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Oct. 5, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:05:33
The Greatest Whine Of All | Ep. 632
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Republicans and one Democrat vote for cloture on Brett Kavanaugh, leftists take to the streets, Kavanaugh defends himself, and Chuck Grassley unleashes.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, man, do we have plenty of news for you today, plenty of commentary.
Wow.
I mean, let's just say that lots of stuff is happening and tomorrow is going to be fascinating because the vote is now set on Brett Kavanaugh for Saturday.
We'll get to all of that news in just a second.
First, a couple of quick reminders.
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All right.
So let's jump into today's news.
There is a bunch of it.
So we begin with the fact that Republicans and one Democrat just passed Brett Kavanaugh through a cloture vote.
So thank you once again, Harry Reid.
Let me just begin with a big thank you to Senator Harry Reid, who killed the filibuster on judicial nominees way back in 2013.
And Mitch McConnell, cocaine Mitch, In his prescient, turtle-like fashion, said at the time, you will come to regret this sooner than you think.
And oh boy, do Democrats regret it right now, because all it takes is 51 votes, not 60 votes, in order to elevate someone to the Supreme Court.
The vote on Brett Kavanaugh was closer than expected, and that is because of the politically traitorous behavior of Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted no on cloture.
Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who wishes to retain his seat in the Senate, voted yes.
That means that it is now bipartisan opposition because of one vote.
It's bipartisan opposition to Kavanaugh and also bipartisan support for Kavanaugh because of one vote.
Basically, one Democrat voted yes, one Republican voted no on cloture.
But this thing is too close for comfort.
Wouldn't it be nice right about now if the Alabama GOP had not nominated Roy Moore to fill a Senate seat?
That would give me a little bit more breathing room.
I think I'd feel a little bit happier about life right now.
Suffice it to say, the odds are very much I'm Brett Kavanaugh's side in terms of being confirmed.
Jeff Flake voted yes on cloture.
Susan Collins voted yes on cloture.
In order for Kavanaugh to go down right now, basically both those people have to switch their votes or Joe Manchin has to switch his vote between cloture and a final vote.
The final vote is designed to take place on Saturday.
That is the goal.
It's supposed to take place tomorrow.
And Lisa Murkowski obviously is in the crosshairs because Lisa Murkowski, who lost her primary in 2016 and then won a write-in vote and won about 44% of the vote in her election before that in 2010 against a libertarian candidate, she's not wildly popular in Alaska or anything like that, but she feels pretty secure because she's not up for re-election until 2022 and now she gets to burnish her feminist bona fides It would not be particularly surprising if the Democrats at some point win back the Senate, say in 2020.
It would not be particularly surprising to see somebody like Lisa Murkowski switch to independent a la Jim Jeffords and then caucus with the Democrats in order to preserve her seat.
That would not be a giant shock.
So Murkowski votes the wrong way on this.
Susan Collins votes the right way on cloture.
She has in the past voted for cloture on particular measures and then voted against the nominee.
If she were to do that, If she were to vote in favor of cloture and then vote against the actual measure being taken, then you would see a 50-50 tie in the Senate broken by Vice President Pence, which is about the thinnest margin that you could put somebody on the court by.
But hey, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and this is neither.
So as long as he gets confirmed, that's all that matters in the end.
Joe Manchin, of course, has a lot of pressure on him, but he also understands that if he votes against Kavanaugh, he loses his seat.
He is up for reelection in five minutes here.
And the folks in West Virginia are not going to go along with Joe Manchin if he were to undercut Brett Kavanaugh on this matter.
Also, in other breaking news this morning...
This is an insane story that underscores the vagaries of the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh in the first place.
Christine Blasey Ford was the woman who made those allegations.
There's a new story from the Wall Street Journal that is truly a shocking story and is getting undercovered, of course, by a lot of folks in the mainstream.
They're saying, well, a lot of people in right-wing media, they're picking up on it.
Everyone should be picking up on it because it's a kind of crazy story.
Here's the story from the Wall Street Journal.
Quote.
A friend of Christine Blasey Ford told FBI investigators that she felt pressured by Dr. Ford's allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say she believed but couldn't corroborate Dr. Ford's accounts, according to people familiar with the matter.
Let me be clear what that means.
That means that people close to Christine Blasey Ford called up Leland Kaiser, who was the only witness that essentially Ford brought forth, and who had denied that she knew anything about the party or knew Brett Kavanaugh at all.
And Ford's people called up Kaiser and tried to get her to change her story.
They pressured her to change her story in order to go after Brett Kavanaugh.
That's fully crazy.
And if it happened on the other side, if it was Brett Kavanaugh calling people up saying, I need you to change your story and say that you denied it, people would be saying, wow, that guy is evil, okay?
To try and pressure somebody to change a story in order to convict someone, either in the court of public opinion or in court, may in fact be criminal activity, right?
I mean, to get somebody to change their story for the FBI, that's putting pressure on an actual witness.
That's witness tampering, maybe.
That's pretty dicey stuff.
Here's what the story says.
Now, it is worth noting that Monica McLean has only come up in one other context in this case so far.
allegedly assaulted in the 1980s, told investigators that Monica McLean, a retired FBI agent and a friend of Dr. Ford's, had urged her to clarify her statement that people said.
Now, it is worth noting that Monica McLean has only come up in one other context in this case so far.
So it turns out that Monica McLean went to Ford's actual testimony.
Why else do we know Monica McLean's name?
Anybody remember?
Quick quiz on whether you've been up on the news and listening to the show.
Monica McLean was the woman who was mentioned by Christine Blasey Ford's ex-boyfriend in his letter when he said that Christine Blasey Ford trained somebody to pass a polygraph.
That would have been Monica McLean.
Monica McLean, when she was trying out for a job with the federal government, She then said that that had never happened.
It also turns out that Monica McLean is probably the quote-unquote beach friend that Christine Blasey Ford was talking about who urged her to approach Democrats.
So Monica McLean, who's a Democratic activist, was involved in this thing basically from inception.
The statement to the FBI offers a glimpse into how Dr. Ford's allies were working behind the scenes to lobby old classmates to bolster their versions of the alleged incident, as were Judge Kavanaugh's.
Judge Kavanaugh, whose Supreme Court nomination will be debated in the Senate Friday, has denied the allegations of sexual misconduct.
On Thursday, a day after sending to the White House the report on its investigation into the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, the FBI sent the White House and Senate an additional package of information that included text messages from Ms.
McLean to Ms.
Kaiser, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms.
McLean's lawyer, David Loffman, said in a statement, quote, Any notion or claim that Ms.
McLean pressured Leland Kaiser to alter Ms.
Kaiser's account of what she recalled concerning the alleged incident between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely false.
Ms.
Kaiser's lawyer, on September 23rd, said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee she had no recollection of attending a party with Judge Kavanaugh.
That same day, she told the Washington Post she believed Dr. Ford.
On September 29th, two days after Dr. Ford and the judge testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms.
Kaiser's attorney sent a letter to the panel saying his client wasn't refuting Dr. Ford's account and that she believed it but couldn't corroborate it.
A person close to the former classmate said it was her understanding that mutual friends of Dr. Ford and Ms.
Kaiser, including Ms.
McLean, had contacted Ms.
Kaiser after her initial statement to warn her that her statement was being used by Republicans to rebut the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.
The friends told Ms.
Kaiser that if she had intended to say she didn't remember the party, not that it had never happened, she should clarify her statement, the person said, adding that the friends had not, in fact, pressured Ms.
Kaiser.
No, it wasn't any pressure at all.
So good stuff happening there from the from the politically oriented legal team and friends of Christine Blasey Ford.
This is not obviously good for her account.
And obviously Chuck Grassley is taking this stuff very seriously.
So Chuck Grassley Who is the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of the Republicans.
He actually sent a letter to Christine Blasey Ford's legal team.
And this letter is pretty explosive stuff for Christine Blasey Ford.
He basically said, why aren't you turning over any of your records?
You testified about your psychiatrist's records, and then you won't turn them over to us.
You'll show them to the Washington Post, but you won't show them to us.
You testified about a bunch of material that you won't turn over to us.
So why?
Why won't you turn over any of that stuff?
Here's what Chuck Grassley wrote to Christine Blasey Ford's lawyers, quote, You have repeatedly refused to produce this evidence to the Senate.
In doing so, you are preventing the Senate from considering the evidence most crucial to Dr. Ford's allegations.
I don't know what other interference we should draw from inference we should draw from your refusal, but that the withheld evidence does not support Dr. Ford's allegations in quite the way you have claimed.
I urge you once again, now for the third time in writing, to turn over the therapy notes, polygraph materials, and communications with the Washington Post that Dr. Ford has relied upon as evidence.
And here's where it starts to get real dicey for Legal Team Ford.
In addition to the evidence I requested in my October 2nd letter, in light of recently uncovered information, please turn over records and descriptions of direct or indirect communications between Dr. Ford or her representatives in any of the following.
One, U.S.
Senators or their staffs, particularly the offices of Senators Feinstein and Hirono, other than your communications with me and my staff in preparation for the September 27th hearing.
In other words, were you coordinating with Democrats in order to trot out a particular PR line?
Two, the alleged witnesses identified by Dr. Ford, Leland Kaiser, Mark Judge, and Patrick Smith.
In other words, we think that you've been corresponding with witnesses, including Leland Kaiser, about what they ought to be saying on this.
In other words, were you coordinating with other people making allegations against Judge Kavanaugh?
Chuck Grassley does not actually release that letter unless he's got something in his back pocket.
Chuck Grassley is a very cautious senator, and this is not a guy who's going to go out there on a ledge and then suggest that All this is some giant conspiracy without some evidence.
If he is, then that's inappropriate.
So we will see what arises from all of that.
By the way, Grassley's office did release an executive summary of the FBI findings.
The FBI findings basically said that there was nothing.
So they talked to 11 different individuals, 10 of whom agreed to be interviewed.
That includes Mark Judge, PJ Smith, and Leland Kaiser, as well as two other individuals included on Judge Kavanaugh's July 1st, 1982 calendar entry.
Remember, Democrats were suggesting that on On Kavanaugh's calendar, there was a party for July 1st, 1982, in which he listed some people.
Some of those people had crossover with some of the people mentioned by Blasey Ford.
Even Blasey Ford's lawyers are now saying it wasn't the July 1st party.
Funny how they only say that after the FBI interviews all these folks.
The FBI interviews all these folks, and then, and then, Ford's lawyers come out and say, she would never have said that it was July 1st as a possible date.
Some of the people listed on his calendar, she knew well and would have remembered.
Interesting, interesting how all of that works.
So again, I've never suggested, not once, that she was lying or making this up.
I don't know the answer to that.
I do know that suspicious political activity around an allegation makes me more suspicious of the allegation than it otherwise would.
In just a second, we'll get to the chaos that is happening On the hill right now.
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Okay, so.
We'll get to the chaos that's been happening in Washington, D.C.
in just one second.
First, I think it is worthwhile noting that having lost on all counts here, the Democrats have turned to their final gambit.
They said that Brett Kavanaugh was a perjurer, and then they said that Brett Kavanaugh was a rapist, and now they are saying Brett Kavanaugh cried, and that makes him a baby.
This is, I'm serious.
This is an article in the New Yorker by a person named Michael Lista, who apparently is kind of a, well, a person who repeats garbage on a regular basis.
Here's what he says.
Brett Kavanaugh's cheers make a kind of sense.
From a single phrase by Thomas Jefferson, that public life is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the fulfillment of the white American man's atomized desires assumed the force of a fiat and became the ultimate purpose of this country's society.
So, if you don't understand what he's talking about, that's because you have a brain.
What he's trying to say here is that the phrase, pursuit of happiness, means that white men get to pursue happiness, but everybody else is a giant victim.
And therefore, if you believe in the Declaration of Independence, it's because you're a racist, which is an insane statement.
And then he says, if a white man didn't get what he wanted, it was nothing short of a constitutional crisis in his body and his body politic both.
Really?
That's weird because it seems to me that rape laws have been on the books since forever.
Since all of human history.
Written into America's founding document is the franchise for a man like Kavanaugh to weep when he isn't fulfilled.
That isn't really in the Constitution.
That not really.
Have you read it?
He says, in this, he's less a citizen of his society than one of its disgruntled customers who are always right.
There's an originalist argument to be made for being a crybaby.
So it's bad that Brett Kavanaugh got emotional.
Now, what I would love is a reverse article from this guy on Christine Blasey Ford, right, who was considered credible largely because she was emotional during her testimony.
This is really sick stuff.
And this is the most common argument that I'm seeing is that Brett Kavanaugh's judicial temperament is the real problem here.
We're going to get to more of that argument in just a second.
There's a — John Paul Stevens, who hasn't been relevant for years and years and years and years, thank God, because he was appointed by a Republican, but he was the most liberal justice on the court.
Well, he now said — he's 98 years old — he was speaking to a crowd of retirees in Boca Raton, and he said that Brett Kavanaugh's performance during a Senate confirmation hearing suggested that he lacks the temperament for the job.
And here's what he said.
He said, At the time, I thought Kavanaugh had the qualifications for the Supreme Court should he be selected.
I've changed my views for reasons that have no relationship to his intellectual ability.
I feel his performance in the hearings ultimately changed my mind.
He said that there's merit to the criticism that he has political bias.
And I'm seeing this a lot this morning.
This is the last stand.
Brett Kavanaugh cried.
Brett Kavanaugh got emotional.
And Brett Kavanaugh was partisan.
I saw that today.
It doesn't matter even that he was emotional.
It matters that he was partisan.
Because he said the Democrats were out to get him.
Or, alternatively, Brett Kavanaugh was saying something that is implicitly true, that Democrats were out to get him.
Remember, the original opposition to Brett Kavanaugh is that he was a textualist.
Then it became he was a gang rapist.
Let's say that you had spent the last 40 years of your life in public service, and that somebody you never knew came forward with an allegation against you, accusing you of gang rape.
And that people who opposed you politically, the same people who said that they opposed you because you're a textualist, then came forward and said, we think that you are also a gang rapist.
Might you say, wait a second, this feels like a partisan hit job.
Might you say that?
Or does that make you too partisan?
It's amazing.
It really is amazing.
All these folks who say judicial temperament.
First of all, these folks have never met a judge.
There are lots of judges who are angry.
There are lots of judges who have personality issues.
This idea that all judges are sort of saintly coddies on the hill who dispense justice from beneath the palm tree.
It's just not true.
It's just not true.
But the question of judicial temperament is how do you approach cases when you're on the bench?
So we have 12 years.
Well, 14 years, I guess, of Brett Kavanaugh on the federal bench.
12 years?
12 years of Brett Kavanaugh on the federal bench.
No indicator that there was any problem with his judicial temperament.
He was a moderate to moderate conservative on the bench.
And then, he went through a full Senate hearing.
You remember?
Remember, there was a whole set of Senate hearings before this whole garbage news cycle began.
There's a whole set of Senate hearings where he went through silly questions from Senators, and you had the grandstanding by Kamala Harris and Corey Potato Head Booker, and they went through the entire hearing, and he was placid, right?
He was dull.
That was the rip on him.
He was too dull.
He was too robotic.
And then, he was 12 years on the bench, placid.
A full hearing.
Poised.
Placid.
And then, shockingly, people accused him of gang rape, and he got a little mad.
And then it was, oh my god, how dare he be mad?
Look at that.
That's a failure of judicial temperament.
It turns out that people react differently to different stimuli.
If you give me a massage, that is a different thing than you clocking me in the back of the head with a 2x4.
I react slightly differently.
If you massage me and you're a masseuse, and I consent to your touch, then I am probably going to be placid and happy.
If, however, you clock me in the back of the head with a 2x4, I might be justifiably angry, and I might be, you know, miffed enough to turn around and try to clock you back in the face.
That's what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, but apparently that's no good.
Showing who Brett Kavanaugh really is, he wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Trying to defend his behavior and apologizing for being too emotional.
As I said at the time, he owes no apology to anyone on any of this.
None.
If I had been Brett Kavanaugh and people had accused me of that, I would have gone into that room and I would have said, let me be clear.
I want this read into the congressional record.
I'm going to state, I want you to spell this correctly.
Okay, all of you Democratic Senators accusing me of sexual assault on women I've never met, go F yourselves.
And let me explain what I mean by F yourselves.
I mean, I want you to go perform an anatomically impossible function upon yourself in the back room.
Use whatever pretzeling mechanisms you need to in order to achieve exactly that sort of apotheosis.
And never stop doing it.
Do it for the rest of your lives.
Go in the back room and go... And I would spell it out so I can make sure, and I would say it very slowly.
I want to make sure the stenographer can get this down.
Okay, that's what I would have said.
Brett Kavanaugh just went in there and he said, you guys are partisan hacks.
Okay, that's a really nice way of saying what these folks actually are and what they actually did here.
But who is Brett Kavanaugh?
He's a guy who then wrote a full op-ed for the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his brutish behavior.
I'll read you some of it in just a second.
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So here is Brett Kavanaugh.
Trying to make amends for his uncouth behavior after being called a gang rapist by sitting United States Senators.
Here's what he said.
I was deeply honored to stand at the White House July 9th with my wife, Ashley, and my daughters, Margaret and Liza, to accept President Trump's nomination to succeed my former boss and mentor, Justice Anthony Kennedy, on the Supreme Court.
My mom, Martha, one of the first women to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to become a lawyer, sat in the audience with my dad, Ed.
That night, I told the American people who I am and what I believe.
I talked about my 28-year career as a lawyer, almost all of which has been in public service.
I talked about my 12 years as a judge on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the second most important court in the country, and my five years of service in the White House for President George W. Bush.
I talked about my long record of advancing and promoting women, including as a judge, A majority of my 48 law clerks have been women and as a longtime coach of girls' basketball teams.
As I explained that night, a good judge must be an umpire, a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no political party, litigant, or policy.
As Justice Kennedy has stated, judges do not make decisions to reach a preferred result.
Judges make decisions because the law and Constitution compel the result.
And he talks about how he has ruled in the past.
And then he says, as Justice Kennedy showed us, a judge must be independent, not swayed by public pressure.
Our independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic.
The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution.
The justices do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle.
They do not caucus in separate rooms.
If I were confirmed, I'd be part of a team of nine.
And then he gets into his sort of mea culpa.
He says, during the confirmation process, I met with 65 senators and explained my approach to the law.
I I participated in more than 30 hours of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I submitted written answers to nearly 1,300 additional questions.
I was grateful for the opportunity.
After all those meetings and after my initial hearing concluded, I was subjected to wrongful and sometimes vicious allegations.
My time in high school and college more than 30 years ago has been ridiculously distorted.
My wife and daughters have faced violent, violent threats.
Against that backdrop, I testified before the Judiciary Committee last Thursday to defend my family, my good name, and my lifetime of public service.
By the way, this is worth noting.
He's right about this.
People who say this was a job interview, I ask you, have you ever been on a job interview?
When was the last time you went on a job interview?
You walked through the door and some random woman popped out of a door and said, you raped me 36 years ago.
And then the employer says, hmm?
Hmm?
It's never happened to you on a job interview, because that's not a job interview.
That's an actual prosecution, in all likelihood.
My hearing testimony was forceful and passionate.
That is because I forcefully and passionately denied the allegation against me.
At times, my testimony, both in my opening statement and in response to questions, reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused without corroboration of horrible conduct, completely contrary to my record and character.
My statement and answers also reflected my deep distress at the unfairness of how this allegation has been handled.
I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been.
I might have been too emotional at times.
I know my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.
I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband, and dad.
I testified with five people foremost in my mind.
My mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all, my daughters.
And then he talks about going forward.
I can always be counted on to do what I've always done.
He owes no apology.
He was not too emotional at times.
His tone should have been sharp.
And the fact that people on the left, you know, the creature, by the way, the left, the same people who suggest that I should not be allowed to speak at UCLA or USC or Berkeley because I might hurt people's feelings, these are the same people who are saying that feelings are unjustified when accused of rape.
So in other words, feelings are justified, anger is justified, protest is justified when I say a man is a man and a woman is a woman, but feelings are not justified if I were to accuse you of gang rape in a public setting.
This is all insanity.
Obviously.
And that's why I pray to God that tomorrow the Republicans do the right thing.
I'm talking to you, Susan Collins.
I'm talking to you, Jeff Flake.
Lisa Murkowski, it's too late for.
And so chaos has now taken over the Senate buildings.
They've already set up barricades outside the outside the Senate.
Because of protesters that are expected tomorrow.
I will note something.
It is pretty amazing.
It's pretty amazing that we've reached this point in American public life with regard to Supreme Court seats.
This did, in fact, start with the Democratic left that decided that the court was a tool for the promulgation of public policy and not merely an impartial arbiter of constitutional meaning.
The reason that the stakes are so high is because the court became something it never was before during the Warren era and afterward.
And that was an actual political institution dedicated to a specific set of policy goals.
The reason people care about the Supreme Court, the reason that the people think that the Supreme Court matters, is because of things like Roe v. Wade, when the court decided that it was going to make national policy on the basis of left-wing viewpoints, having nothing to do with the Constitution.
And the left believed that the court was going to be its final bastion of leftism.
No matter what happened, they could always count on the court to step in and defend leftist policy priorities.
And for a long time, that was basically correct.
And now it turns out that when Republicans want to restore the judiciary to its proper role, namely reading the Constitution as it is written, as it was meant, then the left says, wait, hold up a second.
Hold up a second.
That's why people are so passionate.
Because let's face it, nobody cares about the local dog catchers race.
None of this would have happened if we were talking about a branch of government like a bureaucratic branch of government.
Nobody would have cared about that.
They care about the Supreme Court because they think the Supreme Court is important.
The only people the only reason people think the Supreme Court is important is because the left has turned it into a political tool and has used it as a club to beat senseless people who actually believe in the text of the Constitution for the last Sixty-odd years?
Fifty-odd years?
I think it's fair to say fifty-odd years.
Since the 1960s?
Since maybe Griswold versus Connecticut?
Although, you can certainly cite cases like Wickard v. Filburn.
And the court has outstripped its boundaries many times before that.
Obviously, Dred Scott, Korematsu.
I wrote my entire Harvard Law School third-year paper on the idea that judicial review should be significantly curtailed because the founders never intended for the Supreme Court to be a superior political branch, and yet that's exactly what's happened.
In any case, the passions were running high yesterday and today.
Marco Rubio was talking about Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination in the halls of the Senate, the Senate Hart building, and he was drowned out immediately by protesters because this is the way our politics goes now.
The way everybody's reacting to this now, you know, every Supreme Court Justice hearing coming forth that's going to be going on after this.
Well, we had one a few months ago and it didn't work out that way.
You know, they're all different.
Okay, and that's just, I mean, that was a normal day for the Senators.
They had to be escorted in by police.
I will note something.
Remember that time when people said that the right wing was really crazy and really radical?
Remember the Tea Party in 2010?
How dangerous the right wing was?
You know what they never required?
Police presence to escort members of Congress to and from things.
They didn't actually require that.
And...
Let's be frank about this.
I don't recall a Republican staffer trying to dox members of Congress and release their children's health records, which is a thing that actually happened.
An intern for Representative Sheila Jackson Lee tried to reveal senators' children's health information.
That's what he allegedly threatened.
That would be Jackson-Costco 27.
It works for Sheila Jackson Lee.
And protesters didn't stop, of course, in Marco Rubio.
Here's a protester berating Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
They're going to just try to do the same thing they did to Senator Flake, buttonhole somebody in an elevator and then yell at them about how they obviously hate women because they believe in due process.
Ben Sasse was kind of ripped up and down by the right the other day for a speech that he gave on the floor of the Senate.
And that's because people were taking one line kind of out of context when he said he would have preferred Amy Coney Barrett.
So would I. My original pick was Amy Coney Barrett, if you recall.
But the bottom line is that Ben Sasse is voting for Kavanaugh.
The point that he made is this false dichotomy that's being drawn by the left, particularly, between this case and the MeToo movement, in which they say that if you support Brett Kavanaugh, you therefore hate MeToo.
If you support Brett Kavanaugh's due process and presumption of innocence, therefore you don't take women seriously.
He said that's garbage and that's nonsense.
And he's exactly right.
Of course, that's exactly right.
So I'll show you how the left has been playing this anyway in just one second.
But first, let's talk about how you preserve your memories.
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There's some of us who tend to say that memory may not be the most reliable source, but you know what helps preserve your memories?
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Okay, well, we are going to get into more of all of this in just a second.
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All righty.
So these protesters are not stopping me.
They are berating people like Joe Manchin, trying to buttonhole people.
And we'll see if the protesters have their desired impact tomorrow, because this is a razor-thin margin.
Remember, it was a 51 to 49 vote.
That 51 includes a Democrat, Joe Manchin.
Republicans have a two-vote cushion here.
If Joe Manchin were to switch his vote, if Susan Collins were to join Lisa Murkowski, there is no Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
He goes down to failure.
And it's a disaster for Republicans in the midterms.
Because a lot of voters just say to their own party, you know what?
You guys are awful.
Go screw off.
Just leave.
We're not interested in you.
Anymore.
But this is the protesters sort of story.
It is worth noting, you know, there are there's a lot of hubbub today because President Trump tweeted out that some of these protesters are being paid.
That is undoubtedly true.
There are a lot of these protesters who are members of groups that actually will pay you to be out there for the day.
I'm sure many of them are spontaneous.
It's not all of them.
It is true that one of the women who buttonhole Jeff Flake in an elevator is an actual Democratic Operative.
I mean, there's a person who works for a 501c3 Center for American Democracy, I believe.
And that center is funded by George Soros.
He's not the main funder.
People are saying, oh, well, it's Soros funded.
Look, let's not use George Soros as, like, the stand-in for all human evil.
George Soros is a guy who I really disagree with in a lot of ways.
I don't think he's a good guy, per se.
I think he's stood for a lot of bad things.
But you don't have to, like, use George Soros as the bogeyman.
Okay?
He's not the bogeyman.
But there are a lot of leftist protesters out there who had their lunch paid for them by groups that are trying to astroturf this.
Okay, that I think is eminently true.
Here's a protester, I don't know about this protester, maybe this protester is genuine, berating Joe Manchin.
You're listening to me as a survivor.
I don't understand how you can't look me in the eye.
Why are you going to vote yes on this?
Can you tell me where you're going to vote?
How are you not listening to us as survivors?
Are you?
You're going to get in this elevator?
How are you going to vote?
Tell me.
Folks, step back.
Okay, it's not his job to tell her how he's going to vote.
And, of course, what he should say is, I'm happy to listen to your story as a survivor.
Also, do you have corroborative evidence?
It's amazing.
There's an article in The New Yorker today, or yesterday, saying that rape does not require corroboration.
Because most crimes don't require corroboration.
What the legal standard means by that is that if I were to allege that I witnessed a murder, there's not a second witness that has to corroborate my story.
However, you do need other evidence.
If I just say, I witnessed a murder, I walk into a police station, I say, someone in this room, this very room killed someone.
Right, let's say that, I won't name names, but if I were to walk into a police station and say that, the police would say, okay, is there a body?
Is there a weapon?
Do you have any evidence of this?
Is someone dead?
Is someone missing?
You need corroborative evidence.
Evidence.
Okay, there doesn't need to be a second person in the room for a rape to watch it and then tell you, yep, it was a rape.
There has to be some sort of corroborative evidence, which is why there are so many cases that the police simply does not take up because there is no corroborative evidence.
By the way, Michelle Malkin has a terrific video today about the number of cases of sexual assault and rape that are either falsely reported or misremembered.
It is not 2%.
It is somewhere between 8 and 41%.
It depends on the metric that you're using.
In any case, the protesters also took over the Senate Hart building and hundreds of them taking over the very floors of the building.
I'm not sure why this is allowed, frankly.
It seems like kind of a dangerous thing.
but here it was yesterday.
Okay.
Now, I will say that all of this is driving the most Republican unity I've ever seen in my lifetime.
There are some new polls out that are just astonishing, because there's a poll about Republican female enthusiasm.
There's a gap in Republican female enthusiasm, and what it shows is that the Democratic enthusiasm gap, which was at a massive high.
In July, there was a 10-point gap between the number of Democrats and Republicans, saying the November elections were very important.
After Kavanaugh, It's down to a statistical tie.
A 10 point advantage for Democrats just evaporated.
Evaporated over two weeks.
By the way, it's not just a bunch of animated Republicans.
Women are not happy with this.
The great lie is that women, all women, hate Judge Kavanaugh and think that no corroborative evidence is necessary.
Look at this Quinnipiac ballot.
This is a generic ballot among white women.
This is unbelievable.
Among white women, okay?
July 22nd, D plus 14 among white women.
A massive gender gap.
A massive gender gap.
September 9th, D plus five.
September 30th, D plus one.
A 14 point gender gap among white women disappears over the course of these allegations.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
That's not among Republican women.
That's among white women.
All white women.
White women don't love President Trump.
They don't.
They're not huge Republican fans.
That is because there are a bunch of people who still have an iota of sanity in this country and recognize you can't destroy people's lives based on non-corroborated allegations.
All of which is driving Republicans to actually find a spine for the first time in a long time.
It's pretty incredible.
So we'll get to that in just a second.
I have to say, I love Lindsey Graham 2.0.
So, Lindsey Graham 2.0, this is the best software update ever.
I don't know where this Lindsey Graham came from.
Sassy Lindsey Graham.
I don't know where this came from, but it's pretty spectacular.
So, Bob Menendez, who is the Democratic Senator from New Jersey, he's had some of his own allegations brought against him.
I remember that there were allegations against Bob Menendez that he was flying out to, I think it was Puerto Rico, and that he was making time with prostitutes, and they'd investigated the allegations, and they really couldn't come up with anything.
Well, Bob Menendez is very upset with the FBI report on Brett Kavanaugh, and here's what Bob Menendez had to say about it.
Okay, and then Lindsey Graham 2.0 shows up.
And Lindsey brings the hammer.
Here is Lindsey Graham.
My goodness, Lindsey Graham.
Where'd you come from, buddy?
This is awesome!
Keep it going, dude!
Enjoying it!
not a full and thorough investigation.
Evidently, the Republicans who gave the direction to the FBI...
Okay, and then Lindsey Graham 2.0 shows up, and Lindsey brings the hammer.
Here is Lindsey Graham.
My goodness, Lindsey Graham, where'd you come from, buddy?
This is awesome.
Keep it going, dude.
Enjoying it.
Okay, so here's Lindsey Graham 2.0.
So here's what the three senators asked for.
That the people named by Dr. Ford be interviewed by the FBI, just not the committee.
And Ms.
Ramirez be interviewed by the FBI.
That was done, plus five other witnesses.
The results are in.
Senator Collins and Senator Flake said they thought it was thorough, they thought it was fair.
And these two people, who are my friends, have no idea what they're talking about.
And let me tell my friend Bob, what y'all have done is bull****.
Yes!
Lindsey Graham!
Woo!
Kinda lovin' it!
Okay, and then Orrin Hatch, who's become the fun, grumpy old man in the Senate.
It's just fantastic.
Orrin Hatch, he has a fantastic social media team.
Whoever does his Twitter is just great, but Orrin Hatch has basically turned into Walter Matthau, and it's spectacular.
So here is Orrin Hatch.
He's walking the halls, and a protester comes up to him, and Orrin Hatch just deconstructs the guy.
I mean, he just tears the guy limb from limb.
It's spectacular.
Why aren't you, why aren't you brave enough to talk to us and exchange it with us?
Don't you wave your hand at me!
I wave my hand at you!
When I grow up!
You and I grow up!
How dare you talk to women that way!
How dare you!
If you missed it...
If you missed it, Senator Graham, Senator Hatch, this woman's like, don't you wave your hand at me?
As she's screaming at him.
And he goes, I'll be ready to talk to you when you grow up.
And she goes, you grow up!
Senator Hatch is 1,000 years old.
He grew up a long time ago.
I mean, and then Senator Hatch, as he's getting in the elevator, if you can't see this, Senator Hatch, he just starts waving at them, right?
Bye, see you later, because the elevator door's gonna close.
See you later, bye bye.
The Republicans finding a spine, and boy is it enjoyable when Republicans actually have a spine.
I have to say, I'm really getting a kick out of it.
That's pretty great.
Just to show you where the media are on all this, the media have totally undercut their credibility on all of this.
And CNN, particularly, has just been absolutely god-awful on this issue.
Just astonishingly bad.
Alison Camerata, who I used to have more respect for as a reporter, she's really, I mean, she's like the Titanic that hit the iceberg on this story.
Here she was, talking on CNN last night.
Wouldn't it just be easier to go with a different nominee?
You know, after all of this, after we've, you know, gone after this guy, and made a bunch of unverified allegations, and reported Julie Swetnick as a real story, and put Michael Avenatti on this network every five seconds, and set up a pup tent for him in the green room.
You know, after all that, wouldn't it just be better if you guys, you know, just did what we wanted and got rid of Kavanaugh as a nominee?
Allison Camerata, Objective Reportering.
At worst, he sexually assaulted someone, as Christine Blasey Ford accuses.
Wouldn't it be easier at this point to go with a different nominee who doesn't have any of these problems?
You have time before January.
Just start over.
This process has gotten too tainted.
Start over and do a more clean process with a different nominee.
So much journalisming!
Wow, did you hear all the journalism in that question?
All the journalism where why won't you just do what we want?
We've been trying to trump up this story for months here.
Why won't you just do what we want you to do?
And then I love this from Jim Sciutto, who's another reporter, another objective reporter over at CNN, saying, you know, when people accuse people of gang rape, that's just politics.
That's just how politics works.
Oh, really?
OK, here's some more journalism from CNN.
Here's the difference, Scott.
But this is a person running for a lifetime, not running, but being considered for a lifetime position.
The fact is, this is Washington, this is politics, but political candidates have been accused of horrible things for years.
And it becomes a test, really.
How do you respond to that?
And trust me, I'm not taking issue with responding when your character has been.
He's got a 12-year record.
It's a fair question.
Okay.
No, that's just how politics works, according to CNN.
And reporter Jim Sciutto.
Yep.
Wonder why we can't trust the media these days.
All right.
Meanwhile, the celebrities have been sounding off.
So there are a bunch of celebrities showed up in Washington, D.C.
yesterday to do some sort of big protest.
Amy Schumer got herself, quote unquote, arrested.
So Benny Johnson over at IJ Review, and I think now he's a daily caller.
So Benny Johnson went down there.
She wasn't arrested.
Amy Schumer did not get arrested.
She got herself quote-unquote arrested because the police came up to her and said, would you like to be arrested?
And she said, absolutely.
And then they gave her a $50 fine and she walked away.
So less than I pay for a parking ticket.
Okay, she got, she got, and then, I love it, she gave like, she gave a fist pump to the cameras as she's being walked out.
The best acting she's done before the cameras in years, Amy Schumer.
So that was pretty solid.
Emily Ratajkowski, is that, Ratajkowski?
Ratajowski?
I don't know who she is.
She's a model?
Actress?
Eh?
She showed up, and she did exactly the same thing because, women must be arrested for no apparent reason!
So, they decided to make a fuss.
I am amused, I will say, by Alyssa Milano.
Because Alyssa Milano has been going hard after Brett Kavanaugh.
But, as I showed you, as I talked about yesterday on the program, Alyssa Milano also was a big fan of Bill Clinton.
And talked about how much she loved Bill Clinton.
And then that came out.
And then things got awkward.
Because now she comes out and she says, you know what?
Maybe we should have investigated Bill Clinton after all.
Oh really, Alyssa Milano?
Why, how convenient that you suddenly discovered that Bill Clinton was a credibly accused rapist.
How convenient that you finally figured out after like 25 years that maybe it would have been a good idea to, you know, look at like the stuff Bill Clinton did.
Weird how that just occurred to you now in the last 24 hours after people discovered one of your old tweets.
Here she is on CNN rewriting her own history.
Pretty spectacular.
No, and I don't think Bill Clinton should have gotten that benefit of the doubt in hindsight.
I think that as a nation we were in a different time.
I think that women were continually being silenced and I think we gave him the benefit of the doubt and we probably should have investigated the allegations against him as well.
Oh, oh, that.
Oh, weird.
Why did you change your mind?
I can't.
What could have changed your mind?
Who knows?
It's a mystery.
Pretty amazing.
Also, Bette Midler sounded off.
So, Bette Midler, who is a very, very wealthy woman, who's worked a very long and productive career in Hollywood.
Last relevant when she did, what is it?
Witches of Eastwick, she's in?
Is that correct?
Or, she's in Beaches, correct?
Hocus Pocus, thank you, is another witch movie.
So, Hocus Pocus.
So, Bette Midler, she tweeted this out.
Women are the N-word of the world.
Hmm.
Really?
Like we eat animals?
awkward bat meddler.
Raped, beaten, enslaved, married off, worked like dumb animals, denied education and inheritance, enduring the pain and danger of childbirth and in life, in silence for thousands of years.
They're the most disrespected creatures on earth.
Really?
Like we eat animals.
So I'm gonna go with no on that one.
Like I had a hamburger last night.
I also had a fish burger for lunch.
I'd say those are probably slightly more disrespected creatures than women.
They're the n-word of the world.
Like, black people have had it slightly harder than women.
I think historically it's fair to say that You know, millions of black people shipped over from Africa to South America and to North America and then forcibly enslaved and then used as chattel.
Probably a little worse than that time that Bette Midler didn't get a job in Hollywood at an audition.
And I love that, I love when she says, for thousands of years, women have been treated as chattel.
For thousands of years, people died at 35 too, okay?
Can we talk about, like, things that have been relevant in the last, say, couple generations?
Just insanity.
Then she was forced to apologize because, of course, she had violated the tenets of intersectionality.
originality.
She tweeted out the too brief investigation of allegations against Kavanaugh infuriated me angrily.
I tweeted without thinking my choice of words would be enraging to black women who doubly suffer both by being women and by being black.
I'm an ally and stand with you always have.
And I apologize.
Pretty, pretty spectacular.
Well, I've been told that Woman is the N-Word of the World is a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the songwriting duo most responsible for, imagine, the worst atrocity ever perpetuated against art in the history of mankind.
In any case, Bette Midler.
I love this.
When she says that she tweeted angrily without thinking.
She doesn't have judicial temperament, Bette Midler.
Just gonna put that out there.
And also, I love when she says that black women suffer doubly by both being women and by being black.
There's a really interesting study actually from, I think it was Harvard University, talking about disparities.
Income increases over time.
And what I found is that black girls actually have significantly, that black girls who are raised in the same situation as white girls actually have exactly the same sort of income trajectory.
Black boys, if you're going to talk about who actually has it worse in American society for whatever reason, and there are probably some good ones and some bad ones, black boys have it a lot worse in American society than black girls do.
Just by income statistics from Harvard University.
Okay.
Well, you know, enough of that.
Let's do a little bit of mailbag.
I know we're going long today, but we'd be remiss if this week we skipped the mailbag.
So let's do a couple of questions.
Amir says, Ben, I have a very Islamic name.
I want to have my name legally changed to something more American, but people have accused me of trying to run for my ethnicity.
I was wondering what your take on this was.
Well, you know, Amir, in the Jewish community, it's not uncommon and it hasn't been uncommon for generations for Jews to have two names, basically.
One that you have in Hebrew and one that you have in English.
That's not rare at all.
My family, we all have the same name because my name is Benjamin.
It's Benjamin in Hebrew.
There are a lot of Jews in the community who will go by like, it's Yechezkel in Hebrew, and then it's Ezekiel in English, which sounds very different.
Or you have folks whose name is actually completely, completely different.
Like my mom's name in Hebrew is Kayla, her English name is Cynthia.
So I think there's a, if you have the name for religious reasons, then I think maintaining that name for religious reasons and in religious contexts is acceptable.
You can choose whatever name you want, obviously.
You should ask your parents how they feel about it, honestly.
I think that your parents gave you a name for a reason, and as a tribute to someone or something that's meaningful, I think names have power.
I wouldn't change my name just out of outside pressure, honestly, if I could avoid it.
Instead, I'd be calling out people who treat you in discriminatory fashion because of your name.
I think that changing names in order to avoid discrimination I would rather work on calling out folks who are discriminating against you because of name.
I'm a 15-year-old conservative from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
My question is a moral dilemma I've been faced with.
I was actually inspired by you to become more active in politics, and I joined the debate team at my school.
When I joined, I found that you don't always get to pick which side of an argument you're supposed to argue for.
What I want to know is whether or not it's morally acceptable to attempt to argue a point I do not agree with.
I'm a huge fan of the show, thanks for your time.
So, yes, the answer is yes, because these are all mock debates.
So, when I was at Harvard Law School, we actually had this exact situation.
We had mock trial, we had like a moot court.
And I was assigned for the criminal defense.
And I remember that the professor knew who I was and came up to me like, I'm so sorry, you gotta sign this.
I was like, no, it's totally fine.
Like, this is a moot trial, right?
It's a mock trial, it's a moot court.
It's good.
It allows you to actually get inside the other thinking and makes you a better thinker about your own positions, which is a useful thing.
Mathis says, Ben, do you prefer your leftist tears hot or cold?
Also, what the heck was that tan colored beverage you were drinking on Wednesday?
I know a lot of people had questions about that.
That was heavily creamerized coffee.
I've said before, I don't drink man drinks, okay?
I don't drink, like, whiskey, because it tastes like turpentine.
I don't drink vodka, straight.
I'll take vodka with orange juice.
I'll have a screwdriver or something.
I like things that taste good.
Coffee on its own.
Black coffee.
Anybody who says black coffee tastes great to them has some sort of actual brain imbalance.
Black coffee is not good.
Coffee with cream and sugar is delicious.
So that's what that was.
So that...
Yeah, it was not actually the blood of my enemies.
It says, Seth, with the recent events and resultant response from Republicans, what do you think are the chances in November, Republicans gain in the House and win a supermajority in the Senate?
It's unlikely they win a supermajority in the Senate.
I feel they will pick up probably three to four seats.
I think Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota is done, done-zo, gone.
I think Claire McCaskill in Missouri is in serious trouble.
I think that there are some other seats that are really on the verge, and I think the Democrats have really destroyed themselves here.
And I think there is now a significant possibility that Republicans retain the House.
I would not have thought that possible even three weeks ago.
I think that is much more of a possibility now.
He's not going to get impeached.
Everybody's going to let it go.
This is all a bunch of temporary BS.
They're not effective.
if the House or Senate flips in November.
He's not going to get impeached.
Everybody's going to let it go.
This is all a bunch of temporary BS.
Daniel, what are your thoughts on the efficacy of polygraph tests?
Should employers be allowed to use them on employees?
Should they be scrapped altogether?
They're not effective.
They should be scrapped.
Should employers be allowed to use them on employees?
Well, I mean, if you sign a consensual form saying that you're okay with it, then sure.
I mean, if your employer decides to give you an implicit bias test and you sign on to that, then they should be allowed to do whatever they want.
It's a free country.
But if my employer were going to polygraph me, I probably wouldn't want to work there.
Steven says, hi Ben, if Kavanaugh's nomination is defeated tomorrow, what should the Republicans' new strategy be?
Renominate Kavanaugh, like Graham suggests, or pick someone new?
Well, I mean, at that point, they're basically done.
You're not going to get any more Republicans to vote for him.
So I assume that at that point, they move on and they pick Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.
But it really undercuts a lot of Republican enthusiasm.
Right, because, yeah, actually were vote tickets for people who said they were going to disturb it.
I found the event to be well run, no shouting protesters inside the auditorium.
Right, 'cause yeah, actually revoked tickets for people who said they were gonna disturb it.
And the question is to be surprisingly respectful.
How was your experience there inside and outside the auditorium?
It was great.
I thought the USC team did a fantastic job.
I think their security did a really great job.
I thanked them repeatedly from the podium.
The USC did what they're supposed to do.
And the protesters got to protest outside and chant whatever they want to chant.
I always prefer that people come and confront me with the ideas.
My favorite thing is that, I promise you, 90% of the protesters have no idea who I am.
None.
They've never listened to an episode of the show.
They've never read a thing I've written.
I promise you.
But, you know, they can do what they want to do if that's how they want to spend a Thursday night.
Well, I guess you can't get a date.
That's what you do.
Well, apparently on Twitter she was saying beforehand she was going to take a shot at Israel.
Ariel Gold, I believe, has been banned from the state of Israel because she supports boycott of the state of Israel.
And so she decided to raise that for no apparent reason.
Which is bizarre to me, because obviously I am Zionistic and pro-Israel, and obviously I'm an Orthodox Jew, but since I wasn't discussing the topic, it felt very out of context, to say the least, for this, you know, winged topic to fly in from left field.
It was very bizarre.
Well, I'd say unwarranted and uncalled for.
As I say, I'm happy to discuss the issue.
The issue is wrong and lying about Israel's status as a state, but that's that.
I talked about that one today.
Ben, there's a longstanding conspiracy that leftist protesters are paid by Soros.
I talked about that one today.
Josh says, hey, Ben, I often have conversations with friends that end with them denying that America is the greatest country in history.
What are some statistical metrics that confirm this?
All of economic history confirms this.
America is the most powerful economy in world history.
The fact that hundreds of millions of people no longer live under dictatorship, that would be thanks to the United States.
Also, the principles of the United States are not, it's not statistical, okay?
The principles that the United States is based on, is rooted on, God-given rights protected by a limited government, It's a moral argument.
It's not a statistical argument.
But if you want to talk about the reduction of global poverty by half in the last 30 years, that is due almost solely and completely to the rise of free trade principles in conjunction with a powerful American engine driving that car.
As I might say to my children.
I think probably not.
I think that this thing is over by Monday, in all likelihood.
Ben, do you think that the conservatives will pursue Ford and attorneys for perjury, false allegations, etc.?
What will be the ramifications on the Me Too movement?
Here are all victims.
I think probably not.
I think that this thing is over by Monday in all likelihood.
And then everybody goes on to the next battle, which presumably will be making tax cuts permanent or whatever stupid thing we decide to fight about tomorrow.
Last question here.
here.
Dom says, good morning, Ben.
I was wondering who your three most liked and disliked characters from Game of Thrones and which political actors on the scene today you would choose to play them as well as why.
I wish you and my fellow listeners a wonderful day.
Okay, so one of the problems with Game of Thrones is that all my favorite characters are basically dead.
So I was a big, what's the So Tywin Lannister was the best.
Tywin Lannister was the greatest.
And he would have made the best leader of Westeros because that dude knew real politics.
I mean, that guy was like Henry Kissinger of Westeros.
He gave no craps about how things were going in other parts of the country.
He knew what his interests were.
He pursued them.
Plus, the actor who plays him, I'm trying to remember who plays him, he's just fantastic.
He was the best thing on the show.
He was just spectacular.
And when he was killed, that was very sad.
Spoiler alert.
Retroactively.
Also, I was a big fan of Rababa Stark, so I call him Rababa because there are two Bs at the end of his name.
I'm one of the people who's actually read the books, so I will admit that when they hit the Red Wedding, there's a great gif that shows, I think it's from Survivor, where there are a bunch of women who get some news and they're all crying, they put their hands to their face.
And behind them, there's a guy who just breaks into a massive grin.
That was everybody who read the Game of Thrones books versus everybody watching the Game of Thrones series when they got to the Red Wedding, because we all knew what was coming.
But the killing of Rob was really messed up, right?
I mean, these are all based on real historical circumstances.
The assassination of princes at weddings and all this stuff.
There were actual real historical antecedents for this.
Basically, R.R.
Martin took that into a fantasy context.
That's why the best part of the books and the best part of the show is all of the non-magical stuff.
All of the non-dragon stuff.
All that stuff.
And I will say that I liked early, pre-Child Sacrifice Stannis Baratheon.
So I had a sneaking fondness for him because I too am a religious prude.
And although Stannis, you know, making time with the Red Woman, not my favorite, but I thought that he was at least an interesting character and I feel that he sort of got short shrift.
So that sort of gives you where I stand.
I'm not a Daenerys fan.
I think Jon Snow, well, okay is dummy.
And Tyrion talks a lot.
I mean, that's his character, right?
He talks a lot and he drinks.
That's his actual line in the show.
My great hope was that Hodor was eventually going to take over the country and run things as they ought to be run, just as we would in the United States.
But that is what it is.
So who would play those people?
Well, I think that Tywin Lannister, Mitch McConnell, Cocaine Mitch for Tywin Lannister.
Is that fair?
I think that's not bad.
He's not quite as charismatic as Tywin Lannister, but Cocaine Mitch knows what he's doing out there.
And Robobus Stark.
So Robobus Stark sort of reminds me of Marco Rubio.
Like, well-intentioned, but bound to get stabbed one million times before this is all over.
And who was the last character that I mentioned there?
I'm trying to remember.
Sorry.
No, it wasn't Hodor.
Oh, it was Stannis?
I hate to do this to Senator Cruz, but I really like Senator Cruz, but there is something to the guy who actually has a legit claim on the throne and then just gets short shrift and gets increasingly frustrated by life.
I think there's maybe some of that going on.
I think Senator Cruz will take that well.
He likes himself some fantasy TV, so I think that's fine.
That's all fine.
Okay, so, all right.
That's harsh, dude.
Mike piping in with Cory Booker as Hodor.
Not totally unfair.
I have to say, not bad, Mike.
Not bad, producer Mike.
We killed you at the beginning of the show, but he has risen once again.
For those who don't, you don't get the pre-show.
At the very beginning of every show, we have to kill the producer's Mike.
We have a producer named Mike.
And so, every show, they say, kill producer Mike.
I say, sorry, Mike.
He goes, ahh.
That's a little behind-the-scenes knowledge for you there.
Okay, time for a thing I like and then a thing that I hate.
So, things I like today.
There's a kind of popular historian named John Julius Norwich.
He doesn't do a lot of footnotes.
He doesn't do a lot of breaking new ground in history, but he does a great job of summing up how history has worked and he tells a great tale.
He has a book about the history of the papacy called The Absolute Monarchs.
And it is well worth the read.
It's fun.
I'm in the middle of it right now.
It kind of gives you a history of the ups and downs of the papacy.
Whether you're Catholic or non-Catholic, tends to be more skeptical of Catholicism, this particular book, but it is worth checking out.
Absolute Monarchs, A History of the Papacy.
I picked it up because my favorite thing, I should actually do this as a separate thing I like, my favorite thing legitimately One of my favorite things in the world is on Shabbat, my parents bring over the Wall Street Journal and I read the review section cover to cover because it is the best section in journalism.
It's just great.
It is all book reviews and a couple of kind of overarching op-eds about key issues like AI.
It's just fantastic.
If you have a chance, I wish I could only subscribe to the review section of the Wall Street Journal because I would do that, really.
I don't get a newspaper because the news moves too fast, but the review section of the Wall Street Journal is the best thing in print media.
It is so good.
So I saw they reviewed his latest book on the history of France, and so I picked up several of his books.
This is where I get a lot of my book recommendations.
So go check out the Wall Street Journal review section for an impromptu thing I like.
Okay, things that I hate.
So a story that is getting just very little coverage, but actually is kind of important, is that China has apparently been infiltrating U.S.
companies with a tiny spy chip.
And this is why when President Trump says that for national security reasons he's tariffing China, I have a lot less problems with that than him saying that he's using national security to try and start trade wars with the EU or Mexico or Canada, which I think is silly.
Him talking about China as a national security threat, that's an actual real thing.
In 2015, according to Bloomberg, Amazon began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video.
Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the CIA.
So, they were looking at this particular company to help with due diligence.
AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental's security.
The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS, that's Amazon's web services, to take a closer look at Elemental's main product, the expensive services that customers installed in their networks to handle video compression.
These servers were assembled by a company called Supermicrocomputer.
It's one of the biggest suppliers of server motherboards.
In late spring of 2015, Elemental staff boxed up several servers, sent them to Ontario, Canada for a third-party security company to test.
Nesting on the server's motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip Not much bigger than a grain of rice that wasn't part of the board's original design.
Amazon reported the discovery to U.S.
authorities, sending a shutter through the intelligence community.
Elemental's service could be found in DOD Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, the onboard networks of Navy warships.
Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing probe, investigators determined the chips allowed attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines.
Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
So China was putting little, essentially, these tiny microchips in virtually every piece of technology that was being sold in the United States, or at least a huge percentage of technology sold in the United States, and it allowed them to basically hijack the technology.
It's a stealth doorway.
China... The government of China is not a friendly government.
The China of government is not our friend.
They're quite unfriendly and they figure that they are fighting a long war against the West.
This is something we ought to be keeping an eye on.
The fact that it's been undercover shows that our priorities are really screwed up.
Okay, well, we will be back here on Monday with all of the latest.
Plus, we'll be there on Sunday, so go check out Fox News Sunday, 5 p.m.
Pacific, 8 p.m.
Eastern, for our latest Fox News election special.
We will have plenty to talk about because, of course, the big vote is coming up tomorrow.
I'm Brett Kavanaugh.
We'll have an outcome for you then.
You're just a content factory over here.
Go check us out over there.
By the way, we appreciate you watching.
Our ratings last week blew it out.
Blew it out the week before.
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So go check all that out.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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