the racial epithet in the song, but she clearly did not get the memo.
	And then, so Delaney, who is this woman who was called out of the crowd, said, man down, where are you from, N-word?
	F who you know, where are you from, my N-word?
	What your grandma say, huh, my N-word?
	Okay, so, it's not like this appears one time in the song.
	It appears 1,000 times in the song.
	Like, what's she supposed to do?
	Okay, get up here and sing the song.
	And she goes, literally, this is what it would sound like.
	Man down, where are you from?
	F who you know, where are you from?
	Where your grandma stay, huh, my?
	Okay, like, you wrote the lyric, dude!
	This is your own fault!
	You don't want people using the N-word, then don't use the N-word.
	Don't use the N-word in your song.
	Okay, I understand that there are distinctions between black people using the N-word and white people using the N-word and that there's a whole attempt by certain members of the black community to co-opt the term N-word and then use it as a way of empowerment.
	I think this is fully stupid.
	Okay, I think it's stupid.
	I'm just gonna be honest with this.
	There are lots of slurs that are used against Jews all the time.
	Okay, and you've heard me try to co-opt Jewish jokes.
	Okay, but you've never heard me try to co-opt the K-word.
	Right, there's a k-word that has been used against Jews for many, many, many, many decades.
	Okay, Jews don't call each other, my bleep.
	Okay, they don't call each other that because why would you want to promulgate the word?
	If the word is bad, the word is bad.
	Especially to avoid situations just like this, because it sets up this ridiculous double standard.
	I don't think it is worthwhile to have that lyric in the song, but if you are going to have that lyric in the song, you can't be surprised when people sing your song.
	The whole point of you singing the song is that others will sing your song.
	Oh, Kendrick Lamar.
	Ugh.
	How I mourn for you.
	Okay, well, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest on everything under the sun.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
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