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May 24, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:08
The Kneel Strong-Arm | Ep. 545
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President Trump talks about the NFL's new ban on kneeling during the national anthem.
Plus, we meet the most entitled 30-year-old in America and bring you the latest on Spygate 2018.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Lot to get to today, and we will be talking about all of it.
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Okay, so the big news of the day.
Which is, I think, a good move by the NFL, although I think it's done in the worst possible way, and they should have done it originally.
The NBA had this problem years ago when there was a player named Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
He was a guard, I believe, for the Denver Nuggets, and he didn't want to stand up for the National Anthem.
He was fined, and pretty quickly he ended up standing for the National Anthem.
Refused to put his hand over his heart for the national anthem.
I believe he was fined as well.
The NBA has always had this rule.
The NFL never should have allowed the politicization of its games.
It is a product.
When your product is politicized, then you take action to prevent that politicization.
But the NFL wanted to reach out to new audiences, and so not only did they support the politicization, they actually forwarded the politicization.
Even before the National Anthem protests, if you recall, all the way back to 2013, 2014, during the Ferguson issues in 2014, there were a bunch of players who ran out onto the field doing the hands up, don't shoot motion, no fine.
But there were people who wanted to wear gear that honored the slain Dallas police officers in 2015, and the NFL threatened to fine them, you know, before the NFL backed down.
So, the NFL took positions on these issues in the worst and stupidest possible way.
Well, now the NFL has decided they're going to come out and ban the kneeling altogether.
ESPN reports the new policy subjects teams to a fine if a player or other team personnel do not show respect for the anthem.
That includes any attempt to sit or kneel, as dozens of players have done during the past two seasons.
Those teams will also have the option to fine any team personnel, including players, for the infraction.
So Roger Goodell, who I think has been rather a not good NFL commissioner, actually.
He's been the beneficiary of tremendous growth in the NFL.
I'm not sure it's because of Roger Goodell, however.
He said, And this season, all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.
Personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem may stay in the locker room until after the anthem has been performed.
We believe today's decision will keep our focus on the game and the extraordinary athletes who play it and on our fans who enjoy it.
And the 32 teams agreed to the following requirements.
All team and league personnel on the field shall stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.
The game operations manual will be revised to remove the requirement that all players be on the field for the anthem, so you can stay in the... in the... um...
in the locker room.
Personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem may stand in the locker room or a similar location off the field until after the anthem has been performed.
A club will be fined by the league if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.
Each club may develop its own work rules consistent with the above principles regarding its personnel who do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.
The commissioner will impose appropriate discipline on league personnel who do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.
Okay, so what is the actual practical effect of this going to be?
A bunch of people are going to stay in the locker room out of solidarity with people who would kneel but were not allowed to.
As I said last year during the actual National Anthem controversy, I think it is stupid and counterproductive to kneel for the National Anthem.
I think it is disrespectful, but I don't think that players should do anything beyond if they want to stand with their with their fellows, they should just stand with their fellows instead of kneeling with their fellows.
They should stand there and put their hand on their shoulder or something like that.
And I think what you will see is solidarity with these guys.
And a lot of people will now stay in the locker room.
So we'll get to rehash this entire controversy all over again, or things will get even worse.
And what you will see is a bunch of players stay in the locker room and the owners, in order to virtue signal to the left, will decide to pay the fines.
And that's what we're getting from New York Jets chairman Christopher Johnson, who says he'll take the hit.
He said, I don't want to come down on them like a ton of bricks, and I won't.
There will be no club fines or suspensions or any sort of repercussions.
If the team gets fined, that's just something I'll have to bear.
I think you're going to see a lot of other owners follow suit, and then owners who don't follow suit will be called antagonists of free speech, people who don't support free speech.
And this controversy will just continue.
Well, President Trump responded to all of this by celebrating this big victory for President Trump culturally.
And because everything in our politics has broken down into stupid conversations over winners and losers, as opposed to what's good for the country, this has turned into a big win for Trump.
And Trump not only says that it's a big win for Trump because Trump got the NFL to cave and change their policy, but it's a big win for America.
Here's President Trump explaining.
You have to stand proudly for the National Anthem.
Well, you shouldn't be playing.
You shouldn't be there.
Maybe you shouldn't be in the country.
You have to stand proudly for the National Anthem.
And the NFL owners did the right thing if that's what they've done.
Okay, so here's the reality.
You don't have to stand for the national anthem in the United States.
Should you stand?
Sure.
Is it a sign of respect for the nation?
Yes.
And all of the players who are black and who are protesting about supposed police brutality against black folks, I think that they would be better served to take a play from the playbook of Frederick Douglass or a play from the playbook of Martin Luther King and say, listen, I'm going to stand for the anthem because the anthem is mine too.
And then they can come out and they can say, And I don't think we're living up to the anthem.
It's not like these guys have no platform.
They do have a platform.
When celebrities speak, people listen.
But kneeling for the national anthem was a crude method of attempting to draw attention and actually created more of a backlash than it was meant to do.
I do not think it is appropriate for the President of the United States to be inserting himself in these controversies.
I don't.
I don't think it was appropriate when Obama did it.
I don't think it's appropriate when President Trump does it.
President Obama, the Obama administration, inserted themselves into controversies like this in North Carolina when there was an act at the local level in Charlotte to prevent transgender people from using opposite-sex bathrooms.
And there was a boycott of the NCAA, and the entire left supported it.
They thought this was great.
The NCAA was not going to allow Final Four games to be played in North Carolina thanks to a local bathroom policy.
They thought this was great, but if the NFL says we're not going to allow people to kneel, Then it's a huge problem because the NFL is cracking down on free speech.
Now listen, I am a free speech absolutist, but private companies have the ability to take steps to curb free speech.
Hey, there's a difference between me going and speaking at UC Berkeley and me going and speaking at DePaul University.
When I spoke at DePaul University, they threatened to arrest me.
They said if you walk on this campus, even though I'd been invited by a student group, they said if you walk on this campus, you will be arrested.
And I respected that because, listen, it is a private university.
Were they wrong?
Were they stupid?
Sure.
Do they have the right to do it?
You bet they do.
Now, there is also a major difference, and I don't like the comparisons between, oh, you conservatives complaining about safe spaces on college campuses, but now you want a safe space at an NFL game.
There is no comparison between a college campus and an NFL game.
There really is not.
Okay?
For a simple reason.
College campuses are explicitly places for exchange of ideas.
When I'm invited by a student group, it is not to play football.
When I'm invited by a stu- I mean, I suck at football.
When I'm invited by a student group, it is specifically to give my opinion.
When you go to an NFL game, you are purchasing an entertainment package to watch the NFL.
And part and parcel of that is the patriotic show.
So I was at the Super Bowl last year, and the Super Bowl was deeply patriotic.
Deeply patriotic.
For those who have never been to a game, it's not just the national anthem beforehand.
It's the waving of the flag during the commercials.
It's the, this was in a domed stadium, but usually it's the, it's the Blue Angels flyover.
It's the whole deal.
The NFL has always been heavily tied in with a lot of patriotic imagery.
That's part of the products that they are selling to the American people, is that this is the all-American sport where we get together as a community every Sunday afternoon, and we remember that America is a great place, and we enjoy ourselves and just watch some people clock each other.
That's basically what football is all about, and it's not the NFL's fault if that product is being undercut by people on the field and they say, We're not going to withstand the fans who don't want to watch our games.
We are not going to withstand the ticket sales loss, and we're not going to withstand the TV ratings loss.
The entire NFL is moving in the direction of whatever the TV ratings say, and the TV ratings in 2017 were down a full 8%.
That's a significant, significant drop.
Now, not all of that is due to the National Anthem controversy, but certainly part of it is due to the National Anthem controversy.
When there have been polls done of people who say they're not watching as much NFL, something like 50% of them cite the National Anthem controversy.
Because they don't feel solidarity with the players who are kneeling for the national anthem.
This is not the same thing as a college campus.
Again, it's more like, first of all, I'm an outside contractor who's brought in by a student group for that free exchange of ideas.
Again, college campuses are for ideas.
NFL games are for playing football and production of a product.
It's more like if a college campus had a professor who taught engineering, and this engineering professor decided that they were going to talk politics at the beginning of every engineering class, and pretty soon, it turns out that all the students want to just learn engineering, and they're not interested in hearing the politics, and so they all drop out of the class.
Does the college now have the right to lay the guy off?
In my opinion, the college does have the right to lay the guy off.
He's speaking outside of his realm of political purview.
If you were in poli-sci, it's a little bit of a different story.
If he's in engineering, he's there to provide an engineering product.
And if the engineering product does not meet specifications, the college can do what it wants.
And that's not quite the same thing as a student group inviting someone for a political conversation and then the college cracking down on a political side of that political conversation.
The case that's being made on campus is that this is a safe space and that people with differing political points of view in an inherently political area should not be able to speak.
The case being made with regard to the NFL is I'm not going to tune in to watch lectures on police brutality when I want to watch a football game.
That is not the same case that's being made.
It's not about the NFL being a safe space.
It is about the NFL not providing what it promised to consumers.
And that's why you've seen so many people drop out.
Now, with that said, you know, Mike Pence tweeted out hashtag winning.
I do not think.
It is appropriate for government officials to say that it is winning to pressure a private organization to crack down on members of its organization for political reasons.
I don't think that's appropriate.
I think that it's one thing for you or for me to say I'm turning off the TV.
I think if Trump said, listen, I've been turning off the TV, that's fine.
I think the the attempt, the pretty clear attempt, governmental attempt to pressure private organizations to do things on the free speech basis.
I don't like it.
And I don't think it's winning, by the way.
I don't think that you're winning with your base.
You're winning with your base.
But I'll explain why I think this is actually counterproductive for Trump and Pence to a certain degree in just one second.
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Alrighty, so here is why I don't think this is super productive for President Trump.
His entire base believes it is wrong to kneel for the national anthem.
He's getting them jazzed up, right?
And I think that that is a useful political tactic.
But in its way, it's no different from what Obama did when he would get people jazzed up about Ferguson to go out and vote for him in a midterm election or in a presidential election in 2012 by sending Joe Biden out to say that Mitt Romney was going to put y'all back in chains.
I do not like the idea of the president of the United States Taking an inherently political issue and instead of being circumspect about the issues that are being, that are in play, going straight to the everybody who disagrees with me should be deported stuff.
I think it's dumb.
I think it's counterproductive.
I think it doesn't unify the country and actually has a counterproductive response because here's the question.
For Trump, it's all about the political win.
I get it.
Okay?
He's a politician.
It's about the political win.
But, for the country, what I would like is more Americans to believe that standing for the National Anthem is an inherent good, not fewer Americans.
The polls show that before President Trump got involved in this particular issue, something like 75%, 80% of Americans thought that it was stupid and wrong to kneel for the National Anthem.
Now that Trump has gotten himself involved, it's more like 55% or 60%.
So, to win for Trump, because the majority of the public still agrees with him, but it is not a win for America if 20% of the public now believes the other way simply because they don't like President Trump.
So, again, I understand the gut-level response of President Trump, which is what he is, it's what he does.
I understand why that's popular, but I don't think that it's productive for the country.
Now, with all of that said, it was not Trump who politicized the NFL.
It was the NFL players who politicized the NFL long before Trump was even involved with this.
They were the ones who decided to kneel for the national anthem.
They were the ones who decided to wear socks, as Colin Kaepernick did, with the depiction of cops as pigs.
That was their decision to make.
Okay, and you can't blame people for responding to that decision.
Just as I don't blame protesters for protesting my speeches.
Right?
They are allowed to protest my speeches.
That's fine.
I think they're wrong, but that's okay.
That's part of the political conversation.
Well, this is part of the political conversation, too.
Again, I do not think that NFL games are anything like college campuses.
I'm not...
Crazy about the idea of the NFL cracking down on players doing this, although I think they should have done so at the beginning.
Jonathan, last I thought, had a good suggestion.
The NFL should have just come out and said, listen, our consumers don't want to see what you are doing.
Our consumers don't like this.
So we're setting rules.
End of story.
Instead, they turned it into a sort of principled point.
And obviously, everyone can see through the principled point.
Everyone can see through the so-called principled idea here, because it's not really principled.
It's much more about the notion that they are going to crack down on players in order to make sure that their wallets are still stuffed.
So I get all of it.
Listen, I understand the arguments.
I'm just not in love with it.
I know a lot of people on the right are very much in love with this.
It's a big win.
I'm not in love with it as much as everybody else, because I see the danger in private organizations seeing political speech Okay, meanwhile, speaking of people who need a safe space, I have to show you this tape.
There's a 30-year-old who was evicted from his home in a judicial proceeding.
So he's a 30-year-old unemployed man.
He's a self-described conservative.
So, the host of CNN, Brooke Baldwin, had this guy on.
This guy's obviously a crazy person.
The guy is named Michael Rotondo, and it did not go well for him.
It's my understanding you've lived, you know, at your parents' house, rent-free for eight years, and I know you do your own laundry, you buy your own food, but they asked you five times, please move out.
Why couldn't you guys resolve this without the court?
I would consider much of what they were doing to try to get me out as a tax and what I was trying to, I was just, you know... I mean, hey, do you, you know, a lot of us have lived with our parents maybe a little bit longer than we wish we could.
Please take a sip of your water.
I'm sure you're irked.
I'm sure your parents are irked.
But, you know, you only have one mom and dad.
And I understand that you are probably more upset than even you're letting on.
But don't you want to reconcile with them?
OK, let me let me point out here that Brooke Baldwin obviously is having this guy on just to humiliate him.
And this is this is not great as a television host.
You shouldn't have people on simply to make them look stupid.
I think that it's kind of a waste of time and a waste of everybody's time.
That said, there's another point here to be made.
So CNN is spending an awful lot of time with this guy.
They spent like five, 10 minutes with this guy talking about how he wanted to stay home and he was entitled.
CNN is very much in favor of the idea that if you occupy somebody else's dwelling, you should not be evicted.
They're the ones who are saying that when banks evict people for non-payment of their bills, that this is somehow cruel and terrible.
People on the left want to have it both ways.
They want to say the millennial generation is entitled when they act precisely how CNN and MSNBC tell them to, which is, you should mooch off your parents.
We were told that until we were 26, we were staying on our parents' health insurance, and we should mooch off our parents.
Our parents owe it to us.
We were told that if we decide to live in the home, there is nothing wrong with that.
You should stay as long as you want.
You should be able to squat.
You should be able to live on the street.
You should be able to do whatever you want.
This guy does it, and suddenly he's being castigated for the doofus that he is.
And obviously, he is a doofus.
But it does go to show you how even the underlying narrative points that CNN is trying to drive home that are successful for them, in many cases, are conservative points.
It's really funny.
When you go and you watch movies from Hollywood, you know, Hollywood, obviously, a very, very left area.
It's a place where virtually everybody is a Democrat.
But if you just watch the movies without knowing the politics of the people behind it, and you could avoid all of the stupid insertions of politics into the particular movies that you are watching, what you would see is actually a very conservative narrative that's drawn out in nearly every movie.
It's usually a good guy and a bad guy.
There's a concept of good and evil.
It's usually somebody who comes into conflict and has to resolve that conflict through a crisis of will and principle.
A very conservative idea.
Well, the same thing happens on CNN right here.
So CNN, if this were a story about the parents evicting their son, Let's say they'd come at it from the other angle.
This is a story about parents trying to get rid of their son.
They would have said, look how cruel these parents are.
These parents are so cruel.
So terrible.
But because they decided to take the conservative angle, it's much more compelling TV, which is, why are you suing your parents to stay in their home?
Again, it's hilarious to see so many folks on the left who are saying, you should be independent.
You should get out of your parents' home.
Why are you bothering your parents?
And then at the same time, they say, well, you know what?
You really should be deeply dependent on the government.
Be dependent on the government.
Be dependent on everyone else.
There's nothing wrong with taking a government check.
There's nothing wrong with taking a handout.
There's nothing wrong with demanding a handout.
Now, they say this guy's a self-described conservative, but he's acting like a Bernie Sanders lefty.
It's Bernie Sanders lefties who say that I am here, therefore you owe me stuff.
And that's precisely the angle that this guy is taking.
And CNN's ripping him for it.
So at some point, I'd like them to ask Bernie Sanders what this guy did wrong.
I just think it'd be really funny.
Like, they could have this guy on with Bernie Sanders, and they could ask Bernie Sanders if the guy is doing something truly awful.
Because he's paying his rent, right?
I mean, he's doing what he's supposed to do.
Presumably Bernie Sanders would stand up for him.
But CNN is not standing up for him because even they understand that there is nothing good happening there in terms of the useful.
Okay, so before I go any further, I want to talk about President Trump and North Korea because he made a pretty major move on North Korea this morning.
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Okay, so.
Meanwhile, President Trump has gotten himself into, not a pickle, out of a pickle, I would suggest.
So I have always been skeptical of the idea that there was going to be a grand summit between the Trump administration and the North Korean dictatorship.
I have always been deeply skeptical of this.
I was from the beginning, when people were shouting, Nobel Prize.
I was saying for what?
Okay, unless North Korea wants to actually give something up, there's no deal that's going to get done here, and there's a far better shot that the United States will make a bad move and that the bad move will involve pulling troops off the peninsula or scaling down military drills or making some sort of promise financially to Kim Jong-un, which I do not support.
Well, President Trump did the right thing.
So a few days ago, North Korea threatened a nuclear showdown with the United States.
So this was just a few, a couple of days ago.
North Korea, according to Huffington Post, has escalated its war of words with the U.S., repeating a threat on Thursday to call off the planned June 12 summit with President Donald Trump.
Warning that a nuclear showdown could instead be on the table.
In a statement published by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, the North's Vice Minister of Public Affairs, Cho Sun-hui, blamed reckless remarks made by top U.S.
officials as the reason behind Pyongyang's second thoughts.
Cho took aim at VP Mike Pence in particular and called him a political dummy.
Who defended North Korea with his unbridled and imprudent comments.
And impudent comments, rather.
Pence had warned in a Fox News interview that Pyongyang could follow the Libya model if Kim Jong-un doesn't make a deal, which was a deal where Muammar Gaddafi met a brutal end after his decision to denuclearize.
OK, North Korea has long expressed distaste at comparisons with Libya.
They don't want to look like a weak country.
They gave up their nuclear weaponry and all the rest.
So they were ripping on Mike Pence and they were suggesting that they were going to pull out of the June 12th summit.
And so Trump came out and he wrote a letter and his letter basically said, fine, stay home.
I don't care.
Which is exactly right.
That's exactly right.
The United States is not the country in trouble here.
The country in trouble here is North Korea.
And let's face the reality.
North Korea is in trouble because they blew up their own nuclear mountain.
It collapsed in on them weeks ago.
They do not have a nuclear testing site inside North Korea because they had a physical problem with their nuclear testing site.
It broke.
They broke their own testing site, which is an amazing thing.
And President Trump was just sitting there and then they're like, can we have some talks?
He's like, absolutely, you can have some talks.
And then in order to save face, they're making all sorts of noises about nuclear war.
So President Trump, this is where President Trump's habit of being just a bloviating hammer of a human being.
It really comes in handy.
So here is what he wrote.
You have to love this.
It's so good.
He writes, Dear Mr. Chairman, we greatly appreciate your time, patience and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12th in Singapore.
We were informed the meeting was requested by North Korea, but that to us is totally irrelevant.
I was very much looking forward to being there with you.
Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time to have this long-planned meeting.
Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.
You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.
Okay, that last sentence is so Trump.
It's so Trump and it's so great.
I mean, it's like Donald Trump brags about his genitals and his nuclear capabilities in exactly the same way.
They're so massive and powerful.
I pray to God they will never have to be used.
It's just spectacular.
It's so good, right?
I mean, it's the president of the United States telling North Koreans, guys, like, let's be real here.
You're pretending that this is a partnership of co-equals, that we're gonna sit down across the table and we're gonna pretend like North Korea is a real country and not a crazy dictatorship where you imprison in a gulag hundreds of thousands of people?
And then test her crappy level nuclear weapons?
Like, we're gonna pretend that?
But, let's be real.
We're massive.
We're huge, you might say.
And then he continues.
That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.
was building up between you and me.
And ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters.
Someday I look very much forward to meeting you.
In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families.
That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated, which is him reminding them, you guys already made concessions to me.
So ha ha ha ha ha ha, you idiots.
You let out the hostages, and now we're not gonna do a meeting, and I'm gonna laugh about how my nuclear weapons are better than yours.
Again, all of this is kind of hilarious.
Can this be real?
Kind of funny?
Does it increase the chances of nuclear war?
No, because the North Korean regime does not want to get into nuclear war with the United States.
We would turn his palace into an ocean of glass in 30 seconds flat.
This is not happening, okay?
There's not gonna be a war between North Korea and the United States because Kim Jong-un is not suicidal.
And all of the concessions he was prepared to make were not going to be made because Donald Trump sweet-talked him.
This is never going to be about Donald Trump being able to cut a better deal than anyone else or anything like that.
The art of negotiation does not lie in you giving somebody a pat on the head and a shoulder rub.
That's not how negotiation works.
The way it works is Trump is ready to walk away from the table.
This is true for your salary negotiations at your own company.
It is true for everyone.
You have to decide in your own head, what is your walkaway point?
What is the point where you say, listen, this is not worth it for me.
I'm out.
Trump knew that his walkaway point was pretty much anything.
That if North Korea decided to make trouble, he was just going to say, fine, screw it.
Enjoy your poverty stricken country.
We're out.
And if you make trouble, well, guess what?
Our military threat is still on the table.
It continues along these lines.
If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.
The world, North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth.
This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.
Sincerely yours.
And then it's the biggest signature ever.
Like you almost have to see the signature.
It's like the entire page.
It's like President Trump was like, you know what?
So Kim Jong-un doesn't need to use his reading glasses.
He's going to sign this huge spiky signature, the Donald Trump signature.
Okay, you can hate Donald Trump as much as you want.
That's pretty great stuff.
This is what he is supposed to do.
What's hilarious is folks on the left are saying, how could Donald Trump do this?
It just shows how Donald Trump blew it.
Now, here's where Donald Trump went wrong.
He shouldn't have been running around talking about how he was going to win the Nobel Prize for meeting with Kim Jong-un beforehand, but that's Trump's thing.
Okay, are we going to pretend for half a second here that President Trump isn't the guy who walks around bragging about everything?
Have you met him?
Have you seen him?
Of course, as soon as people started saying Nobel Prize, he was going to go around talking about how he was about to win eight Nobel Prizes in physics, in literature, all of them, right?
He was going to like that was going to happen.
But here's the I thought that that was trapping him in a situation where he was going to have more stake in having the meeting than in getting something good out of the meeting.
That obviously was not true.
So if I sound relieved, it's because I am.
President Obama was not like this.
President Obama I was skeptical about this, but it is.
It is in making a good deal.
It is in making a better deal.
regime in Iran just so he could say that he got a deal and he was a great peacemaker.
He was not willing to walk away from the table because his interest was in the deal itself.
President Trump's interest, I was skeptical about this, but it is, is in making a good deal.
It is in making a better deal.
I'm very much heartened by President Trump's willingness to walk away from the table with Kim Jong-un because I don't think that it was smart for him to put it out there that we were going to meet with Kim Jong-un without preconditions I don't think it was smart to walk into a room not knowing what we wanted from Kim Jong-un.
I'm very happy that he said, listen, My walkaway point was right here.
You passed it.
We're out.
Good.
Good.
Now, maybe it was preemptive, OK?
To be skeptic, maybe it was preemptive.
Maybe he figured the North Koreans were going to cancel.
He wanted to cancel first.
It was more of a, you can't, you can't fire me.
I quit.
Maybe it was that.
Maybe that's what was going on.
But whatever it was, at least Trump was willing to say that.
And you got to love the dude, right?
You got to love the attitude because the attitude is just spectacular.
It is indeed.
Hilarious.
It is so good.
I can enjoy it, okay?
I can enjoy it.
Well, in just a second, I'm going to give you the update on this ins— I have to talk to you about this judicial decision about Trump's Twitter feed because it's just ridiculous.
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All righty.
So now I want to talk to you about the stupidest judicial ruling I have seen in a long, long time.
So, a federal judge ruled Wednesday morning, according to LawAndCrime.com, that President Donald Trump may not block critics on Twitter.
So many of those critics must now be unblocked.
I don't know how Twitter works.
The way it works is that you send off your little missives into cyberspace and anyone can see them, unless that person annoys you, in which case you have the ability to do one of two things.
You can either mute them so you can't see their responses to you.
This is my preferred method because I just am amused by the idea that there are people who are so upset about what I'm saying that they are firing back tweet after tweet at me and I can't hear them at all.
It's the equivalent of me hitting mute on my TV screen or sticking my thumbs in my ears.
I don't actually need to listen to you, and you still think you're talking to me, so I think that's really funny.
But there's also block.
Okay, the block function is where you can't even see my tweets.
So I don't believe I've actually used the block button on anyone on Twitter.
If I have, it's like one or two people, maybe.
But President Trump has over the years blocked A lot of people.
And there are lots of legislators who have.
I am blocked by a number of Hollywood celebrities.
A number of Democrats have blocked me as well.
That is not a shock, because they don't want you seeing their tweets and then mocking them.
Particularly if you have a big following.
Because, you know, I have 1.4 million followers on Twitter, and so that gives me the ability to, if someone tweets something stupid, Tweet out about their tweet and then it's not good for them.
So, in any case, there's a lawsuit filed against Trump for blocking people on Twitter.
Here's why this is dumb.
First of all, you can still view any of Donald Trump's tweets simply by going to Twitter.com and not logging in.
If you don't log in and you just view his Twitter feed, you can do that without actually having to count on Twitter.
Second, Are we really suggesting the media don't cover Trump's Twitter feed?
Is the suggestion here that you have no access to what Donald Trump said if you are not unblocked by President Trump?
And Twitter is not a public utility, right?
Twitter is a method for distribution.
So this would seem to suggest that if the President of the United States gives an interview to one outlet, he must give an interview to all outlets.
You can't give an exclusive anymore.
Instead, every outlet must be welcomed into the White House press office every time Trump has a press conference.
Well, obviously this is stupid.
A 75-page order.
U.S.
District Judge Naomi Rice Buchwald concisely began her lengthy analysis with the following emphatic finding of the law.
This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, block a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the president of the United States.
The answer to both questions is no.
And she says, We hold that portions of Twitter could shut down his account tomorrow.
He doesn't own Twitter.
Okay, Twitter is not a public forum.
Well, Twitter owns Trump's account.
Twitter could shut down his account tomorrow.
He doesn't own Twitter.
Twitter is not a public forum.
He doesn't pay tax dollars to Twitter.
Again, this is completely idiotic.
And if this is the case, then presumably I should sue all the Democratic legislators who have been blocking me.
But antipathy for the antipathy for the the Trump administration has led the judiciary just to the stupidest possible conclusions, like really, really dumb conclusions.
What they say is that under Supreme Court jurisprudence, there are three types of public forums, foura, traditional, designated, and limited, and closed.
So they found that this is a designated public forum because anyone can view Trump's tweets, because anyone with a Twitter account can follow Trump's tweets, because anyone who's not blocked on Twitter can interact with Trump's tweets, and because the social media directly said, social media director at the White House, Dan Scavino, said Twitter is how Trump communicates with you, the American people.
Twitter is a private company.
Twitter is not a public forum.
But this is how stupid the judiciary has become.
Now, speaking of Twitter and stupidity, Michael Avenatti, you remember him?
This is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels.
And he is the great leader of the Democratic Party now.
He is the great white hope to take down President Trump.
Trump will fall thanks to the bravery and supreme leadership Well, now it turns out that Michael Avenatti is a coward.
Stormy Daniels, she will cast her spells from the witches of Brestwick and President Trump will immediately be cast out of office.
Well, now it turns out that Michael Avenatti is a coward.
So he has now made his account on Twitter locked.
He's locked it.
He's made it a private account.
So he has like 600,000 followers on Twitter, and he blocked his entire account.
So presumably I can sue Michael Avenatti, since this is the way he gets out information, and I can make the claim that Michael Avenatti is not able to block me because Twitter is a public forum.
Twitter's a public forum, just like in a public park.
He can't force me to be removed from a public park, can he?
He says, I purposely locked my account due to the following, due to the following, bots, abusive trolls, and we will be releasing some sensitive info in the coming weeks, and I want to somewhat control who has initial access to it.
You're not going to control who has initial access to it, dude.
You have 600,000 followers on Twitter, and a lot of those people, presumably, are going to distribute that information as soon as it hits.
Ryan Lizza at CNN rightly said, this is ridiculous.
He rightly said, this is hypocritical.
How can you say that he's a champion of the press, when at the same time, he's blocking reporters who are covering him after there were mildly critical tweets?
But again, hypocrisy, thy name be leftism, and the hypocrisy of the left is on full display throughout all of this just silliness.
And this Twitter spat is really particularly stupid.
I mean, the fact that Trump tweets things out and that people look at those tweets does not mean that you have direct access to President Trump's every thought, any time, regardless as to who you are, or that you have no access to Trump if you can't follow him on Twitter.
I promise you, people are pretty aware of what President Trump is doing these days, but it shows the perversion of the judiciary and the fact that the judges that President Trump is selecting are deeply important because once the judiciary is monopolized by the left, then they will use that judiciary to cram down whatever dumb policy they see fit to cram down that day.
Okay, meanwhile, the Mueller investigation continues to move forward.
The latest on that Is that Mueller is planning on sentencing George Papadopoulos.
You remember George Papadopoulos.
He's a former Trump campaign aide.
The case that was being made by the Obama administration, the FBI, the DOJ under Obama, is that it was scrutiny of George Papadopoulos that led to the opening of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, because Papadopoulos had met with a professor in London who had said that he had access to Hillary Clinton's emails via Russian hacking, and Papadopoulos had gone around bragging about it.
This is what led to the opening of the investigation, according to the FBI.
Now, apparently, according to CNN reporter Shimon Prokopesk, he says that the Mueller office has asked the courts to begin the sentencing process.
He says, it signals to now they're done with George Papadopoulos and his cooperation.
He's been providing them information for months, now cooperating with them.
Within the last hour, the special counsel's office filed a status report saying they are ready for him to be sentenced.
And they are ready.
So this does not really give us an indicator as to what exactly he knew or when he knew it or what this means for President Trump.
But the Mueller investigation continues apace.
Now, one of the things that's hilarious about all of this is that it is quite plausible.
It is quite plausible and possible the Mueller investigation comes up with nothing.
The latest indicator that they could come up with nothing is Jared Kushner.
So Jared Kushner, as you recall, is President Trump's son-in-law.
He's also a top advisor to President Trump.
He has run his Middle East policy and his China policy and his toilet replacement policy and pretty much every other policy.
A lot of the policy considerations go through Kushner's office.
I think some of them beyond his brief, but he's done a good job on the Middle East, so I'm happy with that.
In any case, Jared Kushner, He has been very cooperative with Robert Mueller, and you recall that just a few months ago, his top-secret security clearance was revoked by John Kelly, who is the White House Chief of Staff, because he had a temporary top-security clearance, and that was revoked after there was a staffer who was ousted from the White House for having allegedly abused his ex-wife and ex-girlfriends.
You remember that whole story.
Well, after that, John Kelly revoked the temporary top-secret clearances of a bunch of people, including Jared Kushner.
And a bunch of people in the press said, this must be because Kushner is corrupt.
It must be because Kushner is corrupt.
Well, now, Kushner has his top-secret security clearance back.
So, so much for the whole, he's so corrupt he can't get top-secret clearance back routine.
He's got his top-secret clearance back.
Not only that, he was given his top-secret clearance back after he's been interviewed by Robert Mueller.
Twice.
For seven hours.
Here's Kushner's lawyer explaining.
I don't know that anybody could be cooperating more.
He has spoken to them when asked.
He has provided them with tons of documents that reflect what he's provided Congress and what else they've asked for.
He sat down in the fall when they wanted to ask questions about General Flynn, and he was very happy to spend almost an entire workday when they asked again.
So I would say it's the definition of cooperation.
So the assumption on the part of the left is that Jared Kushner was going to go to jail, that there was too much corruption.
He was going to go to jail.
That's why he didn't have his top secret clearance.
That obviously was false.
And not only was that false, Kushner has sat down with Robert Mueller on more than one occasion and everything is fine for him.
So I think that a lot of the left narrative about Mueller is going to get Trump.
It's all going to fall apart for Trump.
I think a lot of that is falling apart.
Now, with that said, I still am skeptical of President Trump's story that he was unfairly targeted by the FBI at the beginning of 2016.
I'm still very skeptical of this.
I don't I don't see why, if he was targeted by the FBI, he doesn't just declassify the documents demonstrating this.
The President of the United States has plenary power to declassify anything he wants under FBI auspices.
So that means, tonight, he could just get rid of the classification status for the FISA warrant on Carter Page.
He could just get rid of the classification status on all of the information about the informant against his campaign.
And again, I am not sure that, we have to be very specific in our language.
When President Trump says that he was spied on, his campaign was spied on, Members of his campaign had an informant against them.
That's not quite the same thing as saying that Trump himself was spied on, or Kushner was spied on, or Bannon was spied on, or any of the top members of his campaign at any point.
Low-level people who are openly discussing the possibility of working with Russia, it seems to me, were the targets of the informants.
The reason I'm being careful here is just I want to go where the evidence leads.
If the evidence ends up leading to SpyGates 2018, fine.
Fine, if that's where it leads, I'm happy to go there.
But so far, I'm not seeing the evidence and I want to be very specific before we start slandering the entire FBI and suggesting the FBI was out to get Trump in March 2016 before he had even won the nomination.
Okay, so, you know, let's just be specific in our accusations.
Okay, I think that it's time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, A thing that I like today.
So I have been watching this Starz series.
It's an old Starz series from 2013, 2014, with Rebecca Hamilton, who's become a relatively major star.
She was in Life with Jake Gyllenhaal.
She's in a bunch of other stuff now as well.
And this is a miniseries, The White Queen.
The White Queen is about the period in English history.
This is like 1470s, 1480s.
The period in English history, British history, in which it's the War of the Roses.
This is the period covering Edward IV, Richard III, who you'll recall from your Shakespeare classes in high school, if you actually went to a decent high school, and then the period immediately following with the restoration of Henry IV.
So, yes, Henry IV.
So that is... Henry VI?
Okay.
In any case, the series is quite good.
It's really well produced.
It stars.
That means there's a little bit of boobage for no apparent reason.
So just be warned about that if that's something that bothers you.
But the production quality is excellent.
It is really worth watching.
And the portrayal of Richard III is really interesting because it is exactly counter to the Shakespearean portrayal of Richard III.
So remember that Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets.
And at the time that Shakespeare was writing, which is 200 years after, well, let's see, when was Shakespeare writing?
Now I'm going to have to check it out.
So Shakespeare was writing within the next century, right?
Shakespeare was writing in the late 1500s.
He's about a hundred years later, and he's writing after this.
And the current regime in Britain, it's Elizabethan England.
Elizabethan England is a spawn of the line that followed Richard III.
Right, so remember that the House of Lancaster has recovered its predominance by the time that Shakespeare is writing.
And Richard III's family, his entire family, was the last of the Plantagenets.
So it was the Lancasters versus the Yorks.
It was the York family.
So the York family was fighting the Lancasters for predominance.
The Lancasters ended up winning.
Shakespeare is writing under a Lancaster queen, Queen Elizabeth.
And what this results in in his work is this real bias against Richard III.
Richard III is an evil guy who killed his nephews and all the rest.
I'm gonna have to recommend a book probably next time on Richard III that sort of debunks this.
But this series sort of debunks it as well.
So here's a little bit of the preview for The White Queen.
I'm Lady Elizabeth Grey, Your Grace.
The King has done what he should not.
He has married from another house and a commoner at that.
There are many who will be wishing us to fall.
You're making it sound more like a battle than a marriage.
It is a battle.
She could never be royal.
She's my queen of choice.
This can easily be undone.
There was an uprising.
Warwick brings 10,000 men from the south.
You are to lead his crusade.
We will crush Queen Elizabeth for good.
I have to go.
Okay, so the series is actually really well shaded.
You don't get the idea that any one of these people is like the great hero, although Richard III is treated very sympathetically.
Production quality, very, very high.
It was Henry VII, by the way, who was the successor to Richard III.
Obviously, you remember from Shakespeare class, my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse, that comes from Richard III, that last battle.
That is what the series approaches near the end, but it's really well done.
The acting is quite good.
The scripting is quite good.
Well worth watching.
Very sympathetic take on virtually all of the characters, so definitely worth checking out.
Okay, now time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, so, here is the thing that I hate today.
The thing that I hate is that there was a Freedom of Information Act request that was reported by the Baltimore Post about Barack Obama and his top advisors after the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
Okay, right after the tragedy at Sandy Hook, after the act of evil at Sandy Hook in which 20 children were shot and 6 staffers were shot as well.
The top members of the Obama administration immediately began discussing how to use this as a political weapon before the bodies were even cold.
So two days after the massacre that left 26 dead, there is a text exchange between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff for President Obama, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
About what to do.
And they were discussing.
So Duncan said, what are your thoughts?
In the subject line, CT shooting.
And Emmanuel said, go for a vote this week ASAP before it fades.
Tap people's emotion.
Make it simple.
Assault weapons.
Yep.
Thanks, replied the education secretary.
And then Emmanuel wrote back, when I did Brady Bill and assault weapons for Clinton, we always made it simple.
Criminals or war weapons.
And then Duncan asked about so-called gun show loopholes.
He said, So they were already trading ideas on how exactly to take advantage of this entire thing, the immediate polarization, the immediate politicization, the attempt to turn it into a rallying cry for gun control.
Tap people's emotions is, you know, listen, that's politics.
But when it's exposed to public view, it is a little bit gross.
It is a little bit gross.
And I think everybody should see that the the supposed sincerity of the Obama administration in pushing legislation connected with gun control was largely about tapping into people's emotion, which you could tell certainly at the time.
OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with Mailbag.
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