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July 20, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:28
Trump vs. The Intelligence Community | Ep. 585
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Robert Mueller offers Tony Podesta a very special deal.
President Trump prepares for a second Putin meeting.
And we check the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Ooh, what a week, folks.
Gotta tell you, a lot went on this week, and there's a lot more to come on today's show.
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OK, I want to talk today a little bit about a story that no one is talking about.
And it really is a disturbing story because it suggests where the right in the country is headed.
And I don't mean the Trumpian right.
The evil right.
I'm talking about the pansy right.
I'm talking about there are folks on the right who will run from any controversy because they are deeply afraid of being miscast as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
As someone who's frequently miscast this way, I gotta tell you, the only way to stand up to the social justice mob is to simply stand up to them and say, I'm not those things, and you're full of crap.
It's the only way to do it.
But with that said, there's a story that really went unnoticed this week that is pretty disturbing to me.
Here is the story.
It's from Oregon Live.
It says this.
This is the most liberal circuit court of appeals in the country.
And this replacement was for a pretty conservative judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The move came about 45 minutes after a Senate vote had been scheduled to confirm Bounds.
McConnell offered no explanation, but Oregon senators later said it became apparent the Republicans didn't have the vote.
So what did this judge do that prevented his nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals?
He's 44 years old.
And he had an opportunity to be sitting on this court for a very, very long time.
So what did he do that was just so terrible that Republicans could not support him?
Well, according to Oregon Live, he hadn't disclosed inflammatory college writings about sexual assault, the rights of workers, people of color, and the LGBTQ community to the Oregon committee when questioned about his thoughts on diversity or if there was anything embarrassing from his past.
Perhaps because he's 44 and he wrote this crap when he was 18 or 19.
In a second, we're going to go through those writings and we'll try to determine what, if anything, that he said is so offensive that literally 25 years later, he should not be allowed to sit on one of the nation's courts.
Both Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon repeatedly warned their Republican colleagues that a confirmation of bounds would signal an end to bipartisan cooperation in judicial nominations Okay, first of all, there is no bipartisan cooperation in judicial nominations.
Republicans have simply been voting by straight majority to confirm all of these nominees.
It was Harry Reid who ended the policy of judicial confirmations as a bipartisan exercise during the Bush years.
And then it was Harry Reid who, again, decided it would be a wise and brilliant idea to end the filibuster for judicial nominees.
So this idea that there's been judicial nomination, confirmation, bipartisanship is just nonsense.
sense.
It hasn't been true for a very long time.
Wyden said, I'm gratified that the Senate has come to its senses and that longtime proven practices of bipartisanship for judicial nominations have prevailed over partisan efforts to force through a deeply flawed and compromised nominee.
Wyden said, I think this is going to affect other nominees and strengthen the whole advice and consent rule for members of the U.S.
Senate.
It's going to be good for the nominees being truthful.
I think it's a win for the Oregon way.
He says it wasn't a complete surprise because several Republicans were looking carefully at this.
But on the other hand, we knew a lot of pressure we brought to bear.
This was a nominee from the Fed Society, the Federalist Society, which has extraordinarily huge leverage in driving through nominees.
So according to my sources in the Judiciary Committee, as well as Senator Tim, as well as this this open report from Oregon Live, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who's Normally a really good senator.
The Republican caucus's lone black senator appears to have been a pivotal no vote.
In a statement, Scott said he couldn't support Bounds if his name went to a vote Thursday after meeting with him.
He said, after talking with the nominee last night and meeting with him today, I had unanswered questions that led to me being unable to support him.
So does Scott actually believe this nominee was a racist?
Does this mean that he was a racist?
So according to the reports, Merkley said he had heard that Bounds would be defeated by about 70 votes, including the 49 Democratic senators if his nomination had been put to a vote.
Why exactly was he shut off?
Now let's look at the text of what he said all the way back when he was at Stanford University in 1995 when he was 19 years old.
So here are some of the excerpts that were cited by the Alliance for Justice, which is a far-left group attempting to get this guy to prevent him from sitting on a court.
Again, this was written 25 years ago, and this is the stuff that prevented a guy from sitting on a federal court because Republicans were too pansy to actually just confirm the guy.
So here's what he wrote.
During my years in our multicultural Garden of Eden, again this is 1995 at Stanford, I've often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempts to heighten consciousness, build tolerance, promote diversity, and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil.
I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookmurning.
That's bad?
I'm confused.
That's true.
Okay, that part's actually true.
Multiculturalism on campus is a way for people to pigeonhole each other into various racial categories and then to shut down free thought.
So that's not wrong, even if you think it's mildly overstated.
You're going to keep them off a court for that?
How about this one?
I submit that the multiculturalistas, when they divide up by race for their feel-good ethnic codons, engage in nearly all of the fundamental behaviors of groupthink.
Because they do.
Okay?
I've been on college campuses.
This is what happens.
It is groupthink.
Okay, if a black person is an individualist and a thoroughgoing capitalist who eschews victimhood status and its concomitant entitlements, race thinkers are quick to brand him and bounds then listed out derogatory terms that are often used, including sellout.
Again, I'm confused.
This is why Republicans wouldn't vote for this guy?
For the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals?
Because he said true things about multiculturalism?
He said the existence of ethnic organizations is no inevitable prerequisite to maintaining a diverse community.
White students, after all, seem to be doing all right without an Aryan student union.
OK, he's making the case against an Aryan student union.
That's not a case in favor of an Aryan student union.
He's saying that when you divide people up by ethnicity, what you are actually doing on college campuses is preventing everybody from seeing each other as equals and as Americans.
Again, true.
Okay, so none of those things should rule this guy off the court.
What else?
Well, he said there's nothing really inherently wrong with the university failing to punish an alleged rapist regardless his guilt in the absence of adequate certainty.
There's nothing the university can do to objectively ensure that the rapist does not strike again.
So the case that he was making in this particular argument is not in favor of rapists.
He was saying that the university is not responsible for jailing people.
The police are responsible for jailing people.
And that if somebody alleges rape on a college campus, we shouldn't have these sort of campus witch hunts where people are immediately deemed guilty and then tossed out of school.
This has become a serious problem on America's college campuses.
So again, he's not completely wrong here.
He says, expelling students is probably not going to contribute a great deal to a rape victim's recovery.
There's no more imperative to risk egregious error in doing so.
Again, the case that he's making here is the same.
He is essentially saying that throwing people off of campus in the absence of an actual court trial that would land them in jail is going to be a serious problem.
You're going to have kangaroo courts determining whether people are guilty or not based on lack of evidence.
And you have had this happen, right?
Mattress Girl over at NYU or Columbia, rather.
This is still a thing where people allege things that are not true.
Remember, at Columbia University, there's a woman, I can't remember her name, Emma Salkowitz, I think it was.
She called herself Mattress Girl because she would go around campus carrying a mattress, alleging that she had been raped by a foreign student.
And it turns out that he had texts that proved that she was not actually raped.
She is still upheld by the left as a sign of the campus rape epidemic that's happening on campuses.
And this guy sued the university because Columbia punished him.
He sued the university and he won a couple million dollar settlement from the university.
This sort of stuff does happen on campuses.
So this is the writing that this guy got thrown off a court for?
That Republicans said they wouldn't vote for him for?
And Bounds even gave them the Stalinist apology, right?
He even gave them an email.
The judicial nominee, he even gave them an email apologizing for all this stuff.
stuff.
He said, achieving a more egalitarian and inclusive society has always been centrally important to me.
Appropriate sensitivities, the views of others, particularly those from my marginalized communities about how best to pursue that aim, however, came to me only after I'd left college for the workaday world.
I regret that.
And I apologize to you all for the obnoxious tone and misguided sentiments you will hear about because of it.
Please know that my commitment to our shared mission will only be redoubled by this unpleasant reminder of my errors of nearly a quarter century ago.
Okay, that's just, I'm sorry.
It's a bunch of crap.
It's a bunch of crap.
Like the stuff that you wrote in college, well, not bad.
Even if you think it was that bad, it was back in college.
And unless you have anything to show me from the last 25 years demonstrating the guy's a secret member of the KKK, I'm gonna go, this is idiotic.
This is idiotic.
It's idiotic.
People do change from the time they're 17 years old.
I should know, I was writing a syndicated column when I was 17 years old.
Do I stand by everything I ever wrote when I was 17?
No, because I'd be an idiot if I did.
If you've changed no opinions you ever held since you were 17 years old, it's because you haven't been doing any thinking.
So there's that element of this.
We have to, oh man, let's go through his college writings and determine whether he's secretly a segregationist.
And then, it turns out the stuff this guy wrote wasn't even that bad.
The stuff this guy wrote is largely true.
And he's kicked off a court for that?
Now, what's hilarious about this is that the left does not have the same sense of composure.
The left does not have the same sense that we have to be above the fray when it comes to these political battles.
The left is not cowardly this way.
There are leftists who were members of Occupy during college who will sit on our nation's federal courts.
And the left, the left worships at the altar of people who are actual legitimate terrorists.
People like Assad al-Shakour.
They're actual people.
And we are told that the left is going to heroize those people.
William Ayers is a professor at a major university after being a legitimate domestic terrorist during the 1970s.
And so is his wife, Bernadine Dorn.
All of this stuff, according to the left, is totally fine.
It's totally fine.
The left is never shy about this stuff.
And I promise you, all the people who are writing extreme stuff today in their student newspapers about how Donald Trump is the worst person in the world, all those people will be sitting on federal courts in 30 years.
Mark my words.
And no one on the left will care.
It is only the right that is so shy about its own viewpoint with regard to multiculturalism that they run away when something as mild as these writings from a prospective judge come up.
It's really absurd.
It's truly absurd.
I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
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Okay, so back to this judge, this prospective Judge Bounds, who was shut down by Senator Tim Scott, who Couldn't apparently say that he thought that this guy was a racist.
He just felt uncomfortable with him.
Just because you feel uncomfortable with somebody doesn't mean that person shouldn't sit on a federal court.
It depends on how sensitive you are.
I believe that there are levels of discomfort that pass beyond discomfort into outright antagonism.
And sometimes that's justified.
But if you're just uncomfortable with the way somebody phrased something back in college, even though you agree with the underlying message, maybe you ought to think about the stuff that you wrote back in college and thought back in college and think, wow, do I agree with the way I phrased everything way back when?
OK, Bounds apologized before the Judiciary Committee for his often high-handed and overheated tone of his Stanford commentary about campus politics.
He says the intentions behind those articles were always to see greater tolerance and mutual understanding on campus.
That was always my aim.
The Judiciary Committee voted 11 to 10 in June along party lines to forward Bounds' nomination to the Senate floor.
Democrats blasted their Republican colleagues and President Trump's administration for trying to pack courts with extremist judges.
Ron Wyden, who's a socialist idiot, accused Bounds of misrepresenting and covering up disturbing, intolerant writings from his past.
It's not a cover-up, and they're not disturbing, and they're not intolerant.
He says what really outraged and shocked me was his comparison of organizations that promote multiculturalism and tolerance here in America to Nazi rallies.
So that was that quote that I read you a little bit earlier, where he said that a lot of these ethnic groups do more to shut off thought than a Nazi book burning would.
Honestly, that's not completely wrong.
Having been on campus, having spent an enormous amount of time on campus, I've been protested by exactly these groups who have stood outside theaters where I'm speaking, shouting, speech is violence, and attempting to shut down the speech and prevent people from entering.
Hey, I was at Cal State Los Angeles when many of these student groups were calling out their friends to block people from entering the room.
Hey, that is a shutdown of free speech by these exact campus groups.
And we're supposed to believe it's just terrible?
This guy wrote this at Stanford in 1995?
It's just it's absurd.
So I don't blame Democrats for doing this.
They don't want a conservative sitting on the court.
Shocker.
They don't want somebody who is going to interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning sitting on the court.
Shocker.
What I am embarrassed by, really embarrassed by, is the Republicans, including senators that I like.
I like Tim Scott.
I'm embarrassed by senators in the Republican Party who will not stand by a prospective judicial nominee because they are, quote unquote, embarrassed by some of the things that that person said back when they were 19 years old at Stanford University.
Things that are objectively non-embarrassing.
It demonstrates the level to which all of these Republicans have been bullied and cowed.
It demonstrates how fast they run for the hills.
And here's the thing.
They think this is going to buy them some sort of love from the left.
They think that the left is going to somehow treat them nicely.
Doesn't work that way.
John McCain was treated really nicely by the left up until the point where he ran for president.
In 2008, he became a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
Mitt Romney was supposed to be a favorite of the left up until the point when he ran against Barack Obama, at which point he became a guy who wanted to put black people back in chains, strap dogs to the top of his car, and hated women.
All you people in the Republican Party, including you, Senator Scott, if you think you're going to get off easy with the left by shutting down the nomination of people like this guy Bounds, you are out of your mind.
They will come after you just as hard and twice as badly because they know that you can be cowed.
This sort of stuff has got to stop on the part of Republicans.
It really has to end.
It's just egregious.
Okay, meanwhile...
There's a lot of fallout now from the Trump-Putin meeting earlier this week.
And there's some disturbing stuff coming out of the Mueller investigation.
And I don't mean disturbing about President Trump.
I mean disturbing in the way that the Mueller investigation is approaching President Trump and members of Trump's campaign.
So this is a report from The Daily Caller.
It was reported also on Tucker Carlson's show last night.
Basically, the report is that Tony Podesta who is obviously a top honcho in the Democratic Party, along with his brother, John Podesta, who they founded the Podesta Group together.
And then John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign chair.
Well, it turns out that Tony Podesta has now been flipped against Paul Manafort with a promise of immunity.
Here is Tucker Carlson reporting on it last night.
Well, tonight we can report exclusively based on two separate sources we spoke to today that Tony Podesta has been offered immunity by Robert Mueller to testify against Paul Manafort.
In other words, for a near identical crime, Bill and Hillary's friend could skate and emerge completely unscathed, while Paul Manafort may rot in jail.
Only one of them made the mistake of chairing Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Okay, and it's hard not to read it the way that Tucker is reading it here.
Now, the counterargument would be this, just to be fair.
The counterargument is that Tony Podesta blew the Foreign Relations Act, the Foreign Actors Relations Act.
It's called FARA.
I'm trying to remember what it actually stands for.
The basic idea is that he didn't register as a foreign agent, and then he registered late as a foreign agent, which is another thing that Paul Manafort did.
So they had the same crime there.
It is fair to say, however, that Paul Manafort is also being charged for tax evasion in a way that Tony Podesta is not.
So maybe you say, OK, well, we flip the lesser crime for the greater crime.
The reason that they are giving Podesta immunity is because if they don't give him immunity, he can plead the fifth.
This is the way that it works legally, is that you cannot plead the fifth just because you feel like pleading the fifth.
So let's say that you are called as a witness in a criminal trial, but there is no actual chance that you are going to be prosecuted, and you plead the fifth, the judge will force you to testify.
He'll say, There's no self-incrimination issue here because you're not prosecuted.
If you offer Tony Podesta immunity, now he can't plead the fifth.
Okay, so they're trying to get him to testify against Manafort.
So one read is, this is Mueller attempting to roll up all the members of the Trump campaign by flipping a bunch of Democrats like Tony Podesta.
By giving them immunity.
If that's the case, then Mueller is politically biased and this is a bad, it's a bad look.
It's just a bad look.
The other way to read this is that Tony Podesta didn't commit the same crimes as Paul Manafort, and so him flipping Podesta against Manafort is really just normal criminal procedure.
I don't know the answer to that.
All I can tell you is that it doesn't look great.
Podesta's lawyers have responded by hitting Carlson with a cease and desist order because Carlson had previously reported details of Podesta's involvement in the Mueller probe.
He reported in October that Podesta was in the special counsel's crosshair.
Podesta's lawyers had hit Carlson with a cease and desist and the Daily Caller co-founder ignored all of that.
It's not good news for the Mueller probe that they had to do that.
And again, it's sort of lending credence to the idea that Trump is putting out there that the Mueller probe is a get Trump probe as opposed to something that is objectively trying to go about the prosecution of criminals in the United States.
Now, with that said, I'm lending more, I think, credence to some of Trump's complaints.
There's this article in Reuters that is really sort of disturbing.
There's an article from Tim Weiner over at Reuters, and here's what he says.
He says, The foundations of American national security are under assault.
The battle lines are drawn.
On one side stand the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency.
On the other, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
Donald Trump's appalling performance in Helsinki was a subversive act.
He rejected the conclusion of American intelligence that his election was aided by a hydra-headed act of political warfare controlled by the Kremlin.
He did so with a wink and a smile for the smirking autocrat who led the attack.
And then this Reuters columnist continues by ripping into Trump.
And then he says about the intelligence community, they have the power to strike back.
For two years now, high-ranking veterans of American intelligence have sounded the alarm about Trump in the starkest language possible.
And then he quotes a bunch of members of the intel community who have been warning about Trump.
Intelligence officers already have provided reams of information to Mueller under the ambit of the law.
In little more than a year, Mueller has brought to court overwhelming evidence that Russian military intelligence carried out the covert operation.
While Trump emphatically denies collusion, signs suggest that Mueller can and will show that the Russians were aided and abetted by Americans.
Mueller has won guilty pleas in cooperation.
In the coming months, a noose around Trump, whose lawyers keep setting new conditions for an interview with the president, will likely tighten as the special counsel closes in on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
These cases never could have been made without the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA.
If the House of Representatives slips from Republican to Democrat in November, impeachment hearings may open in January.
Again, American intelligence officials will provide the information fueling these investigations.
Now, in just a second, I want to talk about why this sort of angle is really, really wrong-headed and really, really dangerous.
And this columnist for Reuters isn't the only one who's taking this particular attack.
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It is not just this Reuters columnist who is praising the Deep State today, on the same day that Mueller apparently is using Tony Podesta to go after Paul Manafort in what looks like a non-decent arrangement.
It's Eugene Robinson, who's a lefty columnist over at the Washington Post.
He has a column today called God Bless the Deep State.
And his main contention, his main objection, is he suggests that the administration is so dangerous that we need all of these bureaucrats in place to stop the administration from being dangerous.
So he says, before this harebrained and reckless administration is history, the nation will have cause to celebrate the public servants derided by Trumpists as the supposed deep state.
The term itself is propaganda intended to cast a sinister light upon men and women whom Trump and his minions find annoyingly knowledgeable and experienced.
They are not participants in any kind of dark conspiracy.
Rather, they are feared and loathed by the president and his wrecking crew of know-nothings because they have spent years, often decades, Mastering the details of foreign and domestic policy.
God bless them.
With the supine Congress unwilling to play the role it is assigned by the Constitution, the deep state stands between us and the abyss.
And then he talks all about how the deep state is basically leaking to the media all this information and talking to Robert Mueller and building a case against the President of the United States.
He says, Democrats in Congress are powerless.
The Republican leadership's spineless.
Experienced government officials know that their job is to serve the president.
But what if the president does not serve the best interests of the nation?
In this emergency, the loyal and honorable Deep State has a higher duty.
It's called patriotism.
Do you understand how dangerous this is?
So basically, you have the president of the United States who accuses the intelligence services of being politicized.
And the response of the left is, good!
I'm glad they're politicized because the president is just that dangerous.
Now, imagine if the situation reversed.
Barack Obama were pursuing his awful, awful Iran deal and people inside the so-called deep state were leaking all sorts of information about the Iran deal and making a criminal case that the members of the Obama administration were lying to the American public, for example.
Do you think the left would be quite so sanguine about the deep state?
Or would they say, listen, Obama was elected to do a job.
If Congress wants to check him, Congress can check him.
That's the way our government works.
Unelected bureaucrats do not get to play their own role out here.
I think that would have been the better case and the stronger case and the more intelligent case.
You cannot have an executive agency that is not subject to the purview of the president because then you do have a rogue agency that is subject to no one.
Congress can't curb them.
The president can't curb them.
Do you really want a state in which those with the greatest power over surveillance and intelligence also have the most power over our politics?
Is that really what you want?
Put aside the president for a second.
Lefties, put aside how much you hate President Trump for just a second.
Do you really want the most powerful agencies of the country, the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, to have so much power that it's their job now to curb and topple the President of the United States?
Those are the people who also have power over your emails and your call data.
Those are the people who you suddenly trust.
The same leftists who five seconds ago were ripping into the Patriot Act, suggesting it was unpatriotic.
Those same leftists today are deeply excited about these members of the so-called Deep State checking President Trump's excesses.
If you don't like President Trump, there's a very, very easy thing you can do about it.
Vote out Republicans in November.
If you think that he's so dangerous, then get out there and give money to your local Democratic candidate.
But if you think the solution to this is a bunch of bureaucrats appointed at the highest levels and left in power for years on end without any sort of serious oversight, I don't know what kind of country you want to build.
It does suggest the anti-democratic tendencies of some folks on the left that they hate Trump so much they are willing to go along with the so-called deep state.
Pretty amazing.
The same people who should have learned their lesson after J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King, suddenly they believe that the deep state are people who are worthy of our insane Now, do I really think the people in the FBI, CIA, NSA, these are all bad people?
Of course not.
I've been very strongly defending all of these people from what I think is the unfair assault of President Trump on their capabilities with regard to the Russian investigation.
But two things can be true at once.
I can like that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are doing their job investigating Russian election interference, and I can also be wary of unelected bureaucrats in any branch of the federal government Overriding their constitutional boundaries and impinging into normal, everyday electoral politics.
I don't want the FBI interfering in the election any more than I want the Russians interfering in the election.
The Russians are a foreign power.
The FBI is an unelected bureaucracy.
They should not be interfering in the election outside of their normal processes of criminal adjudication.
Once you start turning this into a political branch, why should I possibly trust that I can trust these people with additional power?
Why would I possibly trust that these people are looking out for me and not looking out for their own political interests?
Remember, these are government agencies.
Government agencies have a couple of different interests, maximizing power and maximizing their own money.
That means that these are folks who are going to manipulate the system, or at least they have an interest in manipulating the system, into giving us more surveillance power and funding us better.
At the very least, that's a problem.
And that's why we have Democratic elected officials, small-D Democratic elected officials, who are going to provide a check against this sort of apparatus.
But cheering on the apparatus is a mistake.
And by the way, it lends all sorts of credibility to Trump when he rips into the apparatus.
When he says there is a deep state, it's hard for you to claim there's not a deep state while you're cheering for the deep state.
If Trump says, the deep state's out to get me, and you say, there is no deep state, but also, I'm glad that the deep state is out to get you, you gotta pick one of those things.
The excitement to get President Trump has led people to lose their basic notion They lose their basic idea of how government ought to work.
OK, meanwhile, in breaking news that is not great for President Trump, The New York Times is now reporting that Michael Cohen has secret tapes of President Trump.
So perhaps this is the reason why the Mueller investigation was essentially trying to raid the Cohen offices.
We still don't know why that happened, by the way.
You remember that Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, his office was raided by the FBI.
And there are questions as to what exactly was the criminal activity at issue.
And the suggestion was that he violated campaign finance law by paying off Stormy Daniels or some such.
It's still very unclear to me that it's legitimate that the FBI raided Michael Cohen's office.
We're going to have to see what the prosecution looks like, but...
The New York Times is reporting today that President Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.
The FBI seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen's office.
The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen's involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws.
Any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.
So I guess that they're going to now claim that because Trump actually had a clear conversation with Michael Cohen about the election and then about Stormy Daniels, that Cohen paying off Stormy Daniels and getting reimbursed by Trump was actually a form of campaign finance violation.
Now again, this comes from the deep state.
How does the New York Times find out about this?
How does this?
Well, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recordings, that's very deep background, right?
There's the way that it works in journalism, by the way, just so folks know, is that when you talk with a reporter, you can use a couple of different designations.
There's off the record, which means that the reporter cannot report it, but can use the information that you are giving them to go look for other leads.
And then there is on background, which is to say you can quote me, but not by name.
There's deep background, which is to say you can you can use the information that I'm giving you without attributing it to me.
And then there is the and then there's on the record, which means that you can just quote me.
So these are people who are speaking on deep background, which means they're probably pretty close to the investigation and probably is actual members of the Justice Department talking to the New York Times.
And all these people are trying to get Trump.
I mean, again, the fact that all this stuff leaks on a consistent basis is not good for either the intelligence apparatus or the Department of Justice or for President Trump.
The recording's existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates use to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret.
It highlights the potential legal and political danger Mr. Cohen represents to Mr. Trump.
Once the keeper of many of Mr. Trump's secrets, Mr. Cohen is now seen increasingly as willing to cooperate with prosecutors.
Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, who's Trump's lawyer on this stuff now, he says the recording is less than two minutes and demonstrates the president did nothing wrong.
Nothing in that conversation suggests he had any knowledge of the payment in advance.
He says in the big scheme of things, it's powerful exculpatory evidence.
We'll have to see what exactly is on the tape.
Again, these leaks are devastatingly bad for the Department of Justice.
It's really not good for trust in the system, for sure.
So, Yeah, again, all of this is to suggest that when President Trump complains about the deep state, he's not completely, completely off base.
OK, in just a second, I want to talk about the insanity that's happening on The View with Jeanine Pirro.
I also want to talk.
A little bit more about Trump's relationship with his own intelligence community.
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We have a great Sunday special episode that is coming out this Sunday with Eric Weinstein.
You'll love it.
Really intelligent guy.
Man of the left.
A liberal who disagrees with me about many issues.
Agrees with me about some.
I love those conversations because, unlike others, I'm not intolerant of people across the aisle when it comes to having political conversation.
But, go check that out.
Also, we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
So as I've been saying, I'm deeply skeptical of the intelligence community leaking about Trump or the Democrats who say that the intelligence community going after Trump is a good thing for the country.
I think the Department of Justice leaking stuff to The New York Times is deeply troubling, obviously, and I suspect that that leak about Michael Cohen is coming from the Department of Justice.
With that said, the President of the United States should treat his actual intelligence community well when they are doing their jobs.
And one of the big problems here is that he leaves them out of the loop on a fairly regular basis.
So the most obvious example of this is yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who was basically thrown under the bus by President Trump this week.
He was appearing at some event with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and he is told that Donald Trump plans a second meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Now, I'm not sure why we would have a second meeting with Putin when the first meeting obviously was such a mess.
But I guess Trump wants to do that as sort of a doubling down.
Anyway, Dan Coats is told about this on stage.
His reaction says something about Trump's relationship with his own intelligence community at this point.
I do want to say we have some breaking news.
The White House has announced on Twitter that Vladimir Putin is coming to the White House in the fall.
Say that again?
You... Vladimir Putin coming to the...
Did I hear you?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So clearly, he's been blindsided by the fact the president wants now Putin to come to the White House.
Yeah, the president, look, the president is a man of many passions.
And he does things on the spur of the moment and at whim.
And his comms office tends to repeat those things on the spur of the moment and at whim.
All I can say is it would be better for the Trump administration if they would coordinate these things a little bit in advance so you don't have embarrassing moments quite like this.
Okay.
Meanwhile, the left demonstrates that they do, in fact, have complete Trump derangement syndrome.
So Jeanine Pirro of Fox News was on The View.
How does Jeanine Pirro get to be on The View and I don't get to be on The View?
What is the deal here, guys?
OK, what is this?
I've been begging you to book me on The View for literally years at this point.
Now, I understand you don't want to have me on The View.
I get you don't want to have me on The View because it's going to get weird and ugly.
But that's the whole point.
Don't you want it to be good TV?
So anyway, they have Jeanine Pirro on and it does get weird and ugly.
So Jeanine Pirro says to Whoopi Goldberg that she has Trump derangement syndrome, which is clearly true.
And things get wild.
Here's my question for you, because you talk about... I am not.
Did you just point at me?
Yes!
Listen, I don't have Trump derangement.
Let me tell you what I have.
Okay, and then she gets crazier from there.
Whoopi eventually goes so nuts that she essentially throws Jeanine Pirro off the set, because Jeanine Pirro says that Whoopi Goldberg has Trump derangement syndrome, which she clearly does.
Here's Whoopi Goldberg losing her mind, saying, I'm done, and then bringing this nutty segment to a crashing halt.
Okay, and so it ends like that, but then it gets even worse.
So Jeanine Pirro was on Sean Hannity's radio show the other day, and Jeanine Pirro explains what happened directly after that little tiff.
When I went off the stage, Sean, I was walking downstairs, and I said something like, Whoopi, I've fought for victims my whole life, and she came at me as I was leaving, and she said, F you, in my face, literally spitting at me, F you, get the F out of this building.
Okay, so obviously she does not have Trump Derangement Syndrome, Whoopi Goldberg.
Obviously she's a completely sane person, having normal political discourse.
This is the level to which things have sunk.
Okay, the level to which, I think Whoopi Goldberg is representative of a hardcore base of leftists.
That this is how they feel.
That anyone who disagrees with them is an evil, evil human being.
And you can't even have a discussion about the issues.
Now look, Jeanine Pirro is a very pro-Trump guest.
There's no question.
But they knew that when they booked her.
If you're going to have Jeanine Pirro on, you at least have to let her talk.
This idea that you bring on a guest and you don't let them talk is so beyond absurd to me.
I don't understand it at all.
When we do our Sunday specials here on The Ben Shapiro Show, one of the things that I do is I bring in people who disagree.
I brought in Sam Harris.
I brought in Eric Weinstein.
I bring in people from the left all the time.
We invite tons of leftist guests who won't even come because they don't want to do an interview.
And I let them talk for like 15 minutes at a stretch because you want to know what they think so then you can critique what they think.
But the left has decided that even having these conversations is to grant credibility to a side so evil that they must not be heard.
You know, Whoopi Goldberg has a slot on that show every single day.
Everybody in the audience knows what Whoopi Goldberg thinks about these things.
Wouldn't it behoove Whoopi Goldberg and the folks on The View to at least let Jeanine Pirro make her point of view known?
Especially because you know the audience is going to laugh at Jeanine Pirro anyway.
Because it's a View audience.
It's just, it demonstrates real cowardice.
You know, props to Bill Maher.
Props to Bill Maher.
Bill Maher had me on a couple of weeks ago.
And props to Bill Maher who actually let me talk.
We had a reasonable conversation.
We disagreed about nearly everything.
His audience was against me.
He acknowledged that at the very beginning, and then we had a reasonable conversation.
Good for people like Bill Maher.
Really.
Because there are very few of these folks left in American discourse, and Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on The View demonstrate it pretty much every day.
It's really, really quite pathetic.
Okay.
So, let's get into the mailbag.
Let's jump right in.
So, Neil says, Excellent first question, Neil.
on The View, Judge Jeanine was apparently cursed out and forced to leave the building by Whoopi Goldberg.
Does her experience on The View deter you from wanting to appear on it?
Excellent first question, Neil.
The answer is no.
I want to go on it more than ever because I think I can have a good discussion with Whoopi if she will allow us to have such a good discussion, especially because I think that so many folks on the left want to box everybody on the right into the you're an evil, mangy, terrible, horrible human being and...
And people on the left have a surprisingly hard time doing that with people who are not terrible, horrible human beings.
I don't consider myself in that category, so.
I'm happy to have, anytime, a reasonable conversation about these issues.
I think that's exactly the reason why some folks on The View don't want to have me on.
Well, listen.
I'm not of The View.
My husband and I are conservative parents to five young boys under nine.
We are a family with deep roots in the military and police.
How can I help my boys understand it's okay to be men, real men?
My sister is a very leftist lesbian who hates men and voices it.
How do I keep her around while keeping her from negatively influencing my boys?
Well, listen, I'm not of the view that if your family members are espousing viewpoints that you think are bad for your kids, you have to have your family members around your kids.
I'm not of that view.
Now, I don't know, your sister, maybe she's a very nice person, maybe she's good for the kids overall, maybe you can talk to her and say, listen, you espouse viewpoints that I don't like in the house about politics, so we're just gonna stay away from politics when we're hanging out.
Like, I love you, I want you to be here, but I can't have you inculcating values in my kids that I don't want my kids to learn.
Maybe that's a conversation you can have, but I'm not a person who believes that your relationship with your sister trumps your relationship with your kids or your capacity to teach your kids.
If it turns out that your sister is bad for your kids, keep your sister away from your kids.
Your kids are more important than your sister.
David S. says, Ben, many of my friends insist that cohabitation before marriage is necessary for marriage to last.
I know the data indicates otherwise, but can you explain exactly why it's a bad idea for a couple to live together before marriage?
Are there any books that explain the disadvantages of cohabitation from a psychological perspective?
Thanks, Dave.
So Jonathan Haidt talks a lot about this in The Happiness Hypothesis.
He has a chapter on love, and he talks about why it is that cohabitation before marriage tends to lead to higher rates of divorce.
There are a couple reasons in my view.
Number one is that the longer you cohabit, the longer you start to realize the real reason you're cohabiting and not getting married is so you don't have skin in the game, so you're not locked down.
The real reason that you're living together in sin, as they used to say, the reason that you are doing this is because both of you want a window ajar, just in case you feel like escaping.
Without actually having to have any legal entanglements that get in your way.
That's just reality.
That's one of the reasons that you are doing that.
Because otherwise you would just go down and get a piece of paper that says you're married and be done.
You want to leave that door or window ajar.
That's why you're doing it.
And ladies, if you think that you're locking down a guy by getting him to cohabit with you, got bad news for you.
You really, really, really are not.
Okay.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ring.
Okay.
That's the way this works.
Okay.
And, and also, I mean, just on a sociological level, just on a social science level, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but there are two types of love.
According to social science, there is what they call passionate love.
And then there is companionate love.
So, passionate love is what you have for the person that you meet in the first six months, really.
First six months, year of your meeting.
And this is where you want to be with the person every minute.
You want to find out every single thing about them.
You can't be apart from them.
You are passionately in love with this person in the sense that you want to be physically intimate with them like every minute of every day.
This happens a lot when the person is new to you and then over time you get used to the person.
And as you get used to the person, you begin to love them in a different way, which is a companionate way.
You're grateful to that person for the fact that that person stays with you despite all your flaws.
You know all of the little chinks in their armor.
You know all of the good things about them and all the bad things about them.
Makes you that much more grateful to be in this battle with them together.
That's a different kind of love.
Right?
You barely know the person you marry, typically.
You get to know that person over the course of your life.
Like, I didn't know, compared to what I know about my wife now, I knew nearly nothing about her when we got engaged.
Like, really, nearly nothing.
I just made a bet.
And that bet was a good bet.
And I think that the reason that bet is worth taking when you're in the middle of that passionate love stage, as opposed to when you're in the companionate stage, which is what happens if you cohabit for a very long period of time.
It's because if you don't understand how marriage works, then what you tend to think is that marriage is what turns passionate love into companionate love.
That it's marriage itself that got rid of the passion.
And this is what you hear from all these guys who get it wrong.
They say, oh, you know, when she was my girlfriend, man, we were at each other all the time.
And then we got married and now we don't do any of that stuff.
Why did you get so boring?
And the answer is, no, that's not what happened.
It wasn't marriage that did that.
What actually happened is what happens in every relationship, whether you are married or not.
The reason you should get married when you're passionate is because marriage should continue to have that element of passion.
But you should move into companionate love when you are already committed to the person.
Because if you move into companionate love when you are not already committed to the person, you're going to go searching for the passionate love again with somebody else.
Because, and inevitably, whatever passionate love you pursue will turn into companionate love.
This is not me speaking, this is social science speaking.
Okay, Brandon says, Hey Ben, I'm a little down this week and in my thoughts over the loss of my sister.
Well, I'm so sorry to hear that happened, Brandon.
Really, my heart breaks for you.
That's awful.
I would like to better understand the Jewish perspective of grief and how to deal with it properly.
Thank you.
So Jews have a very interesting way of dealing with grief.
Everything in Judaism is somewhat ritualized.
So we have something called sitting shiva.
Sitting shiva is where you basically As soon as you hear that someone... I'll give you the whole spiel.
So when you hear that a relative is dead, a close relative, like a sister or a brother or a parent or a child...
Then the first thing you do is you tear your clothing as a sign of mourning.
And you say, which means blessed is the true judge, meaning that God's justice is not ours and he gets to make the decisions about the world.
And then you go into a period of mourning.
That period of mourning is basically a period of comfort.
It's sitting Shiva.
Shiva means seven.
For a week, you sit in your house and you don't go out of your house.
Like literally, you don't go out of your house.
And people come and they bring you food and they pray with you.
They come and they actually bring prayers to the house.
Like they'll bring a Torah to the house so you can do Monday and Thursday services at the house.
And they will come and they will visit.
It's one of the greater mitzvahs that we have is to visit Beit She'oeva, to visit somebody who's mourning.
And you sit and you talk about the person and you comfort the person.
You talk about, you know, the person who's been lost.
And then for 30 days after that, for Shloshim, then you are supposed to I believe it's here.
You're not supposed to listen to music.
You're supposed to do certain things that involve a little bit more mourning.
But after the seven days, you go out of your house.
You leave your house.
Really, you're not supposed to shower, actually, for the seven days.
You're supposed to go into full mourning.
You're supposed to really kind of sit in it and experience it.
So that by the time you finish those seven days, you're ready to get out in the world again because you're so cooped in and because you've been so kind of ensconced in this basket of love, basically, that now you're ready to go out into the world again.
And then you say Kaddish for a year.
So you say Kaddish is this prayer that we say repeatedly during the morning, afternoon, evening services that basically suggests that God is holy and knows what he's doing and also is very based around the idea that there are distinctions between life and death, good and evil, et cetera.
So, Judaism says that you are supposed to really be in the morning.
Now, a lot of people want to push off morning.
A lot of people want to just, I'll deal with my morning by going out and working more.
I'll go out and I'll deal with it by ignoring it.
The problem is that it's going to hit you even harder.
I think that the Jewish way of morning is one of the more beautiful parts of my religion, actually.
So, you can buy some books on it.
There's a good book called The Jewish Way in Death and Morning that I think is worth reading.
Jordan says, Hey, Ben, my older brother is a classic American rags to riches story.
He lives like a conservative and has conservative values, but is liberal politically.
How is that even possible?
The reason it's possible, Jordan, is because most liberals live conservative lives if they're successful, because the rules that make you successful in life tend toward conservatism, like get married, get a job, save your money, make good decisions with your life.
These are all based on certain conservative values.
The fact that your brother lives, thinks liberal things, but acts non-liberally is pretty common.
There's a great book called Coming Apart by Charles Murray, all about the fact that there are so many people on the left, particularly in white upscale areas who live conservative lifestyles, get married, have kids, save their money, make good business decisions, but then have liberal views that end up being promulgated on areas that don't live those lifestyles.
And when those lifestyles are actually tried, they fail.
And so people are very easily able to ignore the way they live in their own life in order to pursue political values they think are important.
Joel says, Ben, since Roe v. Wade's a bad case, he won't argue for digital privacy and NSA restrictions, Fourth Amendment notwithstanding.
Concern rose around the SB iPhone encryption backdoor dispute, blockchain implications.
That's a pretty complicated question there.
There's a lot to unpack.
But the Fourth Amendment, I don't know why you'd have to have a generalized right to privacy in order to make an argument against the NSA.
I mean, the Fourth Amendment is not, is withstanding.
The Fourth Amendment says that there shall not be unreasonable search and seizure.
That's a Fourth Amendment consideration.
OK, that has nothing to do with abortion, but it does have to do with the government's ability to search and seize your records, as it always has had to.
That's why there's a real balance that has to be drawn between the needs of the national security community and keeping the country safe and protecting our data.
I think that balance has largely been drawn too much in favor of the NSA and not enough in favor of individual privacy.
No, I don't agree with that.
I think that big is not inherently bad.
I think big is sometimes bad, and small is sometimes bad, and bad is sometimes bad.
Bad is always bad, in fact.
the presence of natural monopolies with few consequences.
No, I don't agree with that.
I think that big is not inherently bad.
I think big is sometimes bad and small is sometimes bad and bad is sometimes bad.
Bad is always bad, in fact.
So the idea that a company is bad because it is big, no, it was good to get big, Then the question is, do they deal with market consequences?
And here's the truth.
Unless they are skewing the system, unless they are acting in corrupt fashion, big is not inherently bad.
I think big is, in many cases, quite good.
I mean, it's the reason that you get economies of scale and cheaper products, for example.
It depends how you define disease.
So I tend to think addiction is not a disease in the sense that it's not transmissible.
could be put in place to help those who struggle with disease, and if so, which ones?
It depends how you define disease.
So I tend to think addiction is not a disease in the sense that it's not transmissible.
When I think of disease, I think of a transmissible disease, right?
I'm I guess that you could say maybe cancer is a disease, although usually you would say that cancer is more of like a medical condition.
I guess you could say it's a disease.
Is it a disease in the sense that it is naturally occurring?
Sure.
I think in that sense, it absolutely is.
But it is also a disease that can be fought with willpower, which is different than a lot of other diseases.
Addiction is something that not always, but sometimes can be fought with compassion.
This is why the 12-step program has been so successful for Alcoholics Anonymous.
I mean, that's an active act of self-control.
So unlike other diseases that can't be fought, like you can't not have cancer just because you determined that you are not going to have cancer.
It's beyond your control.
Addiction is partially beyond your control and partially not.
And one of the things about addiction is that one of the ways you control addiction is acknowledging that you have an addiction and then creating prophylactic rules to avoid getting into areas that put you in a problem.
So if you're an alcoholic, you stay away from liquor stores.
If you are a drug addict, you stay away from parties where you know people are going to be smoking pot, for example.
If you're a porn addict, you put porn blockers on your computer specifically so that you're never tempted to click on things.
Thanks.
Well, George Orwell is fantastic.
I think he would have considered himself a socialist, but he also understood the problems with Marxism.
So it would be more fair to call him sort of a democratic socialist in the sense that, like, the Europeans see it.
I'm not sure that he believed in large-scale nationalization of industry.
I think he probably believed in more redistributionist programs.
So he'd be more in line with sort of Norwegian socialism, sort of the Nordic states, which, as I've explained before, is sort of a mix of capitalism and socialism.
But his best essay, the best essay ever, is something that's not even about socialism or capitalism.
It's a 1940 essay that he wrote specifically about the appeal of Nazism.
It is just spectacular, I quote it all the time, because his basic argument is that the failure of both right and left in modern society is to acknowledge that people need meaning.
And so the reason that the Nazis had succeeded in twisting so many people's minds is because while both right and left were focused on capitalism makes us rich or Marxism makes us more materially prosperous.
The Nazis were focused on what gives people spiritual meaning, and they found an evil way of giving people spiritual meaning, and people resonated to that.
His essay basically says, people do want flags, people want cannons, people want guns, people want marches, people want a feeling of solidarity.
That's what people are looking for.
It's something that I think we've neglected in our society that has become so materialistic.
I've been writing an entire book about this.
I talk about the book a lot.
It really is good.
I just finished the manuscript on it, which I am very, very excited about.
I may try to push up the pub date with the publisher.
I don't want to be immodest here.
I think it's the best thing I've ever written.
I think it's really, really good.
And I think it'll help a lot of people, help me clarify my own thoughts.
I think it'll help a lot of people clarify their own thoughts about Western civilization, what it means, and how we fight for it.
I consider it better because I don't think it's any of the government's damn business what kind of money I earn.
Like, why do I have to tell the government how much money I earn?
I'm exactly the same person that I was before.
Now, the government, you know, having having capacity to examine transactions seems to me a lot easier.
They can just take the money at the cash register as opposed to trying to go through how much money I earn.
And then I take certain tax deductions and then you punish me based on how much money I earn.
It creates it creates this this pathetic class warfare system income tax or a sales tax really does not.
All right.
David says... Well, Thomas has a quick one.
I'm a huge fan of the show.
Well, I appreciate it.
Waffles is obviously the answer.
Waffles are certainly... I love both, because who doesn't love... I mean, carbs are amazing.
They're amazing.
They're God's worst punishment on us, carbs.
They're unbelievable.
But waffles are definitely better.
They have pockets for butter and syrup.
OK, they're just made for deliciousness.
Put some whipped cream on top of that stuff, some caramel.
Oh, my goodness.
Is it a dessert?
Is it a breakfast?
Who knows?
It's just unbelievable.
David says...
This is a question I've held for a long time.
Since I respect your opinion, I agree with your assertions most of the time.
I know you have a personal understanding about the subject.
Here's my symbol.
Here's my question.
Can you please explain the Star of David?
How or when was it seen as the symbol of Israel?
And most importantly, where did it come from its origins?
Thanks for your reply in advance.
My understanding is that the first use of that was, I believe, during the early part of the first millennia.
First millennium?
I'd want to check this out and get back to you, honestly.
I don't want to give you the wrong historical answer on the history of the Star of David, but I know that, you know, it's been part of Jewish prayers for a long time.
The Magen David.
Sometimes they say Magen Avraham, meaning the Star of Abraham.
All right, let's see.
Let's do a quick thing I like and a thing I hate, because we are past our expiration date here, and we're beginning to smell.
So things that I like.
Sorry, what was it?
There's a series on Netflix that I've started.
It's a Harlan Coben series.
I believe "Justified" was also a Harlan Coben series.
So this is similarly good.
It's called "Safe" and it stars the guy from Dexter, whose name I completely forgot right now.
And, sorry, what was it? - Michael Seahaw.
- Michael, Michael. - Seahaw.
You can see who comes in and who goes out.
See you later.
Not too late.
Okay, and it is worth watching.
The basic premise is that this guy's daughter goes missing in a gated community and everybody has secrets.
So if you like these kind of juicy purple pot boilers, then this is for you.
Check out Harlan Coben's Safe on Netflix.
Here's some of the preview.
This is a gated community.
You can see who comes in and who goes out.
See you later.
Not too late.
Okay.
It's safe.
Hi, this is Jenny.
Leave a message after the beep.
Jenny, it's dad again.
Where are you?
This man wants to know if you've seen his daughter.
Okay, so it's well made.
I'm only about halfway into the series, but I'm enjoying it.
There are a couple others.
If people have recommendations on other series that they think I should watch, then send them to me because my wife and I are always looking for good series to watch.
I've heard that there's this one on Netflix also that's about terrorism that's supposed to be pretty good.
So I'll check that out and I'll see if it's worth a recommend.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So the media has a grand interest in turning idiot parents into a trend.
Their latest trend that they like is what they're calling theybes.
And of course, not rabies, theybes.
What are theybes?
Okay, this is that you are raising your children without gender, which is idiocy because you're supposed to teach your kids about things that make them healthy, not things that make them unhealthy.
Okay, the fact is that if you are confusing your two-year-old about gender, then you are being an idiot.
Like, this is my great question about this stuff.
How do you think you're helping your kid?
Like really, do you think it helps your kid not to give them any guidance at all?
Would you let your kid not go to school because your kid doesn't know anything about reading?
And maybe your kid is better off not reading.
Maybe reading is a societal construct.
And we know there are lots of bad things that come from reading, like being on Twitter.
We know there are terrible things that come from education, like a certain sense of non-equality with others.
You're an elitist.
But now we've got parents who have decided to raise their kids without a gender designation, which, again, how does this help the kid?
Nobody the hell knows.
So this is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, because of course it is.
Of course, the home of Harvard is the center of stupidity in the universe.
They say three-year-old twins, Zyler and Caden Sharp, Scurried around the boys and girls clothing racks of a narrow consignment store filled with toys.
Zyler wearing rainbow leggings scrutinized a pair of hot pink and purple sneakers.
Caden in a T-Rex shirt fixated on a musical cube that flashed colorful lights.
At a glance, the only discernible difference between these fraternal trends is their hair.
Zyler's is brown and Caden's is blonde.
Is Zyler a boy or a girl?
How about Caden?
That's a question their parents, Nate and Julia Sharpe, say only the twins can decide.
Or biology.
Or we could alternatively look at their genitals.
How you think this is good for your kid is beyond me.
I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, so I know a fair bit about raising kids of precisely this age.
resignation from birth.
A Facebook community for these parents currently claims about 220 members across the United States.
How you think this is good for your kid is beyond me.
I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, so I know a fair bit about raising kids of precisely this age.
And listen, I've said on this program, when my daughter was two years old, you know what she really liked?
Trucks and buses.
Did I care?
Not at all, because I don't think that it is a natural indicator of masculinity or femininity for a two-year-old to like trucks or buses.
And you know what?
Now she's four and she only wants to wear princess dresses.
It's the only thing she wants to do.
You know why?
Because that's what girls typically want to do.
That said, my two-year-old son, right, he also likes trucks and buses.
If he started wanting to wear princess dresses, you know what I would say to him?
I would say, no, that's a girl thing.
That's what your sister does.
You know what you do?
You do fun boy things, like you play baseball.
That's not a bad thing.
I'm not saying my daughter can't play baseball.
I am saying that my son cannot wear dresses because I want my son to be secure in his own masculinity.
And it turns out that being a man means accepting some of the societal constraints around manhood.
Hey, now it doesn't mean when he's 18 or 20 he can't make his own decisions.
That's when you're 18 or 20.
But when he's 2, I get to make those decisions.
And I want to inculcate in my son a feeling that he is a boy, a strong boy, who's going to grow up to have manly responsibilities for taking care of women and children.
Manly responsibilities for defending a civilization that makes important distinctions between men and women.
I think there is a good reason that the Bible says that boys should not dress as girls and girls should not dress as boys because every society in human history has made distinctions between how males dress and females dress.
And don't give me the Scottish wear kilts.
That's correct.
Men wear kilts and women wear dresses.
Every society in history has had distinctions and those distinctions are deeply important because they inculcate different responsibilities that are indeed rooted in biology.
The idea that all of gender is a construct is simply not backed by science, nor is it healthy for society or even for individuals.
If there are people who are confused, then we have to figure out how to deal with that.
But to inculcate the confusion as a point of politics is an evil thing to do to a child.
OK, well, we will be here tomorrow.
Well, no, we won't.
You know, it's going to be a Saturday, so we're not going to be here tomorrow.
Why would I be here tomorrow?
I can't even do that.
It's Sabbath.
We'll be back here on Monday with much, much more and the Sunday special, which is coming up on Sunday.
So go check that out.
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.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
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