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Feb. 26, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:02
Who Cares About The Future? | Ep. 725
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President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, heads to the Hill.
Democrats vote against protecting infants already born.
And Bernie goes full Bernie.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All right, we got a lot to get to today, and we're going to get to all of it.
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Alrighty, so, The big news of the day.
Michael Cohen is now headed to the Hill.
And this has been expected for a couple of weeks.
He said he was going to testify on the Hill.
Republicans are going to take the tack that Michael Cohen is a congenital liar who has been, in fact, convicted of lying.
He's pled guilty to lying.
He has perjured himself.
And so whatever he says cannot be taken with great seriousness.
And Democrats will say, well, maybe that's true, but also your guy, Donald Trump, he lies a lot as well.
So if you have a liar's paradox where both people are lying, how do you know which one is lying about any given issue?
Well, here's what he is supposed to testify today, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal former lawyer, will for the first time publicly accuse the president of criminal conduct while in office.
related to a hush money payment to a porn star, a person familiar with his planned testimony before Congress said.
Appearing on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, Mr. Cohen will also make public some of Mr. Trump's private financial statements and allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes, the person said.
The financial statements were developed by Mr. Trump's accountant.
The person also said the Wall Street Journal has not yet seen those statements.
So the implication is going to be the reason that President Trump did not want to turn over his tax returns is because he has been futzing with the numbers in his tax returns for years to avoid paying property tax.
Cohen's testimony is expected to focus on his behind-the-scenes accounts of working for Mr. Trump over a decade, a period during which Mr. Cohen will say he witnessed lies, racism, and cheating by Mr. Trump, according to this person.
Cohen is expected to recount racist remarks Trump allegedly made to him, including instances in which Trump allegedly questioned the intelligence of African Americans and criticized their lifestyle choices, the person said.
Now, this is just gossip, presumably.
Is Michael Cohen now speaking out of school?
If we were to go through everybody's conversations at any time in the United States that they had privately and then blast those out for all the world to see, I have a feeling most people would have something they've said in the past that is embarrassing to them.
But again, Cohen has every interest at this point in making Trump look as bad as possible.
After all, how's he going to get that book deal after he gets out of prison?
Mr. Cohen's planned testimony comes 13 months after the Wall Street Journal first reported that Cohen paid $130,000 in October 2016 to former adult film star Stephanie Clifford, that would be Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence after she alleged having a sexual encounter with Trump.
In the wake of the Journal's revelations, you'll remember that federal prosecutors investigated Cohen, raided his home, his hotel room, and his office, and began probing the Trump Organization.
And the Trump Organization has been spearheaded, not by the Mueller investigation, but by the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Manhattan.
That investigation will continue, I've said for a long time.
The grave threat to Trump's presidency on the legal front is not the Mueller investigation alleging collusion with the Russian government.
The grave threat has always been the SDNY.
Because the allegation, if you recall, was that Michael Cohen basically served as a cutout for Stormy Daniels in order to avoid campaign finance law.
The idea being that he made an illegal campaign contribution to President Trump by paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 and that Trump later reimbursed him for that so that he wouldn't have to report that to the FEC.
That if Trump had personally paid Stormy Daniels, it wouldn't have been a violation of law.
If Michael Cohen had paid Stormy Daniels and not been reimbursed by Trump, then Cohen would have violated the law, but Trump wouldn't have.
But if Trump told Cohen to go and pay her off and then paid him through a back channel to avoid FEC disclosures, then that would be a violation of campaign finance law.
Now, that's a controversial proposition.
There are former FEC commissioners who say that's not actually a violation of campaign finance law because even if Cohen spends $130,000 shutting up Stormy Daniels, that's not a campaign expenditure.
You can't say that that is directly related to and exclusively related to the campaign.
Maybe Michael Cohen made a habit over the period of years paying off women on behalf of Trump, which is likely and probably true.
The White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Mr. Cohen was a disgraced felon and noted he had previously pled guilty for lying to Congress and making other false statements, which is a pretty good comeback.
Why should we believe you today when you testify before Congress?
You lied before Congress last time.
Now, presumably, Cohen's response will be, right, I lied to Congress last time, I got caught last time, and if I lie this time, they're going to revoke whatever plea bargain I have arranged and they're going to send me to jail for longer, so my incentives are not quite the same as they were even a year ago.
Sarah Sanders says, Sadly, he will go before Congress this week, and we can expect more of the same.
It's laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.
Cohen agreed to testify before the committee at the behest of its Democratic chairman, Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, after postponing his scheduled hearing last month, citing public statements by Trump that he saw as threats toward members of his family.
In August, Mr. Cohen implicated the president in two federal crimes when he told prosecutors that Trump directed those hush money payments to Stormy Daniels as well as Karen McDougal.
But here's what's different.
All of that supposed criminal activity happened before the election.
Apparently Cohen is going to testify that Trump committed criminal activity after the election.
So according to the person familiar with Cohen's anticipated testimony, whenever the Wall Street Journal says things like the person familiar with Mr. Cohen's anticipated testimony, you can fairly bet that Mr. Cohen is the person most familiar with Mr. Cohen's anticipated testimony.
In other words, By the way, here's a check.
the wall street journal and said here's what i'm going to testify to the person familiar with cohen's anticipated testimony said cohen would provide evidence of criminal conduct since trump became president but other than saying that involved the stormy daniels payment he wouldn't offer more specifics so presumably he's going to say that the criminal conduct was trump saying to him by the way here's a check it's for all that good work you did with stormy daniels and he did that while he was already president of the united states
Trump has previously described the Stormy Daniels payment as a simple private transaction and he said if the payments were illegal, well then that's Cohen's mistake because Cohen's the lawyer.
It's not my job to know campaign finance law.
That's why I have lawyers.
I hire lawyers for this kind of stuff.
In December, federal prosecutors in New York for the first time directly implicated President Trump in the payoff scheme.
They referred to him in court papers as Individual 1, alleging that Trump had played a key role in the hush payments.
Now, with all of that said, can SDNY prosecute Trump?
No, they cannot prosecute President Trump unless he were to leave office.
The president cannot be prosecuted while he is in office.
Unless he murders someone and there's a state crime.
Even then, it's controversial as to whether a state prosecutor could prosecute a sitting president for murder, for example.
He'd have to be impeached first and then probably prosecuted.
Cohen, of course, worked for Trump for a decade.
He was his political hitman.
He was the guy who was his sort of consigliere, supposedly.
At least that's how Cohen portrayed it.
In a letter last week to the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina accused the panel under Elijah Cummings of being out to attack the president for partisan gain, noting that Cohen had already lied to Congress in 2017.
They said they intended to question Cohen about his conduct throughout his professional life and any other financial dealings he has had.
Including with his father-in-law, because there were accusations that his father-in-law was corrupt and that Cohen had engaged in criminal activity with his father-in-law as well.
According to NBC News, Cohen is going to focus on his allegations of the president's lies, racism, and cheating.
And again, he's going to turn over financial statements to the committee that he somehow got hold of.
Which is a violation, if I'm not mistaken, of attorney-client privilege.
I don't think the attorney just gets to breach attorney-client privilege.
So I assume that Cohen, as Trump's personal attorney, got a hold of all of the financial records.
I'm not sure what provision of law allows him to then spill that in front of Congress.
You can't really do that to a lawyer.
I mean, the whole point of attorney-client privilege is that communications between a client and an attorney are indeed shielded by law from discovery.
So I'm not sure exactly how this would work.
Nonetheless, it will be a highly dramatic day on the Hill, something that we can all look forward to with great trepidation and vometriciousness.
Because honestly, Here's my honest take on this.
Do I think some of the stuff that Michael Cohen says is going to be true?
Sure.
Yeah, why not?
I mean, Michael Cohen says a lot of stuff.
Is some of what he says going to be false?
Yeah.
The problem is, I'm not sure what's what.
And the same thing has always been true when President Trump talks about himself.
Remember, President Trump denied ever having an affair with Stormy Daniels.
That was a lie.
He denied directing money to Stormy Daniels.
That was a lie.
The president has lied a lot about his personal life and about his business dealings.
All of that happens to be the case.
So when you have two people who lie a lot, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe and what I'm not supposed to believe.
Am I supposed to only believe the stuff that confirms my priors?
So if Cohen says that Trump is a wonderful guy, am I supposed to believe that because I'm a Republican?
And if Cohen says that Trump is a vicious racist, am I supposed to believe that because I'm a Democrat?
I mean, is that the way this is supposed to work now?
This is the problem with having deeply untrustworthy people on the Hill and then having them testify.
We don't know what to believe and what not to believe.
And when people say, what is Cohen's incentive to lie?
Cohen's incentive to lie is that this is the only way that he can find any measure of grace with the press.
It is the only way that he can have a best-selling book after he leaves jail.
It is the only way for him to fix his reputation.
Right now, he's just the rat who President Trump sent scurrying around to do errands for him and then flipped when the federal government pressed him.
That's not a great rap, but if he can become the hero who unmasked President Trump, then Cohen will live forever in the annals of joy among Democrats.
We've seen that over and over and over.
You'll recall when James Comey was an enemy to the left because he released a letter a week before the election that severely hampered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
And then Trump fired Comey, and now Comey's a leftist hero.
You'll recall that the same thing has happened with Jeff Sessions, even, and Rod Rosenstein, and a bunch of other government actors who are perceived to be anti-Trump, or at least obstruction to President Trump's agenda.
All those people have become suddenly heroes of the resistance.
Omarosa Manigault became, for a time, a hero of the anti-Trump resistance.
So that's Michael Cohen's only play here.
So is this going to have any real impact on President Trump's presidency from here on out?
Probably not, but I'll explain why it will have some impact politically in just a second.
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So, is this going to have any impact on President Trump?
The only impact this is going to have on President Trump is that it shifts the topic.
So as I have said for a long time, whichever party is not in the headlines is the party that does well right now.
Whichever person is not in the headlines is the person doing well.
Americans don't like President Trump when they look at him for long periods of time.
They don't like Bernie Sanders when they look at Bernie Sanders for long periods of time.
They do not like AOC even when they look at her for long periods of time.
The American people look at all their politicians and they say, these people suck.
Which is generally true, because most people who try to control your lives, which is what politicians do, they kind of suck.
The people you like in your life are the people who don't try to control you.
The people who try to control you are the people who annoy you.
So by nature, the more we look at one side of the political aisle and focus in on them, the less we are going to like them.
President Trump has been doing well in the approval ratings, better than usual, because all the focus of late has been on Democrats.
When the focus is on President Trump, then Republicans don't do as well.
Right before the 2018 congressional election, the focus was on Democrats during the Kavanaugh hearing.
And the Democratic lead on the generic ballot slipped down to basically nothing.
Then President Trump decided, you know what, I want the focus back over here on me.
Let's talk immigration.
Then Republicans get blown out by nine points.
President Trump's best strategy has been to hide in the basement.
That's been the best strategy.
Hunker down.
Don't say anything.
Well, Cohen obviously allows the media the opportunity to shift the conversation back onto President Trump, because the last thing they actually want to do is talk about the Democratic Party.
Which makes perfect sense, because the Democratic Party has gotten so unbelievably extreme that they did something almost unthinkable yesterday.
So here's what happened yesterday.
Yesterday, brought up for a vote was the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
It was offered by Senator Ben Sasse, who was on the program a couple of weeks ago, talking about all this in the midst of the Ralph Northam controversy in Virginia.
You'll recall that Ralph Northam went on a radio show where he suggested that babies that were born alive in botched abortions, maybe they should be kept comfortable while the mother and the doctor decided what to do with the babies.
He said that he was talking about normal end-of-life care.
He said that kind of post-hoc.
But in the interview, he said, If a baby is born alive, maybe the baby has a viability issue or maybe the baby just has a severe deformity.
Then we'll keep the baby comfortable until we decide what to do with it.
His statements were a little broader than just end-of-life care.
The baby's not viable.
Do we pull the plug or not?
In any case, Kathy Tran was even clearer about it on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates when she said a baby should be aborted basically in the birth canal is totally fine.
And then the state of New York passed a law and the state of New York's law was so wildly extreme that it actually got rid of an already existing point of law in New York that protected infants that were born alive during botched abortions.
Which is fully crazy.
Well, last night there was a vote in the Senate, and by a vote of 53 to 44, the Senate failed to pass the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
That was 53 votes in favor, 44 votes against.
You need 60 votes to clear the filibuster.
The bill needed 60 votes.
Just three Democratic senators crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans in favor of legislation that was specifically designed to protect infants that were born alive during abortions.
To get rid of any distinction in law between infants born alive for any reason and infants born alive during abortion.
Mitch McConnell has a column talking about exactly why this was necessary in a piece for the Kentucky Courier-Journal, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
He said, I announced as Senate Majority Leader that we would vote on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
The bill, on which I'm proud to be an original co-sponsor with nearly 40 of my colleagues, would direct any physician present when a baby survives an abortion to provide medical assistance the same way they would for any other child who's born alive at that stage.
In short, it requires that doctors treat these babies with the attention and care they deserve.
Apparently, Ben Sasse tried to seek an agreement to expedite the passage of the legislation, and Democrats held that up.
They blocked the passage of the bill.
And Senator McConnell says that the bill is necessary, again, because of laws like that in the state of New York.
Which is true.
Again, the state of New York obliterated a provision of law that provided additional protections for babies that were born during botched abortions.
Now, here's the thing.
The case that Democrats are making against this thing doesn't make any sense.
I've been trying literally all night and this morning.
I've been trying to find why exactly Democrats object to this bill.
Why exactly is there anything wrong with this bill?
They say, well, there's already a bill on the books, 2002, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, that says that if a child is born alive, then it is to be treated as any other baby would be.
So why exactly is this bill necessary?
We're not going to vote for it.
The problem is that Democrats constantly vote for bills that are unnecessary, but are morally, morally good.
So, for example, last week, there was a bill that was passed.
It was a federal anti-lynching bill.
Is that really necessary to make lynching a federal crime?
Not really on a practical level, because it's already a state crime to murder somebody.
There are state anti-lynching laws in the vast majority of states across the United States.
So why was a federal law necessary?
The answer was it wasn't really necessary in practical terms, but it was a morally good thing to do, and so it passed with flying colors, I believe a unanimous vote, in the United States Senate.
Suddenly, Democrats have decided they don't like extraneous and unnecessary legislation?
This is a weird thing.
Sass said in a speech in the Senate on February 4th that Ralph Northam had endorsed infanticide.
He said the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act prohibits exactly the kind of infanticide Northam was addressing.
The bill requires that a baby that is born alive must then be transferred to a hospital and away from an abortion clinic because we don't actually trust abortion doctors not to do a Kermit Gosnell and just kill babies that are already born.
The case the Democrats are making against this makes no sense.
So Leanna Nguyen is the president of Planned Parenthood.
Here's what she said.
She said, this legislation is based on lies and a misinformation campaign aimed at shaming women and criminalizing doctors for a practice that doesn't exist in medicine or reality.
Then why are you objecting to it?
I'm confused.
If this never happens, then what are you worried about?
What are you worried is the actual practical ramification of this legislation?
Why do you need 44 Democrats to vote against a piece of legislation saying if a baby is born alive during a botched abortion, then you can't kill it?
Really, like, if you say that never happens, okay, fine, so it never happens, so what's the downside?
What's the downside?
If you can't explain the downside, you're gonna have to vote for the bill.
Like, really, there's no real excuse not to vote for it.
Elizabeth Warren tweeted out in fully crazy fashion this morning.
She tweeted out something about how this was a way to protect women's health.
What in the world does women's health have to do with a baby that's already born alive?
That's fully crazy.
She tweeted out Republican politicians just tried and failed again to score political points at the expense of women.
Enough.
Women and their doctors should decide what's best for their health, not the Senate GOP.
What the?
What is that supposed to mean?
We're not talking about abortion here.
We're talking about babies that were born alive.
I mean, I'm looking at the text of the bill right now.
It was originally introduced in the House as H.R.
4712 by Representative Marsha Blackburn.
That was the version, or close to the version, that was voted on last night.
The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
All it says is that if an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States and entitled to all the protection of such laws, and then adds, any infant born alive after an abortion or within a hospital, clinic, or other facility has the same claim to the protection of the law notarized for any newborn or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care.
It says, any health practitioner present at the time the child is born alive shall exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.
In other words, you treat victims of botched abortions the same way that you would treat any baby that's born, and they would have to ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital because they don't have postnatal care available at abortions.
That's not what abortion clinics are for.
There's also a mandatory reporting of violations requirement saying that a health care practitioner whose knowledge of a failure to comply must report this to state or federal law enforcement.
And whoever violates subsection A will be fined under the title or imprisoned for not more than five years or both.
Or if you try to kill a born alive baby, then this will be treated as murder.
And the law explicitly says that the mother of a child born alive under the subsection may not be prosecuted under the section.
So this is not about even prosecuting mothers.
What is objectionable about this bill?
Literally nothing is objectionable about this bill.
I'll explain more in just a second.
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So again, I don't see any rationale for actually voting against this.
I'm still waiting to hear a rationale by Democrats other than just the simple propaganda of Democrats suggesting that this is a violation of women's health or women's rights.
There's nothing.
The baby's now separate from you.
I mean, how does that even affect a woman's health or rights?
What are we even talking about here?
Now, folks who say that it's unnecessary, it is important to note that the New York state law that recently passed that basically made abortion a guaranteed right, it repealed section 4164 of New York's public health law.
That section had provided that abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy had to be performed in a hospital, and that abortions after 20 weeks A separate physician had to be on hand to provide medical care.
It also specified, this section did, that a child born alive during an abortion procedure immediately enjoyed the protection of New York's laws.
It required medical records to be kept of efforts to care for the infant.
Without section 4164, this is according to America magazine, Catholic magazine, the public health law is now silent on the status of an infant born alive during an abortion.
Vermont is set to pass a similar law.
All the federal law would have done is obliterate distinctions between infants born alive, period, and infants born alive during abortions.
And the Democrats voted against it.
They voted against it, again, without any excuse.
I mean, I legitimately do not understand this.
Maisie Hirono tried to provide that excuse.
This is the horrible senator from Hawaii trying to make the case for why you shouldn't vote in favor of protecting infants born during botched abortions.
We're indulging the majority's use of a false premise to inflame the public, shame women, and intimidate healthcare providers.
Conservative politicians should not be telling doctors how they should care for their patients.
Instead, women, in consultation with their families and doctors, are in the best position to determine their best course of care.
Okay, so that's an insane contention.
Women are in the best position to determine their course of care.
The baby's course of care?
What is she even talking about here?
What is she even talking about?
If you are so extreme that you could not vote for this bill, you're too extreme for the American people.
And that means every single Democratic senator who is running for president, all six of them, they've all said that they voted, all of them voted against this bill.
How extreme have the Democrats become?
In 2002, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act passed.
We passed with unanimous Democratic support.
Every single Democrat voted in favor of it.
Now, I don't know who's doing the PR for the Democrats, but this is incredibly stupid.
The reason it's incredibly stupid is because the polls have shown that in the last two months, abortion opinion in the United States has shifted dramatically in favor of the pro-life movement.
The reason it has shifted dramatically in favor of the pro-life movement is because there's been a lot of talk about late-term abortion, and people are not in favor of late-term abortion.
Well, Democrats are now embracing after-term abortion, They're at least saying that we shouldn't have additional protections for babies that are born after birth.
After birth, after an abortion.
They're saying we shouldn't have additional protections.
And then they're blaming that on women's health?
What in the hell?
NARAL, Pro-Choice America.
They used to be called the National Abortion Rights Action League, but then they called themselves NARAL because they realized people don't like abortion.
They tweeted, The Senate has voted down Senator Sasse's extremist anti-science bill.
Anti-science?
What's anti-science about saying you need to provide the same level of hospital protection for an infant born during an abortion that you would for an infant born not during an abortion?
They attempted to inflict medically unnecessary restrictions on clinics.
I read you the restrictions on clinics.
The restrictions on clinics were you need to provide a baby the same care you would provide any other baby and you need to transfer that baby to a hospital ASAP.
You can't keep the baby at an abortion clinic because abortion clinics generally are not created to take care of babies that are alive.
They're created to kill babies.
What Nero is really worried about is this part.
They're spreading dangerous anti-choice lies like the lie that abortion clinics kill babies after birth.
Okay, well, if that's a lie, then what are you worried about?
Legitimately, what are you worried about?
All it says is that it is a crime for you not to report a baby murdered after birth.
That's what the bill says.
And you're saying that's spreading a lie?
Okay, well, then you're gonna have to show me, then you're gonna have to show me, if it never occurs, why you worry so much about voting in favor of this bill.
And as far as threatening health care providers with jail time, it threatens them with jail time if they kill a baby after it's born.
Now, notice the media coverage of this issue.
It's insane.
So, here is Politico's headline.
The Senate rejected a bill making it a felony for a doctor to harm or neglect an infant who survives a quote-unquote attempted abortion.
Part of a Republican effort to squeeze Democrats ahead of the 2020 campaign.
Republicans pounce, guys.
More pouncing by Republicans.
So, Republicans say, hey, shouldn't we protect this baby that's already born?
Democrats say, nah.
Unnecessary.
Why?
And Politico says Republicans pounce.
This is not a Republicans-Pounds issue.
But it doesn't matter.
The media will always cover these issues the way Democrats want these issues to be covered.
Pretty, pretty insane.
Okay, meanwhile, Bernie Sanders had another big moment in the national spotlight.
It did not go all that great for him, Bernie Sanders.
He talked about Venezuela.
He talked about how he was going to fund his insane programs.
All of this was on CNN in primetime.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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So Bernie Sanders is a front runner for the Democratic nomination.
If you remove Joe Biden from the polls, Bernie Sanders is the guy who is most likely to win the Democratic nomination, which means we have to play his theme music.
There it is.
Bernie Sanders' theme music, the old Soviet national anthem, D.C.
Dude loved the Soviet Union.
Back in 1988, he was talking about their great social programs.
Three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
What a wonderful dude Bernie Sanders is.
Well, Bernie Sanders voted also against the Born After Abortion Infant Protection Act.
But that wasn't all he did yesterday.
He also appeared on CNN where he said a bevy of crazy things.
So, he was asked specifically if America would become socialist if he were elected.
And he refused to say no.
Because, of course, he wants America to be socialist.
Now, the best part about Bernie Sanders is he says all the quiet parts out loud.
So for a long time, he's been trying to maintain that socialism is really just Norway.
Even though he used to hang out with the Chavistas, and even though he's a big fan of the Castros, and even though he loved the USSR, Bernie's new thing for the last 10 years has been, you know what's a great place?
Forget about all those other communist socialist places.
Let's talk about Scandinavia.
Let's talk about Sweden.
By the way, hilarious, the former prime minister of Sweden tweeted out about Bernie Sanders that Bernie Sanders knows nothing about our country and really doesn't know anything about politics.
Bernie loves Sweden, Sweden don't love Bernie.
In any case, Bernie was on CNN last night and he was asked, will America become socialist if you're elected?
And he was like, well, maybe, kinda.
This is the president.
America will never be a socialist country.
Will that hold true if you're elected president?
If I am elected president, we will have a nation in which all people have healthcare as a right, whether Trump likes it or not.
We are going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free.
We are going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of at least 15 bucks an hour.
And whether Trump likes it or not, when I talk about human rights, you know what that also means?
It means that our kids and grandchildren have the human right to grow up in a planet that is healthy and habitable.
This is what we call avoiding the question.
So, will it be a socialist country?
I will give you lots of nice things.
And they will be things that you like.
Like pudding.
Pudding is delicious.
So, are you socialist, Senator?
No, I just want things for all people.
This is one of my favorite rhetorical tricks.
People say things like, so, are you like a communist?
And you're like, if by communist you mean I am nice to puppies and pet them on the street, then yes, I am a communist.
And you're like, no, that's not what I meant by communist.
I meant like you want to nationalize all resources and take the profit margin out and really destroy the American economy.
I thought you meant puppies.
I like puppies.
So Bernie didn't stop there.
He was asked, how do you pay for all of this?
He said, well, all I will do is I will go to Jeff Bezos's house and then I will rob him.
I believe that in a democratic, civilized society, healthcare, yeah, is a right.
Making sure that our kids can get a higher education is a right, that we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure is a basic need.
That's going to cost money.
People say, where are you going to get the money?
Where are you going to get the money?
Amazon, owned by the wealthiest guy in the world, made $5 billion last year in profits.
Anyone here know how much they paid in taxes?
That's right.
That's where we're going to begin getting the money.
They are not paying zero in taxes.
Every time you buy a product from Amazon, you are paying a sales tax.
Every single time.
They pay appropriate state taxes in every state in which they do business.
But I love that.
My favorite thing is when you have socialists and they say things like, they get so offended when you ask them how you're going to pay for things.
Like really offended.
Like yesterday, AOC was talking about, they're all asking me questions like, where am I going to get the money for this stuff?
I mean, like, from the sky?
Hello?
And then you had Kamala Harris doing the same thing.
She was asked on CNN, you know, people say, where are you going to get money for this, Senator Harris?
And I say, don't worry about where we get the money.
The question is how much benefit you're going to get from the money.
Is it OK?
Can we just?
Enough of the avoiding the serious question.
Where are you going to get the money?
The answer is not Amazon.com.
The answer for Bernie Sanders is 60% tax rates on everybody making above $60,000 a year.
That's the actual answer for funding Bernie's nonsensical programs.
He wants to raise tax rates on everybody, including the middle class.
And if he were honest, he would just say that.
But what's hilarious is he won't even acknowledge that that's the case in the countries that he loves most.
So he'll say, I love all the social programs in Sweden.
Sweden has great social programs.
Well, how about their tax rates, Bernie?
No, we don't talk about that around here.
That's Amazon.
Jeff Bezos.
What demagogic nonsense.
The good news is that Bernie wants to do universal preschool education so he can make sure that your kids are indoctrinated by Head Start programs.
If you become president, will you support efforts to offer high quality, optional, publicly funded preschool for all Americans?
Want a one word answer?
Absolutely.
Every dollar you invest in preschool education will be paid back many, many times.
So we got a lot of work to do in education from higher education, To preschool, to improving our public schools as well.
Again, he does the same trick.
Every dollar that you spend on public education will be returned to you manifold, plentifully.
Wow.
Okay, well, nonsense.
Head Start is one of the great failures in American public education.
It has been for years.
It's a giant money pit.
There's no evidence whatsoever that Head Start results in better educational outcomes for the kids who go to Head Start.
You don't get money back just because you send your kids to a Head Start program or universal preschool.
Or anything like that.
Plus, if you actually want to do this, why not just give vouchers to parents and then they can pick the school they send their kids to?
But Bernie would never do that.
He wants government-run Head Start programs.
You don't want parents actually choosing what to do with their kids.
It's just lies.
I mean, Bernie's big thing, the big thing about socialism is the giant lies that accompany it.
So, if you just take our giant government program and you implement it, then magical gumdrops will fall from the sky.
Everything will be just great.
There's never been a downside to any massive government bureaucracy.
We don't have to spend additionally, we can just tax people.
We don't have to tax additionally, we can just go after the rich people.
We don't have to worry about bureaucracy, we'll have the best bureaucrats you've ever heard of.
We don't have to worry about the history of socialism bankrupting countries and burdening economies and creating massive tax rates and And really undercutting the power of entrepreneurship.
We don't have to worry about any of those things.
It'll all be great.
So here's Bernie doing that routine on Medicare for All.
Will these people be able to keep their health insurance plans, their private plans through their employers if there is a Medicare for All program that you endorse?
What they will, what will change in their plans is the color of their card.
So instead of having a Blue Cross Blue Shield card, instead of having a United Health Insurance card, they're going to have a Medicare card.
That Medicare card will allow them to go to any doctor that they want.
If they're going to the doctor, they're happy.
Any hospital they want.
But you know what else?
They're not going to be paying any...
Private insurance premiums?
Okay, this is completely insane.
If Medicare for All were a thing and you abolished private insurance, you would not be able to walk into any hospital you want and get any care you want.
They have waiting lists.
They have rationing.
They have shortages.
This is true in the NHS in Great Britain, for example, which is the best example of a nationalized healthcare system.
All of the things that people like about Medicare, generally they like about Medicare Advantage, which is a program where you're buying supplemental insurance on top of your Medicare.
People on Medicare right now are being cut out from their doctors right now because reimbursement rates are too low.
What he is saying is just not true.
It's just not true.
It's on the order of if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
When Bernie Sanders says, nothing will change except the color of your card, Well, that and you won't be able to go to the doctor you want to go to.
You won't be able to get a surgery on demand.
You won't be able to go to the doctor you've normally attended.
You won't get the same medical care.
You'll have to wait in line.
But aside from that, it'll be exactly the same.
Aside from all the things being different, it'll be exactly the same.
It's like my favorite joke as a child.
What's the similarity between a cow and a plum?
They're both purple, except for the cow.
It's the same thing with Medicare for All.
What's the difference between Medicare for All and your current health insurance?
They're exactly the same, except for they're completely different.
Oh, Bernie Sanders.
Okay, but the best of Bernie Sanders is yet to come.
So, here's the thing about Bernie.
The frontrunner for the Democratic Party refused on national television last night to call Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, a dictator.
Because Bernie has a long... Again, he said the quiet part out loud, which is that Democrats kind of like socialism in Venezuela.
A lot of Democrats were cheering for Hugo Chávez like ten years ago.
And now they're very... Now...
Before, Hugo Chavez was kind of like the new, he was like the Scandinavian countries.
He was the hot new socialist thing.
And then everything fell apart and they're eating dogs and Maduro's shooting his own citizens.
And it's like, well, I guess that one was a, I guess we picked a bad example there.
You know, sure we picked a bad example in Russia, China, Cuba.
Half of South America.
Sure, we picked some bad examples there, but in reality, the new best country is gonna be Venezuela.
And then they're like, oh no, sorry?
Scratch that.
The new best country?
Sweden.
Sweden, we've chosen.
So here's Bernie Sanders forgetting for a second and going back to, Venezuela's kind of great, except for the death and destruction and despair and starvation.
Except for that, it's pretty awesome.
Why have you stopped short of calling Maduro of Venezuela a dictator?
I think it's fair to say that the last election was undemocratic.
But there are still democratic operations taking place in that country.
The point is, what I am calling for right now is internationally supervised free elections.
And I do find it interesting that Trump is very concerned about what goes on in Venezuela.
My record is to be concerned about democracy all over the world.
Okay, well, no, your record is not that, actually.
You were in favor of the USSR and Cuba, so no, that's actually not your record, being in favor of democracy all over the world.
As far as why we don't support democracy in Saudi Arabia, it's for the same reason that supporting democracy in Hamasistan was a bad idea.
The worry in Saudi Arabia is that if you actually were to have a vote, that the Muslim Brotherhood would then be in charge of Saudi Arabia and their oil supplies.
Democracy is not always consonant with liberalism, but in Venezuela, it certainly is.
And so you get, theoretically, the best of both worlds.
A democracy in which a socialist dictator is overturned.
That's good.
Why is he opposing it?
The answer is he's opposing it because this guy happens to be a socialist.
I mean, because you could ask the same question in reverse.
Why is it, Bernie, that you're in favor of democratization in Saudi Arabia but not in Venezuela?
There's only one reason.
I just gave you the geopolitical reason why there's an actual rationale for the Saudi royal family remaining a dictatorship.
And that's a very hardcore political reason.
It's not a neocon position that every country needs to be immediately democratized because there are consequences to democratization.
When they tried to hold a vote in Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas was elected, an actual terrorist group.
Elections do not necessarily guarantee liberalism.
But, in Venezuela, the good news is they kind of would.
Like, actual open elections in Venezuela would certainly be preferable to a socialist dictatorship.
But apparently not according to Bernie.
There is a pretty stark contrast, by the way, between the Bernie Sanders perspective on Venezuela and the perspective of the senator from Connecticut for the Democrats who said yesterday that he was very afraid of Trump when it came to Venezuela, but not so much Maduro.
There's a big contrast between that and the position of the administration.
Here is Vice President Mike Pence yesterday saying that Maduro has to go.
What brings us together today is the recognition by all the nations gathered here That Nicolas Maduro is a usurper with no legitimate claim to power.
And Nicolas Maduro must go.
Okay, so that's a very different position.
By the way, worth noting, yesterday there were journalists who were arrested and harassed by the Venezuelan governor, Jorge Ramos, who you'll recall once yelled at President Trump when President Trump was first elected.
He yelled at him and then President Trump said, I'm not going to answer your questions.
He refused to listen and then he was removed from the tent.
And people were like, that's fascism!
That's a crackdown on the press.
Okay, here's what happened to Jorge Ramos and his Univision team yesterday in Venezuela.
They were actually detained.
They were legally detained in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, after asking Nicolas Maduro questions he did not like and showing him a video of people eating from the trash.
They were actually arrested and put in jail.
Okay, that's fascism.
That's a crackdown on the press.
And the press treated as though being a member of the press in the United States is a great risk.
The great heroes of the journalism-ing press here in the United States.
It actually takes some guts to be in Venezuela right now.
If you want to talk about the actual oppression of journalists, you might want to look to some of the socialist dictatorships that you love so much here on the left.
Turns out that those places are very likely to crack down on journalists in a way that Donald Trump never has and never is going to.
So that is pretty astonishing stuff.
That's pretty astonishing stuff.
Again, the weird, odd defensiveness that so many people on the left have about Venezuela is really telling.
It's really telling.
I'm not defensive about the human rights violations about Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is a terrible place.
Lots of human rights violation run by people who are fully ensconced and cracking down on their own population.
It's really ugly and it's really bad.
And the only question is, would the alternative be worse?
In Venezuela, there's no question the alternative would be better.
And yet there are members of the hardcore left in the Democratic Party who are still trying to manipulate so that Maduro has a chance to remain in power undemocratically.
Thank you.
And then they talk about how much they are worried about President Trump.
It's kind of astonishing.
And meanwhile, I do have to make a quick note here.
President Trump is in Vietnam right now, and he is meeting with Kim Jong Un.
And he's doing some PR that I think is not only unnecessary, but really morally ugly.
He was looking to flatter Kim Jong Un today, according to CNN.
Trump told Kim Jong-un that he had known plenty of people who had grown up wealthy and whose families were powerful, is what he told Kim Jong-un.
And then he said many of them emerged messed up, but Kim wasn't one of them.
Mr. President, I understand that you are trying to...
Make nice with a dictator because you think you're going to get something from him?
Can you please not say evil things in the process?
Kim Jong-un literally kills his relatives and keeps millions of people in a giant gulag.
I'm fairly certain messed up would be the least of the descriptors to apply to him.
My goodness.
If Barack Obama had said that, we'd all be up in arms.
So I think we should be similarly up in arms that the President of the United States is telling one of the worst dictators on planet Earth that he did not emerge, he emerged better than many families, many kids of rich families in the United States.
Absolute silly nonsense.
Alrighty, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.
So things I like today.
There's a famous poet named Roderick Falconer, and he has written a poem about abortion that is really quite affecting and quite moving.
You can check it out on the Daily Wire's YouTube page.
And here is a little bit of that poem about the evil, the grave moral evil that is abortion and the people who are willing to support it.
Feel the sun's befriending warmth be held by ones who are supposed to be waiting, who must be waiting for them.
They too had love to give, for they were someone.
Not nothing, not no one.
No matter all the worthless words that can be said.
Though they themselves never had a chance to speak.
Somewhere before this life, unspoken sentences of tenderness were formed.
And then cut off before they could be said.
Cut off in ceremonies of lifeless latex hands and disembodied masks that float in blind bright auras of white rooms with antiseptic smells.
It's a really brutal and affecting poem.
You can go check it out at Daily Wire.
The poet again is Roderick Falconer.
Go check that out right now.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So, things that I hate today.
AOC, freshness, faceness, beyond compare.
I mean, exponential levels of both freshness and faceness.
So fresh, so face, fresh face, fresh, fresh.
So, yesterday, Senator John Cornyn of Texas tweeted out this quote.
quote.
He said, we were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.
Benito Mussolini.
And the reason that he was tweeting that out is because he was saying that many Democrats, many people on the left, are happy to restrict strict freedom of the individual on behalf of a more complex and complicated state.
He's saying it's bad.
AOC, being a historical ignoramus and not knowing things, then tweeted out, in case you missed it, while the GOP is calling paying a living wage socialism, a Republican senator full-on quoted National Fascist Party leader and Hitler ally Benito Mussolini like it's a Hallmark card.
Okay, there's a meme on Twitter that shows a person and then a joke going over their head and it says, you, the joke, going over your head.
Thank you.
Hey, that is AOC nearly every day of the week.
He literally quoted this to say that Democrats are centralizing power and limiting freedom because they keep saying the world is complicated.
And then she's like, you quoted Mussolini, though, didn't you?
Because he's saying that you guys are kind of akin to Mussolini, because it turns out the Democratic Party was a big fan of Italian fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.
But AOC, and what's amazing is that people are so stupid that her dumb tweet, which completely misses the point in every conceivable fashion, that that idiotic tweet received 45,000 likes because everyone and everything is stupid.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So there's a video going around of me last night eating a piece of popcorn that fell on the floor.
So, number one, snacks don't care about your feelings.
Number two, I will point out that the five-second rule is a reality.
It does indeed apply.
This wasn't five seconds.
This was a momentary lapse.
Also, I was in hour six of broadcasting yesterday, man.
I mean, like, leave me alone.
That's all I'm saying.
I'm saying, look, celebrities, they're just like you.
Okay?
It's actually a really funny video, so you can go check that out.
I wouldn't put it in things I like because the popcorn wasn't that great, and especially with the dog hair on it after that and everything.
Anyway, okay.
Other things that I hate.
So there's an article from NBC News.
The party of science, the media that loves science.
Here's a headline.
Trans athletes make great gains, yet resentment still flares.
As soon as they start winning, they start winning.
That's when the vitriol comes out about how they're really still a man.
No, it's not vitriol.
They're really still a man.
Men perform different athletically than women.
That's what we're talking about.
This is the Associated Press.
Across the U.S.
and in many places abroad, transgender athletes are breaking barriers in high school, college, and pro sports and being embraced by teammates and fans.
Right, they're cheating.
Right, like if a man goes into MMA, if Fallon Fox goes into MMA and beats the living bleep out of a bunch of women, that is called cheating.
That is called cheating.
You say, but resentment can still flare when transgender women start winning and dominating their sport.
Yes, because they're biological men.
If a man calls himself a woman and then has a couple of surgeries to make himself feel better about that, that does not mean his athletic prowess has radically changed.
What in the world?
And then they go after Martina Navratilova.
When the woke start eating the woke, you know things have gotten bad.
Martina Navratilova is obviously a bad person.
One of the first out lesbians in modern athletic history.
And she is a bad person because she says men are different than women.
Very, very, very terrible.
But don't worry.
These, these are the parties of science.
They love science.
Elizabeth Warren yesterday tweeted out that she loves science immediately after she said that mother's health determines what to do with the baby after it's born.
Which apparently is scientific or something.
Everyone's lost their damn mind.
Alrighty, well, we'll be back here later for two more hours, and we have on guest Senator Ben Sasse.
We'll stop by to discuss the Post-Birth Abortion Protection Act that he put forth and that was voted down by Democrats.
We'll talk about that with Senator Sasse a little bit later today.
That's why you should go subscribe, that way you can get two hours additionally every day, anytime you want.
Go check it out right now.
We'll see you here later.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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