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Nov. 8, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:43
The Day After | Ep. 656
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President Trump enters into wild battle with the media, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out, and the left's intersectional rage cannot be stifled.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Too much news!
Too much news!
Okay, there's no way to cover all the news, but we will do it.
And we will do it with aplomb, alacrity, and finesse.
Wash us.
But first, we first have to talk about the fact that the Democrats have retaken the House, which means that a lot of the positive policies Republicans have enacted over the past two years could be stymied.
The Democrats start to obstruct.
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So we begin today with a couple of news updates from around the nation, a couple of stories that are deeply upsetting.
The first story is obviously this mass shooting that has now happened in Thousand Oaks, California.
So this is Pretty close to where we are.
Obviously, you know, mass shooting anywhere in the United States is horrifying, but a mass shooting that is close to you feels a little bit more immediate.
In this particular case, the gunman who massacred 12 people at a country music bar in SoCal on Wednesday night has been identified as an ex-Marine.
We have a policy here on the show that we do not actually identify the name of the shooter, but we'll give you details so that you know motive.
He opened fire on the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks at 11.20pm.
This person had been cleared by mental health experts after an incident in his home in April.
Sheriffs revealed on Thursday morning.
So once again, somebody had a brush with the law and the brush with the law was not enough to end with this person being prohibited from firearms ownership or gun ownership.
California does have an A rating from the Brady Center for Gun Control.
It is considered the most gun-controlled state in the United States.
We've had a multiplicity of mass shootings in California in the past few years.
We had one in Santa Barbara.
We have this one.
We had the one in San Bernardino.
We've had a bunch of mass shootings in the past five years alone.
The killer killed 11 people inside the bar.
One of the first cops on the scene he shot also before taking his own life.
Survivors from the shooting said he looked like he knew what he was doing as he repeatedly fired his legally purchased Glock 45 handgun.
It's also worth noting is that he was using a handgun.
He was not using a so-called assault rifle.
So all of the talk about banning assault rifles would have done nothing to stop this shooting either.
This piece of human filth threw smoke grenades to confuse the crowds while he started shooting folks.
People were hiding beneath pool tables and using bar stools to shatter windows to escape.
The first police officers arrived at the scene three minutes later, and then the shooter shot one of them multiple times before shooting himself.
By the time SWAT teams arrived, he was dead.
His body was found in an office inside the bar.
The sheriff's sergeant who was shot later died in the hospital.
He was Ron Helus, a 29-year veteran.
In total, 13 dead, 11 killed in the bar, the sheriff, sergeant, and the gunman.
And again, this guy is a former Marine who lived in nearby Newbury Park, who apparently had mental health issues.
In April this year, deputies were called to his home amid reports of a disturbance.
He was acting irrationally and was irate, so police called in their mental health specialist.
They cleared him, decided against having him committed, and left him at the home.
It is unclear when he bought this.
He had no criminal history except for a minor traffic infraction.
A neighbor told ABC he was known to suffer from PTSD.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said she had no idea what he was doing with a gun.
He had apparently modified his weapon to hold more rounds.
So again, gun laws in the state of California not being effective.
The handgun was designed to hold 10 rounds and one in the chamber.
The weapon did have an extended magazine on it that he'd either obtained illegally or he had modified illegally so that he was able to hold more rounds in the magazine.
Obviously a terrible story.
It will drive more conversation about gun control, even though, as I say, California is extraordinarily heavily gun controlled.
And the notion that more gun control prevents mass shootings like this is simply not true in a country where there are already something like 400 million guns in circulation in the United States.
In other news, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 85, broke three ribs in a fall.
She apparently fell in her office at the Supreme Court.
Tests showed she fractured three ribs on her left side.
She was admitted for observation and treatment.
Broken ribs are incredibly painful.
Obviously, we pray for her recovery and that she should be in good health.
But her health obviously has significant ramifications for the future of the Supreme Court.
Were she to retire from the court, for example, then that would have a massive impact on the future.
President Trump would still have the ability to appoint a replacement who presumably would be frontrunner Amy Coney Barrett.
It's a little bit early to say that, but she's going to be okay, according to medical reports right now.
Obviously, when older people fall, there's obviously a lot of speculation about what happens after that, because very often declining health begins with a fall sort of like this.
This is not the first time, though, that Ginsburg has fractured her ribs.
In June 2012, she fractured two ribs in a fall.
She didn't disclose the injury to the public.
Until months later, she hasn't missed a day on the court despite a couple of rounds of cancer as well as a fall in the past.
She says that she wants to serve on the bench until she is 90.
She is now 85, so she's hoping to outlive or at least stay on the court past President Trump's tenure in the White House.
So that is your quick News update quick.
One more note I should add just about the gun laws and state homicide rates.
There is no correlation between mass shootings and gun laws.
There is no correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws.
People who have tried to draw this sort of correlation are doing are doing so in statistical error.
That is important to note at the outset.
Okay, so the big news yesterday, and still this morning, continues to be President Trump's press conference that he held yesterday.
It was a wild and crazy press conference.
He took something like 60 questions from various members of the press, and he had a fair number of things to say about the midterms.
What he had to say about the midterms is kind of fascinating.
So here's what he had tweeted out directly after the midterms, President Trump.
He tweeted out, So Trump was ready and raring to go immediately upon the outcome of the midterms.
do not give us proper credit for this great midterm election.
Just remember two words, fake news.
So Trump was ready and raring to go immediately upon the outcome of the midterms.
Now, giving President Trump credit for some key Senate victories in swing states, I think He also gets the blame for Republicans alienating an enormous swath of the suburban vote, which ended with the Democrats taking districts like the Georgia 6th District.
You remember that there was a special election in the Georgia 6th District just a few months back when John Ossoff ran against Karen Handel.
Ossoff lost despite a lot of money pouring in while Karen Handel lost the seat.
A couple of nights ago.
So obviously suburban Republicans got just walloped.
In large part because of the unpopularity of President Trump.
President Trump then sounded off about what Democrats are gonna do in the future here.
He said, if the Democrats think they are going to waste taxpayer money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of classified information and much else at the Senate level.
Two can play that game.
Obviously, everyone knows that the Democrats are going to investigate the president as far as they possibly can.
President Trump kind of levying threats that the Senate is going to investigate or that he's going to use the executive branch to investigate.
Not ideal, but expected.
And then President Trump said this, and in all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats.
If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes.
She has earned this great honor.
Which is high levels of trollery from the president.
Well, then he did his press conference.
And his press conference yesterday was basically, there are a few themes.
Theme number one was, I'm awesome.
I love me.
Fantastic.
So here's President Trump yesterday talking about how awesome he was in the election.
And again, this is somewhat justified by the Senate results.
It is certainly not justified by the House results.
But here was the president praising himself.
It was a big day yesterday, an incredible day.
And last night, the Republican Party defied history to expand our Senate majority while significantly beating expectations in the House for the midterm and midterm year.
OK, so part of that is true.
Part of that is not.
It is true that the Republican Party defied history and expanded their Senate majority.
That was expected based on the polling data and based on the fact that Democrats were running a lot of vulnerable seats in purple to red states.
The Republicans did not significantly beat expectations in the House.
You know how I know that?
Because I predicted, to the number, how many seats the Republicans were going to lose in the House.
And that was based largely on the data that were available.
So, Republicans did not beat expectations in the House.
It was a bad election for Republicans in the House.
It was a good election for Republicans in the Senate.
And that has to do with various constituencies.
It has to do with the red states getting redder and the blue states getting bluer.
But according to President Trump, it's all about President Trump.
Now, yesterday I advanced a theory.
And my theory is maybe the most controversial theory of all.
And that is that President Trump, while he is not a generic Republican, the electorate treats him like a generic Republican.
He gets precisely the vote percentages you would expect from a generic Republican.
He is treated by the press as they would treat a generic Republican, except more so.
The president may act like he's out of the box because he is out of the box, but that does not mean that the response to him is out of the box.
In fact, it is very much in line with Republican-Democrat breakdown all the way up till Barack Obama.
Barack Obama is the sort of statistical outlier, not President Trump.
President Trump has a vested interest, obviously, and so do the media, in suggesting that all of politics revolves around President Trump, a fact which I do not actually think is borne out statistically.
But this leads President Trump to suggest that every candidate can be adjudicated, the quality of that candidate can be adjudicated based on how close they were to President Trump.
So yesterday, in what can only be described as a pretty classless move, The president gets up at this press conference, and he rips into a bunch of Republicans in swing districts, and he says that if they'd only embraced him more closely, then they would have won their seats.
Here he was, literally mocking other Republicans who lost their seats, who he could have used, you know, in places like the House.
Here he was doing that.
So on the other hand, you had some that decided to, let's stay away.
Let's stay away.
They did very poorly.
I'm not sure that I should be happy or sad, but I feel just fine about it.
Carlos Kubella.
Mike Kaufman.
Too bad, Mike.
Mia Love.
I saw Mia Love.
She called me all the time to help her with a hostage situation.
Being held hostage in Venezuela.
But Mia Love gave me no love.
And she lost.
Too bad.
Sorry about that, Mia.
And Barbara Comstock was another one.
I mean, I think she could have won that race, but she didn't want to have any embrace.
For that, I don't blame her.
But she lost, substantially lost.
Peter Roskam.
Didn't want the embrace.
Eric Paulson didn't want the embrace.
And in New Jersey, I think he could have done well, but it didn't work out too good.
Bob Yugin, I feel badly because I think that's something that could have been won.
Okay, I mean, it just goes on like this, right?
We don't have to listen to the whole thing.
It just goes on and on.
President Trump ripping into his own party members who didn't want to associate with him because they were in purple districts or in blue areas.
Does he really believe that the solution there was more cowbell?
That if Barbara Comstock had brought in Trump, she would have won that race?
That if Mia Love had brought in Trump to a blue district in Utah, that that would have shifted the race?
Of course that's untrue, but this is sort of the myth of Trump that's been created in the aftermath of the myth of Obama.
The myth of Obama was that Obama had radically shifted American politics permanently.
The myth of Trump is that he broke that radical shift.
The reality is that Obama was a statistical outlier because he was a uniquely amazing candidate in many ways.
Bad president, good candidate.
President Trump All he did was sort of allow the reversal back to status quo ante, which is good.
I mean, that's great.
But but the idea that Trump is some sort of magician with electoral votes is is just not supported by the evidence.
I want to talk some more about President Trump's press conference, and then we'll get to the big the big hubbub of the day, which is, of course, Jim Acosta, who loves that dude, Jim Acosta.
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Okay, so President Trump continues at his press conference.
So theme number one of his press conference was, I'm awesome, and everyone who did not sufficiently embrace me loses because I am a magic, magic man.
Okay, that was theme number one.
The number two was Democrats.
If you start going after me and you start trying to leverage me, then I'm just not going to make deals with you.
And this, I think, is relatively fair.
Like, I don't think that Trump has any obligation to make deals with Democrats.
I think, in fact, that Democrats Antipathy for President Trump will prevent any deal-making from taking place, which, as a conservative, is a comfort to me.
I don't want the president making deals with the Democrats.
Bipartisan deals tend to be very bad for the country.
There's a general rule.
So, President Trump says that basically he doesn't want to work with Democrats if Democrats don't want to work with him.
If they do want to work with him, then he's happy to work with them, but he is not going to make deals with them while they decide that they are going to crack down on his tax returns, for example.
So here's President Trump talking about that.
They want to do things.
You know, I keep hearing about investigations, fatigue, like from the time almost from the time I announced I was going to run.
They've been giving us this investigation fatigue.
It's been a long time.
They got nothing.
Zero.
You know why?
Because there is nothing.
But they can play that game, but we can play it better because we have a thing called the United States Senate.
And a lot of very questionable things were done between leaks of classified information and many other elements that should not have taken place.
Now people are very upset about President Trump for saying that partisan investigations will take place on a responsive basis.
I'm not sure why they're upset about that.
It's pretty obvious that partisan investigations are going to take place on a partisan basis.
That's what Democrats have been doing.
Okay, then Trump moves to his... Let's get to the actual meat of the matter.
So the meat of the matter, all of this went by the wayside because President Trump is in this knock-down, drag-out fight with CNN.
And this has been going on since legitimately he was campaigning.
And CNN has acted awfully.
The worst reporter on the CNN team by a fairly long shot is Jim Acosta.
As I said yesterday, find you somebody who loves you, like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
I mean, that dude loves Jim Acosta.
Every possible arena in which Jim Acosta can show how much he loves Jim Acosta, he does.
I mean, dude buys himself flowers, takes himself out for dates.
I mean, the other day, he bought himself an engagement ring, and then he told himself that he couldn't get engaged to himself because that's still illegal, but someday in the future, love will be known as love.
I mean, Jim Acosta, Loves Jim Acosta.
In any case, Jim Acosta decided to use the president's first press conference since the midterms to grandstand.
Because it's a day ending in Y. And Jim Acosta has a microphone.
And things went sideways.
So here is the exchange that is making the rounds between President Trump and Jim Acosta.
I will explain where it got controversial visually if you can't see this.
No, not at all.
No, not at all.
I want them to come into the country, but they have to come in legally.
You know, they have to come in, Jim, through a process.
I want it to be a process.
And I want people to come in.
And we need the people.
You know why we need the people?
Because we have hundreds of companies moving in.
We need the people.
But your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls and so on.
Well, that's true.
But they weren't actors.
They're not going to be doing that.
They weren't actors.
Well, no, it's true.
Do you think they were actors?
They weren't actors.
They didn't come from Hollywood.
These were people, this was an actual...
You know, it happened a few days ago.
There are hundreds of miles away though.
There are hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
That's not an invasion.
Honestly, I think you should let me run the country.
You run CNN.
And if you did it well, your ratings would be much better.
If I may ask one other question.
Mr. President, if I may ask one other question.
That's enough.
What you're seeing now, and what you're about to see, is a white-out intern kind of pops up, and she goes to grab the microphone from Acosta.
She tries to get the microphone from Acosta by reaching over his left arm twice, and then she reaches under his left arm, and his left arm either falls or pushes down.
People are suggesting that Acosta is trying to force her away.
I don't see that here.
What I see is that they come into contact.
But it doesn't look to me as though he's, like, trying to actively push her arm away or anything like that.
And he says, excuse me, miss, as he does it.
So I don't think that's the controversy.
It goes like this.
He kind of, she sits down again.
The exchange continues.
And then Trump continues to go off on Acosta, calling him a rude and terrible person.
Because it's a hoax.
That's enough.
Put down the mic.
Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?
Mr. President.
I'll tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them.
You are a rude, terrible person.
You shouldn't be working for CNN.
Go ahead.
I think that's unbearable.
You're a very rude person.
The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible.
And the way you treat other people are horrible.
You shouldn't treat people that way.
Go ahead.
Go ahead, Peter, go ahead.
In Jim's defense, I've traveled with him and watched him.
He's a diligent reporter who busts his butt like the rest of us.
Well, I'm not a big fan of yours either, so... I understand.
To be honest.
So let me ask you a question if I can.
You repeatedly said... You are the best.
Mr. President, you repeatedly, over the course of... Okay, just sit down, please.
Well, when you report fake news, no, when you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people.
Go ahead.
Mr. President, over the course- Okay, so a couple of things can be true.
As you know, I do not like it when the President says that CNN, even when they report fake news, are the enemy of the people.
That's not language that ought to be used about people in the United States, enemy of the people, unless they're actual terrorists.
But, with that said, when the President is ripping on Jim Acosta, Jim Acosta deserves every rip that he receives there.
Everything the president says about Jim Acosta, about how he is rude to people and how he is grandstanding and about how he is attempting to push himself at the expense of all the other reporters in the room, all of that's right.
Well, this broke into the open because the White House then denied Jim Acosta his hard pass.
Well, a hard pass is basically a security clearance.
It says that you don't have to get checked for security every time you walk onto White House grounds.
So last night, about 8 o'clock, Jim Acosta tried to go to the White House to do his report from outside the White House.
They said, we've revoked your hard pass.
You can't come in here.
Is that completely inappropriate?
No, I think Jim Acosta is a bad reporter.
Not only is he a bad reporter, I think what they should have done is they should have said, listen, there are certain procedures in this room.
The procedure is that once you ask your question and the president answers your question, we are done.
And if he doesn't want to answer more questions from you, he is under no obligation to do so.
Nor is he under an obligation to hold up the entire show while you sit there and rant at him.
That's not a thing that has to be done.
So I think the best possible solution, by the way, would not be to ban Jim Acosta.
It would be to just not allow Jim Acosta to ask a question in the White House press room anymore.
First of all, I think a lot of these press conferences are a waste of time.
I think the amount of new information received at these press conferences is nearly nil.
It is basically grandstanding and TV nonsense.
But with that said, Jim Acosta can be both a disgrace.
Two things can be true at once.
One, Trump His language on the press can be wrong.
Two, Jim Acosta can be a disgrace to his profession who should be immediately replaced forthwith by CNN.
Both of those things can absolutely be true.
Well, in a second, we're going to get to CNN's response to all of this, plus the overblown response of the White House a little bit, a little bit.
I mean, they're right that Acosta's terrible, but they're wrong in another aspect.
I will explain why in just a second.
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All right.
So Jim Acosta is then banned basically from the press room, at least for the moment.
And And Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweets out about his ban from the press room.
And she says that, she said, we stand by, let me find all of her tweets.
She said, we stand by our decision to revoke this individual's hard pass.
We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video.
Okay, well, that's fine.
I mean, okay, but she also said this.
She said, this conduct is, she said, President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his administration.
We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.
This conduct is absolutely unacceptable.
It is also completely disrespectful to the reporter's colleagues not to allow them an opportunity to ask a question.
President Trump has given the press more access than any president in history.
Here's the part that I think you don't need to do.
And the idea again, watching the video, the phrase put his hands on a young woman suggested he sort of grabbed her.
And that's that is not what happened.
The suggestion is that he is legitimately like pushing her away, fending her off or any of that.
I don't see that.
But what I do see is Jim Acosta being a douche.
Because guess what?
Jim Acosta is a douche.
And that means that Jim Acosta, they have fair reason to say, listen, you're wasting everybody's time.
You're stealing everybody else's time.
You don't get to act like this and still ask questions.
So we're just not going to allow Jim Acosta to ask any more questions because he's a grandstander and we're not going to do that.
And I was asked yesterday by somebody at The Wrap, Who are some good White House correspondents?
There are plenty of them.
Jonathan Karl, I think, is a good White House correspondent.
Major Garrett from CBS is a very good White House correspondent.
Jim Acosta is the bottom of the barrel.
He just stinks.
Anyway, CNN responded to all of this with their usual outrage and ire.
This president's ongoing attacks on the press have gone too far.
Ooh, America is in danger because Jim Acosta can no longer grandstand.
They're not only dangerous, they're disturbingly un-American.
While President Trump has made it clear he does not respect a free press, he has a sworn obligation to protect it, a free press is vital to democracy, and we stand behind Jim Acosta and his fellow journalists everywhere.
Hey, Jim Acosta didn't go to jail.
Jim Acosta doesn't have a right to a White House press credential.
CNN has plenty of other credentialed reporters, including Caitlin Collins over at the White House.
CNN is not being rejected from access to the White House.
Jim Acosta is being rejected for the moment because Jim Acosta is terrible at his job.
And then Chris Wallace ripped into Jim Acosta and he said, Appropriate.
He said he embarrassed himself, which is true.
He did embarrass himself.
So a reporter from CNN said, Hey Chris, at least Jim Acosta doesn't work for state TV.
Must be hard to sleep at night.
Also curious, I can't find your comments about how shameful it was when your colleagues campaigned for Donald Trump the other night.
That apparently is a reference to Sean Hannity campaigning with President Trump.
Right, because Sean Hannity is an opinion host who clearly supports President Trump.
Jim Acosta is supposedly an objective journalist whose job it is to elicit the truth.
Okay.
Lindsey Graham responded in the best possible way.
Lindsey Graham 2.0.
2.0.
So he tweeted out, it's apparent to me the White House press corps live in a bubble, and the way they are conducting themselves today will do nothing to improve their standing with the American people, which is obviously true.
Jim, Lindsey Graham's take on this.
Correct.
He scolds the media.
Again, a few things can be true at once.
It can be true that Jim Acosta is terrible at his job.
It can be true that President Trump thrives on this sort of conflict.
And how do you know that he thrives on this sort of conflict?
Because the biggest story of the day, we're now like half an hour into our show, okay?
And the biggest story of the day has not even been touched.
So what was the biggest story of the day?
The President of the United States fired his Attorney General yesterday.
All anyone is talking about is Jim Acosta.
Because President Trump knows that all he has to do is ding the egos of a couple of people in the press, and then they will just spin off into the outer darkness for the rest of time, forgetting to ask actual questions about actual things that are going on.
Also, I would point out, let's look at the disparity in coverage today between President Trump and Jim Acosta on CNN.
People are dying by the hands of the police.
night.
So Tucker, who is a good guy, I have disagreements with Tucker on politics.
That doesn't matter at all.
Last night, protesters went to Tucker Carlson's house.
His wife was inside with their kids.
And the protesters literally tried to break down his front door.
His wife had to hide in a closet with the kids and call mine one one.
Here's some video of the incident.
People are dying by the hands of the police.
To trans women being murdered in the streets. - No policies?
Okay, they're chanting, we know where you sleep at night.
They're chanting, we know where you sleep at night.
Yeah, that's not, that's not dangerous at all.
That's not scary at all.
at night.
They're chanting, we know where you sleep at night.
They're chanting, we know where you sleep at night.
Yeah, that's not dangerous at all.
That's not scary at all.
Just fantastic.
Carlson told the Washington Post, quote, I called my wife.
She'd been in the kitchen alone, getting ready to go to dinner.
She heard pounding on the front door and screaming.
Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.
His wife thought it was a home invasion.
The couple has four children.
None were home at the time.
She locked herself in the pantry.
She called 911.
Carlson said it wasn't a protest.
It was a threat.
They weren't protesting anything specific I had said.
They weren't asking me to change anything.
They weren't protesting a policy or advocating for legislation.
They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.
I mean, I mean, that is ugly, ugly stuff.
And of course, there are apologists, including the ridiculously stupid Matt Iglesias over at Vox.com, the repository of all stupidity.
And again, there are some people at Vox who are not stupid.
I have friends who work for Vox, but if you are looking for a stupid take, Vox is a good place to start.
Matt Iglesias wrote, I think the idea behind terrorizing his family, like it or not, is strategy, is to make them feel some of the fear that the victims of MAGA-inspired violence feel, thanks to the nonstop racial incitement coming from Tucker.
And then he said, I think this is probably not tactically sound, but if your instinct is to empathize with the fear of the Carlson family rather than with the fear of his victims, then you should take a moment to reflect on why that is.
Um, because they tried to break into his house last night?
Maybe that's why that is?
Just ugly, ugly stuff from the media, but we'll see how they cover things today.
I have my doubts that they will cover it in an honest way, or cover it at all.
We'll get a lot more about how President Trump is an ever-present threat to the press, but, you know, the, but, but protesters showing up at Tucker Carlson's house trying to break down his front door, not actually a threat to the press.
Solid stuff.
Okay, I want to get to the firing of Just Sessions, what it means, what it doesn't mean, in just one second.
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OK, so I do want to talk about Jeff Sessions, his firing.
and the intersectional rage of the Democrats.
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So the actual big news of the day is that the attorney general is gone.
So there was a lot of talk about how Attorney General Sessions was in serious trouble.
He'd been in serious trouble for a long time.
President Trump spent an awful lot of time ripping on him on Twitter.
And people like me would be like, dude, you picked him.
And Trump, every couple of weeks, would be like, "My own attorney general is the worst.
"Why in the world did he recuse himself?
"He's supposed to be my best friend, "my sword and my shield." And he was very angry at Jeff Sessions because Sessions, very early on, recused himself from the Trump-Russia investigation because he was involved in the campaign.
And that meant that Rod Rosenstein was overseeing the Mueller investigation, Well, the Mueller investigation is getting about ready to wrap.
We're going to find out in the next few weeks what is in there.
They are apparently putting the final touches on their report, which will, I am sure, be a grenade thrown into the midst of our already chaotic politics.
So that'll just be spectacular.
I'm happy to wait to see what's in there because I don't know what's in there.
You don't know what's in there.
Trump doesn't know what's in there.
Nobody knows what's in there.
But the firing of Jeff Sessions is leading a lot of people to be very worried.
They think that now the new Attorney General is going to crack down on all this.
So Jeff Sessions was fired.
He did not resign.
Donald Trump tweeted out, we are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the DOJ, will become our new acting Attorney General of the United States.
We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service and wish him well.
A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date.
Jeff Sessions put out a letter in which he began by saying, at your request, I am submitting my resignation, which means that Trump fired him.
And he talked about how he tried to abide by the law.
I agree with this.
I always thought Jeff Sessions was unfairly maligned.
You may disagree with him on a number of issues.
I do with regard to, for example, drug prosecutions.
But that does not actually change the fact that unlike his predecessors under the Obama administration, he actually did attempt He was not using the DOJ as a political weapon of the White House, nor was he acting as rearguard for the President of the United States, which I think is good.
I mean, he's the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
Sessions' ouster has created all sorts of consternation because the acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is a little bit more on record with regard to a wide variety of issues.
So, in 2016, he argued that Hillary Clinton should have been criminally charged for her use of a private email server, which, again, I don't see why that's disqualifying.
I think virtually everyone in law enforcement who is not a Clinton devotee believes this.
But more importantly, he also commented back in 2017 that he thinks that the Mueller investigation was overreaching.
In August 2017, he said, Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election meddling investigation he is dangerously close to crossing.
It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like me to conclude that investigating Donald Trump's finances or his family's finances falls completely outside the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else.
So this has led a lot of folks on the Democratic side of the aisle to be deeply fearful that Trump is installing Whitaker specifically to hamstring whatever ancillary investigations spring from the Mueller investigation.
Now, we haven't been talking about that because we've been talking about midterms.
We've been talking about fights with Jim Acosta.
The media are easily distractible.
But this is more of a major issue.
Now, I will say there is pretty solid bipartisan support for the idea that the Mueller investigation should simply come to its terminus.
It should come to its natural conclusion.
Even inside the White House, people just want to let this thing go.
Like, the idea that Trump is trying to shut down the Mueller investigation is just... I see no evidence of that.
Seriously, like, none.
Because Mueller himself has not implied such a thing.
Even James Comey said that Trump didn't really try to shut down the investigation.
He didn't really do anything.
He said some stuff.
But Trump says a lot of stuff.
Nonetheless, Democrats are treating this as red flag number one.
They're on the lookout for bad behavior.
So here is Tom Perez, head of the DNC, saying that this is worse than Watergate already.
Fact check.
It is not worse than Watergate.
Watergate was the Saturday Night Massacre, which was about the firing of Archibald Cox, who's a special prosecutor.
That was an active attempt to undermine and derail an investigation.
That is not happening here.
Trump doesn't like Sessions.
There's no indicator that there's been any sort of boundaries put on the Mueller investigation at all by Sessions or Whitaker.
When that starts to happen, then I think that we can fairly ask whether the president is trying to put the kibosh on it.
But up till now, I've seen no evidence of that.
Not going to stop the Democrats from alarmism, of course.
On a certain level, this is worse than Watergate, because the Saturday Night Massacre, he kept firing Senate-confirmed people until he found Bork, who was a Senate-confirmed person, to do this.
Okay, no, it is not worse than Watergate and that's a wild exaggeration.
Chuck Schumer says the timing is suspect because obviously this is the day after midterms and now Trump gets rid of Sessions.
The idea here is that by getting rid of Sessions with a Republican larger majority in the Senate, now Trump has the capacity to put in a person of his choosing.
The rumor today, the rumor today is that it will be Chris Christie as his attorney general, which just...
Okay.
Here's why Chris Christie would not make a good attorney general.
I actually like the fact that Jeff Sessions was the earliest supporter of President Trump.
Not about support for President Trump.
Trump.
Jeff Sessions treated his job with a level of seriousness befitting the office.
I do not know that Chris Christie will do the same.
I have a feeling that it will be more about Chris Christie fetching President Trump's hamburgers.
I am not a fan of the attorney general being the wingman for the president as Eric Holder was for President Obama.
I'm I think that's dishonest.
I thought it was dishonest when Obama did it.
I would think it were dishonest if it were Chris Christie doing it.
I'm suspicious of Chris Christie.
It seems to me that the President should put into place somebody with a serious legal background and the capacity to actually treat the DOJ as the chief law enforcement tool of the United States, which it basically is.
Here's Chuck Schumer saying the timing is suspect.
I'm not gonna say much.
I'm not gonna say much until I read what they said and why.
I find the timing very suspect, number one.
Okay, so, uh, meanwhile, Eric Holder.
This just shows the hypocrisy of the Democrats.
Eric Holder tweeted this out, which is just insane.
He tweeted out, Mm-hmm.
Eric Holder?
anyone who attempts to interfere with or obstruct the Mueller inquiry must be held accountable.
This is a red line.
We are a nation of laws and norms, not subject to the self-interested actions of one man.
Eric Holder.
You.
That guy?
With the face?
Over there?
You?
Yeah.
Mr. I was held in contempt of Congress for covering up my involvement in Fast and Furious, and then the president asserted executive privilege to shield me from prosecution?
That guy?
And you wonder, honestly, it is stuff like that from Eric Holder that makes people go, fine, Chris Christie, fine, who cares?
Let Trump appoint Melania.
Like, no one cares.
It's because of that.
The radical dishonesty of Democrats leads Republicans to embrace the suck, as Nancy Pelosi was once fond of saying.
Okay, meanwhile, The Democrats cannot get over the fact that they did not sweep in these latest midterm elections.
They did well in the House, but for them that wasn't enough.
There was this weird idea going around among Democrats that they were going to sweep everything.
They were going to take back the Senate.
They were going to take back the House.
They were going to win every close race.
That obviously was not true.
The reason they thought that is because they thought that Obama had created a new normal.
The new normal was Democrats win all the time.
They never lose.
And there was this new, durable coalition that was extendable across time and space with growing demographic groups.
And it turns out that the only person who was able to put together that coalition was Barack Obama.
And then once Obama was off the ballot, then American politics basically went back to American politics as it was before.
Republicans vote for Republicans, Democrats vote for Democrats.
People don't like voting for radicals.
In fact, there was a Sean McElwee, who is, I think he's over at Salon, maybe?
He's a very left-wing, he's at The Nation.
He's a very left-wing analyst.
He had created a list of the eight most progressive Democrats running, and all eight of them lost in the midterms.
So, the Democrats are upset because they had this mythical version of what the United States was that was Pretty roundly refuted during the midterm elections.
This has led to an outsized amount of rage on the left.
So the chief target of such ire has been white women.
So this was the next intersectional group to go.
As I've always said, there's an intersectional hierarchy of victimhood.
If you are at the top of that intersectional hierarchy, then your opinion means everything.
If you are at the bottom of that intersectional hierarchy, your opinion means nothing and you must shut up.
At the bottom are white men, followed by white women.
So the Women's March, which is filled with anti-Semites at the top level.
And by the way, I have to stop here and give credit to Alyssa Milano, who did the right thing.
Alyssa Milano came out and said she is no longer going to associate with the Women's March so long as Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory remain a part of the leadership and refuse to condemn Louis Farrakhan.
Good for Alyssa Milano.
And really, a little intellectual honesty from somebody with whom I disagree.
So seriously, real clap for Alyssa Milano.
The Women's March tweeted this out.
There needs to be accountability and an honest reckoning.
There's a lot of work to do, white women.
A lot of learning.
A lot of growing.
We want to do it with you.
Stay tuned.
Hey, what the Women's March actually means is, white women, why don't you think like we tell you to think?
Because true feminism is telling women how to think.
That's what feminism is really about.
Not women having their own opinions, with which you may agree or disagree, but women voting as you tell them to vote.
Jemele Hill used to work over at ESPN.
She tweeted out 59% of white women voted for Ted Cruz.
53% of white women voted for Donald Trump.
So given these numbers, who is the real face of feminism?
Well, clearly the real face of feminism is Jemele Hill, who tells women that they need to vote how she wants them to vote.
That's what real feminism looks like.
And then Mona Eltaoui, I think that's her name, this far left progressive commentator, she did the same thing.
She said, look at these bigoted white women who voted 59% for Ted Cruz.
So let's get this straight.
Let's get this straight.
95% of black women voted for Beto O'Rourke in Texas.
59% of white women voted for Ted Cruz.
But white women are indoctrinated to vote along intersectionally racist lines.
Black women are just voting their conscience.
Why don't we just suggest that everyone is kind of voting for whom they want to vote for, and it's a free country, so who cares?
But that's not how the left thinks.
So, the next target of their intersectional rage will be white women, which means that the gender gap may actually come down.
Like, good strategy here, Democrats.
Go for that.
Do that.
Make sure that you attack one of the major demographic groups in the United States.
Attack white men, attack white women, the total of which comprises 68% of the American population.
Attack those people.
See how that goes for you.
See if that's going to work out well for you.
It's amazing.
It's like both sides want to lose the suburbs.
Seriously, like Donald Trump will not spend five minutes reaching out to the suburbs.
And so he gets swamped in the suburbs.
And meanwhile, the far left progressive Democrats are telling white women that they're a bunch of gender traitors.
So it's like everyone is just slapping around the suburbs and the suburbs have to decide whether they're going to move with the progressive left or they're going to move with Donald Trump.
I swear, if somebody were to just shake hands with anyone in the suburbs, they would win the suburbs.
Now, you know who gets this?
Cocaine Mitch gets this.
So Cocaine Mitch, who has proved himself to be one of the most apt political operators of our time, he sent a majority leader talking to Dana Perino yesterday.
He says, listen, we got to reach out to the suburbs.
This is what I was saying yesterday.
If Republicans want to win, suburbia is where they're going to do it.
And that means they need to remake those connections.
Well, we definitely need to stop the slide.
We used to do much better in the suburbs across America than we're doing now.
We're happy about the gains that we've made in rural America, which didn't used to be totally Republican like it seems to be now.
Right.
But we ought to be able to do both.
We ought to be able to appeal to our rural and small town constituents.
And do a better job than we did Tuesday in the suburb.
OK, so Mitch McConnell gets it.
If Republicans want to win, then they will listen to Mitch McConnell, because Mitch McConnell, if he's proved anything, that dude is a survivor.
And his Senate majority grew last the other night.
So again, I think that let's not be distracted by all of the battles Between the media and Trump, let's not be distracted even by all of the Mueller stuff.
Let's focus on what really matters, and that is the lives of people across the United States.
If the Republicans focus on that, I think that they win big in 2020.
If they don't, I think they lose big in 2020.
It is pretty much that simple.
Okay, time for things I like and then things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
I have to admit that I always enjoy Michael Moore's political analysis.
He came out yesterday and he said that President Trump is an evil genius.
It's always fun to watch Michael Moore pump up President Trump.
Okay, so he's an evil genius, President Trump.
night was no different.
I mean, the man is a genius in this area.
He's an evil genius.
But to not respect how smart he's been in doing this.
OK, so he's an evil genius, President Trump.
I do love that this is the Democrats can't decide whether he's an evil genius or whether he's a dunce.
The real answer, as I've said before, is that President Trump is a stand in for generic Republican and people don't like Democrats right now.
That's pretty much what's happening here.
The only area in which President Trump... He's good at two things.
He's good at driving out the base.
He gets full credit for that.
And he's good at driving out the opposition's base.
He gets full credit for that, too.
Those are the two things that he is really good at.
Okay, other things that I like...
I'm never going to be on The View.
I've given up on that dream in life.
There are not many dreams in my life that I've had to give up on, but that one I've had to give up on.
Well, I wish that I were on The View because I would like to ask questions.
I have so many questions about The View.
So Joy Behar over on ABC, she said that Republicans won the Senate because of gerrymandering.
She is a quote-unquote political analyst on a mainstream television show, and she thought that Senate seats could be gerrymandered.
That's not how the Senate works.
They're just states.
You can't gerrymander a state.
It's not like the state of Iowa just gerrymanders into Chicago to pick up a few extra votes.
That's not how this works.
So, well done everyone on failing basic civics.
Everyone seems to be doing a fantastic job.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So I wasn't sure whether to put this in Things I Like or Things I Hate, but it is a hilarious story.
So this is according to the UK Telegraph.
A pensioner in... This looks like a pensioner in Denmark.
He has begun a legal battle to be recognized as being 20 years younger than his actual age, so he can go back to work and achieve greater success with women on Tinder.
His name is Emil Rattleband.
He is 69.
He argues that if transgender people are allowed to change sex, he should be allowed to change his date of birth because doctors said he has the body of a 45-year-old.
This guy, not all heroes wear capes.
I mean, just spectacular.
So, the entrepreneur and self-help guru is suing his local authority after they refused to amend his age-unofficial documents.
His case has now gone to a court in the city of Arnhem, in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland.
The case has caused controversy in his homeland, where the Dutch edition of Vice, a news website, asked, is Emile Ratelband disturbed or accidentally extremely woke?
And that would be the question, right?
Because they are the same thing, being extremely woke and being disturbed.
Now the crossover, like, if you had a Venn diagram of extremely woke and disturbed, the Venn diagram is just a circle.
Okay, Mr. Rattlebun was born on March 11, 1949.
He says he feels at least 20 years younger.
He wants to change his birth date to March 11, 1969.
He says, I've done a checkup.
What does it show?
My biological age is 45 years.
When I'm 69, I'm limited.
If I'm 49, I can buy a new house, drive a different car.
I can take up more work.
When I'm on Tinder and I say I'm 69, I don't get an answer.
When I'm 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.
Transgenders can now have their gender changed on their birth certificate.
In the same spirit, there should be room for an age change.
Okay, there are some of us, there are some of us who actually made this, used this as an example, used this as an example of why transgenderism is bad logic.
In fact, there are videos that some of us have cut.
With, like, 70 million views, in which we ask this exact question.
So, good for this guy, because I love it.
The court said there would be practical problems.
This is so good.
Okay, so the judge said he had some sympathy with Mr. Rattleband, as people could now change their gender, which would have once been unthinkable.
But the court said there'd be practical problems in allowing people to change their birth date, as it would mean legally deleting part of their lives.
Oh, you mean like legally deleting the part of your life where you are biologically male, as in your entire life, if you're a transgender female?
Or legally deleting even the part of your life where you identified as a member of the other gender?
The judge asked Mr. Rattleband about the status of his early years from 1949 to 1969, if his official birthday was put back.
He said, for whom did your parents care in those years?
Who was that little boy back then?
The judge asked.
The court is going to deliver a ruling on it.
And the answer is, Who cares?
Shouldn't that be the woke answer?
The woke answer is, who cares?
Your parents cared for it.
We're just rewriting history now.
So if you were a little boy growing up and now you think that you are a woman, were your parents caring for a little boy?
No, because we can change your birth certificate.
So they were apparently caring for a little girl.
You were always a little girl.
So if you say that you are actually 20 years younger than you are, then your parents were caring for nothing.
You didn't exist.
It was all a figment of the imagination.
I love this story so much.
I should have put it in Things I Like.
It's just, I've decided.
It is too wonderful in every possible respect.
Just spectacular stuff.
So, good on that Dutch man for being so woke.
Okay, well, we will be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.
Tomorrow's a Friday.
Man, this week has been eight weeks long.
We'll be back here tomorrow with the mailbag.
Now's a good time to subscribe if you want to ask questions, because then you can have your questions answered.
If not, then you will suffer the pangs of envy for all of the others who get to ask questions.
So go to dailywire.com and subscribe.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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