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Nov. 15, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:09
To Have And Avenatti | Ep. 661
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Michael Avenatti finds himself on the wrong side of the law.
Democrats and Republicans argue over voter fraud.
And the first wave of migrants hits the American border.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh man, a lot to get to today.
Karma, it turns out, has a hell of a right cross.
We will get into everything Michael Avenatti-related.
Plus, I have to tell you, the negotiations over Amazon, as the true story comes out over what cities were willing to offer Amazon, it's pretty spectacular and pretty hilarious.
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All right.
So, you all remember Michael Avenatti, my dark horse pick for the 2020 presidential election?
And he was my dark horse because he was the most militant of the Democrats.
He was the guy who kept talking about punching President Trump, and I've got to hit back, and we've got to punch twice as hard, and when they go low, then we punch back, and all this kind of stuff.
Well, it turns out that there are now allegations that he didn't just punch back against President Trump, he punched back against a woman.
Here are the allegations, courtesy of KTLA.
Michael Avenatti, who skyrocketed to fame as a critic of President Donald Trump and the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested on Wednesday and booked on a felony domestic violence charge, according to the LAPD.
Now, you'll recall that Michael Avenatti is also the guy Who trotted out Julie Swetnick to claim that Brett Kavanaugh had been involved in gang rape.
That Brett Kavanaugh, who is now justice on the Supreme Court, had been involved in getting girls drunk or drugged at parties, and then he had involved himself in gang rape trains.
And Michael Avenatti pushed all that out there, and Democrats jumped on it because Michael Avenatti is their friend.
Michael Avenatti is somebody who says mean things about President Trump.
And that's our only standard for good people now.
If you say something mean about President Trump, this means inherently you're a good person.
Well, in this case, it turns out that Michael Avenatti, the evidence isn't in, right?
We don't know.
We don't know.
Presumption of innocence applies.
Michael Avenatti, we don't know whether he's guilty or whether he is innocent in a court of law.
But it's kind of ironic that a guy who suggested believe all women is now saying, well, don't believe this one over here with the black eye.
The alleged victim in the case had visible injuries, according to Officer Tony Im, a police spokesman.
Avenatti slammed the allegation as completely bogus and fabricated and meant to do harm to my reputation in a statement released by his law firm.
Avenatti says he's mulling a 2020 presidential run.
He posted $50,000 bail and was released about four hours after being arrested on the same block where he lives in a skyscraper apartment on Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City.
Police didn't provide any details about the alleged victim, including that person's relationship to Avenatti.
And here is what Avenatti had to say after being released on $50,000 bail.
I have never struck a woman.
I never will strike a woman.
I have been an advocate for women's rights my entire career and I'm going to continue to be an advocate.
I am not going to be intimidated from stopping what I am doing.
Believe all women.
Except that one.
Who I allegedly hit.
Don't believe her.
She's a liar.
So, this is all going very well for Michael Avenatti.
Avenatti, by the way, is now- he says he'll be fully exonerated, and he suggested that he- that the woman hit him first, apparently.
This was apparently one of the suggestions.
Stormy Daniels, who of course is the great feminist of our time, has released a statement on the incident saying these are serious and obviously very troubling allegations.
But right now, that is all they are, allegations.
We should all reserve judgment until the investigation, an investigation Michael has said he welcomes, is complete.
And that's what I'm going to do.
Agree.
But kind of weird coming from the same people who said that Brett Kavanaugh should be run out of town on a rail, lose his Supreme Court judgeship, lose his actual life, career, career, family, on the basis of unverified and unverifiable allocations and allegations that are now being investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee for being false, probably the Julie Swetnick allegations, which are now under like full investigation by the Senate.
Apparently, this is according to TMZ, the alleged incident occurred Tuesday night, but there was another confrontation police on Wednesday between the two at an exclusive apartment building in the Century City area of Los Angeles.
Law enforcement sources say Avenatti was arrested Wednesday after a woman filed a felony domestic violence report.
The TMZ folks were told her face was swollen and bruised with red marks on both cheeks.
Security apparently Apparently, here's what TMZ says.
We're told Wednesday afternoon the woman was on the sidewalk on her cell phone with sunglasses covering her eyes, sobbing and screaming on the phone, I can't believe you did this to me.
I'm going to get a restraining order against you.
We're told security brought her inside the building, took her upstairs, and Michael showed up five minutes later and ran into the building.
He screamed repeatedly, she hit me first.
So this is, that's great.
She Hit Me First, by the way, is not an actual defense to domestic violence allegations.
He apparently then angrily added, this is BS, this is effing BS.
We're told he tried getting into the elevator, but security then denied him access, and then cops showed up and escorted Avenatti into a corner of the apartment lobby and spoke with him for five to ten minutes before taking him into custody.
A law enforcement source said on Tuesday that Avenatti kicked this woman out of the apartment, and that's when the alleged domestic violence occurred.
And then she went back to the apartment on Wednesday to retrieve her belongings and called police to stand by in case things got heated.
So, good stuff all the way around.
Avenatti, for his part, is now blaming Jacob Wohl.
So all of the storylines are colliding.
The writers of season four of Trump.
And I will say this.
They really know how to ratchet up the tension and bring back old storylines that we'd forgotten about, like Michael Avenatti and Brett Kavanaugh.
Like, we were beyond those storylines.
And then the writers were like, you know what?
Let's bring that back.
Let's bring that back.
Like, whoa, good callback, writers.
So, Jacob Wohl, right?
That was a story like three weeks ago.
And we're like, okay, you know what?
Let's see if we can somehow intertwine these strands and really build this thing to an epic conclusion.
For the second or third episode of season four of Trump, the show.
So Michael Avenatti apparently is now blaming Jacob Wohl.
Jacob Wohl, you'll recall, is a big Trump supporter who was recently implicated in accusations that he was attempting to falsely malign Robert Mueller, suggest that Robert Mueller was responsible for Some sort of rape allegations, extra marital affairs, and Wohl had created this entire fake intelligence company apparatus that was gonna reveal the deep dark truth about Robert Mueller.
Well now, Avenatti is blaming Jacob Wohl.
So this is kind of awesome.
He says, So, all of these strands are being brought back together.
So, that's great.
If it turns out that Jacob Wohl is behind a false allegation about Michael Avenatti, then we get to watch the world explode again.
again.
Surefire then retreated a report about the case with an additional comment.
Surefire intelligence strikes again.
So that's great.
If it turns out that Jacob Wohl is behind a false allegation about Michael Avenatti, then we get to watch the world explode again.
And then Michael Avenatti becomes a frontrunner again.
So who the hell knows?
If it turns out that all this is false and Jacob Wohl made it up about Michael Avenatti, then Michael Avenatti shoots back to the top of the heap That's how our presidential politics go these days.
There are a few lessons to be learned here.
One, you know what's great in the United States?
Due process and the presumption of innocence.
Those things are awesome.
And maybe Michael Avenatti and Democrats will learn a valuable lesson here.
That regardless of your political leanings, it's good that we have a system that protects your innocence until you are proven guilty.
Number two, what the hell is going on?
Maybe that's what we should learn.
What is going on?
What?
Lesson number three, if a guy ever says, believe all women, and he just spends all his time shouting, believe all women, I would say that a certain amount of time, those are the guys that you should trust the least with women.
Because, honest to goodness, that is such a virtue-signaling position that makes no sense in the real world.
That it makes you suspicious of the person who says it in the first place.
So, all of this is absolutely delightful, obviously.
And by delightful, I mean garbage.
But, welcome to the world of Trump Season 4.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with President Trump.
It's just that everything is crazy.
Okay, meanwhile, I have to make a note.
It's kind of a tag note on this Amazon moving to New York and Washington, D.C.
story to Crystal City.
This is pretty spectacular.
So, New York and Virginia collectively have offered more than $2 billion in tax credits, rebates, and other incentives to attract Amazon.
And as I mentioned when I discussed Amazon yesterday and the day before, I said it's kind of ironic that Democrats have suddenly realized that if you lower taxes, And allow people more freedom without regulation that it attracts businesses.
Suddenly they are saying this about Amazon.
So it's okay to have low taxes for Amazon, but everybody else has to pay higher taxes.
I do love this.
So Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked about this because he's a Democrat.
And a lot of Democrats were saying, uh, Governor Cuomo, you say corporations are bad and they don't pay a high enough tax rate, and then you're giving all sorts of goodies to Amazon.
So what's the deal, Governor Cuomo?
So Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is in a run-and-gun battle with his brother, Chris Cuomo, for dumbest Cuomo brother, he defended the deal.
He argued that New York has to offer incentives because of its comparatively high taxes.
No, ya think?
Ya think?
Maybe your taxes are too high and that's why you have to offer special tax breaks to get businesses to move in?
I love this.
He says, the lack of self-awareness here is just tremendous.
I love it so much.
So here is what Governor Cuomo said.
He said, quote, It's not a level playing field to begin with.
All things being equal, if we do nothing, they're going to Texas.
Right, right.
These are your policies, my friend.
These are the policies that are, and if you're a business in New York, all you should do is now go over to de Blasio's office and go over to Cuomo's office and say, listen, we're investigating moving to Texas.
How about you give us a tax break?
And Cuomo will be like, well, you know, we're not very competitive.
Maybe we should give a tax break to that company.
So this is what I urge every business in the city of New York to do.
Go over to the offices of Andrew Cuomo right now and threaten to move to Texas.
You know, get a P.O.
box in Dallas or something.
And then go over to de Blasio's office, hand him a groundhog, and say to him, Mayor de Blasio, we're gonna leave unless you give us some sort of tax breaks.
And presumably, the tax breaks will then be forthcoming.
So, pretty great stuff from the Democrats.
Other great stuff from the Democrats with regard to Amazon.
I do love this so much.
So there are a bunch of cities.
That we're trying to lure Amazon and BuzzFeed News has sort of a rundown on what those cities were offering Amazon in order to lure them there for their second headquarters.
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So it's not just that Washington DC and New York were using all sorts of incentives to Northern Virginia.
We're using all sorts of incentives to lure Amazon.
Some of the other incentives that were being used to lure Amazon are pretty spectacular.
According to BuzzFeed News, cold cash wasn't the only thing local governments used to lure Amazon.
They made other desperate overtures as well, including exclusive Amazon-only executive lounges at local airports, a personal appeal from William Shatner himself.
I kid you not.
Very weird.
Oh!
Amazon!
Come!
We need you!
Right here!
Come on!
Now!
And relocation reimbursements for every migrating employee.
And some of these are just spectacular.
Some of these are so good.
So Boston didn't offer the same billion-dollar tax incentives as other HQ2 finalists.
Instead, it hoped that its pool of top university talent would draw them.
But they committed to $75 million in funding over 10 years to maintain home prices around the proposed 8 million square feet of development needed for HQ, and $13 million in workforce training grants.
So all these leftist cities, happy to pay off big corporations to move Into town.
Chicago was happy to give 2.25 billion dollars in incentives and potentially more.
Half of that offered in the form of tax credits.
400 million allocated to infrastructure spending.
Apparently, it was Chicago that enlisted William Shatner to narrate its proposal video.
Come to Chicago!
Okay, this is my favorite one.
Okay, really, this is my favorite one.
I love it.
Columbus, Ohio, or just we're speaking at The Ohio State University, they created a 1,300-page pitch for Amazon.
They offered nearly a half billion dollars.
They granted Amazon a 15-year 100% property tax abatement, which means they wouldn't have to pay any property taxes.
They also offered a 15 year 35% income tax refund, which is up to $50 million annually.
But here is the best part.
This is so good.
City officials vowed to create a task force to prevent what Columbus refers to as an unacceptable murder rate.
Again, Columbus said that they would start investigating murders to lure Amazon to Columbus.
So before Amazon was going to come to Columbus, the city council in Columbus was like, you know what?
And the mayor was like, you know what?
People getting killed in our sh—whatever.
You know, we have an unacceptably high—whatever.
Unacceptably high murder rate, people shooting—well, no biggie.
Amazon's coming?
Oh.
You know what, guys?
Maybe we should crack down on the murder here.
Maybe we should crack down on the murder.
So, three cheers for capitalism, finally getting democratic cities to acknowledge that murder is bad.
All it took was a little bit of capitalist ingenuity to get Columbus to acknowledge they may have a murder problem in their own city.
So, well done, Democrats, who it turns out, when you want jobs in your city, you actually have to lower the murder rate in your city.
So, all of this is pretty wonderful.
Okay, meanwhile, there's a big argument that is broken out between right and left over voter fraud.
So, the right is looking at Florida and saying, look at the people in Florida.
Look at the election officials in Florida.
They're obviously not abiding by the law.
They're obviously attempting to do something.
Is it voter fraud?
We don't know.
Here's the responsible take on what's happening down in Florida.
The law is not being abided by.
This makes you suspicious that the law is being violated for political reasons.
We don't know how many ballots have been counted that are illegal.
Is it going to swing the election?
We don't have evidence it's going to swing the election yet.
But should we be suspicious?
Sure, when people break the law, you should be suspicious, right?
That is the responsible way to talk about voter fraud.
Then there's the way that President Trump talked about voter fraud with The Daily Caller yesterday.
Here's what he said about voter fraud generally.
He said, The Republicans don't win, and that's because of potentially illegal votes.
When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote, and they go around in circles, sometimes they go in their car, they put on a different hat, they put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.
Nobody takes anything.
It's really a disgrace what's going on.
Note number one, not a lot of evidence that people are going and voting, going back out to the parking lot, putting on a different hat, walking back in and voting again.
Most jurisdictions do have a signature match.
Most jurisdictions, you do have to give an address that actually matches up with the name that you are giving.
So, it's not quite, you can just, I mean, maybe at Tammany Hall and like, In like 1880, maybe you could do this?
Maybe like if you watch the gangs of New York, maybe that's what Trump was doing, he was watching gangs of New York and then he was like, oh okay, that's how voting goes.
This is the best part.
Now, I don't know what sort of cereal President Trump is buying.
ID.
They try to shame everybody by calling them racist or calling them something, anything they can think of when you say you want voter ID.
But voter ID is a very important thing.
Now, I don't know what sort of cereal President Trump is buying.
I don't believe you actually have to have ID to buy cereal.
That's an interesting take.
It's a hot take.
Okay, I guess.
Voter ID to buy cereal?
Maybe the frosted flakes, I don't know what they're frosted with, but things are wild over there.
Well, all of this has driven the Democrats to say, oh, look at Trump.
He's talking about voter fraud.
He's undermining our elections!
We saw this from Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.
Nate Silver put out a tweet saying, As I said a few days ago, Guys, you have been saying since 2016 that Donald Trump won in 2016 because of the Russians.
So we can start with that.
that if he lost an election, he would say that it was a stolen election.
As I said a few days ago, guys, you have been saying since 2016 that Donald Trump won in 2016 because of the Russians.
So we can start with that.
But it's not just that, right?
Republicans, Martha McSally in Arizona.
There was a, there was a very close election in Arizona.
It involves a recount.
She lost the recount.
You know what she did?
She said, oh, I lost the recount.
I guess I'll go home now.
I'll go back to my slot in the House of Representatives.
Republicans, when they lose elections generally, in recounts, don't protest those elections.
It's Democrats who are going around literally saying, not just implying with voter ID and serial, but literally going around and suggesting that when they lose an election, it is absolutely due to voter fraud.
And it's every major Democrat now who wants to run for president.
So, Sherrod Brown, who's a senator from Ohio, He's kind of Captain Rumpel.
You know, that's his schtick, is that he walks around looking like Martin Sheen in Wall Street.
I came from a union house, and that's what I'm doing here.
So Sherrod Brown, who wants to run for president, just won his latest race in Ohio, and he says if Stacey Abrams, who is the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, and who lost, who's going to lose, fair and square to Brian Kemp in Georgia, If she loses, it's because the election was stolen.
I'm not hearing the same whining from Nate Silver about the undermining of our electoral integrity when Sherrod Brown openly says that if Stacey Abrams loses in Georgia, it was stolen.
If Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it.
It's clear.
It's clear.
And I say that publicly, it's clear.
What they're trying to do in Florida to the gubernatorial candidate and to the Senate candidate running for re-election.
What they tried to do in Ohio with some success by voter purging.
What they did in Georgia when they shut down rural precincts that were predominantly African Americans where many people simply don't have transportation to get to the polls.
Okay, this is irresponsible and it's a lie.
There was no attempt to shut down rural precincts in Georgia.
There were some malfunctions of machines in Georgia, which were pretty quickly rectified.
So Sherrod Brown, and he's speaking of the National Action Network, so this is obviously his attempt to reach out to the African-American base and suggest that they are being unduly barred from elections, which is just nonsense.
In fact, in Georgia, the black population, again, in this particular election, outvoted its percentage of the normal population in terms of overall electoral percentage, is my understanding.
And it's not just Sherrod Brown.
It's not just Sherrod Brown.
It's other mainstream Democrats who are dropping this sort of crap on a regular basis now.
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Okay, so it's not just Sherrod Brown who wants to run for president doing this.
Hillary Clinton is doing this, which says to me that maybe she wants to run for president again.
Honestly, normally when a presidential candidate loses, suddenly they become a lot more honest.
Suddenly they become a lot more honest.
They tell you all the things that were really on their mind, what they really thought about things.
But Hillary Clinton is acting like she's pandering to the radical base.
I love this.
Hillary Clinton, who was saying before the election, if Trump loses, he's gonna say it was stolen.
Now she's saying that Stacey Abrams would have won if it weren't for voter suppression.
So, basically, you have the left claiming voter suppression.
There's virtually no evidence of voter suppression.
Like, active voter suppression attempts to keep Legally registered people from voting across the country.
There's no evidence of this.
All the attempts to suggest that voter ID represents voter suppression is absolute nonsense.
Again, you do have ID not to buy cereal, but to buy alcohol, to buy cigarettes.
We use ID every time.
Every time we are, I mean, when I get, when I use my credit card half the time, I have to show photo ID.
The idea that voter ID is somehow a bar to black people voting is belied by every statistic from 2008 and 2012 and 2018.
And 2016 as well.
People vote because they want to vote.
And if you don't want to vote, you don't vote.
But how many people are being rejected from the polls because of voter ID?
The answer is none.
The Democrats have shown no evidence that voter suppression has resulted in lower black turnout, for example.
Black turnout in 2012 was wildly outsized in states like Ohio, which is why Ohio went for President Obama.
On the left, they like to say voter suppression.
On the right, they like to say voter fraud.
So the right is worried about people illegally voting.
The left is worried about legal people not being able to vote.
Neither of those things is really happening at a rapid rate, okay?
The idea that there are lots and lots and lots of illegal votes out there...
There's not a lot of evidence to support that.
There's also not a lot of evidence to support the idea that legally registered people are being barred from the polls.
That's a bunch of nonsense, too.
But you never hear the same outcry from people in the media about Hillary Clinton openly saying, openly saying, that if a Democrat loses in Georgia, the election was stolen.
Doesn't that undermine electoral integrity a lot more than Donald Trump talking about using voter ID to buy cereal?
We all know Trump says stuff, but when Democrats, mainstream Democrats say that elections have been lost due to voter suppression, that does undermine electoral integrity.
I know Stacey well.
She was one of my really strong surrogates in the campaign.
If she'd had a fair election, she already would have won.
What nonsense.
If she would have had a fair election, she would have won.
What made the election unfair?
All the Democrats' attempts to talk about voter suppression because Brian Kemp, who is the Secretary of State in Georgia, now the future governor of Georgia, was purging the voter rolls of people who were dead or who had changed addresses?
Okay, that is not voter suppression.
And then it was Chuck Schumer, right?
Chuck Schumer says, well, Bill Nelson, who's the current senator in Florida, who's about to lose his seat to Rick Scott, in a fair and square election.
They're having a recount.
Scott's going to have too big a margin for Nelson to make up.
That's not stopping Schumer from saying that Nelson is going to win, and that if the votes are fairly counted, Nelson will win.
Again, the idea here is if my side loses, they cheated.
And wherever that's coming from, that is not good for the feeling of electoral integrity in the United States.
He's won a majority of the votes.
And as long as they're counted, he will continue being senator from Florida.
President Trump and Governor Scott have just lied.
They've said there's fraud when their own Republican officials in Florida have said there's no fraud.
They're trying to shut down the election because they're afraid of the consequences if they don't.
This is such crap.
It's such nonsense.
It's not true.
Senator Rubio has said over and over and over people are violating election law.
They are in Florida.
The Broward County election officials, they keep saying they can't meet deadlines.
Alex Seitzwald, who reports for NBC News, was down there yesterday.
He was tweeting pictures of what's going on at the election headquarters for Broward County.
The answer is nothing, literally nothing.
So they're saying they can't meet deadlines.
At the same time, they're not even attempting to comply with deadlines.
There is nothing wrong with saying, why in the world won't you guys just do your damn job and count the ballots how you're supposed to do under Florida law?
We do have laws governing this stuff.
That doesn't mean that fraud is going to overturn an election.
It does mean that if you are making no attempt to comply with the law, I'm a little suspicious of you.
And I have a reason to be a little suspicious of you.
All of this, however, ties into a broader attempt by Democrats to drive out the black vote in 2020.
That's really what this is about.
By claiming that there are a bunch of white folks who are trying to suppress black votes, this is why Democrats are doing this.
This is why Democrats are... Democrats understand that the crucial factor in 2016, more than anything else, is that in heavy urban areas, and in areas with heavy black turnout in 2012, folks didn't show up for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
So what they're trying to say now is Trump is a racist, and Trump is trying to suppress your vote, so you better show up in 2020 and vote for Democrats.
And maybe that'll shift Ohio back, maybe it'll shift Wisconsin back with a heavy Milwaukee vote, maybe it'll shift Pennsylvania back with a heavy Philadelphia vote.
That is the goal here.
They're trying to rebuild the intersectional coalition.
Now, President Trump is fighting back against that in a couple of ways.
One way that he's fighting back against that is with criminal justice reform.
So, he has pursued criminal justice reform in what I think is a pretty obvious attempt to win support in minority communities, because the idea here is that our criminal justice system cracks down on minorities too heavily, even though there's not a lot of evidence of systemic racism.
In the criminal justice system, it is true that the laws do hit black folks disproportionately because black folks are disproportionately involved in, for example, marijuana distribution crimes, for example.
Here is President Trump talking about criminal justice reform yesterday, which he has embraced, which is really interesting because, you know, five minutes ago he was suggesting death penalty for drug dealers.
Here he is basically saying, well, maybe we ought to just let a bunch of people out of prison if they are, in fact, engaged in drug crimes.
First, it will provide new incentives for low risk inmates to learn the skills they need to find employment, avoid old habits and follow the law when they're released from prison.
That reduce their chances of recidivism and, in other words, reduce their chances of going back to prison.
Second, this legislation will allow federal inmates to be placed closer to their home communities in order to help facilitate family visitation.
Third, the bill includes reasonable sentencing reforms while keeping dangerous and violent criminals off our streets.
Among other changes, it rolls back some of the provisions of the Clinton crime law Okay, so there are some good things about this bill, there are some things I don't like about the bill.
One of the good things about the bill is the idea of keeping people in prisons closer to their hometown makes a lot of sense, because obviously you want people to be able to visit.
Some of this was driven by Jared Kushner, whose dad was in prison for a while, and he was unable to visit his father in prison, and so he's been pushing very hard for this.
Some other parts of the bill?
You know, as far as reducing federal mandatory minimums, for example, on certain crimes, that's a lot more unpopular among members of the Republican base.
But there's no question Trump is trying to reach out to minority communities with this.
I mean, that's why, even in that shot of Trump right there, where he's talking, you can see in the background there are a lot of brown and black faces, specifically because this is a political attempt by President Trump to reach out to those crowds, just in a purely boiled-down political manner.
In a second, I want to talk a little bit more about criminal justice reform, and then I want to talk about what Democrats are doing to try and label Trump racist anyway.
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So, we have a little bit more on criminal justice reform and also the Democrats' push in 2020 for minority votes.
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All right.
So, you know, the criminal justice reform bill that President Trump is pushing, as I say, some of it is good and some of it is not so good.
But, you know, Daniel Horowitz has a good piece about this over at Conservative Review, talking about the flaws in the criminal justice system.
So, he points out that there are some criminals who have been let out of prison in similar situations, who are obviously not meant to be out of prison.
Because there are certain cases in which people have pled down to crimes and by pleading down to these particular crimes, they've gotten off on more severe crimes.
And this means that there are people who have actually committed pretty severe crimes who are going to get out of prison based on criminal justice reform.
With that said, President Trump is obviously attempting to reach out to Different communities, and that's something that's good politically for him.
Democrats, however, are counting on winning the same amount of the black vote they did in 2012, and they're counting on heavy black turnout.
This is why you have people like Nancy Pelosi hanging out with Al Sharpton.
Again, it is amazing to me that Democrats are allowed to hang out with Al Sharpton with no questions asked.
Al Sharpton is a race hustler of the worst possible variety.
Al Sharpton is an anti-Semite of the worst possible variety.
Nancy Pelosi will hang out with Al Sharpton, though, and then thank him for helping to save America.
Thank you for helping take back America.
People all over the place are calling me, writing in the airports here and there.
Thank you for saving America.
I give those thanks to you.
Thank you for saving America.
Reverend Sharpton, thank you for saving America.
Okay, I mean, why we're not showing that on a loop is beyond me.
Republicans should be showing that on a loop.
Al Sharpton's one of the worst people in modern American politics.
He has been for decades.
And there's Nancy Pelosi on the podium, championing him.
The intersectional coalition is in a rebuild mode.
That's why Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, she says she wants to run for president because women are called to stop Trump.
So it's not just black folks who are called to stop Trump.
It is women who are called to stop Trump, according to Senator Gillibrand.
And I think there are many women who will look at what President Trump has done to this country, dividing us, tearing us apart, really at the seams and destroying the line between what's right and what's wrong.
I think women will feel called to this moment as to whether they need to run, whether they need to share their vision for America.
Okay, so that's her routine.
Elizabeth Warren's doing the same routine.
She says, Trump divides us with racism.
Again, it's Democrats over and over and over who are accusing President Trump of being divisive, even at a time when he's pretty much attempting to reach across boundaries with things like criminal justice reform.
Here's Elizabeth Warren saying, Trump is dividing us with racism.
Not me.
Not I. It is not I. At the National Action Network, again, with Al Sharpton, trying to divide us based on race.
No, it's President Trump who's trying to do all of that.
Donald Trump still practices the dark art of ruling by fear.
Fear designed to pit Americans against Americans.
You know, we have seen this roadshow before.
It is the old divide and conquer strategy.
Hate and racism have divided America for a very long time.
Okay, the divide-and-conquer strategy that's actually being employed is being employed by everyone, but it's being employed more by the left as a mainstream tactic than the right.
Now, I've criticized the reactionary right when I think they're engaging in identity politics.
I don't like that sort of thing.
But the Democrats have made it a main part of their platform, and they are making it even more of a main part of their platform.
This is where Democrats could be making a mistake.
Really, electorally speaking, Democrats did well with suburbia this year because they seemed less threatening than President Trump.
But if they continue with this routine, this intersectional coalition routine, this identity politics routine, black people, you should hate Trump because he's a racist.
Women, you should hate Trump because he's a sexist.
Hispanics, you should hate Trump because he's a racist.
You do this too often, and then you suggest that all of Trump's supporters are racist, and there is, in fact, blowback.
So when Sherrod Brown, whose main appeal in Ohio is that he is considered a blue-collar moderate reaching out to rural whites, when he says that he's running for president to stop President Trump's hate speech, giving license to racist violence, I'm not sure how he thinks that's actually going to help him win states like Ohio.
I mean, a lot of my colleagues have thought about wanting to be president for a long time.
And I really haven't until this election.
I mean, people have asked me.
I've thought a little bit about it because I'm like you are, Chris.
I'm worried about my country.
I'm worried about longtime young federal judges that he puts on the bench.
I'm worried long term about climate change.
I'm worried about the hate speech coming out of the White House.
And that's given license to for people to engage in racist or worse racist rhetoric or worse.
Okay, they're doubling down on stupid.
All they have to do is run against President Trump on the basis that they are more moderate than President Trump, that he's too extreme.
Instead, they're running on the basis that President Trump is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
All of his followers are racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes.
This is not the way you're going to win back Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Ohio.
And yet, this is exactly what Democrats are doing on a routine basis right now, which is really dumb.
Again, all Democrats have to do is say that President Trump overstates his case.
There are serious problems in the country, and we have to deal with them rationally, but President Trump is not a rational person.
Like, I don't want to give Democrats electoral advice because I would prefer them to lose.
But the campaign that they're running right now is bad for the country.
The campaign that suggests that everybody has to be broken down by race and class in separate groups to oppose President Trump, it's pretty ugly, ugly stuff.
And meanwhile, the news is that hundreds of migrants in the caravan traveling from Central America have been done arriving.
In the northern Mexico border city of Tijuana, setting up a potential confrontation with American authorities.
We're gonna give you the update on that in just a second.
So, the migrants are arriving in this caravan.
They've arrived in Tijuana, and it marks the end of one struggle, according to the New York Times, in making it safely across the U.S.
border.
It signaled the start of another to get across that border, something President Trump has promised to impede, even for those seeking asylum.
A few of the migrants were trying to figure out how to get appointments with American border officials to present their case for sanctuary, but many of them were trying to figure out what to do now.
Were they going to try and seek sanctuary, try to cross illegally, or remain in Mexico?
There's video of some of these folks trying to hop the fence from Tijuana into the San Diego area.
Here is what that looked like.
There's a bunch of people who have like climbed up the fence.
They're sort of sitting on top of the fence.
Apparently, these folks jumped the fence, and then they saw Border Patrol, and they sort of just hung out near the fence and then climbed back over.
So, the notion that they just kind of fled into the unprotected wilds of the United States is not actually true.
However...
When President Trump said there are people who are trying to illegally enter the country in this caravan, obviously that was true.
Now is it a crisis that requires thousands of troops on the southern border?
I don't think so, but by the same token, the notion that these folks are just coming here to abide by the law, there's not a lot of evidence of that either.
Some of them are, And some of them aren't.
Authorities in Tijuana said they expected between 1,500 and 2,000 migrants associated with the caravan to arrive by the end of the day on Thursday, with many hundreds more showing up throughout the rest of the week.
That influx could possibly overwhelm the city's resources.
Another 2,400 migrants associated with two other separate caravans were in Mexico City on Wednesday, according to the president of that city's Human Rights Commission, and they are staying in a vast temporary shelter set up in a sports stadium.
You do have to ask why it is that the Mexican government is helping to Bring these folks to the American border.
Like, if the Mexican government wants to help these folks out, it could just give them residency.
It's not going to do that.
They're obviously moving folks to America's southern border, and that is not the mark of a government that wants to work smoothly with that of the United States.
Now, President Trump is right to be worried about illegal immigration, and he's not wrong to suggest that we have to vet the people coming in across the southern border.
However, they're not a critical threat to America's national security, because we do have people at the southern border right now.
And also, when Democrats deny that illegal immigration is a problem, they're wrong too.
That also is not accurate.
Meanwhile, there's a lot of news about the Mueller probe.
Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal today, special counsel Robert Mueller's office is now exploring whether longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone tried to intimidate and discredit a witness who's contradicting Mr. Stone's version of events about his contacts with WikiLeaks.
So, as you'll recall, the Mueller investigation is trying to look into the idea that Trump campaign associates were working with the Russians, specifically WikiLeaks, which is a Russian-backed front group, to release information about Hillary Clinton in advance of the election in order to harm her.
In grand jury sessions and interviews, prosecutors have repeatedly asked about emails, text messages, and online posts involving Roger Stone and his former friend, Randy Credico, a former New York radio personality.
Stone has asserted that Credico is his back channel to WikiLeaks, a controversial transparency group, which Credico denies.
They're apparently looking at texts between the two of them, suggesting that Credico had access in advance to the situation with WikiLeaks, and that he was passing that along to Roger Stone.
Then the idea would be that Stone was coordinating with the Trump campaign.
So you have to connect a lot of dots to get to President Trump here.
Mr. Mueller's team is examining whether Stone, along with several other pro-Trump activists, knew in advance about WikiLeaks' release of Democrat emails in the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
And then the question becomes, who is Roger Stone talking to on the other end with regard to the Trump campaign?
President Trump is obviously agitated about all of this.
He was tweeting out earlier today about how angry he is at the Mueller report.
And the fact is that, you know, I don't know how worried he should be at this point, I think that it's a long stretch for him to be implicated in any of this, but we're going to have to wait for the report to come out in the end.
Anyway, here is what President Trump was tweeting out a little bit earlier today.
He said, the inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess.
They found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts.
They're screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.
They're a disgrace to our nation and don't care how many lives they ruin.
These are angry people, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller.
Who worked for Obama for eight years.
Fact check, he worked for Obama for four years, he worked for President Bush for eight years.
They won't even look at all of the other bad acts and crimes on the other side.
A total witch hunt like no other in American history.
And then he talks about Bob Mueller protecting Crooked Hillary and Comey and McCabe and Lisa Page and her lover Peter S, that'd be Peter Strzok, and all of his friends on the other side.
The only collusion is Democrats with Russia and many others.
Now listen, I think there's a case to be made that Hillary Clinton should be, should be, Investigated.
Her campaign should be investigated for ties to, for ties including the Fusion GPS tie to the Russian collusion dossier and all the rest of it.
But we're gonna have to wait to see what comes out in this report before we can actually make a judgment.
I'm not gonna prejudge evidence that has not actually, that has not actually been released at this point.
Okay, time to Time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.
So things I like, as you know, I'm a big baseball fan.
I've been getting into a book by Joe Torre, or really about Joe Torre, called The Yankee Years, written with Tom Verducci, and it's really a fun read.
It's all about Joe Torre's tenure as manager of the Yankees, beginning in 1996 and stretching for more than a decade, and how he had to deal with Steinbrenner and how he had to deal with his own team.
Again, if you're into baseball and you like baseball books, then this is a good book for you.
The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci.
Go check it out right now.
It's a lot of fun.
You know, one more thing that I like that I forgot.
We are going to be recognized by the National Radio Hall of Fame today as the up-and-comer, as one to watch.
They're giving us an award.
So we thank them for that.
That's very kind of them.
So that's a fun thing.
So I will have a trophy for the first time since I won a spelling bee back in third grade, I guess, if there's a trophy that comes along with this, which I hope there is.
I mean, come on.
What fun is an award if there's no trophy?
So that's pretty cool, the National Radio Hall of Fame, pointing out the obvious there, which is that we are ones to watch.
So that's kind of fun.
Okay, back to things that I hate real fast.
So I do love Bill de Blasio.
So, Bill de Blasio, who just offered the store, I mean, really the store, to Amazon.
He said, well, if Amazon comes here, they have to understand that they live by our values.
You mean, the communist values that you waived when you gave them a bunch of tax breaks to bring them to Queens?
Those values?
Here's Mayor Bill de Blasio, an idiot.
Amazon understood that if you're going to come to New York City, you have to live with our values.
And in the end, what we're going to see is not only a vast number of jobs, it's by far the biggest number of new jobs this city's ever seen.
I mean, I don't even know what that means.
They have to live by our values?
What does that even mean they have to live by our values?
What do they think, that Amazon was going to come in and start rounding up all the gays or something?
What exactly is de Blasio trying to imply?
What he's really trying to do is cover his own ass because the reality is that he, like all other Democrats, is willing to offer the store to a business that can help prop up his failing regime in New York.
I mean, it's really that simple.
And meanwhile, One other thing that I don't like, so President Trump did an interview with the Daily Caller, and in that interview, he went after Antifa.
Now, I am no friend of Antifa, because Antifa legitimately targets me, and they've been doing so for quite a while, right?
They did so at Berkeley, they did so at Ohio State University.
The other night, well, President Trump talked about Antifa, and here's what he said, he said, They better hope the opposition to Antifa decides not to mobilize, because if they do, they're much tougher, much stronger, potentially much more violent, and Antifa's going to be in big trouble.
But so far they haven't done that, and that's a good thing.
Okay, the reason that that's not good is because you actually do not want groups mobilizing in the civilian area in opposition to Antifa to pursue violence against other people.
This is why the government has a monopoly on legitimate use of force except in self-defense.
You actually don't want, you know, like we've seen brawls between Antifa and other groups in Portland, we've seen it in Berkeley.
What would be better is if law enforcement were to do its job.
And then President Trump talked about how it was law enforcement that was going to oppose Antifa, but the law enforcement was getting very angry.
Well, again, law enforcement's anger should not be the standard.
Law enforcement is there to enforce the law.
None of this is particularly good, and none of it takes down the temperature at all, even though, again, I hate Antifa, and I think President Trump speaking out against Antifa is really a worthwhile thing, and a little bit of measured language here would be useful if we want to take down the temperature a little bit.
Okay, well, we'll be back here tomorrow.
We'll have the mailbag, so send in all of your questions.
Become a subscriber so I will answer them for you, and check that out right now over at dailywire.com.
We'll be back here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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