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Dec. 4, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

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No Crimes And Misdemeanors | Ep. 672

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	What happens if the Mueller report comes up empty?
	Plus, we recap the H.W.
	Bush tribute ceremony and discuss whether gender-reveal parties are cis-normative.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	In just a second, we're going to recap the tribute ceremony that was held in Washington, D.C.
	yesterday for George H.W.
	Bush, the 41st President of the United States.
	We're also going to go through the latest in the Mueller Report, because the fact is that more and more information keeps leaking, and there's this feeling that it's leading to a final conclusion here, so we'll preview all of that.
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	Alrighty, so we begin today with a recap of the ceremony held for George H.W.
	Bush.
	In the Capitol Rotunda yesterday.
	And it was, I think, a very meaningful, very nice ceremony.
	People filing past the casket of George H.W.
	Bush, American hero and 41st President of the United States.
	Donald Trump came by to pay a visit, saluted the coffin.
	President George W. Bush, of course, was there.
	It was quite moving to watch George W. Bush saluting his father, obviously.
	The AP says the nation's capital embraced George H.W. Bush in Death Monday with solemn ceremony and high tributes to his service and decency as the remains of the 41st president took their place in the Capitol Rotunda for three days of mourning and praised by the political elite and everyday citizens alike.
	With Bush's casket atop the Lincoln catafalque, first used for Abraham Lincoln's 1865 funeral, dignitaries came forward to honor the Texan whose efforts for his country extended three quarters of a century from World War II through his final years as an advocate for volunteerism and relief for people displaced by natural disaster opportunities.
	Obviously, President George H.W.
	Bush died on Friday at age 94.
	A bunch of luminaries paid tribute to him.
	Representative Paul Ryan.
	Said here lies a great man and a gentle soul.
	His legacy is grace perfected.
	Vice President Mike Pence spoke.
	President Trump did not speak, which is probably a smart move, knowing that it would just be politicized immediately.
	Anyway, here is a little bit of Vice President Mike Pence giving what I think was one of his finest speeches of his political career in tribute to George H.W. Bush.
	All of his 94 years, President Bush never lost his love of adventure.
	And he never failed to answer the call to serve his country.
	When President George Herbert Walker Bush left office, he left America and the world more peaceful, prosperous, and secure.
	President Bush was a great leader who made a great difference in the life of this nation.
	But he was also just a good man.
	who was devoted to his wife, his family, and his friends.
	We had a discussion yesterday.
	We had a special that was me and Jeremy Boring and Andrew Klavan and, for some reason, Michael Moles.
	We were talking about George H.W. Bush.
	And it strikes me that it is much harder in life to actually be a good man than it is to be a great man.
	To be a great man, meaning a remembered person, a person who shaped the lives of millions of people requires a couple of things.
	You have to be in a position of power, and you have to be in a position where a crisis is sort of thrust upon you.
	When we think of the great leaders in American history, we think of George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, who had to ride out the Civil War, or FDR, who had to ride out World War II and the Great Depression.
	We tend to think of Ronald Reagan, who faced down the Soviet Union.
	A lot of being great is sort of a response to circumstance.
	Winston Churchill, facing down the Nazis in World War II.
	But being a good man is a different thing.
	And I think George H.W.
	Bush, I'm not sure that he was a great man in the sense that he shaped the lives of millions of people and will be considered an important world leader in the great span of history.
	But I think he was a very good man.
	And being a good man is a lot more difficult in a lot of ways because it means more anonymity.
	It means a certain level of humility.
	Like to be a great president, It used to be that being a great president required many of the qualities of being a good man.
	It used to be that being a great president required humility, electoral humility, legislative humility, a feeling that you were there to guard and protect, but not to change, that basically your job was to be a manager, a caretaker.
	So Calvin Coolidge, in my opinion, a great president and a good man.
	And I think that there was crossover between being humble and not needing to be in the spotlight all the time and not being concerned with being seen as a great moral visionary or somebody transforming the country.
	And then as government grew, and as government became more powerful, and as we started to abandon a lot of our social institutions, we stopped looking for the good people in our own life to model our behaviors after, and instead we started looking for the great man to lead us.
	And that has required a different set of people to be President of the United States, people who may not be as good in general.
	People who do have sort of world beating ideological visions, people who are not as concerned with simply managing America and keeping out of harm's way and staying out of everybody's business, and much more are interested in shaping the country, transforming the country, fundamentally rewriting the country.
	That's a tragedy for the country, and it also, it gives a lie, I think.
	It demonstrates that being a good man and being a great president, not the same thing.
	But being a good man is, again, harder.
	You know, it's interesting.
	I was reading a book by a famous rabbi, and he was specifically talking about why there are so many famous rabbis of the past who didn't write books.
	Many, many famous rabbis are not known for their writing.
	They're known for sort of their old lectures that were taken down by people who would transcribe them.
	Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a very famous rabbi, Talked about this.
	He said that one of the reasons that he didn't write more is because he felt it was an act of arrogance because he was just one person in the great span of history and to arrogantly ascribe his beliefs to a name to try and outlive himself would be an act of arrogance.
	Being good requires making all the daily decisions that make your family stronger to do all the things on a daily level that nobody's going to know about.
	It's very funny.
	Whenever we talk about the folks in our lives who made a big difference, we say things like, well, you know, my dad, who, and my father, I mean, like, when we talk about our own parents, we tend to say things like, my parents are great, and that's what really counts, because that's what will be remembered.
	But the truth is, that won't be remembered.
	Three generations from now, three generations from now, I don't think that the actions that my grandfather took or my great-grandfather took will be remembered.
	I'm not sure that people remember much about my great-grandfather.
	I certainly didn't know the man.
	But I do know that all of the small actions that he took led to this time.
	And so being a good man, in many cases, is what keeps civilization going, while being a great man may keep civilization alive in times of crisis.
	It requires good men to prevent those crises in the first place.
	I think George H.W.
	Bush was a very good man, even if I'm not sure that he was a great president.
	With all of that said, the left has decided that they can't stand all the warm feelings for George H.W.
	Bush, at least some members of the left.
	We've gotten the dumbest versions of the left coming out and saying incredibly stupid things.
	The stupidest thing yesterday was this article from Slate about Sully H.W.
	Bush.
	So this dog, Sully, is a service dog.
	And there's a picture that was going around of the service dog that was lying near the president's casket.
	And according to Mediaite, that a part of President's Labrador retriever had captivated political observers for the last few days as the nation mourns the ex-president's passing, people became particularly enamored with the dog thanks to a widely circulated photo of him lying in front of his owner's casket.
	Thus, Slate published a piece titled, Don't Spend Your Emotional Energy on Sully H.W.
	Bush.
	It's not enough to attack H.W., we've got to attack his dog.
	So Ruth Graham writes a piece talking about how this dog only knew George H.W.
	Bush for six months.
	On Sunday night, George H.W.
	Bush spokesman Jim McGrath posted a photograph to Twitter depicting a golden Labrador named Sully resting in front of the former president's casket.
	The caption read, Mission Complete.
	Within hours, Sully the dog had become a bona fide celebrity.
	McGrath's sentiment has been retweeted 61,000 times and counting, and Sully was trending on Twitter at various times on Monday.
	C-SPAN covered the dog's arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Monday afternoon.
	The picture of the dog lying in front of the casket was covered by outlets from Fox News to NPR, but But this is not reality.
	Many suggested Sully was heartbroken or that they themselves were crying over the photo.
	Conservative writer Dan McLaughlin compared the dog to a marine.
	There's nothing wrong with applying sentimentality when it comes to family pets reacting to their owner's death.
	But Sully is not a longtime Bush family pet, letting go of the only master he has known.
	He is an employee who served for less than six months.
	Hey, if this is how you spent your day, writing this think piece for Slate, may I suggest that you find another line of calling?
	My goodness!
	Sully's Instagram account and several mainstream news outlets referred to him as Sully H.W.
	Bush.
	His bio also says he's making his forever home at Walker's Point.
	But Monday morning, just a few days after his owner died, Bush's son George W. Bush announced that Sully is heading to his next assignment, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, because he is an ambassador for a New York-based nonprofit called America's Vet Dogs, which trains guide and service dogs for military veterans.
	It's wonderful for Bush to have a trained service animal like Sully available to him in its last month, but it's a bit demented to project soul-wrenching grief onto a dog's decision to lie down in front of a casket.
	And now, listen, I'm not a dog person, right?
	I don't own a dog.
	I'm not a person who, by and large, likes dogs.
	But if you are, like, ripping on a service dog for lying in front of the casket of a master that he just served for six months, That's pretty demented.
	That's pretty demented.
	But that was not the only evidence of the left being demented yesterday.
	Joy Behar, who is just out of her mind, she apparently took it upon herself to bash President Trump during a segment about George H.W.
	Bush because this is really what the left wanted to do.
	I mean, the reality is, what the left really wanted out of this whole George H.W.
	Bush spectacle, out of the entire hagiography for George H.W.
	Bush, was to rip on President Trump.
	We talked about this yesterday.
	They wanted to juxtapose the class and goodness of H.W.
	Bush with President Trump, who is not the classiest best dude.
	Right?
	That was their whole goal here.
	So, Joy Behar started to go off on it, and Meghan McCain basically stopped her cold.
	This president that we have now is trying to unravel everything that he did and Obama did.
	And if I ever become a one-issue voter, it will be about pollution, and the greenhouse effect, and the fact that- Can we focus on the president, please?
	I don't want to talk about Trump when we're in the moment of- Excuse me a second, please.
	I want to talk about- But I'm not interested in your one-issue voter.
	I don't care what you're interested in.
	I don't care what you're interested in either.
	We'll be right back.
	When Whoopi Goldberg is jumping in to stop the fight, then you know things have gone wildly wrong.
	Apparently, it got even worse.
	According to a source, they told the Daily Mail that Behar threw her hands in the air as soon as the producers muted Behar's mic.
	They actually muted Behar's mic because she would not get under control.
	And the source told Daily Mail, Behar threw her hands in the air and yelled, my God, and get this B word under control.
	And she said, if this bleep doesn't stop, I'm quitting this damn show.
	I can't take this much more.
	He says, I've tolerated a lot of bleep on this show, but I'm at my wits end with this entitled B word.
	Enough already.
	Enough already.
	I'm not playing nice any longer, Behar shouted, despite the studio audience being able to hear it all.
	How dare Meghan McCain, how dare Meghan McCain say, let's not talk about Trump's pollution record?
	While we're talking about the death of George H.W.
	Bush.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	I'll give you more on Joy Behar's demented response to Meghan McCain in just one second.
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	So, Meghan McCain, apparently, and Joy Behar continued to get into it.
	Apparently, McCain reportedly said, I don't know why she's so upset.
	I just wanted her to focus on President Bush and not bring Trump into this for once.
	While hair and makeup people attempted to groom both of the hosts, producers tried to calm Behar down before returning from commercial break.
	Everyone was frantic, this is according to the Guardian or the Daily Mail.
	The last thing they wanted was for Joy to walk off the show.
	She's done that before.
	Remember the Bill O'Reilly situation?
	She appeared just as disgusted as she did that day.
	They only had two minutes to contain this explosion on set and get everyone positioned to return for the next live segment.
	It was utter chaos on set.
	Now, listen, I've been part of group shows.
	With people on the left, and sometimes those people get angry, and I've had situations where those people have walked out of the room not naming any names, but just because that is the way that people on the left sometimes act in these situations does not mean that Joy Behar is not insane, okay?
	George H.W.
	Bush dies.
	She's ripping on Trump about pollution.
	Meghan McCain, who knows a few things, by the way, about prominent Republicans dying in the recent past, says maybe we should pay attention to the guy who just died.
	And Behar loses her bleep.
	That's because, for the left, H.W.
	is just another vehicle for attacking President Trump.
	That's really what is going on here.
	And we all know it.
	And it's not just, you know, on silly things like pollution.
	The latest example, Catherine Rample is a columnist over at the Washington Post and she pays tribute to H.W.
	Bush because H.W.
	Bush was the last of his kind.
	Why?
	Because he understood that tax cuts were voodoo economics.
	So now we're going to praise, now the idea is I guess that we are going to praise George H.W.
	Bush for being an establishment Republican.
	And you knew it was always going to come around to this.
	It was going to start with what a classy dude that guy was.
	I mean, just what class he was.
	And then eventually it was going to turn into because Trump is a jerk and also because George H.W.
	Bush was more moderate.
	Amazing how they say to all these people as soon as they leave office.
	Pretty incredible stuff.
	Well, in just a second, I want to talk about why it is that George H.W.
	Bush's tenure eventually led to the Trump tenure.
	It's a long chain.
	But here's here's really how this began.
	So George H.W.
	Bush was a moderate establishment Republican.
	He did not see tax cuts as spurring the economy.
	He did not believe that tax cuts would increase tax receipts, which they do.
	The lie that it is voodoo economics that tax cuts lead to increased tax receipts, that is just not true.
	Every time tax cuts have led to increased tax receipts, the problem is we've never brought our spending under control.
	Well, because George H.W.
	Bush was so eager to capitulate to Democrats from 1988 to 1992, and then because George W. Bush cut a bunch of deals with Democrats when he was in office, and then because Democrats decided from 2008 to 2016 they were not going to make any deals with the Republicans and were instead going to cram down the purest form they could get through their own caucus on every single issue, eventually Republicans said, this Republican Party doesn't do anything.
	Put the guy in charge who will just wreck things.
	And the problem is that this has not actually cured the Republican Party's inability to get anything done.
	So let's be frank about this.
	The Republican Party has been in charge of Congress, in charge of the House of Representatives, since 2010, from 2010 to 2018.
	And most of that was dedicated to stopping President Obama's hardcore agenda, which I think that the House largely did.
	Then we got to 2016 through 2018, and the Republicans controlled the House, they controlled the Senate, and they controlled the presidency.
	They couldn't even stop the funding for Planned Parenthood.
	And so all the talk about Republicans and their ability to get things done, it is Republican inability to get things done that led to the frustration that brought about Trump, because there were promises made and those promises simply were not kept.
	It's why so many members of the base are willing to grant President Trump a lot of leeway, because they feel like at least President Trump is making promises that he's attempting to keep.
	Now, have those promises actually been kept?
	No, but Trump, I think, can pretty cleanly say that a lot of those promises haven't been kept because Republicans in the House and Senate have not given him what he wanted.
	So, for example, Trump says, I want to build the wall.
	The House does not fund it.
	The Senate does not fund it.
	President Trump said he was going to defund Planned Parenthood.
	That has not happened either.
	He wanted to make the tax cuts permanent.
	That did not happen either.
	By the way, there's no excuse for the fact That the session, the congressional session ends later this week.
	They have a couple of days later this week.
	They have some, I believe, some session days next week.
	Why they're not working while they still have a Republican House on making the tax cuts permanent is beyond me.
	But they're not doing any of that stuff.
	And it's exactly that sort of mentality.
	We can't ram things through.
	That'll lead to a backlash that led to President Trump in the first place.
	So for all the folks who are saying, well, look how, look how the Republic has declined.
	Look how the temperament has declined.
	You know why?
	Because in 2012, I think 2012 in a lot of ways broke the country, in 2012 Republicans ran a guy who was by many measures extraordinarily moderate, in 2008 they ran a guy who by many measures was extraordinarily moderate, both of those guys were considered to be classy gentlemen, both of them lost.
	And then the Democrats said that they were not in fact moderate, they were radicals, and not only were they radical, they were mean, nasty, and cruel.
	And so Republicans responded to years and years and years of running moderate candidate after moderate candidate, Who has class and decency year after year.
	And then they're like, you know what?
	We never win.
	And then Trump comes along, says, I pledge to you, I will win.
	And then in 2016, he did win.
	And that was taken as evidence that all of the all of the moderation and all of the class were actually inhibitory to victory.
	Now, I don't think that that was a proper conclusion to draw.
	I think you can be classy and you can also be a knife fighter.
	But with that said, to ignore the history that led up to to ignore that history did lead Through the perception of George H.W.
	Bush as an establishment guy, to George W. Bush as an establishment guy, to John McCain and Bob Dole and Mitt Romney as establishment guys, all the way up to Donald Trump, whose anti-establishment is to ignore the stream of history that led us to this point in time.
	And it's why there was a backlash, right?
	Dick Cheney was talking about George H.W.
	Bush and the partisan rancor on CNN the other night.
	And it is amazing to me to watch as Republicans like Dick Cheney, right, who spent a lot of time working with Democrats.
	As I've mentioned, Hollywood's making a movie about Dick Cheney right now called Vice by Adam McKay.
	It's going to be a hit piece on Dick Cheney about how evil and Machiavellian he is.
	And there's Dick Cheney talking about, well, there used to be a better time in history.
	Those of us in the grassroots base don't remember a better time when Democrats actually treated Republicans well.
	We just think that establishment Republicans are delusional when they talk about this time.
	But Dick Cheney says, no, no, no, there was a better time.
	It was so much better before.
	Not sure that's the case.
	Is all of this goodwill that we're seeing going to make a difference as far as Washington is concerned?
	I don't know, Wolf.
	I hope so.
	It's a different feel when you get this group of people around you and we're interacting with one another.
	It's a warmer, friendlier, we're reminiscing.
	Of course, we're not in charge now.
	We're not in control of anything.
	But it was a different era.
	Okay, so, you know, again, this idea, it was a different era.
	It was different then.
	They said all these terrible things about H.W.
	They called him a racist.
	They said the same stuff about Ronald Reagan.
	They called him a racist and a buffoon and a crazy person.
	No.
	Things were not different.
	It's just that Republicans were much more conciliatory in action as well as in deed.
	Trump is not conciliatory in action or deed, which is why he is heavily popular with the base.
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	on Russiagate.
	People still hoping that Robert Mueller is going to bring down the president.
	I'm not so sure, but we're going to discuss the latest allegations in just a second.
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	Okay, so...
	As we move forward with this high level of loyalty by Republicans toward President Trump, We are headed for a showdown over the Mueller investigation.
	According to Michael Isikoff, reporting for Yahoo News, he says, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are tying up loose ends in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running Russia probe in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter.
	The new information about the state of Mueller's investigation comes during a pivotal week in which the special counsel's prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high-profile defendants, former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
	A Flynn sentencing memo is due on Tuesday.
	Memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday.
	All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.
	There's been a lot of speculation that Mueller might file his memo in Manafort's case under seal to prevent public disclosure of the additional crimes his office believes Manafort committed when he allegedly lied to prosecutors and broke a plea deal after agreeing to cooperate.
	That would be the juiciest part.
	The juiciest part would obviously be what Manafort lied to prosecutors about, because presumably that's his coordination with the Trump legal team.
	But Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel, confirmed to Yahoo News on Monday the Manafort memo will be public, although he added there could be some portions that are redacted or filed as a sealed addendum.
	The Manafort memo has been requested by the federal judge in his case so that prosecutors could, for the first time, spell out what matters they believe Manafort has lied to them about.
	The fact that Mueller is planning a public filing about Manafort suggests he may no longer feel the need to withhold information about his case in order to bring additional indictments against others, which means that this thing is coming to its close.
	They've been telling people they're tying up loose ends and trying to conclude, said one source familiar with the communications between Mueller's office and defense lawyers.
	That message was reinforced to some degree on Monday.
	When Mueller's office talked to congressional investigators as part of an ongoing discussion about whether new subpoenas for testimony by House and Senate committees might interfere with Mueller's investigation.
	The response, which surprised one investigator, was that it would not, at least in matters relating to obstruction by the White House in the Russia investigation itself.
	What we were told is that the investigation has reached a mature enough stage that they've basically talked to everybody they want to talk to, said a knowledgeable source.
	Mueller's office is declining public comment when asked to confirm this account, so it could be that there are a few more witnesses out.
	By all accounts, last week's guilty plea by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was one of Mueller's more significant documents.
	Cohen is due to be sentenced in federal court in New York next week.
	The only publicly known matter Mueller is believed to be focused on relates to Trump advisor Roger Stone and conspiracy theory Jerome Corsi.
	So we're going to find out more this week about exactly what Mueller has.
	But all of this raises the possibility that Mueller doesn't actually have that much either.
	So I know everybody is speculating that Mueller has everything, but I'm not sure that that is the case.
	I want to get to that theory in just a second.
	But first, the New York Times is also reporting that in mid-May 2017, Paul Manafort, facing intensifying pressure to settle debts and pay mounting legal bills, flew to ecuador to offer his services to a potentially lucrative new client the country's incoming president lenin moreno mr manafort made the trip made the trip mainly to see if he could broker a deal under which china would invest in ecuador's power system possibly yielding a fat commission for manafort but the talks turned to a diplomatic sticking point between the u.s.
	and Ecuador, the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
	In at least two meetings with Manafort, Mr. Moreno and his aides discussed their desire to rid themselves of Mr. Manafort.
	They said Manafort suggested he could help negotiate a deal for the handover of Mr. Assange to the United States, which has long investigated Assange for the disclosure of secret documents.
	Within a couple of days of Mr. Manafort's final meeting, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, and it quickly became clear that Manafort was a primary target.
	There is no evidence, I love that this is buried deep down in the New York Times article, there is no evidence that Mr. Manafort was working with or even briefing President Trump or other administration officials on his discussions with the Ecuadorians about Mr. Assange.
	So, what does all of this mean?
	When all is said and done, what does all of this come to?
	Well, it comes down to the idea that there may not be an underlying crime here.
	There may be ancillary related crimes, meaning that Michael Cohen may have lied about stuff to the FBI while the FBI was investigating 2016, meaning that Manafort may have lied to the FBI about ancillary matters unrelated to the 2016 election, meaning Michael Flynn may have lied about stuff that had nothing to do with the 2016 election, which appears to have been the case.
	But that doesn't go to an underlying conspiracy to affect the 2016 election by coordinating with the Russian government, which, again, for the one millionth time was the original allegation against President Trump and his team.
	Now, that means that President Trump should shut up, really, for his own sake.
	His lawyers need to tell him to stop tweeting, to stop saying things, because all he could possibly do is get himself in further legal trouble by creating ancillary legal problems for himself.
	It's one thing to protest your innocence.
	It's another thing to do it so vociferously that you verge on violating other federal laws.
	So yesterday, President Trump As we talked about, issued a series of tweets in which he said that Michael Cohen should be punished.
	He said he lied and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.
	And then he immediately followed that up by saying that Roger Stone is a good guy for not testifying against President Trump, which sounds like maybe he is offering a pardon to Roger Stone if Roger Stone were to be prosecuted and keeps his mouth shut.
	But he thinks that Cohen should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
	Trump appears to be suggesting that Mueller and his angry Democrats were seeking to suborn perjury to push Cohen and others from Trump's orbit into lying about Trump-Russia collusion.
	There's no actual evidence of that.
	Trump also seems to be trying to affect witness testimony, or maybe he could be.
	So George Conway, who's the husband of Kellyanne Conway, he tweeted out, file under 18 U.S.C.
	section 1503 and 1512.
	Those would be the provisions of federal law with regard to witness tampering.
	Alipundit has a long article over at Hot Air looking at the applicable law in this case, and this has become a meme on the left over the last 24 hours, is that President Trump violated the witness tampering statutes.
	Section 1503, which is what Conway is referring to, says whoever corruptly or by threats or force or by any threatening letter or communication endeavors to influence, or impede any grand or petite juror or officer in or of any court of the United States or officer who may be serving at any examination, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, or corruptly or by threat or force or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstructs or impede the due administration of justice shall obstructs or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstructs or impede the due administration of justice
	That's a catch all for corrupt behavior.
	And then 1512, which is the other federal section that is talked about by George Conway, is about tampering with a witness, victim, or informant.
	It says, whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person with intent to influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding, or cause or induce any person to withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object from an official proceeding, Could violate the witness tampering statute.
	The problem here is that there's no actual indictment out against Roger Stone at this point, so he's not actively a witness in an actual judicial proceeding.
	So the definition of judicial proceeding is a little more specific than I think folks are making out here.
	Beyond that, is a prosecutor really going to Going to be prosecuting on this basis.
	I think that is highly unlikely that President Trump is going to end up in the dock for witness tampering, for tweeting out publicly that he likes a witness who is not testifying against him.
	I mean, he said this sort of stuff publicly.
	If he has not, if there's no evidence that he actually offered a pardon, if the best that they can do is the suggestion that maybe he's covertly offering a pardon by saying that some people have guts and I'm glad he's not talking to Mueller.
	I don't think that that counts as witness tampering under any interpretation of law.
	But again, the most grave danger that President Trump has here is with regard to suborning perjury or witness tampering or some ancillary crime.
	And those things are a real problem.
	They're a real problem for presidents under investigation.
	I'll explain more about that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the best gift you can get somebody this holiday season.
	I mean, the best gift.
	Your parents particularly.
	They have a bunch of old memories stacked up in the garage.
	They've got all these old films, they've got all these videotapes, these VHS tapes.
	Nobody's looked at them in years.
	They're inaccessible.
	There are moles running out there in the garage.
	The bugs are getting into them.
	You need to send them over to my friends at Legacy Box and get all your old home movies, films, and photos converted to digital files.
	Your birthdays, baby's first steps, graduations, weddings.
	You can get them all converted to a thumb drive, a DVD, or even a convenient digital download for you to easily watch and share with your family, which means that God forbid something happens to your garage, you're not going to have to worry about rushing.
	I mean, that used to be the go-to answer, right?
	When the question was, there's a fire at your house, what's the first thing you grab?
	And you always say, well, the baby books.
	Well, now you no longer need to worry about that, because why would you be schlepping 60-pound boxes out of your garage in the middle of a fire?
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	Your memories are your life.
	It's LegacyBox.com slash Ben.
	Get those memories preserved.
	And when you use that slash Ben, you get 40% off.
	So go take care of it right now.
	LegacyBox.com slash Ben.
	That's LegacyBox.com slash Ben.
	Now, as I say, President Trump could put himself in jeopardy due to ancillary crimes.
	I'm going to get to all that in a second.
	First, go subscribe over at DailyWire.com.
	Now, I remind you, you love the podcast, right?
	You love being able to Coordinate with me and be part of the mailbag and all that.
	All this stuff's great.
	Come January, there'll be two more live hours every afternoon, in which I will be speaking to you, we'll be syndicated on the radio, and you get the behind-the-scenes, which means when you're a subscriber, I'll actually be doing things like answering questions daily in the middle of the commercial breaks, because that's how much we love you.
	That's how much we want to help you.
	You get all those goodies coming up in January, so subscribe now for all of that.
	You get the rest of this show live, you get the rest of Clayton's show live, and Michael Knowles' terrible show live.
	Yeah, all of those wonderful things.
	You get to ask questions in our mailbag.
	So when we do interminable sessions about the history of X-mas, then you can ask us questions to break up the monotony.
	You can do all sorts of wonderful things when you go subscribe over at dailywire.com.
	And with the annual subscription comes this, the very greatest in beverage vessel, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
	Fill it with eggnog this holiday season and get drunk to ensure that you don't have to listen to your leftist relatives rattle on.
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	We have a lot of awesome stuff coming, and I can't wait to announce it to all of you, like, really excited about this stuff.
	Go subscribe, become part of the team.
	We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
	So as I say, the left is trying to proclaim that all of the smoke from Mueller means there's fire.
	But it seems to me that Mueller's solidest ground, the most solid ground upon which Mueller stands, is the idea that there are ancillary crimes here.
	Why do I say that?
	Because every single person who has pled guilty to a crime has pled guilty not to anything having to do with Russian-Trump collusion, which was the original cause of the investigation.
	George Papadopoulos spent 14 days in jail after a huge investigation because he pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
	There is no evidence of underlying crimes with regard to collusion.
	Paul Manafort pled guilty to counts related to work for Ukrainian politicians years ago as well as tax issues no relation to the Trump-Russia campaign.
	Rick Gates pled guilty to false statements charges and to conspiracy related to work with Ukrainian politicians.
	Alex Van Der Zwaan pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI about contacts with Rick Gates.
	Michael Cohen pled guilty to tax and bank charges as well as campaign finance violations as well as lying to Congress about Trump's business in Russia.
	None of it had to do with the Trump-Russia connection with regard to 2016.
	And as Andrew McCarthy wrote a couple of days ago, Mueller knows the legitimacy of his investigation is under attack, allegedly driven by politics rather than evidence of crime.
	But the convictions he has amassed, even if they are only for false statements or otherwise unrelated to the Trump-Russia rationale for the investigation, prove that many people Trump brought into his campaign were corruptible and of low character.
	This means the most severe damage for Trump lies in his own statements to the FBI, to the American public, and his behavior with regard to other witnesses, which is why the president needs to stop tweeting forthwith.
	The president needs to stop making public statements about this, forthwith.
	He is putting himself in a worse legal position by talking about this than if he would just be quiet.
	This is the first rule of a defense lawyer.
	If anybody were to come to me and say, the police are investigating me, what should I tell them?
	My answer would be, shut your face.
	Really?
	Like if you were a subject of an investigation, the answer is shut your face, just from a defense perspective.
	Put aside guilt or innocence.
	The last thing you want is a talkative client.
	Every lawyer knows this.
	And the fact that President Trump keeps providing problems for his own folks because he won't stop the jabbering is a serious, serious issue for him.
	But it does underscore the fact that Mueller still has not presented evidence of the central contention in 2016.
	Yes, there are people who are talking with the Russians.
	Yes, there was a Trump Tower meeting.
	It still seems to me the most important single piece of information for the Mueller case is that Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr.
	and members of the campaign and this Russian lawyer when they were supposedly offering help from the Russian government with regard to intelligence about Hillary Clinton.
	But as Eugene Volokh has written over at the Washington Post, that is not only not clearly criminal, it doesn't even amount to criminal conspiracy.
	And there may not be an underlying crime, considering nothing actually happened from it.
	It can all be dirty.
	It can all be scuzzy.
	It can all be a problem.
	It is not, in fact, criminal.
	And lots of dirty and scuzzy and terrible things happen in presidential politics, as we all know.
	So if I had to try and forecast this, I would say that the best Democrats are going to be able to do is try and accuse Trump of ancillary crimes, which is why that's exactly what they're doing.
	Ted Lieu Looks to me in this case that Donald Trump is attempting to persuade Roger Stone to keep him from testifying.
	in witness tampering.
	Notice again how the accusations against Trump have changed.
	Originally, it was that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
	Now it's that Trump is tampering with witnesses via public statements on Twitter. - Looks to me in this case that Donald Trump is attempting to persuade Roger Stone to keep him from testifying.
	If I were special counsel Mueller, I'd have a whole series of exhibits that simply have Donald Trump's tweets pasted on the page. - And we've put that, as you put it, broad statement on the screen.
	You think this does induce false testimony?
	I think it's an attempt to persuade Roger Stone to not testify.
	That by itself would violate the witness tampering statute.
	Okay, but, you know, inducement actually requires a quid pro quo.
	So the question is, what exactly is the quid pro quo?
	Bottom line is, again, Trump said stuff he shouldn't have said stuff, and now he's got trouble because he said stuff This has been the running theme.
	Can you imagine how good this president would be if Trump had not created all these problems for himself by just saying things?
	Really, it demonstrates that a little bit of discipline in politics goes a very long way.
	Now, again, that is not to underestimate the amount of media hatred for him.
	It's not to underestimate the fact that the media have royally botched their coverage of the Trump-Russia investigation.
	How many false, outright false stories have been printed by the mainstream media that they have then had to retract about President Trump and his supposed coordination with the Russian government?
	And there was one just last week that NPR reported and then had to retract about supposed coordination between Trump and Russia and WikiLeaks.
	There was one last year in which CNN tried to report that Donald Trump Jr.
	had known in advance about WikiLeaks emails, even though the WikiLeaks emails had actually come out before Trump Jr.' 's coordination with anybody.
	They've screwed this story up.
	And it's so funny.
	You see people in the media say, well, yeah, but we corrected it because we're good at this.
	That's not the point.
	The point is not that you corrected it.
	The point is whenever the media screw up in their coverage of Trump and Russia, they only screw up in one direction.
	See, we at The Daily Wire probably screw up in one direction 95% of the time also.
	You know why?
	Because we're conservative with an overt ideology.
	But if CNN's job is to objectively cover the news, and every mistake they make cuts against Republicans and Trump, you have to wonder at a certain point whether they are not just as ideologically driven as The Daily Wire, except we are significantly more honest about our ideologically driven News coverage.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, in other news, if you're worried about media bias, if you're worried about the social media crackdown, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, made some statements that are deeply disturbing and ought to disturb anyone who believes in freedom of opinion and free exchange of ideas.
	Tim Cook said that it's a sin.
	He legitimately said this.
	He said at a conference, it is a sin not to ban people from platforms, to de-platform people for hateful speech.
	He set no limits on what exactly hateful speech constitutes.
	We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence.
	You have no place on our platforms.
	applause Thank you.
	People who push hate, division, and violence?
	If you want to say people who push violence, agree.
	You want to say hate and division?
	That's how Democrats characterize every statement Donald Trump has ever made.
	As well as a majority of statements I've ever made.
	As well as a majority of statements people like Charles Krauthammer ever made.
	Everyone on the right is suspect to people on the left.
	So when you hear people like Tim Hunt say that sort of stuff, Or, sorry, Tim Cook say that sort of stuff?
	You have to wonder, are we about to experience a digital shutdown of everybody on the right?
	Which is why it is so vital that we have independent platforms like my radio show and podcast, why we have an independent platform over at Daily Wire, why you should be engaging directly with those platforms, because there will come a day, and that day is not far off, it's like two years away, I think, at most, when Democrats are in control of a majority of the branches of government, maybe it's six years from now, Maybe President Trump wins re-election.
	Whatever it is, there will come a day when there is a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress and they're coordinating with Democrats in the social media in an attempt to shut down other points of view under the name of preventing hate.
	And when that happens, your sources of information will be radically, radically reduced.
	They'll be reduced within the ambit that the left-wing finds palatable, and that ambit is really ugly.
	Now, will they take a financial hit for all of this?
	Yeah, they will take a financial hit for all of this, because it turns out that when digital media shuts down half the audience, the audience simply goes elsewhere.
	But that doesn't mean that it can't completely skew the nature of politics in the country.
	And unfortunately, Democrats, once they get control of the levers of government, they can create incentives strong enough to force these social media programs to basically commit seppuku and open their insides out and destroy themselves.
	Because if they don't, then they'll be regulated into oblivion.
	That's what Senator Dianne Feinstein of California actually said to the heads of Facebook.
	If you don't regulate the news, we're gonna regulate the news.
	And it's like, oh my goodness.
	That is the actual thought tyranny in the offing, so prepare for it because it is coming sooner rather than later.
	Okay, final note today before we get to some things I like and things I hate.
	This is an article from Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing opinion writer over at the New York Times, demonstrating the radicalism of the left and prepare for things to be shut down, things that are normal conversation be shut down as hateful and terrible.
	What is the latest example of this?
	Well, Jennifer Finney Boylan, who is a transgender woman, meaning a biological man, says, why are gender reveal parties a thing?
	They say a lot more about our culture than they do about the sex of our soon to be children.
	Jennifer Boylan writes, I remember when the obstetrician revealed the genders of our own children back in the day.
	I recall well the sense of wonder the news brought us, knowing the sex of our child felt as if we had cut in half the number of possible futures our family might find itself in.
	There's a way in which, in the heart of pregnancy, that was very comforting.
	But celebrating a child's gender before it's born is a tricky business.
	It sets expectations for who that child will be.
	It also leaves the unfortunate impression that gender is the most important thing to celebrate about that child.
	Well, first of all, it is a very important thing to celebrate about a child.
	And gender differences, meaning sex differences, are deeply, deeply important to life, and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
	If you don't think there's a difference between men and women, you are a fool.
	I don't just mean in genitals.
	I mean in terms of how men and women think and act.
	Obviously, there is a difference.
	But according to Jennifer Boylan, this is unacceptable because we can't, if you find out that you have a boy in the womb, you can't just assume that that boy is going to be a boy.
	Maybe the boy is going to be a girl.
	Why?
	Quote, as a late transitioning transgender person, I've experienced both sides of a lot of this world.
	I have been both a best man and a matron of honor.
	And I can tell you that being a matron of honor is a lot more fun.
	Being best man felt a little bit like being a security guard at a very sketchy nightclub.
	I've attended bachelor parties as well as bridal showers.
	At the bridal shower, my girlfriends and I mostly said ooh and ah as we opened up boxes of high-end lingerie.
	Which was fun, but let's be honest, Victoria's Secret is no match for an amazing Larry.
	As a transgender person, I thought my eyes were pretty wide open when it came to gender issues.
	I tried to avoid defining either of my children based on their sex and encouraged them to find their own path wherever it might lead.
	Does it ever occur to people that maybe how you act in your life affects how your children act and think about these things?
	The news stunned me and left me for a little while unable to speak.
	Then I put my arms around her just as my own mother had put her arms around me and told her that I loved her just as my own mother had said those words to me.
	Does it ever occur to people that maybe how you act in your life affects how your children act and think about these things?
	And that, I mean, the number of hardships a transgender person has to undergo in this life, the mental hardships, the emotional hardships you have to undergo, even if you are actually biologically predisposed toward gender identity disorder, is extraordinary.
	To suggest that confusing a child for a full generation about sex being completely malleable has no impact on the kids is insane.
	And not to be able to celebrate all this stuff is pretty...
	Not to be able to celebrate the sex of your child because you think your child might end up being the opposite sex is pretty upsetting.
	It's pretty upsetting and pretty ridiculous and pretty cruel to the child.
	Because it turns out, sex differences are a wonderful, beautiful thing.
	If you're not reinculcating them in your child, you are making a very large mistake.
	Okay, time for a thing that I like and then, and I'm not sure I have any things I hate more than that today, so we'll do a thing I like and then maybe a Federalist Paper.
	So, things I like today is a great book called Why Liberalism Failed Out by Patrick Deneen.
	There's a great debate that has broken out on the right about the Enlightenment.
	And I am a pro-Enlightenment guy.
	I like the Enlightenment.
	But one of the critiques of the Enlightenment is that the Enlightenment basically valued individual rights at the expense of social fabric.
	It essentially reduced us all to individual, atomized people who don't have anything in common in terms of culture, in terms of history, in terms of social obligation.
	And this has led to a radical breakdown in society itself.
	That's the case Patrick Deneen makes in Why Liberalism Failed.
	I don't agree with every element of his critique, but I think it's a critique worth taking seriously in a time when suicide is at a record high and when 70,000 people a year in the United States are dying through heroin overdose.
	We have to wonder whether the atomization that accompanied liberalism in the Enlightenment has had some downsides.
	And whether you can get the upsides of classical liberalism without the downsides, so long as you abide by a vision of the social fabric that actually matters.
	The book is well worth reading.
	It is a sophisticated take on political theory that cuts against the grain of modern politics, which suggests that atomized individualism is the only way that the future will think.
	I'm not sure that's the case.
	I think our current political situation is good evidence of the backlash.
	Check it out, Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen.
	Well worth the read.
	Okay, time for A federalist paper.
	So every week we do a federalist paper.
	We are all the way up to Federalist 52.
	This one's by Alexander Hamilton.
	This is about why we have elections in the House of Representatives every couple of years.
	His case is that every two years we have these elections to prevent tyranny.
	He starts off this federalist paper by talking about the definition of suffrage.
	In the federal constitution, it basically says that whatever is the state legislature standard for suffrage, meaning voting in the state, that also has to be extended to elections for Congress.
	What you don't want is the state setting a standard where it says every male of a particular age at the time, because there's only males who were property owners in many of these states, all those males get to vote for the state legislature, but only these seven people get to vote for federal elections.
	They didn't want the state being able to dictate the House legislative constituency that way.
	So it says the definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of Republican government.
	It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution.
	It was done so in Article 1, Section 2, where it says the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors in the most numerous branch of the state legislature, meaning that you can't do what I talked about before.
	Then Hamilton talks about why we should have elections every couple of years.
	He says, in order to decide on the propriety of this article, two questions must be considered.
	First, whether biennial elections will in this case be safe.
	Secondly, whether they be necessary or useful.
	First, as it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, So it is particularly essential that the branch of it, under consideration, should have an immediate dependence on and an intimate sympathy with the people.
	Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.
	Now one of the reasons this is the case is because travel in 1789 is a lot different than travel now.
	People have to go back to their constituencies to campaign every couple of years.
	That's a lot different than now.
	My feeling is that we should basically disband Washington, D.C.
	and let people vote remotely from their district.
	I think it would actually be a lot better for the country if people spent most of their time in their district as opposed to most of their time hanging out with the other muckety-mucks in Washington, D.C.
	Hamilton says it is a well-received and well-founded maxim that where no other circumstances affect the case, the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration.
	We want a lot of answerability.
	We want people being elected every couple of years so that the people can turn over the constituency of the House as often as humanly possible.
	And that is why we vote every couple of years in the House of Representatives.
	Okay, well, we'll be back tomorrow with, I'm sure, a lot more to talk about.
	The Flynn documents are supposed to come down today, so I'm sure we'll be breaking those down and a lot more.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

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