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Aug. 24, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:02:24

The Actual Big Issue | Ep. 610

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	While the nation focuses on scandal, other serious problems are actually cropping up.
	The latest updates in the Trump investigations and we will check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Every day, another piece of news, and every piece of news more annoying than the last.
	So much to get to today, we'll get to all of it first.
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	Okay, so let's begin with all of the legal updates in the investigation into President Trump and the Trump Organization and campaign finance violations and all the rest of it.
	There's a good piece today from Kimberly Strassel about the feeling that a lot of folks on the right are getting that this is all one-sided.
	And President Trump is among those who feel that this is all one-sided, that the investigations into Trump have been consistent, non-stop, and were never mirrored by any similar investigations into the Hillary Clinton Foundation or into Hillary Clinton's emails.
	This feeling that there are a lot of folks who were responsible for bad action on the left side of the aisle, but got away with it because there was no specific special investigation that was dedicated to them.
	And there's some truth to this.
	Kimberly Strassel's column today is all about this.
	She points out, And yet they are now witnessing unequal treatment in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
	Yes, the former FBI director deserves credit for smoking out the Russian trolls who interfered in 2016, and one can argue he's obliged to pursue any evidence of criminal acts, even those unrelated to Russia.
	But what cannot be justified is the one-sided nature of his probe.
	Now, I think there is truth to the idea that the DOJ should be looking into campaign finance violations, for example, by the Hillary Clinton campaign, as Kimberly Strassel will explain in a second.
	It looks like there were some of those violations, but those are kind of going by the wayside.
	However, it is important to recognize that Mueller's original purview was Russian collusion and all crimes connected thereto.
	And when it comes to Russian collusion and election interference, All of that seems to be coming from the Trump side of the aisle.
	So I'm not going to blame Mueller for the breadth of his purview.
	However, you can say that the DOJ, outside of Mueller, ought to be looking into campaign finance violations by the Hillary team.
	So here is what Kimberly Strassel writes, and I think that she's correct.
	She says, if there's only one set of rules, where is Mr. Mueller's referral of a case against Hillary for America?
	Federal law requires campaigns to disclose the recipient and purpose of any payments.
	The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russian narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates.
	But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion GPS.
	The campaign falsely described the money as payment for legal services.
	The DNC did the same.
	A Perkins Coy spokesperson has claimed that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC was aware that Fusion GPS had been hired to conduct the research, and maybe so.
	But a lot of lawyers here seem to have been ignoring a clear statute, presumably with the intent of influencing an election.
	And she points out also that there have been prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which is what has been used to nail Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, people who are acting as essentially emissaries of foreign powers without registering as such.
	But Strassel points out, under this standard, where are the charges against the principals of Fusion GPS, who Senator Chuck Grassley have said So, I think that she's correct, that there should be more investigation into Perkins Coy, there should be more investigations into the DNC.
	However, it is imperative to note, just in the interest of intellectual honesty, that when it comes to President Trump and Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen is the president's fixer, Michael Cohen's the guy who turned on Trump, that's the reason we're talking about all of this right now.
	The reason we're talking about all of this right now is because Michael Cohen was the guy who was funneling the money, and he has now turned on President Trump and admitted criminal wrongdoing.
	The same has not held true with regard to Perkins Coy.
	That doesn't mean there shouldn't be an investigation, but there is a slight difference in the amount of evidence that has now been leveraged against President Trump and against the Trump Organization.
	With all of that said, the breaking news today is that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two senior company officials in connection with Cohen's hush money payment to an adult film actress, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter.
	A state investigation would center on how the company accounted for its reimbursement to Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 he paid to the actress Stephanie Clifford, who has said she had an affair with President Trump, the official said.
	Both officials stressed the office's review of the matter is in its earliest stages and prosecutors have not yet made a decision on whether to proceed.
	So presumably this would involve state charges against the Trump Organization or its executives.
	The Trump Organization involves members of President Trump's family, so it could start to get very ugly for a lot of members of President Trump's family.
	It's also true that the State Attorney General in New York hates President Trump and is more than interested in going after the Trump Organization.
	Does this look like selective prosecution?
	Does it look like they're going a little bit too deep?
	Maybe, but we're going to have to see what charges arise.
	Other news connected to this is that Allen Weisselberg, who is President Trump's longtime financial gatekeeper according to the Wall Street Journal, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Michael Cohen in the criminal investigation into hush money payments Weisselberg is the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, so he's been granted immunity.
	The Trump Organization, again, involves members of Trump's family, so this could theoretically reach into Trump's family.
	It could also be that we're only finding out about Weisselberg basically becoming an informant for the government.
	Because of the Cohen case.
	In other words, what Weisselberg had to offer was bad material on Cohen, not about members of the Trump family.
	We'll have to find out about all of that.
	None of this is particularly good for the president, of course.
	And then the biggest story connected with all of this is this kind of bombshell story that has now been reported by the New York Times and a bunch of other and a bunch of other Outlets that the U.S.
	tabloid newspaper, this is the UK Guardian reporting, the National Enquirer, kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with President Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement have told the Associated Press.
	The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to the National Enquirer's chief, David Pecker.
	There is a general sense, as I say, that there's a little bit of unfairness going on.
	So if there's a safe filled with material, the media are basically outside that safe, like safe crackers from a bad heist movie, trying to break in to find out what exactly President Trump's secrets were.
	Now, there is a general sense, as I say, that there's a little bit of unfairness going on.
	That on one side of the aisle, there's an investigation that is going on into President Trump and all of his associates that is extraordinarily deep, that is extraordinarily detailed, that takes an enormous amount of effort.
	And the feeling is, why are we taking all of this effort on what may or may not be a campaign finance violation?
	And that effort pre-existed, the investigation into Cohen, right?
	We had this whole Russian collusion investigation.
	There's a feeling like this is fruit of the poisonous tree on the right, that the Russian investigation began, it was begun on bad auspices, that basically it was exacerbated by a bunch of bad claims from the DOJ and Obama associates and Hillary Clinton associates, that it was pushed forward by people like Peter Strzok, and that eventually, after President Trump fired Robert Mueller, and after Jeff Sessions recused himself, Then a special counsel was appointed, and that special investigator then proceeded to dig into Michael Cohen as an extension into that, and it all feels just a little too much.
	I think there is some truth to that, especially given the fact that the Obama administration routinely ignored crime that was happening within its own ranks.
	I mean, Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress for not turning over documents, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama, presented him with executive privilege.
	He shielded him with executive privilege.
	The feeling of unfairness on one side of the aisle is absolutely true.
	And I think it's absolutely correct as well.
	Two things can be true at once.
	It can be that unfairness is happening here, that Trump is being pursued in a way Obama never would have been, that Michael Cohen is being pursued in a way no Obama associate ever would have been.
	All of that can be true.
	And at the same time, it can also be true that Trump is possibly guilty of some stuff and that the people around him are guilty of some stuff and have already pled guilty to some stuff.
	So you can feel the unfairness and you can also say that something corrupt went on here.
	Now, the question for the moral person, to get to the kind of root values, the question for the moral person is, do you think that this ought to result in President Trump getting off the hook as sort of a sop to the fact that the DOJ has become thoroughly politicized, or is the answer that we have to start enforcing the law somewhere, and if the law has to be enforced against people on our own side, well, that's the way it's going to have to go.
	In other words, do two wrongs make a right?
	Do we live in a political sphere where it is more important that both sides be treated equally by being let off the hook for corruption, or is it better that we actually start trying to reinstate some semblance of law enforcement in our system?
	And it's hard.
	It's hard because it feels like we on the right are constantly having to Basically suggests that we are on a higher plane, that we are going to play by the rules while the other side doesn't.
	And one of the great irritations on Twitter and on social media these days is you see all of these fools on the left tweeting out stuff about how the biggest scandal under Obama was that he wore a tan suit one time at a briefing.
	That is nonsense.
	There's a list as long as my arm of scandals in which the Obama administration was involved, ranging from the IRS to Benghazi to Fast and Furious to the Health and Human Services corruption, To the Veterans Affairs scandal.
	I mean, there are a bevy of scandals under Barack Obama.
	A bevy of them.
	And yet, they were treated as nothing by the media.
	And so the natural tendency of human beings is to fight back against that by saying, okay, well, if you guys aren't going to play by the rules, we're not going to play by the rules either.
	Why should we abide by the law if you guys are not going to abide by the law?
	And then when you look at the way the media treat these issues, you also feel a certain sense of unfairness.
	Because the media are all over American media, right?
	This National Enquirer.
	Tabloid paper that had a close relationship with Trump.
	But how many newspapers were covering for Barack Obama?
	How many newspapers made clear that they were going to do Obama's bidding?
	The L.A.
	Times in the run up to the 2008 election had a tape of Rashid Khalidi, who was an actual member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who's a spokesman for a terrorist group, and Barack Obama honoring him at an event.
	And the L.A.
	Times refused to release that publicly.
	So the same folks who are railing against the National Enquirer for doing Trump's dirty work, as well they should be, a lot of them were doing Obama's dirty work when Obama was president.
	So it feels unfair on that end also.
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	So as I say, you look at the media, and the media who are ripping on National Enquirer, as is well deserved, the same media who rip on Fox News all day for being quote-unquote in the pocket of President Trump, those media are in the pocket of the left and have been for decades.
	And it feels unfair.
	All of this feels unfair.
	And that's driving a level of support for President Trump in spite of the credible allegations of corruption inside the Trump campaign.
	I have sympathy for this position.
	I do.
	There's an emotional sympathy that accrues to this.
	It feels like the DOJ let Hillary Clinton off the hook.
	It feels like the DOJ let Barack Obama off the hook.
	It feels like Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch basically acted as Barack Obama's great protectors while Jeff Sessions is not doing the same for the President of the United States.
	And so why can't we just play by their rules?
	Right.
	That was, in fact, one of the premises of the of the Trump campaign was they're not going to play by the rules of the Marcus of Queensbury rules.
	Let's just nominate the guy who's not going to play by any rules at all, who smashes every rule.
	We'll get the bull in the China shop.
	He'll go in there.
	He will destroy all the rules.
	And then Trump won.
	And it felt like destroying the rules was the only way to win.
	And I think that that is a predictable effect of the left's decision to basically buck every rule for decades, for as long as I've been alive, and then insist that the right be held to precisely those rules.
	We're seeing the same thing with the impeachment talk today.
	All the same folks who are against Bill Clinton's impeachment have now turned around and said they are very much in favor of Donald Trump's impeachment on similar or lesser grounds.
	It feels unfair.
	It feels like partisan hackery.
	But the question is, is the solution to partisan hackery more partisan hackery?
	Is the country better off if Republicans, if conservatives, start basically shying away from the notion of law enforcement doing its job just because the left has shied away from that?
	Is that a recipe for a better politics?
	Is that a recipe for a better country?
	Is the way that we heal from all of this to basically go along with the left's premise that law enforcement should be used as a tool of those in power?
	Or should we recognize that law enforcement should have a certain level of independence?
	That law enforcement should prosecute crimes as they come up?
	Maybe that's the case we should be making to the American people.
	Maybe the case we should be making is, look, if this were under Obama, he would have shut this stuff down already.
	Because the Democrats are more corrupt.
	But when Republicans get in power, then Republicans get prosecuted.
	Because Republicans are willing to let law enforcement go forward.
	That seems to me like a fairly moral case that ought to be made.
	And, honestly, if the American people want to stand up against corruption, the answer to that is to elect people who you know are not going to stand in the way of investigation of corruption.
	That means don't elect Democrats.
	I want to talk about President Trump's response to all of this, because President Trump, representing, as he does, the sort of id of the Republican Party, and also representing a guy who really loves himself a lot, he's very angry at Jeff Sessions.
	Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General, and he's angry at Jeff Sessions because Jeff Sessions has not acted as Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch did.
	He has not stood there and protected President Trump and President Trump's associates from investigation into corrupt activities.
	So yesterday, President Trump was on TV with Fox and Friends, and he went off on Jeff Sessions in pretty Harsh terms.
	It's a very, very sad day.
	Jeff Sessions recused himself, which he shouldn't have done, or he should have told me.
	Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldn't have put him in.
	He took the job and then he said, I'm going to recuse myself.
	I said, what kind of a man is this?
	And by the way, he was on the campaign.
	You know, the only reason I gave him the job, because I felt loyalty.
	He was an original supporter.
	Okay, the answer is, he's the kind of man who does the honorable thing by recusing himself.
	I'm very much in Jeff Sessions' corner here.
	As the Attorney General of the United States, your job is to uphold the law of the land and the Constitution of the United States.
	It is not to be the President's protector.
	I don't see how we on the conservative right can complain about Eric Holder if we just want our own Eric Holder.
	I don't see how we can complain about Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton if we just want our own Loretta Lynch.
	And I understand the tendency to say, listen, they're corrupt.
	Why can't we play by their rules?
	They're not playing by our rules, so why can't we play by their rules?
	But I don't think that that is a recipe for a better country.
	I think that's a recipe for a worse country.
	Jeff Sessions finally fired back against the president.
	He issued a statement on the basis of these statements.
	He says, I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.
	However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States.
	I am proud to serve with them, and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law.
	The key line here is, while I am Attorney General, the actions of the DOJ will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.
	That's Jeff Sessions doing what he is supposed to do, which is he is saying, listen, I'm not going to be pressured into doing anything here, right?
	The way this works is that I abide by the law.
	And this is correct.
	But again, I think there's a battle that's now been breaking out on the right.
	I think it's a years long battle at this point as to how much of your morality, how much of decency are you going to sacrifice for victory?
	If you feel like we have to, and is it really a victory if you sacrifice that morality?
	Have we won anything?
	Let's say that Jeff Sessions became a flak for President Trump.
	Let's say that he fired Robert Mueller and he became a flak for President Trump just defending him against all comers.
	Is that a win for the country?
	Is that a win for the right?
	In one sense it's a win for the right because President Trump experiences less blowback, presumably.
	Although, I'm not even sure that's true because the media is so much to the left.
	But on the other hand, what exactly is the right fighting for if not the idea that the rule of law applies to everyone?
	This is why I'm sympathetic to Kimberly Strassel's argument more than I am to President Trump's argument.
	I don't think the solution here is for Jeff Sessions to suddenly become a political actor.
	I do think the solution here is for the DOJ to look into malfeasance on all sides.
	That it shouldn't just be on one side, and that if that requires more investigators, it requires more investigators.
	The case against unfairness is a strong one, but the solution to unfairness I don't think is more unfairness.
	Unfortunately, there are some on the right who really believe that they have to go along with the president's whims here.
	Lindsey Graham is one of these folks, senator from South Carolina, who a long time ago was very anti-Trump, now he's very pro-Trump, obviously, and he came out and he sort of split the difference.
	He says he thinks that Sessions did the right thing by recusing, but if the president fires Sessions, he'll go along with it.
	Every president deserves an attorney general they have confidence in.
	As to Jeff Sessions, I've never met a finer man.
	He was a great senator.
	He's a great lawyer.
	I think he's been a good attorney general.
	But this is not working.
	So I hope the relationship gets better.
	If it doesn't, I would imagine the president is going to look for a new attorney general.
	Because what's going on is unsustainable.
	I'm not blaming anybody.
	I love Jeff Sessions.
	But from my point of view, the country is not being well served with this much friction.
	I mean, that's a breach in the wall right there, because Republican senators were basically saying, if Jeff Sessions goes, we're not appointing a new Attorney General.
	It's just going to be whatever happens from there.
	But there's Lindsey Graham basically saying, if Trump fires Sessions, then we'll go along with that.
	Which, again, do you think that's going to redounce Republicans' electoral benefit?
	The American people consent when it feels like people are being corrupt.
	I think that, you know, we have the sense on the right that Barack Obama didn't pay a price for his corruption, that Barack Obama didn't pay a price for Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, except for the fact that Republicans have been in control of Congress since 2010 and now run the presidency.
	So the American people can, in fact, feel corruption, and extending the corruption to the other side of the aisle is not an actual solution.
	Speaking of which, we'll talk about Duncan Hunter and the case against Duncan Hunter.
	I also want to talk a little bit about media malfeasance and corruption because it's pretty insane.
	In just a second, we'll talk a little more about President Trump as well.
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	Okay, so President Trump is You know, very much in line with Lindsey Graham.
	Obviously, he's very upset with Jeff Sessions.
	He had a bunch of tweets this morning about Jeff Sessions, so this is going to come to a head.
	Here's what President Trump had to tweet.
	tweeted, Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.
	Jeff, this is great.
	What everyone wants.
	So look into all of the corruption on the other side, including deleted emails, homie lies and leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, or...
	Okay, a few things that are actually necessary to mention about here is that we only know about Peter Strzok.
	We only know about McCabe.
	We only know about Lisa Page.
	We only know about all of this stuff because of an Inspector General report from the Department of Justice.
	So it's not like the DOJ isn't looking into this stuff or hasn't looked into this stuff.
	And if Trump wants to order an investigation, he does have the capacity to do that.
	Now, I haven't seen the information Jeff Sessions has seen.
	I assume that President Trump has.
	If President Trump feels the evidence is that strong, he should order an investigation right now.
	Also, if the president really feels like all this stuff was really criminal, you know what he can do?
	Declassify all of it.
	Remember, the president does have the power to declassify all of this information.
	So when he complains about FISA abuse, Christopher Steele and his phony and corrupt dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump campaign, Russian collusion by Dems, and so much more, open up the papers and documents without redaction.
	Come on, Jeff, you can do it.
	The country is waiting.
	Jeff Sessions is not the head of the executive branch.
	Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch.
	If he wants the papers opened up without redaction, all he has to do is declassify them.
	He's not doing that, which suggests to me that his legal advisors have seen this stuff, and it doesn't all cut in the direction that President Trump actually wants it to cut in.
	So, how much of this is fulmination for public purposes?
	I don't know, but I'm getting, frankly, a little frustrated with all of the abuse of Jeff Sessions from the right, particularly.
	I don't think Jeff Sessions is doing a bad job.
	I think he's doing a fine job.
	And this notion that Jeff Sessions is somehow a tool of the left, when he was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, the first, okay?
	Don't talk about he's not loyal to Trump.
	He was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, back when Donald Trump didn't look like he had a prayer.
	This idea that Sessions is some sort of stool pigeon for Hillary Clinton, I find it insulting.
	Meanwhile, the corruption on the right side of the aisle continues to be a public issue.
	Duncan Hunter, the representative from California, He has been accused, along with his wife, of basically embezzling $250,000 and using it for personal purposes, and then apparently telling people that he was using the money to benefit wounded vets in some cases.
	Really ugly stuff.
	But last night, he was on with Martha McCallum on Fox News, and he proceeded to blame his wife.
	So this is all going great.
	So are you saying that it's more her fault than your fault?
	I'm saying when I went to Iraq in 2003, the first time I gave her power of attorney, and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career, and that continued on when I got into Congress.
	Because I'm gone five days a week.
	I'm home for two.
	And she was also the campaign manager.
	So whatever she did, that'll be looked at, too, I'm sure.
	But I didn't do it.
	I didn't spend any money illegally, I did not use campaign money, especially for Wounded Warrior stuff.
	So this is going great.
	So I'm going to blame my wife.
	Perfect.
	That's going to be the excuse.
	Yeah, I can't see how this goes off the rails.
	How about this?
	How about we praise law enforcement for doing its job and we recommend that law enforcement, when Democrats take power or are in power, ought to be doing the same job?
	Again, there are electoral consequences to not abiding by the law.
	Democrats found that out in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.
	Republicans are going to find that out if they go the way of Democrats and start using law enforcement in order to shield all of their friends.
	Meanwhile, let's talk about the hypocrisy of some in the media, because it truly is astonishing.
	So over the last few days, there's been a lot of talk about Mollie Tibbetts.
	Mollie Tibbetts is a 20-year-old college student in Iowa who was essentially picked up off the street and murdered by an illegal immigrant.
	She was just jogging.
	This illegal immigrant drove up alongside her in a truck.
	He actually cat called her.
	She tried to run away from him.
	She threatened to call the police.
	He grabbed her.
	He killed her.
	He threw her in the trunk and then he dumped her in a cornfield in the middle of Iowa.
	It's just an awful, awful story.
	And this has become a national issue for a couple of reasons, some good and some bad.
	And I want to discuss whether it's moral to make this a national issue because when there's a school shooting, there's some of us on the right who say, The media's attempt to make every school shooting into the jumping off point for a gun control discussion without any of the facts being in, that's immoral.
	When we have these town hall events in Parkland where Marco Rubio is called a murderer in front of a throng of people all cheering and baying for his blood, that is a bad thing.
	There are a bunch of us who say that that is inappropriate.
	But when it comes to the Mollie Tibbetts case, then we're a little softer.
	Well, I think that there are some distinctions to be drawn between the Mollie Tibbetts case and some of the school shooting stuff.
	Here's the basic analysis.
	I think that there are a couple reasons why you should talk about cases like Mollie Tibbetts.
	One case is obviously that people who are murdered ought to be talked about.
	And this holds true whether it's somebody who's murdered in Chicago or whether it is a girl who was murdered in Iowa.
	The media tend to focus on more attractive victims.
	That's just the way the media works.
	This is a pretty young woman who was killed.
	And unfortunately, the media feel they can get more clicks when they cover Mollie Tibbetts.
	That's one reason.
	The other reason that, but the reason that she really deserves attention is because the media pay outsized attention to victims they think push their particular narrative, and then they ignore victims they think do not push that particular narrative.
	So they covered Mollie Tibbetts wall to wall until it turned out that the illegal, that the killer was an illegal immigrant, at which point they still covered Mollie Tibbetts, but they mostly covered the fact that the right was pointing out that Mollie Tibbetts' killer was an illegal immigrant.
	They're not going to have any town halls in Iowa about illegal immigration after Molly Tibbetts was killed by an illegal immigrant.
	They're not going to do that.
	If she'd been killed in a school shooting, there would be a town hall in Iowa tomorrow with CNN in the lead.
	There's no question that that would be the case.
	So when is it actually appropriate to talk about policy?
	Well, it's appropriate to talk about policy when three factors have been fulfilled, I think.
	First, when we know the actual circumstance of a given incident, so we actually know what happened, one of the problems with a lot of the school shooting talk is that we don't actually know what happened.
	Somebody shoots up a school, we don't know where they got the gun, we don't know anything about the shooter, and before the bodies are even culled, before we even know other people are alive or dead, everybody jumps to a gun control conversation on Twitter.
	That's inappropriate because you actually need more facts to talk about policy.
	In this case, the fact that this guy was an illegal immigrant It does raise one policy issue, which is, are we properly enforcing our laws?
	But we actually don't know why he was in the country, how he got into the country, what laws would have had to be more strictly enforced in order to keep him out of the country.
	We don't know any of those things.
	So I think that it is premature to talk policy with regard to this guy.
	Second, You should talk about an instance when the circumstances are representative of a broader trend.
	There is crime among illegal immigrants.
	There's arguments about whether that crime rate is higher or lower than the domestic population.
	But the bottom line is that if one crime is committed by an illegal immigrant, then that is one crime too many, considering that that illegal immigrant should not be in the country.
	So I think it's fair to talk about it from that perspective.
	And third, you can talk about policy when the policy recommended logically concerns the trend and would have stopped the incident in question.
	This is where I say I'm not sure we have enough information about Malia Tibbetts yet.
	In what situation should we cover the Mollye Tibbetts thing?
	We should cover it by recognizing that the media are completely unjust in their own coverage of these issues.
	That Mollye Tibbetts will not be covered by CNN in the same way a school shooting would be covered by CNN.
	I think that's a perfectly fair political point to make on the back of the Mollye Tibbetts case.
	I think it is also perfectly fair to talk about Illegal immigration and the costs thereof in terms of crime because we know this guy was an illegal immigrant.
	However, when it comes to policymaking, I'm not sure we can actually talk about what policies ought to be implemented yet because we don't know how the guy got in the country, how long he'd been in the country, had he been deported previously, had he committed other crimes.
	We don't know enough about that at this point.
	However, the media's anger at even discussing the issue is wildly outsized and hypocritical considering how much they are willing to cover every single school shooting up the wazoo.
	So, Here's Chris Cuomo on CNN going after President Trump for talking about Mollie Tibbetts.
	Kate Steinle, now Mollie Tibbetts.
	They put their faces out there almost like campaign posters.
	And the political pitch follows soon thereafter.
	If you're not with the president on how to deal with a legal entrance, and really his hostility toward all immigrants, You are disrespecting these victims and their families and you're putting others in danger.
	I don't accept that.
	Okay, so Chris Cuomo is not making the worst argument here.
	The problem is that he's made precisely the reverse argument when it comes to guns.
	Everyone on CNN has, right?
	Just take all of the things he said and flip them around so it's about school shootings.
	And now he sounds like a hypocrite because Chris Cuomo and CNN have said that if you don't agree with them on gun control, it's because you don't care enough about the dead kids.
	This is one of my pet peeves in politics is when people do this routine.
	So I think that it's a mistake to say that folks on the left don't care about people who are killed by illegal immigrants.
	But it is fair to talk about border policy once all the facts are in, and it's certainly fair to point out the hypocrisy of a media that is willing to ignore crimes like this in order to focus in on crimes that push their political agenda in a more thorough going way.
	Geraldo Rivera does the same thing on Fox News.
	Obviously, he's a pro-illegal immigrant figure, and so he's very upset that people are talking about illegal immigration.
	He's not here legally.
	We are putting that spin.
	We at this network are putting that spin on this story.
	It's not spin.
	It's a fact.
	This is a murder story.
	This is not an immigration story.
	This is feeding the false impression that this population increases violent crime.
	It is a falsehood.
	I understand where you're coming from.
	And to use this case to make that point is wrong.
	Okay, well, you can use this case to make the point that any crime committed by an illegal immigrant who shouldn't be here is a mistake by federal law enforcement.
	We already have laws on the books, right?
	And by the way, people on the right make the same argument about guns.
	We already have gun control laws on the books.
	So if there's a shooting and somebody violated the law in order to get a gun, then law enforcement should have done its job.
	So the right is actually relatively consistent here.
	There are a group of people on the right who are making hay while the sun shines.
	They're turning this into a, well, if we can make Molly Tibbetts a household name, and if we can claim that Democrats don't care about the death of Molly Tibbetts, well, then we can make political hay.
	I don't think that the evidence is in for that, and I don't like that tactic very much.
	I don't like that tactic.
	That said, there are some people on the left who have demonstrated some pretty cold-hearted stuff when it comes to Mollie Tibbetts.
	I talked about a commentator on MSNBC who basically just dismissed her death as some girl, but I think that's a minority viewpoint.
	There are political differences on this issue, and those are political differences we should hash out, but I want to be careful about how we handle stories like Mollie Tibbetts.
	She deserves coverage because every murder victim deserves coverage.
	We can discuss illegal immigration, but we have to wait for all the facts to come in.
	But we should certainly point out the hypocrisy of the media that will jump to discussing any issue so long as it is not an issue with which they disagree.
	Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about some actual serious issues in America, like trend lines that look really bad that are being obscured by sort of the daily headlines.
	Then we'll get to the mailbag.
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	By the way, final point on the media.
	If you don't believe in the political bias of the media, all you had to do is watch Chris Cuomo make a fool of himself last night interviewing Kellyanne Conway.
	So, Kellyanne Conway was out there making the case for the president on a variety of issues, and Chris Cuomo just will not allow her to get a word in edgewise.
	It's really a horrible performance by Cuomo, who's now considering himself sort of Jim Acosta, but bigger and weirder.
	And here's what he had to say.
	What are you talking about?
	We play him all the time.
	I'll play his voice saying to Michael Cohen, what are we going to do?
	And then how are you going to do it?
	What do you mean about financing?
	And Christopher, what else is it?
	Play the tape.
	Play the tape.
	Remind everybody what he said to Michael Cohen.
	No, no, no.
	Play the tape.
	No, that's the tape.
	Play the tape.
	Okay, so he's just great.
	You know, just great interviewing skills by Chris Cuomo.
	I can't imagine why people think that he is biased.
	All of this sort of back and forth in American politics is obscuring some relatively big stories that we are missing because these are the trend lines we should be watching.
	Terrence Jeffrey has a piece over at cnsnews.com today that says that 52.1% of children in America live in households getting means-tested government assistance.
	He says, in 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 74 million people in the United States under 18, 38 million of them, 52.1%, resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.
	That would include Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that's food stamps, Medicaid, public housing, supplemental security income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the National School Lunch Program.
	This table indicates...
	That there are approximately 320 million people living in the United States.
	Of these, 115 million people lived in a household that received means-tested assistance.
	That doesn't mean every person in the household received the aid, but it means that one or more persons living in the household did.
	People under 18 were the most likely to receive all of this aid.
	We are creating a system of government dependence that's going to be very difficult for us to recover from, and it is not sustainable long run.
	The only way that you're going to be able to sustain anything resembling a free market economy is if we Lower the burden on public services.
	And the way to do that is not only a thriving economy, but deregulation and also an increase in public charity, a bettering of our education system, attempts by private industry to actually go into underprivileged areas and hire people and educate people.
	If that doesn't happen, then we are moving very quickly toward a huge government, soft socialism.
	A lot of socialist systems built on top of a fading capitalist system.
	Think of the American system, not as a socialist system or a capitalist system, but as basically a clown on stilts.
	The stilts are capitalism, the clown is socialist programs.
	And at a certain point, if the clown gets too fat, the stilts just break.
	And that's basically what we are on the verge of here in the United States.
	We're not quite there yet.
	Thank God capitalism is incredibly robust.
	Thank God business is still able to generate enough revenue to cover some of this, although we are borrowing at extraordinary, exorbitant rates.
	But there will come a time when those stilts break and the socialism just starts to cripple the economy in a major way.
	And we're accelerating that.
	We're moving in the wrong direction.
	There's a poll out today showing a vast majority of Americans, 70%, support Medicare for all.
	They don't know what that means.
	They don't understand what the cost of that is.
	But we continue to think that government is the solution to all of our problems.
	That is a bigger, broader trend than any of the stuff that's happening with regard to corruption or any of the rest of it.
	Okay.
	So in a second, let's do, let's, you know, let's jump in the mailbag.
	So let's do some mailbag right here.
	Okay.
	Go to John.
	Okay, John says, Hi Ben, I'm a freshman at Purdue University with a question on socialism.
	Yes, I know it's evil and horrible.
	Anyway, in my experience in middle and high school, I was taught in detail about the horrors of far right wing Nazi Germany, but never in the same detail about those of other socialist regimes like China or the USSR.
	Considering that those powers were just as oppressive for often the same motivations, why was I never taught this in school?
	Is there actually a significant difference between Nazi socialism and Soviet Chinese socialism?
	When did the notion that Nazi Germany was far right wing become widely distributed?
	I know that history is often written by the winners, but if this is true, how come the USSR and China are not vilified in the same way as Nazi Germany?
	Any answers to one or all of these questions is appreciated.
	Okay, so...
	Here's the answer, and I've puzzled over this too.
	People will still wear Che Guevara t-shirts, but if they wore a Himmler t-shirt, people would rightly say, that person is a piece of crap.
	Che Guevara was a communist terrorist who murdered innocent people.
	And people wear his t-shirt around on college campuses.
	Communism is not seen in the same way as Nazism, specifically because of the racial components of Nazism.
	That is why.
	That is the real answer.
	The reason that Mussolini is seen as a buffoon and not as a tyrannical evil dictator so much is because he was less racist than Hitler, basically.
	The racism that was embedded in the Nazi program is what made Nazism particularly toxic to those on the left.
	The reason for this is that the media actually have a soft spot for socialism.
	Up until the Soviet Union collapsed, there were a lot of people in the United States on the left who were quite warm toward the idea of a more Marxist American government.
	They might have wanted a socialist check on full-on communism, but they were kind of warm toward the USSR.
	Remember, in the 1930s, the USSR was promoted by the left in the United States as the wave of the future.
	HG Wells in Britain was talking about how the USSR was going to be the new way that we did things.
	That scientific socialism was the way that the world was going to run.
	And they never really quite gave up on that.
	I was talking about this with a friend of mine who happens to be kind of on the left, and we were discussing the fact that on the right, The right will actually excise Nazis from its ranks.
	There's a story this week about the Claremont Institute.
	There's a guy named Charles Johnson who was basically expressing white supremacist sentiments on one of their listservs and Claremont just shut it down.
	They shut down the entire listserv because they said we're not interacting with this guy.
	And the left said, look at these white supremacists who have infiltrated Claremont.
	Well, Claremont shut down the listserv.
	When's the last time somebody on the left was actually excised for their ideas?
	Not for promoting violence.
	For their ideas.
	They're open communists who write for major publications on the left.
	They're no open Nazis writing for major publications on the right.
	They're not.
	That's because the right does a better job of policing its own ideology.
	The right does a better job of policing the folks who are sort of on the fringes.
	Now, I still think we should do a better job, but the left has never policed any of this stuff.
	Now, the reason that Nazi Germany is considered quote-unquote far-right is because the Nazis arose in a context in Europe in which the left was the Reds, like the actual communists, backed by the Soviet Union.
	And in Germany, the coalition government that was put together and that led to Hitler's rise was a coalition of anti-communists.
	And Hitler was anti-communist, the Nazis were anti-communist, but they also believed in this big government redistributionist program.
	They believed in also what was called basically economic fascism, this idea that the government could regulate business incredibly heavily, that it could benefit certain businesses at the expense of other businesses, that it would run business from the top without actually nationalizing all the resources of those businesses.
	That's the difference between economic fascism or state-sponsored capitalism as you now see in China.
	China's economic system now Looks a lot more like Nazi Germany's economic system than like the Soviet Union's economic system.
	And that's because they're using capitalism, but it's state-sponsored capitalism.
	Nationalization of resources, regulations on certain businesses, benefiting friends of government, and all the rest.
	So, Nazi Germany was considered right-wing by European standards, but it is deeply dishonest when folks on the left in the United States say that Nazi Germany was a right-wing Group by American standards, that's just nonsense.
	The right in the United States is not for nationalization of industry or top-down control of industry.
	The right in the United States is not for racial classification.
	The right in the United States is about limited government and God-given rights, none of which were any part of the Nazi platform.
	Should communism be treated with the same toxicity as Nazism?
	You bet it should.
	The only real difference in terms of the in terms of the Classification of evil is that you could say Nazi Germany was more evil because there was this heavy racial component Which is an additional?
	Evil and particularly relevant to evil in the United States where racial issues have divided America for a very long time Patrick says hey Ben I love listening to music in my free time, but I've come to realize lately I could be listening to an audiobook or podcast instead.
	How do you balance learning and leisure?
	Well, you know what?
	I realize I tend to lean toward learning but at the same time I'll go for a week without listening to music and I'll realize I'm depressed.
	And then I realize the reason I'm depressed is because I haven't actually taken enough time for music.
	So I think that you have to let your brain rest sometimes and that's what music is for.
	I have met Matt Walsh in person, I think once.
	He came out to our offices a few months ago.
	I'm trying to remember when I first met Andrew Klavan.
	I believe I first met Andrew Klavan when he was working at PJTV doing these short videos.
	And Klavan's a really literate guy.
	We got to talking.
	And we became quite friendly from there.
	I met Knowles at a dinner party at Clavin's house.
	And Knowles was particularly pretentious, talking a lot about Yale that night.
	And so I decided, hey, why not give that guy a show?
	It's my everlasting regret.
	So that's basically how I met those guys.
	And Daniel says, Hey Ben, huge fan.
	I want to ask, is there a benefit to using executive privilege on Michael Cohen?
	Just like Obama used it on Eric Holder, I believe.
	Hoping to see you run for president one day.
	Well, executive privilege only applies to folks who are operating under the auspices of the president.
	It doesn't actually apply to anyone the president deals with.
	So the office of the presidency does not cover everything that the president does in his life.
	So if I I am committing some sort of drug crime with somebody as the President of the United States.
	And that person is operating not as a member of the government.
	Executive privilege doesn't extend to those crimes that are happening outside of government.
	It really extends, my understanding is, to the constitutional purview of the presidency.
	Michael Cohen was not an employee of the government.
	He was working for Donald J. Trump in his private capacity, not in Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
	I appreciate it.
	There are a couple of good books that I really like about evolution and the Big Bang and God.
	Gerald Schroeder is one of my favorite authors on this.
	of the big bang if they can coexist how do we know which parts of the bible to interpret as poetic also wanted to say i became a dad a few months ago and love when you talk about fatherhood thanks well i appreciate it um there are a couple of good books that i that i really like about evolution and the big bang and god gerald schroeder is one of my favorite authors on this i do believe that the theory of evolution fits actually quite well with sort of the story of creation that's laid out in genesis in terms of the ordering and the timing and
	And as far as the Big Bang, the Big Bang lays out much closer to the beginning of Genesis than it did to Aristotelian physics that suggests that the universe has always existed in its current state.
	The Big Bang suggests that out of nothing, God created everything.
	And that looks a lot like the Big Bang, which is why there are so many people now trying to create theories of multiple universes, because they don't like the consequences of the fact that science looks a lot like what the Bible lays out.
	As far as knowing which parts of the Bible to interpret as poetic, I think that the stuff that deals with human action particularly is not poetic.
	The stuff that deals with nature, I think you can fairly say is poetic.
	I think that the beginning of Genesis is pretty clearly meant in a far more metaphorical sense.
	I don't believe there was an actual garden where a snake talked to a man.
	Like, I don't think that's actually what happened in a literal sense.
	There's a lot of debate in Jewish circles, actually, about where the Bible begins to get historically accurate.
	Like, where it's actually now talking about historically accurate people.
	In the general consensus, from what I understand, I know Jonathan Sachs has said, this is basically, once you get to Abraham, now you're talking about an actual historical story, and before that, a certain level of metaphor that's kind of interwoven throughout the story.
	I tend to believe that myself.
	All right, Jessica says, Good morning, legal question.
	It is always my understanding that ignorance of the law is not an excuse in committing a crime, certainly not for a common citizen.
	Why is it that in the political sphere, there's a focus on need for intent or awareness as in the recent examples with Hillary or Trump?
	Thanks for all you do and your team do in the era of fake news.
	She asked me to read fake news in a Trump voice.
	Okay, so the answer is that there are certain crimes that require intent.
	The level of requisite intent is always a matter of debate.
	So it's not that you have to have had subjective intent to do things.
	It's that a reasonably, a reasonable person could determine that you had intent to commit the crime.
	So we use intent in all sorts of crimes, particularly in the criminal sphere.
	So when it comes to torts, you generally don't have to have as much intent.
	Like if I'm just walking around swinging my arm in front of me and I hit you, then that is not something that you have to show intent.
	If I'm negligent, you don't have to show intent.
	That's more of a strict liability standard.
	If, however, I commit... Let's say that I kill somebody.
	We now have to determine what level of intent I was using.
	Did I kill somebody by accident, like I was just walking around and suddenly I tripped forward and in order to stop my fall I pushed somebody into oncoming traffic?
	That looks like manslaughter.
	It may not even be a crime at all.
	Whereas if I just walked up behind the guy and shoved him in front of a subway, that is first-degree murder.
	So intent is an element of a lot of crimes, particularly in criminal law, and you have to determine whether there was intent to violate the law.
	Now, ignorance of the law is not necessarily sufficient to get rid of the intent question.
	You can also have reckless ignorance of the law, and that's more where Trump would lie.
	It's not that Trump didn't know about campaign finance.
	So let's say this.
	Let's say that Trump went to Michael Cohen and he said, listen, I want you to take care of this.
	And the implication was Michael Cohen's a lawyer.
	He's going to abide by the law.
	It's his job to make sure that I'm abiding by the law.
	Well, then Trump has not demonstrated the requisite intent.
	Let's say that Trump went to Michael Cohen and he said to Michael Cohen, listen, I don't care how you do this.
	It doesn't matter to me how you do this, right?
	Legally, illegally, whatever you do, don't tell me about it.
	Just go ahead and do it.
	That is now intent to violate the law.
	So it's not that you have to know everything about the law.
	It's that did Donald Trump have a right to trust in his lawyer to abide by the law?
	That's actually a fairly solid defense.
	As far as intent in the Hillary case, it's a pet peeve of mine that there are so many folks who pretend that intent was a requisite part of the crime.
	It was not a requisite part of the crime.
	She obviously intended to set up a server.
	She obviously intended to put information on there.
	They added this element of intent that she had to intend to expose information to foreign powers.
	That is not part of the law.
	That is not part of the law, and that's why I think Hillary should have been prosecuted.
	Mike says, Hey Ben, I'm a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a Mormon.
	I deeply respect your example of religious strength and courage.
	I was wondering what experiences you've had in your life that have made you so strong religiously.
	I love the show.
	Keep up the good work.
	So, you know, I've always had sort of a deep and abiding faith in God.
	I can't really explain specific instances.
	I don't really think there are a lot of instances That, you know, I'd want to talk about.
	They're kind of private to me.
	That I'd want to talk about where I was suddenly like, oh wow, God exists.
	I don't think that's really how it was.
	I've always just had... I think we all walk around with a baseline level of beliefs in certain things.
	The consistency of the laws of the universe, for example.
	You know that gravity exists.
	You know that there are certain consequences to certain actions.
	My belief in God lies in the idea that there is a rulebook from God that tells you that if you act in a certain way, you are much more likely to succeed than if you act in a different way.
	I would have the faith in an author who told me that if I eat certain things, I was more likely to be healthy.
	I have a lot of faith in an author who says that if human beings act in a particular way, they are more likely to succeed in life.
	If they act in a non-particular way, they are more likely to fail.
	And if they act in one way, they're more likely to be moral human beings, better human beings.
	I sort of take religion, the proof of the truth of religion or the decency of religion, the importance of religion, lies to me a lot less in the text of the religion or even the story of the religion than in the effects of the religion, which is why, for example, you don't see me doing a lot of analysis of the Koran on the show. for example, you don't see me doing a lot of The Quran on the show.
	I don't talk about when I talk about radical Islam, I don't start citing Quranic verses because I think that we can fairly adjudicate the relevance and decency of religion by the action of its practitioners over time.
	That that's that's a better way of gauging the veracity of religion.
	And I think the way that you gauge veracity and faith in God is not just faith in faith in God is different from the belief that God exists.
	Belief that God exists, you can rationalize intellectually, and I think there's some good arguments for it.
	Faith in God is a belief that God has a plan for the universe, whether you understand it or not.
	And you have faith in God just like you have faith in your spouse, or you have faith in your father, or you have faith in your business partner.
	And that is that there's a cause and effect in the universe, and that God does what he promises he is going to do.
	That's what faith in God really means.
	And to me, I've always felt that, I've always believed that, You know, it's not up to God to let me down.
	It's whether I let God down.
	Final question here.
	Let's see.
	Rachel says, Hi, Ben.
	First off, only love your show.
	One thing that gets me through the day.
	So I think your impressions are hilarious.
	I was wondering what your favorite impression to do is.
	My personal favorite is Bernie Sanders.
	So yeah, Bernie is a lot of fun.
	I really like doing Bernie Sanders.
	Senya also is a big fan of the Bernie Sanders.
	Whenever we talk about the pudding and the sugary treats and the redistribution of.
	It's always fun to riff on Bernie Sanders because he says crazy things.
	But he also looks kind of crazy doing it, and his hands move in various different directions.
	So Bernie Sanders is... I do enjoy Bernie Sanders.
	I enjoy doing Chris Matthews.
	Chris Matthews is a lot of fun to do.
	So... Hey, here we are, Chris Matthews!
	Got up in the morning, coming to the show, running all rumpled, looking all crazy.
	And I just got a steak thing.
	And Michael Itzikoff, what do you say?
	What do you say?
	Should Trump be burned to steak as a witch?
	I don't know.
	Kind of like witches.
	Once I saw a witch in a movie.
	Blair Witch Project, good movie.
	It's a...
	Anything you can do sort of stream of consciousness is a lot of fun, but... I love all of my... I won't say I love all of my impressions equally, because I think some of them are just bad.
	I think that my Trump is mediocre at best.
	I think my Obama is quite good.
	It's very underrated, my Obama.
	My Obama is pretty strong.
	My Obama is... Thank you, Alex.
	Alex just piped in from the back saying that my Obama is strong.
	Thank you, Alex.
	And Alex's beard.
	I appreciate it.
	With Obama, the key to doing an Obama impersonation is that you first start off speaking A little bit clipped, a little bit slowly.
	And then as you approach the end of the sentence, you sort of gradually speed up, and your voice goes up.
	Just kind of gradually, slowly, speed it up.
	Right, that's how you do a good impersonation.
	There's also, with Trump, the fun with Trump is always trying to get down the actual patter of President Trump.
	That's the part with Trump.
	So, doing his voice is actually kind of difficult.
	Because he actually has some variation in his voice.
	And he pronounces his P's sort of as B's.
	So he says, Beeper.
	Right?
	Not people.
	Beeper.
	Like Bieber.
	And also, with President Trump, you can also, you can rip.
	So earlier this week, the outtakes from the show, by the way, are phenomenal.
	I mean, we really at some point should start making outtakes available to subscribers because they're so good.
	So earlier this week, the president was talking about flipping.
	And for legitimately 15 minutes after the show, I just did a President Trump impersonation, him talking about all the things that I do not like about flipping.
	I do not like, one time I was on a trampoline, and I was jumping, jumping better, better jumping than anyone else, the highest jumps, the best, most spectacular jumps you have ever seen.
	And I tried to do a flip, but I failed, and I landed on my hair.
	Ever since, I have been very much against flipping.
	Also, I once flipped a house, did not make a profit, but created an open concept kitchen with Formica countertops in Atlantic City.
	It was great.
	Also, I like flips.
	The pretzels with chocolate on top of them.
	They are quite delicious.
	Flipping is... Some flips are good, some flips are bad.
	Michael Cohen is bad because he flipped.
	I don't like flippers.
	I do like flipper the dolphin.
	That was a good dolphin.
	Very smart dolphin.
	Very, very with it, that dolphin.
	Maybe the best often.
	Some people say.
	Some people say.
	Maybe the best often.
	The fun of President Trump lies in the batter.
	Whenever I get to do my impersonations, it makes me happy.
	And I think it makes other people happy, too.
	Jerry Brown is also a personal favorite.
	Very underused, Jerry Brown, because he's really not in the news all that much.
	But Jerry Brown, the governor of California, is 1,000 years old.
	And every so often, Every one of my Jerry Brown impersonations ends the same way.
	I'm here talking about the wildfires in California and those fires are very hot and I haven't had enough water!
	They always end with him, and then he sort of just falls over.
	Every sort of Jerry Brown impersonation ends with him falling over.
	So, are my impersonations all that great?
	No.
	But are they fun?
	Yeah, I kind of enjoy them.
	So thank you for that.
	Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.
	Things that I like.
	There's a great book by Mona Chern.
	It's called Sex Matters.
	Now, the only problem with this book is the same problem I had with my second book, Porn Generation, which is that when you put it on your shelf, people think you're weird.
	Because the name of the book is Sex Matters, right?
	I remember when we came up with the title for Porn Generation, I thought to myself, does someone want to put that on their coffee table?
	The answer, it turns out, was no.
	But Sex Matters is actually a really good book.
	How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.
	Monis has some really controversial stuff here, and she can get away with it because she is, in fact, a woman with a career.
	But she's also a person who was very high-powered in the 90s and early 2000s, and she took some breaks from her life in public, specifically in order to take care of her kids.
	She talks about how feminism has corrupted views of sex, views of relationships, how it's made people unhappy, and how to undercut some basic scientific truths.
	The book is really good and really useful, and Mona is a really clear and compelling writer.
	You should go check it out.
	Sex Matters by Mona Charon.
	Definitely well worth the time.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	So the social media policing is just astonishingly ridiculous at this point.
	So there's apparently a guy named Israel Broussard.
	He's in a Netflix series called To All the Boys I've Loved Before.
	I guess he's one of the stars of that.
	I don't know if anybody in the room has seen it.
	But in any case, he had to officially apologize for his quote, inappropriate and insensitive words and likes on social media.
	So we're not just policing people for what they say on social media, we are policing people for retweeting or liking certain tweets.
	What were his great sins?
	Well, he did tweet out some stupid stuff about Japanese folks, right?
	After there was an earthquake in Japan, he tweeted something out about Japanese people eating dogs or something silly like that.
	But here is the part from the Daily Beast that was truly bad.
	Here's the part from the Daily Beast that was truly, truly awful, okay?
	While those tweets are bad enough, Broussard's likes were apparently even messier.
	Shared screenshots show that his recent likes included Trump and Marco Rubio tweets.
	No, not Marco Rubio, that radical Republican Nazi.
	Not Marco Rubio.
	Ooh!
	Run for the hills, Israel Broussard.
	My God, that man is a covert.
	He's a covert white supremacist.
	He liked the tweets of a Hispanic senator from Florida.
	No, how could we possi- Also, multiple gems from me.
	Oh no, he liked some of my tweets.
	This means he's a very bad person.
	And just like Mark Duplass, who had to be shamed into apologizing for ever having met me, now Israel Broussard has been forced to apologize for having liked tweets by Trump, Marco Rubio, the President of the United States, a Senator from Florida, and me.
	What were my bad, bad tweets?
	Here's one of my bad, bad tweets.
	This is the worst one that Daily Beast could find that he liked.
	Okay, you ready?
	The travel ban is not Japanese internment.
	Immigration enforcement is not Nazi Germany.
	Read an effing book.
	That's really bad.
	He shouldn't have liked that.
	Because it turns out that the travel ban is Japanese internment.
	Immigration enforcement is Nazi Germany.
	How dare Israel Broussard?
	By the way, that tweet, just so we can note this, that tweet was seconded by a bunch of folks on the left who still have the honesty to recognize that Nazi Germany is not actually us arresting people illegally crossing our border.
	By the way, worth noting, not a lot of folks attempting to illegally cross into Nazi Germany.
	That was not actually their big problem.
	A lot of folks attempting to leave.
	Not a lot of folks attempting, like, you know what, honey?
	We need to move to Nazi Germany.
	Sounds awesome.
	That was actually not their big problem, as it turns out.
	And then, I love this.
	A Twitter user captioned their post, look at this.
	These are some of Israel Broussard's most recent likes.
	Seriously, Israel Broussard's likes are the biggest.
	Pro-gun, pro-Trump, pro-effing Shapiro.
	Pro-Ben-effing Shapiro.
	Anti-Muslims, blacks, and women.
	Mess.
	And so he's compelled to apologize.
	This is the world we live in now.
	If you like a tweet from me, you'll be forced to apologize.
	Hollywood, beware.
	The scourge of Hollywood lurks on your doorstep.
	Here I am.
	So ridiculous.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, CNN demonstrating once again.
	It's non-biased.
	It's total objective journalisming.
	They are now running a documentary.
	It's like a 10-part documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most important justice who has ever lived.
	What important decisions has she been involved in?
	The answer is not many.
	She really hasn't written many important decisions at all.
	Virtually all important decisions of the Supreme Court written over the last 20 years, particularly on social issues, have been written by other justices.
	But she's very important because she is a woman and a feminist And oh my god, so CNN is running, I kid you not, a documentary from CNN Films called RBG Beyond Notorious.
	Did they ever run anything like this about Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas?
	No, of course not.
	They only do it about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but they are objective.
	They are totally objective.
	Most liberal justice, leftist justice, on the bench.
	The notorious RBG.
	I hate this kind of stuff so much.
	The kind of worship of judicial figures.
	Like Antonin Scalia, great justice.
	Clarence Thomas, even better justice.
	Are we supposed to, like, do we call him, like, the Notorious Clarence Thomas?
	The Notorious Antonin Scalia?
	The Notorious RBG?
	But they say it's supposed to be ironic because, of course, she's a nerdy white lady.
	A nerdy white Jewish lady.
	But here's a little bit of their documentary.
	Don't worry, this is all objective journalisming.
	She had the theory that, right from early on, she had the theory that injustices or the special privileges that women had hurt everybody.
	Put the women on a pedestal, but it hurt men also.
	I mean, what a hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg is.
	What a heroine.
	Standing up for abortion?
	What a heroine.
	Yeah, don't worry, CNN's objective.
	You can definitely, definitely trust them.
	So, well done, CNN, once more.
	Okay, final thing that I hate for this week.
	So, we have to pervert Shakespeare in every way possible, and make it suck, also.
	So, apparently, Out Magazine is now promoting a version of Romeo and Juliet That takes place 50 years after society has exterminated cisgender men.
	So cisgender men will no longer exist.
	Cisgender men are men who identify as their actual sex.
	In other words, like men.
	Right?
	Cisgender men are just men.
	So I'm confused as to how the society exists 50 years after cisgender men have been exterminated.
	I assume the baby-making rates have gone down rather dramatically.
	Cisgender men, it turns out, are sort of necessary.
	And let's just put it this way.
	If cisgender men were completely eliminated in Western civilization, I think pretty soon Western civilization would no longer exist.
	For both internal and external reasons.
	There'd be a lot of people at the gates, a lot of barbarians at the gates, who would be attempting to destroy what was left of Western civilization.
	And also, turns out you need some cisgender men on that wall, and you need some cisgender men to make babies and be fathers and take care of families.
	Again, none of this is to say that transgender people can't perform relevant and great functions in American society, but to pretend that cisgender men are the enemy is ridiculous.
	Anyway, they're going to do this routine where Romeo and Juliet, it includes six female and gender non-conforming actors as well as a fully female and gender non-conforming crew.
	So I'm confused as to why fully female is okay, but not fully male.
	So males are very bad.
	Here is what their pitch says.
	As the government still relies on martial law to keep the factions in check, two young heirs unexpectedly fall in love.
	One is from the Montagues, the militaristic warmongers responsible for the purge of society's men.
	The other is the Capulets, controllers of information in the media, fighting to regain independence from a sovereign state.
	The genderqueer version of the play, the magazine says, explores mainstream feminism, patriarchal structures, and a society struggling to rebuild in their wake.
	Sounds awesome.
	Sounds awesome.
	Forget about the fact that Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the most explicitly gendered plays in Shakespeare.
	It is specifically built on the idea that young teenage men are reckless and young teenage girls are romantics.
	It's a very, very gender-specific play.
	And this is the thing about good writing.
	What good writing is, is writing of the character.
	You want to write a quote-unquote genderqueer character?
	Go for it.
	That's your problem.
	But to hijack the words of Shakespeare that are specifically written for a man or for a woman and then to pretend that those are equally applicable to people who do not identify as a man or identify as a woman is really It's really amazing.
	The same people who say Scarlett Johansson cannot play a transgender person will now say that Shakespeare's words that were written for a specific character should be read by somebody who does not resemble those characters in any ways and is not trying to act as the character, but is acting as a completely different character saying those words.
	It just doesn't make any sense on an artistic level, but I guess it's forward thinking, so who cares?
	Forward thinking just means having nothing to do with the original intent of the author.
	So glad we're doing that.
	All right.
	Well, we will be back here on Monday.
	Try to survive over the weekend.
	It's been a long week.
	We'll be back here on Monday, and we will break it all down for you.
	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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