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March 26, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

58:20

Donald Trump’s Dreams Come True | Ep. 745

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	Fallout from the Mueller Report continues.
	Michael Avenatti faces down handcuffs, but not the kind that he likes.
	And Vice President Pence heads to AIPAC.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	So, there's a lot of news to get to today.
	There's some breaking news about Jussie Smollett that we will try to get to if time permits it.
	Lots and lots of stuff happening right this very instant.
	But before we get to any of that, let's talk about the fact that our federal government is out of control.
	It's been out of control for a very long time.
	And it's been out of control because the federal government has essentially been restructured to run roughshod over the checks and balances that were inherent in the Constitution of the United States.
	And this is why I am a big believer in calling a convention of states where we the people can propose amendments to the Constitution to protect the Constitution itself from the predations of the federal government.
	That means overreach by the executive branch.
	It means overreach by the legislative branch.
	It means the legislative branch kicking too much power to the executive, and the executive kicking too much power to the judiciary.
	It means Congress threatening to undo the power of the judiciary.
	It's time to protect the Constitution.
	That's why I'm a fan of the Convention of States.
	Can you imagine the look on the faces of members of the federal government when they realize their power has been limited, and that suddenly they have to go back to the original founding bargain of a limited government?
	Well, this is what a Convention of States can help make happen.
	In fact, a Convention of States may be the only way to get the job done.
	There are already 3.8 million people with us on this, more every day, so join me and my friend Mark Meckler.
	Go to conventionofstates.com slash ben to sign the petition today.
	That is conventionofstates.com slash ben.
	Let's re-enshrine the Constitution at the center of American life.
	conventionofstates.com slash ben.
	Go sign the petition today and join Mark Meckler and me to help restore constitutional checks and balances.
	conventionofstates.com All right, so, yesterday, I was not here for our afternoon show, for the additional two hours of the show.
	We kicked it over to the excorable Michael Molls, who had himself a field day, I am told.
	I'll tell you how my day went.
	So, I had an endoscopy scheduled for a while, and it just turned out that it fell yesterday.
	And so, they gave me some propofol, and they put me under to do this endoscopy.
	And when I woke up, I saw that Michael Avenatti was being prosecuted, and the icebergs in Greenland were growing.
	And I thought to myself, am I still under sedation?
	And did I somehow end up in President Trump's fever dream?
	What exactly happened here?
	Because, um, wow, like every 20 minutes there was a piece of news that was breaking for President Trump in favor of President Trump.
	Most of yesterday, of course, was consumed with the reaction to the William Barr Attorney General report on the Mueller report.
	It was a four page summation that we read on the podcast yesterday all about what exactly Mueller had found.
	And it is necessary at this point to point out that the reactions of the people who had overzealously suggested what was in the report are astonishing to watch.
	It is astonishing to watch as people double down on the confirmation bias that got them here in the first place.
	And this is unfortunately a typical typical human tendency.
	You are called out on something that debunks your original position.
	And instead of you starting to reconsider based on the evidence or take the evidence into account, instead, what you do is you simply double down on your original perception of the issue and you look for excuses as to why this is all somebody else's fault.
	Now, this does not mean that it is not hilarious because it is indeed hilarious.
	The most hilarious story of the day comes courtesy of The New York Times.
	Here's the headline, quote, disappointed fans of Mueller rethink the pedestal they built for him.
	It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at this.
	Quote, this is by Astey Herndon and Richard Fawcett.
	The The sense of mourning started to take hold over the weekend, after Attorney General William P. Barr said that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had not found coordination between President Trump's campaign and the Russian government's election interference in 2016.
	Over the nearly two years of the Mueller investigation, a segment of liberals and activists built up fervent hopes that it would bring Mr. Trump down.
	They elevated Mr. Mueller, a former FBI director, into an anti-Trump cultural icon, complete with T-shirts, scented candles, and holiday-themed songs like, For some of them, the report felt like a betrayal.
	To many others, it was a disappointment.
	That's a hell of a range of emotional responses there.
	I mean, from betrayal all the way to disappointment.
	My goodness.
	I was hoping the truth would come out, said Sean Foster, a 45-year-old music video and television producer in Nashville.
	Mr. Foster had taken to wearing a yellow pin showing the top of the special prosecutor's head rising like a shark from the sea.
	Mr. Foster said he was wearing the pin on Sunday when Mr. Barr's summary of the report came out.
	It's definitely embarrassing, he said.
	It's a drag knowing there are people out there who are gloating.
	Well, yeah.
	Also, we've all been laughing at you the whole time, dude.
	Like, it's not just now.
	Like, the whole time we've been laughing at you.
	Now, there are some of us who, daily, wear funny hats on top of our head because we want to be reminded of the providence of God in the universe.
	There are some of us Who wear shirts that proclaim political messages, you know, general political messages.
	And then there are some of us who elevated a person that we did not know anything about and who is just a prosecutor into a national icon in the fervent hope that he would be the deus ex machina who ended the Trump presidency.
	It's just wonderful.
	Jennifer Taub, a Vermont law school professor who had become known for punchy anti-Trump columns with titles like, yes, collusion, now what, said, there are definitely people who thought that Mueller would save us.
	And Mueller looked back at them and he said, No.
	It's just...
	Pretty amazing.
	The media malfeasance here, of course, has been absolutely egregious.
	Now, are the media admitting to their malfeasance?
	Of course they are not.
	How many articles since May 2017 have been published about Russia and Trump slash Mueller?
	Since May 2017, this is according to Axios, 533,000 web articles have been published about Trump and Russia, generating 245 million interactions.
	So the media did all of the election interference that the Russians didn't do in 2016, apparently.
	It's all according to Newswhip.
	And on the networks alone, the networks alone gave 2,284 minutes to the Russia probe, according to Newsbusters.
	And that's just the networks, right?
	Those are the people who have like an hour a night to give you the network news.
	If you go to cable, then you are talking presumably in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of minutes, because that's been basically CNN's main programming for the last couple of years.
	And it's not just that they have been programming this stuff up the wazoo.
	It's also that they've been breaking false bombshells for legitimately years on end.
	The Daily Caller has a really good piece about this by Amber Athey, their White House correspondent, pointing out all of the ways in which the media botched this story.
	You'll recall that CNN accused Don Jr.
	of WikiLeaks collusion.
	She writes, last December, CNN's Manu Raju reported that WikiLeaks emailed Donald Trump Jr.
	to give him access to stolen documents a full 10 days before they were released to the public.
	And then it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date.
	Don Jr.
	received an email with access to the stolen documents after they'd been released publicly.
	Remember that ABC tanked the stock market with fake Mike Flynn news.
	ABC was forced to suspend Brian Ross after he falsely reported that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.
	The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news, but the news turned out to be fake.
	Now, here's the thing.
	You could say this is all just the media getting it wrong.
	Listen, over at Daily Wire, we've had to retract headlines before.
	We've gotten stories wrong.
	We publish legitimately 50 to 70 stories a day, and you do that over the course of several years, and you're talking about thousands and thousands of stories.
	The question is, in what direction do all the mistakes get made?
	So at our site, we're a conservative site.
	We openly acknowledge we're a conservative site.
	CNN, ABC, these are outlets that pretend to be objective.
	And yet, oddly, every error they ever make cuts in one direction and one direction only.
	How strange.
	You remember that CNN reported that the Mooch was under investigation.
	And the Mooch got an apology from CNN because the Mooch was not under investigation.
	First of all, the Mooch was in the administration for a grand total of 32 seconds.
	I'm not sure what he would have done in those 32 seconds to earn an investigation other than being the greatest guest star in the history of Trump the television show.
	Bloomberg suggested that Deutsche Bank was being zeroed in on by Robert Mueller.
	Jeff Sessions Jeff Sessions, it was reported, had botched protocol.
	CNN said that.
	That he had botched protocol when he didn't list meetings he had with the Russian ambassador on security clearance forms.
	But Sessions met with them when he was in the Senate.
	I mean, story after story after story.
	And yet, do the media feel really contrite today?
	Of course they don't.
	I mean, people won Pulitzer Prizes for this stuff, guys.
	People in the media won Pulitzer Prizes.
	The Washington Post and the New York Times won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their national reporting of President Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
	They received the award, this is Town Hall reporting, for quote, deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect's transition team, and his eventual administration.
	Deeply sourced?
	Well, not so much.
	Not so much, because it turns out that half their stories were sourced incorrectly.
	There was an article, for example, they published on Jared Kushner.
	The report talked about Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort, Paul Manafort, meeting with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin.
	In reality, they met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is with Fusion GPS, the group behind the fake dossier.
	The Washington Post did the same thing.
	You'll remember it was the Washington Post reporting that Jeff Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, proving, proving that collusion was on the menu.
	It turns out that Sessions met with Kislyak because he sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
	And the media's malfeasance can be summed up in this one clip from Chris Matthews over at Harbaugh.
	Remember, Chris Matthews, coming into the show, rolling in here.
	In the middle of the Mueller investigation, Chris Matthews comes out there, comes into the show, rolls on in there, and he says, you know what?
	I like to think of an aquatic metaphor.
	I was at the aquarium the other day, with my wife Kathleen.
	We were at the aquarium, and I'd had too much to drink, as per my usual arrangement.
	I started thinking, there's a starfish, there's a clam, it's a Mueller and Trump, go!
	Watching Mueller and Trump go at it, I'm reminded of biology lab back in my sophomore year at LaSalle College High School.
	Remember the starfish and the clam?
	I know we dissected one or the other, definitely the starfish.
	Mueller reminds me of the starfish, which gets itself tight on the clam and uses all its stuff to weaken and pry open the clam.
	Now, this is a battle to the death as far as the clam is concerned.
	If the starfish is able to open him even a little bit, he can get him open all the way.
	And that's it, of course, for the clam.
	He's the starfish's lunch.
	The Starfish and the Clam.
	This is how the media relentlessly reported, with deeply sourced reporting, on Trump and Russia and Mao.
	The Starfish and the Clam, guys!
	Just like high school biology class.
	I failed, by the way.
	It was sad.
	But it's okay, now I'm here.
	I run in here in my funny chair, my weird hair.
	Yeah.
	Well done, media.
	So in a second, we will show you how the media are so apologetic about their mistakes.
	You know, they feel really bad.
	That's the nice thing, is that they have really learned their lesson.
	Yeah, not so much.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Now, as I say, one of the beautiful things about the media is that when they make a mistake, they are happy to acknowledge it.
	They're really good about acknowledging the mistakes that they've made.
	So, for example, people like Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, who came out and said, no, actually, we did great.
	CNN President Jeff Zucker, quote, we are not investigators, we are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.
	Oh, is that what you did?
	That was... Now I get it.
	That's all you were doing.
	You were just reporting the facts as you knew them.
	Never mind there's an entire section of the CNN website called CNN Investigates.
	No, they don't do any investigations.
	They're just there to report the facts as they know them, like the fact that Trump was a Russian cat's paw.
	And it's not just Jeff Zucker who is defending the media's behavior in all of this.
	It's so funny.
	You remember after 2016, the New York Times ran an editorial in which they said, yeah, we sort of got this whole thing wrong.
	Our coverage?
	We sort of missed a few things.
	Well, now self-reflection has become taboo in the media.
	And so it's, no, we did, guys, we did great.
	We did great.
	You know, it's not that we got a 900 on our SATs.
	It's that the test is biased.
	That's what happened here.
	So the New York Times writes today, After Mueller Report, News Media Leaders Defend Their Work.
	By Amy Chozik.
	There have been tipping points and bombshells, walls closing in and turning points, and there have been so, so many declarations of the beginning of the end that comedian John Oliver had a recurring satirical We Got Him segment on his late night HBO show, complete with jubilant marching band and sequined majorettes celebrating President Trump's downfall.
	But in the swirl of reporting and speculation about the 45th president, nothing has held viewers on the edge of their seats quite like the special counsel, Robert Mueller III, and his investigation into possible ties between Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign and Russian agents.
	The storyline had it all.
	Cold War-era intrigue, allegations of shadowy meetings in Moscow, and all of the rest.
	The news media got it wrong, obviously, but are they feeling bad about any of this?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	That's silly.
	Zucker said in an email, a sitting president's own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation.
	That's not enormous because the media says so.
	That's enormous because it's unprecedented.
	Well, except if the media coverage helped drive the investigation in the first place.
	Bill Gruskin, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, where all good journalists go, said, Mueller and Barr need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Do we file charges or don't we?
	Journalists don't have that standard.
	In other words, Pulitzer Prize winning reports of alleged wrongdoing do not need to provide evidence of criminality in order to be factual, newsworthy and relevant to readers.
	That's not really the question.
	The question is whether you blew all of this out of proportion and suggested that around every corner lay the end of the Trump presidency.
	Martin Barron, executive editor of The Washington Post, said, quote, the special counsel investigation documented, as we reported, extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election and widespread deceit on the part of certain advisers to the president about Russian contacts and other matters.
	Our job is to bring facts to light.
	And yet, strangely, it seems as though your entire narrative is that the president was about to be impeached.
	How strange.
	See, there are two types of bias.
	There's bias in how you cover a story, and then there is selection bias in what you choose to cover.
	to determine whether or not there is illegality.
	That's right, it isn't.
	And yet strangely, it seems as though your entire narrative is that the president was about to be impeached.
	How strange.
	See, there are two types of bias.
	There's bias in how you cover a story, and then there is selection bias in what you choose to cover.
	And the media demonstrated both here.
	I'm gonna show you case in point, Chris Cuomo over at CNN.
	So, case in point, Chris Cuomo over at CNN.
	Here's a flashback.
	This is a month ago.
	He said that President Trump would certainly be under pressure after the Mueller report.
	This was not editorializing, this was objective newsification.
	Journalism-ing at the highest level.
	Chris Cuomo journalism-ing all over everyone.
	This block of wood, the less smart of the Cuomo brothers, which is a hell of a statement.
	Here he was a month ago, saying that President Trump would be, dun dun dun dun dun dun, under pressure.
	This is going to be an especially chaotic time.
	This president will be under pressure, in all likelihood, like he's never been before.
	Not because he's going to be removed in cuffs, but because, almost certainly, he's not going to like things in the report.
	But get ready.
	A storm is coming.
	Expect the president and his allies to throw everything they have at you, to make as much noise as possible, to distract and obfuscate.
	And expect those who seek advantage in any negative information to spin it fast and hard as well.
	Okay, well, spinning fast and hard is actually Chris Cuomo's main job at CNN.
	Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani called him out on this.
	He said, maybe you should apologize for your coverage.
	And Chris Cuomo's like, me?
	Me?
	I'm great.
	I'm the best journalist you've ever seen.
	I've journalized all over everyone.
	Everywhere.
	Here's Chris Cuomo defending his dumbiness.
	You guys, on this network, have tortured this man for two years with collusion, and nobody's apologized.
	First of all, before we talk about obstruction, apologize for the overreaction and collusion.
	Not a chance.
	Well, of course you're not.
	Not a chance, and I'll tell you why.
	Of course you're not, because you're not being fair.
	No, please.
	You know better than that, or you wouldn't be here.
	No, I don't know better.
	I am outraged by the behavior of these networks.
	Okay.
	Collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion.
	No collusion, Chris.
	No collusion.
	Here's my case.
	Apologize.
	Never.
	Here's my case.
	Never?
	Never.
	I didn't do anything wrong.
	These questions are real.
	They needed to be regarded as such, and they needed to be investigated.
	Oh, well.
	Oh, well.
	Chris Cuomo's got nothing to apologize for, guys.
	Nothing.
	Their total coverage over at CNN has... If you watch CNN, you could have come down on either side of the issue.
	Either Trump was a traitor, or he was also a traitor.
	Those were the two sides of the issue that you could have come down on if you regularly watch CNN.
	I know, because it was on at the gym all the time while I was working out.
	So it's not like I've never watched CNN, okay?
	I watched CNN for two years do this routine, and yet the media, are they going to take an introspective look, and maybe, maybe, whether they ought to have provided a couple of different perspectives, Maybe whether they ought to have taken a breath before they reported that the president was probably in league with Vladimir Putin.
	Maybe they should have stopped acting so overwhelmingly excited every time they appeared on TV with a new piece of bombshell breaking news.
	Maybe?
	No, no, no.
	They're not going to do any of those things.
	The best example of confirmation bias at work was on The View yesterday, because the members of The View, like Joy Behar, are the bumper sticker version of CNN.
	They're the sort of people who do wear Mueller pins around the office.
	Here was Joy Behar beside herself yesterday.
	She couldn't deal with the fact that the Mueller report had not been everything that she had hoped that it would be.
	I have questions about obstruction.
	Why did he keep his conversations with Putin secret?
	Those are like little questions that sound like obstruction to me.
	So I don't buy that he's completely exonerated the way he just said.
	He says he's completely exonerated.
	But the Republican Party are bashing him up on that.
	I'm reluctant to talk about it at all because, you know, we don't know anything.
	And we have not seen this report.
	So I think everybody needs to pump the brakes when we talk about this being a huge victory for this administration.
	Guys, we don't know anything.
	Like, two days ago, we knew everything.
	We knew that Trump was a traitor.
	Now, we don't know anything.
	We gotta hold up, guys.
	We gotta hold up.
	You remember, they did the exact same thing with Jussie Smollett.
	As soon as Jussie Smollett came out with his story, it was, you know, this is evidence of American racism.
	Deep-seated, brutal American racism.
	Same thing with Covington High School.
	This is evidence of deep-seated, brutal American racism.
	And then the facts started to leak out.
	It was, you know, we gotta, you know, let's wait a minute.
	Let's wait.
	Let's hold up.
	Let's make up our minds after we see all the evidence.
	It's always interesting to see when people say, let's wait for the evidence and when people are willing to jump beyond the evidence at hand.
	Always very interesting because it is a good way of revealing bias.
	Every human being has a has a.
	Tendency toward this stuff, but the media are overwhelmingly biased in one direction now I will say that the media's bias is not any shock to me I think that the the greatest shock to me is the continuing malfeasance I mean true malfeasance of High-ranking members of the intelligence community is severely disquieting to me.
	That so many high-ranking members of the Obama intelligence community, these are people who are supposed to be tasked with protecting us from terrorism, protecting us from threats foreign and domestic, that these folks are so politically biased that they went on television night after night proclaiming that the elected president of the United States is a traitor and that he would be proved to be that these folks are so politically biased that they went on television night after night proclaiming I mean, John Brennan, the former head of the CIA under Barack Obama, he was head of the CIA when the Trump-Russia investigation was initiated.
	He was on MSNBC last night after spending legitimately two years proclaiming that he had secret knowledge that President Trump had committed some nefarious act of treason.
	He was on MSNBC last night.
	He said, Oh, well, you know, my mistake, I guess.
	I mean, like, I just, you know, I guess I thought that there was more than there actually was.
	Oh, well.
	I don't know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected that there was more than there actually was.
	And I am relieved that it's been determined that there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.
	I think that is good news for the country.
	I still point to things that were done publicly or efforts to try to have conversations with the Russians that were inappropriate.
	But I'm not all that surprised that the high bar of criminal conspiracy was not met.
	Whoopsie doodle.
	You know, I've spent the last couple of years suggesting from my perch at the top of one of America's foremost intelligence agencies, using the expertise that comes along with that position, proclaiming that the president is a traitor to the United States.
	I guess I just got a little out ahead of myself.
	You know, it's understandable, really, to call the president, the elected president, a traitor.
	You know, we were investigating him during the campaign on the basis of scanty to no evidence.
	But sure, you know, everybody makes mistakes, guys.
	It's not just John Brennan.
	A former FBI official named Chuck Rosenberg was on Meet the Press, and he said that Mueller's decision not to come to a conclusion on obstruction, quote, strikes me as a little bit curious because, quote, prosecutors get paid to make determinations and recommendations.
	Or perhaps he didn't have the evidence to determine whether or not obstruction took place.
	But now we've got a former FBI official using the expertise of his position to proclaim that maybe something nefarious is going on there.
	And it doesn't stop there.
	I don't know how we are supposed to trust our intelligence community when they are so obviously and thoroughly politicized.
	I'm talking to top-level people.
	It's funny, at every major American institution, there are the low-level people who actually do a lot of the day-to-day work.
	Those are the ones who are trying to track down crime, stop terrorism.
	And then there are the political officials who are appointed, and they are supposed to be granted this patina of expertise and legitimacy.
	Well, they have blown it.
	I mean, absolutely blown it.
	I will show you more evidence of that momentarily.
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	Okay, so it is not just John Brennan, of course.
	It is also James Clapper, the former head, the former director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, who has spent two years proclaiming loudly and proudly That doom was impending for President Trump.
	That we were moments away from the end of the Trump administration.
	Well, here he was yesterday saying, no regerts.
	No regerts, guys.
	Here he was.
	Do you regret anything you have said in terms of raising questions about the president's behavior or some of the things the president has done or said?
	No, I don't.
	And I have put that in writing in my book as well.
	I have concerns, as do others, and I have tried to be factual and temperate and moderate about it, but I do have concerns, and no, I don't have any regrets.
	He has been—no regrets.
	He's getting a tattoo right across his neck that says, no regrets.
	Good stuff there from James Clapper.
	I'm a fan of a lot of folks at the FBI.
	I have friends who are in the FBI.
	I'm a fan of a lot of folks at the CIA.
	Thank you.
	And we were supposed to pretend that they were not political when they were Obama administration appointees.
	And when they were working for Obama, they were absolutely apolitical.
	They were not politicizing the intelligence agencies they headed.
	And then they spend the next two years just spouting absolute bullcrap on national TV, and then they don't apologize for it.
	No, you know, we were just misinformed.
	We were just misinformed.
	The Democrats have been doing the same routine now.
	Many of the Democrats are trying to kind of quietly brush past this.
	You're seeing Nancy Pelosi say, listen, I think that we're done here, right?
	There's no more to see here.
	Many of the Democratic 2020 candidates are just remaining silent on this entire issue.
	Meanwhile, their backup plan is to proclaim that they don't have the full Mueller report, so they can't make a judgment on any of this stuff.
	Six Democratic committee chairs in the House, according to NBC News, Sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr on Monday requesting that he submit the full report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation to Congress by April 2nd, which would be the beginning of next week.
	They say his summary is not sufficient for Congress.
	That's true, but he's going to have to redact presumably some material from thousands of pages under federal criminal regulations.
	There's criminal procedure, federal civil procedure rules.
	Again, under criminal procedure, federal procedure rules.
	6E is the one that was cited by William Barr in his letter.
	He has to redact information because otherwise it's illegal.
	Otherwise, he could be committing a criminal violation.
	And so the Republicans voted down a proposal to force him to release the entire report forthwith.
	He's going to release this stuff.
	It's going to confirm all the stuff that we already know.
	It'll talk about the Trump Tower meeting.
	It'll talk about connections between Mike Flynn and members of the Russian government when he was the incoming NSA.
	It'll be all the stuff that we already know.
	And then it will be the conclusions that Barr has laid forth.
	This thing is over, okay?
	Unless there is some buried bombshell that I think Mueller probably would have leaked by now, considering how much play this has gotten.
	This thing is over, and Democrats can't accept it.
	The dumbest senator in the Democratic caucus is Maisie Hirono from Hawaii, who's proved herself to be absolutely feckless and terrible over the past few years.
	She says, you know who's happy today?
	Vladimir Putin is happy today, because pooty-poot, he's got his man in the White House, and Mueller missed it.
	How does she know?
	Because she's Maisie Hirono, gumshoe sleuth.
	She's Encyclopedia Brown of the Senate.
	Just because there was not enough evidence for a criminal charge of conspiracy does not mean that this very cozy relationship that Donald Trump has with Vladimir Putin, who, by the way, must be really happy that this came about, that this kind of cozy relationship that is not good for our country and that is not transparent, will continue.
	Okay, yeah, I'm sure that's it.
	I'm sure that Vladimir Putin is secretly now working with Trump.
	That's what it is.
	The doubling down is really astonishing.
	Sheldon Whitehouse, the senator from Delaware, he said the same thing.
	He says, you know, Mueller just didn't have enough power.
	That's the real problem here is Mueller didn't have enough power.
	Do you think it makes sense for Bob Mueller, who spends two years trying to discern the truth and the justice here, to turn it over to a guy who just got appointed Attorney General to make a ruling on, the final ruling on the issue of obstruction of justice?
	No, because the whole purpose of special counsel is to have somebody make prosecutive decisions outside of politics.
	So to take the prosecutive decision and hand it back to the top political appointee in the office defeats the whole purpose of being special counsel.
	Oh, is that what it is?
	Sheldon Whitehouse, by the way, from Rhode Island, not Delaware.
	There he is on Chris Matthews making that idiotic point.
	And no, the DOJ is charged with prosecution.
	Mueller gets to decide whether he feels that there is enough evidence to warrant a prosecution.
	or not.
	He said he didn't really have a judgment when it came to obstruction of justice because Trump had said a lot of things.
	And then the AG has to decide whether to prosecute or not.
	That's normally the way that this works.
	The legal imbecility of Sheldon Whitehouse's comments there, pretty obvious.
	Elizabeth Warren, who has just become, like, again, I knew Senator Warren when she was a professor at Harvard Law School.
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not Not well, but we'd had a couple of interactions.
	Everybody at the law school knew about her.
	She was actually an interesting person back then.
	Now she has basically just become Bernie Sanders with Native American background.
	So here she was explaining that the real problem here is Attorney General Barr on Stephen Colbert, who hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, I mean, he's just looking hopefully into Elizabeth Warren's eyes as they lock eyes and dream of the day that Robert Mueller comes back They're like the kid at the end of Shane, crying plaintively out to the planes.
	Shane, come back!
	Robert, come back!
	Here is Colbert and Warren's wing-nat routine.
	Do you trust Barr's judgment on obstruction here?
	No.
	No!
	And you shouldn't have to ask me if I trust it.
	We should see the whole report.
	When we see the whole report, we'll know what the basis is for the decision.
	Yeah, there's still hope, guys.
	We're going to impeach him based on obstruction.
	But the entire Democratic leadership, Pelosi, Schumer, they're like, yeah, we're probably not going to do any of that stuff.
	Now, are any of the Democrats backing down from their overwrought points?
	No.
	Cory McBooker, Spartacus McFace over here, he was asked whether he would correct his claims that there was Trump-Russia collusion.
	He says, me?
	Correct claims?
	No.
	No.
	Real collusion going on, you said.
	Do you now have to revise that to say not chargeable collusion?
	Again, when I have an attorney general, who in my opinion is suspect, filtering a report that I have not seen, I'm not willing to conclude anything yet based upon a letter that he wrote.
	OK, so that's, you know, he's not going to retract anything.
	Not at all.
	Not at all.
	Now, Team Trump has reacted to all of this, and they've reacted with the proper outrage.
	Kellyanne Conway called on Adam Schiff, who has set up an actual pup tent inside the CNN headquarters.
	He's now been forced to evict like a homeless person under Rudy Giuliani in Times Square.
	Adam Schiff is now living on the streets once more, walking around with a sign that says the end is near.
	Collusion, collusion.
	So Kellyanne Conway says about Adam Schiff, yeah, that guy should resign from the Intelligence Committee.
	He's a joke.
	This is correct.
	Then you have Adam Schiff.
	Talk about an oxymoron.
	This man heads the Intelligence Committee in the House.
	He said, quote, he believed that the scandal was of a size and a scope probably bigger than Watergate and that there's plenty of evidence of collusion.
	He ought to resign today.
	You're saying that we did not win fairly and squarely?
	You, in fact, running around, jutting your jaw out and saying, I'm worried about the effect on the institutions.
	You were disparaging the institutions.
	You were demeaning and deriding our great democracy, the presidency of the United States.
	Adam Schiff should resign.
	She is correct about this.
	And as you know, I've been very critical of Kellyanne Conway for being an over-the-top lackey for the Trump administration.
	Well, she is not wrong on this one.
	In a second, we're going to talk about how Trump's stay got even better.
	There was a cherry on top of the ice cream that was provided by a man named Michael Avenatti, who's turned out to be just the best thing that ever happened to Donald Trump.
	We'll talk about it in just one second.
	First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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	So President Trump's winning was not done yesterday.
	You know, President Trump promised winning.
	Winning until it hurt.
	Winning so much winning that we would beg him to stop the winning.
	Well, yesterday was his winningest day.
	Now, I do have to note that when we say it was his winningest day, not politically, right?
	Not in terms of conservative priorities, but in terms of the schadenfreude of watching the entire left collapse in on itself like a dying star.
	Yesterday was pretty spectacular.
	So, the truth is, Trump was elected to spit in the eye of the radical left.
	And he has done that repeatedly.
	And that's been very satisfying for a lot of members of his base.
	If you're a member of Trump's base, yesterday was pretty much the best day you've had since your first child was born.
	It was pretty spectacular, because not only was Trump cleared on the collusion stuff, not only did the media have to look themselves in the mirror and then ignore what they saw, but also Michael Avenatti, a man championed as a possible 2020 candidate, you know, the lawyer, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels.
	He was a fighter.
	Hashtag basta!
	Michael Avenatti, a man who appeared on The View and said that he wanted to see President Trump marched out in handcuffs.
	Not only that, he said his sexual fantasies included handcuffs always.
	Here's what he had to say on The View.
	All of my sexual fantasies involve handcuffs.
	Oh!
	McCain, who looks like she's just gonna vomit all over him.
	The proper response there from Meghan McCain.
	It turns out that he's going to enjoy his sexual fantasies for a while here.
	Because they are frog marching somebody out and it ain't Trump.
	It's Michael Avenatti.
	Best story of the day.
	So good.
	He was arrested because he tried to extort Nike.
	Stand for something, even if it means going to jail for extortion.
	Solid stuff there.
	A federal magistrate judge in New York ordered Avenatti released on $300,000 bond in cases alleging that he embezzled money from a client and tried to extort millions of dollars from Nike.
	And then he claims, no, no, no, he was just standing up with the people.
	Also implicated, just to make this even better, was Mark Garagos.
	Mark Garagos, the celebrity attorney for Jussie Smollett, was named as a co-conspirator in a case accusing lawyer Michael Avenatti of trying to extort Nike.
	Both of these guys were CNN contributors.
	So remember when the media didn't have anything to apologize for?
	Avenatti appeared 59 times in one month, during one period, a couple of, like a year ago.
	There was a picture of him with Don Lemon, Celebrate yucking it up, and Chris Cuomo, and the whole gang over at CNN.
	Michael Avenatti was the guy.
	He was gonna fight President Trump to the end.
	And now, Michael Avenatti is probably going to jail.
	He's probably going to jail because he's an idiot.
	It turns out, honestly, I didn't come up with this, but it is the best description.
	Michael Avenatti is the Jacob Wool of Michael Cohen's.
	It's just spectacular.
	Michael Avenatti turns out to be the most incompetent doofus maybe in legal history.
	So here's what he tried to do.
	He tried to go to Nike and then blackmail them with information about how a representative of Nike had been paying off recruits to use their shoes or something.
	But he was not quite that discreet about it.
	First, he went to them.
	He went to Nike and he said that he represented an AAU coach whose team had previously had a contractual relationship with Nike, but whose contract Nike had recently decided not to renew.
	According to Avenatti, his client had evidence that one or more Nike employees had authorized and funded payments to the families of top high school basketball players and their families and attempted to conceal those payments, similar to conduct involving a rival company that had recently been the subject of a criminal prosecution.
	Avenatti said he planned to hold a press conference the following day to publicize the asserted misconduct at Nike.
	He said he had approached Nike now because he knew that the NCAA tournament was about to begin, and he knew that their quarterly earnings call was scheduled for March 21st, thus maximizing the potential financial and reputational damage his press conference could cause to Nike.
	He said that he would let it go if Nike paid his client 1.5 million dollars and then hire Avenatti to conduct an internal investigation of Nike with the provision that if Nike hired another firm to conduct such an internal investigation, Nike would still be required to pay Avenatti at least twice the fees of any other firm hired.
	So, then the attorney for Nike called up the cops.
	And they said, OK, let's have a meeting.
	Let's have a meeting.
	So Avenatti showed up to the meeting and then repeated all of this in front of law enforcement, apparently.
	This is the allegation.
	And this is what he did.
	He's such a he's such an idiot thug.
	Avenatti reiterated threats made during the previous in-person meeting.
	I guess he did this over the phone, along with his demand for a multimillion dollar retainer.
	And he said he wanted to be paid at least $10 million and leave the bag of money in the parking lot.
	In particular, Avenatti stated, quote, I'm not effing around with this, and I'm not continuing to play games.
	You guys know enough now to know you've got a serious problem, and it's worth more in exposure to me to just blow the lid on this thing.
	A few million dollars doesn't move the needle for me.
	I'm just being really frank with you.
	So if that's what's being contemplated, then let's just say it was good to meet you and we're done, and I'll proceed with my press conference tomorrow.
	I'm not effing around with this thing anymore.
	So if you guys think, you know, you're going to negotiate a million five, you're going to hire us to do an internal investigation, but it's going to be capped at three or five or seven million dollars.
	Let's just be done.
	I'll go and I'll take ten billion dollars off your client's market cap.
	I'm not effing around.
	And then he said that he had the and then he said another meeting where apparently he said the exact same thing.
	And at one point he suggested.
	That he would, quote unquote, cut off their balls.
	This is a quote from Michael Avenatti.
	He's so wonderful, Michael Avenatti.
	So he said all of this in front of, while he's being recorded apparently by law enforcement.
	So it's all going great for Michael Avenatti.
	It was so bad that Stormy Daniels dumped on him.
	I mean, not like that, guys.
	Stormy Daniels put out a statement, quote, knowing what I know about Michael Avenatti, I'm saddened but not shocked by news reports he has made that he has been criminally charged today.
	Wow.
	When Stormy Daniels is now dumping on her own lawyer a person she called Michael Angelo of the legal Michael Angelo of the legal profession, you know, things have gone bad.
	So great day for President Trump.
	And Michael Avenatti remains a he's got a problem.
	He's got a problem.
	He's going to get to fulfill all his sexual fetishes soon enough in prison.
	The reality show we didn't know we needed is Michael Avenatti taking Jacob Walden Law School in prison.
	Okay, meanwhile, breaking news.
	Prosecutors have dropped charges against Jussie Smollett.
	The Empire actor is supposed to forfeit $10,000 bond payment and have the records in the case sealed.
	Sealed!
	Just over a month after he was charged.
	Does that sound like privilege to you?
	That sounds like privilege to me.
	Now, I've been told that the only privilege that matters in America is white privilege.
	But it turns out that if you fake a hate crime, you'll remember that Jussie Smollett faked a hate crime.
	He pretended that he was garroted by a couple of Trump-supporting MAGA-hatted idiots in the middle of Chicago at 3 a.m.
	who were shouting, this is MAGA country, in the middle of a polar vortex.
	The good news was Jussie never lost his Subway sandwich.
	He was holding on to that Subway sandwich forever.
	It turns out the entire thing was a hoax.
	It cost probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to Chicago PD to investigate this stuff.
	Hundreds of man hours that could have been spent on, you know, actual crimes.
	Is he gonna be charged with anything?
	Nope.
	They've dropped all the charges.
	They say he already did community service.
	According to the Smollett defense team, the community service was done prior for something not related to this case.
	Just stupid garbage.
	Stupid garbage from the prosecutors I mean, honestly, the federal prosecutors ought to go after him and nail him to the wall.
	This is insane.
	According to the Cook County Prosecutor's Office, who apparently there were reports that they were interfering even in the CPD investigation.
	The Cook County prosecutors were deeply afraid this was going to go how it eventually went.
	They put out a statement, quote, Absolute crap.
	Absolute nonsense.
	His record has been wiped clean.
	Wiped clean.
	Absolute crap.
	Absolute nonsense.
	His record has been wiped clean.
	Wiped clean.
	They're not even going to have a record of him pleading guilty to something like this.
	Their statement.
	Today, all criminal charges against Jussie Smollett were dropped.
	His record has been wiped clean of the filing of this tragic complaint against them.
	them.
	This is the statement of his defense attorneys.
	Jussie was attacked by two people he was unable to identify on January 29th.
	He was a victim who was vilified and made to appear as a perpetrator as a result of false and inappropriate remarks made to the public, causing an inappropriate rush to judgment.
	Jussie and many others were hurt by these unfair and unwarranted actions This entire situation is a reminder there should never be an attempt to prove a case in the court of public opinion.
	That is wrong.
	Jussie Smollett was not a victim.
	He faked by every piece of evidence a hate crime.
	This is absurdity at the highest, highest level.
	Just amazing and just gross.
	But don't worry, guys.
	The Justice Department in Chicago is doing its best.
	The criminal justice... I mean, if you are the CPD head, you have just got to be enraged, right?
	If you are the head of the Chicago Police, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, who came out with all the evidence, you have got to be fighting mad today.
	Smollett continues to insist that he was innocent.
	That statement from his attorneys is, of course, a lie.
	Smollett was originally indicted on 16 felony counts for falsely reporting a hate crime by a grand jury.
	And the charges were summarily dropped because the guy is a celebrity and because he has connections inside the prosecutor's office is the best possible guess here.
	Federal prosecutors should now move forward full scale with prosecuting him.
	That should be the next move.
	We'll bring you more information as it breaks.
	Meanwhile, over at AIPAC, it's really interesting.
	A gap is breaking out in the Democratic Party.
	So Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, spoke at the American-Israel Public Affairs Conference.
	This happens every year.
	It's a huge event.
	Tens of thousands of people show up, people from synagogues all around the country, because AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying organization.
	They don't give money to candidates or anything.
	But they do spend an awful lot of time talking to various members of Congress.
	And Mike Pence went directly after Representative Ilhan Omar and the burgeoning anti-Semitism inside the Democratic Party.
	Anti-Semitism has no place in the Congress of the United States of America.
	And at a minimum, anyone who slanders those who support this historic alliance between the United States and Israel should never have a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
	Okay, and of course all of that is true.
	What now is hilarious is members of the media pretending like Ilhan Omar had never done any of this stuff and saying, oh, look at Pence, getting all, getting all partisan about this.
	On the Foreign Affairs Committee is an open anti-Semite.
	She's a Democrat.
	The Democrats decided to cover for her.
	It wasn't Mike Pence who made this partisan.
	It wasn't Bibi Netanyahu who made this partisan.
	It was Democrats who made this partisan.
	Now, I do have to give props today to Steini Hoyer, the House Minority Whip.
	When someone accuses American supporters of dual loyalty, I say, accuse me.
	This takes some spine, spine that Nancy Pelosi doesn't have.
	Here was Stiney Hoyer doing the right thing and coming after Elhan Omar.
	Sadly, he should have done this when it was up for debate in the House.
	He didn't then, but at least he's doing it now, better late than never. - When someone accuses American supporters of dual loyalty, I say, accuse me.
	So let's have debates on policy instead of impugning the loyalty of Israel's supporters.
	That is why I oppose those who push for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel.
	By the way, there are 62 freshman Democrats.
	You hear me?
	62, not three.
	Good for him.
	I mean, that's him calling out Ilhan Omar.
	He's the House Majority Leader.
	Sorry, not the whip.
	Yeah, that was a far cry from Nancy Pelosi, who, speaking at AIPAC, said generally she's against anti-Semitism.
	No specific words with regards to Ilhan Omar, because again, she is a coward.
	Steny Hoyer apparently is not.
	Her cowardice, however, rules the day in the Democratic Party.
	This month, The full house came together condemning the anti-semitic myth of dual loyalty and all form of bigotry with a resolution that, quote, rejects the perpetuation of anti-semitic stereotypes in the United States and around the world, including the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States-Israel alliance.
	She didn't have any of the guts to actually come out against Ilhan Omar in any of this.
	And now would be a very good time, it turns out, to be an Israel supporter, considering that Hamas is randomly firing rockets into the middle of civilian centers in Israel.
	And Hamas is an evil, disgusting, vicious terrorist group that is interested in wiping every Jew out of the Middle East, if not across the face of the world.
	And the Democrats couldn't condemn Ilhan Omar.
	They could not do it.
	That is not the... By the way, Bibi Netanyahu spoke at AIPAC as well, and he went after Ilhan Omar directly.
	Here's what he had to say.
	This Benjamin, it's not about the Benjamins.
	The reason the people of America is not because they want our money, it's because they share our values.
	They just don't get it.
	It's because America and Israel share a love of freedom and democracy.
	And of course that's true.
	Ilhan Omar promptly tweeted back at Netanyahu, well you're under indictment for corruption, so obviously it is about the Benjamins.
	The words of a woman who is truly contrite about her anti-Semitism.
	Again, it wasn't the right that made Israel a partisan issue, it was the Democrats who decided to break with Israel.
	At least Steny Hoyer and some Democrats are now saying the right things, even if they're too cowardly to do so in public when it actually counts.
	Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	There is a new movie that is out, Video On Demand, that is actually, it's a good movie, it's a really good movie.
	It's called Dragged Across Concrete.
	The guy who directed it, I'm trying to remember his name, I believe it's Zoller, and he has made some really kind of weird and interesting movies.
	S. Craig Zoller.
	He made Bone Tomahawk, which is a weird and interesting movie.
	This movie is essentially about two cops who are booted from the force.
	They are suspended from the police force for not really racism, but kind of excessive force.
	And they are called racist in the process, even though they were not being racist at the time.
	And then they decide that they are going to rob a criminal.
	They're going to rob a criminal to make money so that they can support themselves.
	The movie has been characterized as reactionary.
	It probably is, in the same vein as Death Wish.
	It's worth watching.
	It doesn't move very fast, but it is very powerful.
	It's good.
	It's good stuff.
	There's a reason I'm sitting behind this desk running things.
	And you're out there with a partner that's 20 years younger than you.
	Hey, Anthony's got a mouth with his own engine, but he's solid.
	I'm thinking about the kind of future I can offer my girlfriend.
	Pops is a yesterday who ain't worth words.
	Good heavens and praise be to him.
	Your absence was a weight upon us.
	Thank you, Mr. Edmonton.
	I don't like doing things with so many question marks everywhere.
	Okay, so the movie is extraordinarily brutal, but it's got a couple of notes that are super conservative that are pretty astonishing.
	So go check it out, Dragged Across Concrete.
	It's available on Amazon Prime, Video On Demand.
	It's really good.
	Mel Gibson is terrific in it.
	He really is.
	I mean, it's a part that fits him.
	Vince Vaughn is very good in it as well.
	So go check out Dragged Across Concrete.
	Well worth the watch.
	Okay, other things that I like today.
	So this is just hilarious.
	Quote, a major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest-shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
	This is according to NBC News.
	The Jakobshavn Glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually, but it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience.
	Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.
	That was kind of a surprise.
	We kind of got used to a runaway system, said geological survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box.
	The good news is it's a reminder that it's not necessarily going that fast.
	But it is going.
	So, they keep suggesting that it is continuing to go, but they were surprised by all of this.
	Listen, maybe in the long term, their estimates continue to be correct, but it is weird how climate scientists keep getting surprised by the data every so often.
	Now, I'm not saying this as somebody who denies that climate change is taking place.
	I've said many times before that the IPCC estimates when it comes to climate change, I'm fine with accepting those.
	I don't have a general problem with all of that.
	However, When your computer modeling is wrong so often, you might need to think about your predictive capacity.
	Because the IPCC report does have a range of possibilities that it offers, and the IPCC report has consistently overestimated the amount of global warming that they thought was going to take place, particularly at the upper end of that estimate.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	So in the aftermath of proving that President Trump was a Russian tool, now the New York Times is on to proving that God doesn't exist.
	That's exciting.
	They have an opinion piece by a philosophy professor named Peter Aderton.
	He is a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University, so his credentials are well in line.
	He has a piece today called, A God Problem.
	Perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful.
	The idea of the deity most Westerners accept is actually not coherent.
	And then he proceeds to lay out, in about 850 words, a sophomoric argument that ignores, you know, probably 3,000 years of Western philosophy.
	The guy's a professor of philosophy, and he doesn't know the most basic Thomistic arguments about the existence of God, or Maimonidean arguments about the existence of God.
	In other words, he's a dilettante when it comes to religious philosophy, which is true for a lot of people who think that they know what they're writing about when it comes to religious philosophy.
	For those of us who spend a lot of our time studying religious philosophy, just as religious human beings, his complaints are nothing new.
	It's funny when you hear people who have spent no time examining religious philosophy go, well, you know, if God knows everything that's going to happen, then how do you have free will?
	And it's like, oh my God.
	You're right.
	You've hit upon it.
	No one in the history of philosophy has thought of these questions.
	Not going back to Augustine.
	Not moving forward through Maimonides.
	Nobody's ever thought about these problems.
	You yourself have hit upon it.
	Now you're right.
	If we had just thought about these questions, when they say, how couldn't all good God allow bad things to happen?
	You're right.
	It's the first time anyone's ever asked this question.
	Kudos to you.
	God, so lazy.
	Now, in my book, The Right Side of History, I do discuss these questions, and I give some very basic answers that virtually all Western philosophers, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, agree upon.
	But this is basically, he legitimately raises the question, I'm not kidding you, he legitimately raises the, can God make a rock so large that he can't pick it up question, which is introduced in theology classes in like sophomore year of high school.
	For the record, there are two particular perspectives on this.
	Perspective number one is God can do anything, so he can even violate the laws of logic.
	And then there's the general Judeo-Christian view, the Thomistic view, and the Maimonidean view, which is that God cannot violate the rules of logic because he created the rules of logic.
	So God cannot be both something and not something.
	God cannot be both a square and a circle.
	Which is one of the reasons why Maimonides is constantly suggesting that you can't affirmatively describe God, you can only describe God in terms of what he can't be.
	So God does not take physical form, according to Maimonides, because that would actually contradict the rules of his existence.
	In any case, this article is just more proof that the New York Times, for them, this constitutes deep philosophy.
	It's so dumb.
	I mean, this article is really silly.
	So he talks about the question of evil.
	He says, if God is morally perfect, it is difficult to see why he wouldn't have created a morally perfect world.
	So why didn't he?
	He says, the standard defense is that evil is necessary for free will.
	However, this does not explain so-called physical evil, like suffering, caused by non-human causes, like famines, earthquakes, etc.
	Well, yeah, actually it does, because if it turned out that the universe actually just reacted in positive ways to you doing good things, there wouldn't be free will.
	In other words, there has to be the patina of chaos in order for you to make freely willed decisions.
	Again, very, very basic stuff.
	Very basic stuff in Judeo-Christian philosophy.
	They say, what about omniscience?
	Philosophically, this presents us with no less of a conundrum, leaving aside the highly implausible idea that God knows all the facts in the universe.
	They just say that it's implausible.
	Why is it implausible?
	Because this philosopher says so.
	If God knows all there is to know, then he knows at least as much as we know.
	But if he knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from his perfection.
	Now, why would perfect knowledge detract from his perfection?
	Because if they were known to God, that would make him a sinner.
	He says, if God knows all that is knowable, God must know things that we do, like lust and envy.
	But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them.
	Well, no, that's, that's idiotic.
	You can know what lust and envy are without, quote-unquote, experiencing them, and the experience or lust of envy does not necessarily connote evil.
	If you created the experiences themselves, then why exactly, I mean, that's, what?
	That doesn't even, that doesn't even match up.
	Also, there's the notion that virtue, and again, this is a Thomistic notion, that God created everything with an innate level of perfection, and then human beings with free will have detracted from that.
	So, for example, lust started off as healthful sexual desire for members of the opposite sex, and when we are not perfect, when we exercise our will in bad ways, or our desires in bad ways, then that turns into lust.
	You say, what about malice?
	Could God know what malice is like and still retain his divine goodness?
	All of this is so sophomoric, but unfortunately, sophomoric religious philosophy is stock in trade for the New York Times.
	Speaking of sophomoric, San Antonio has now barred Chick-fil-A from their airport because Chick-fil-A is owned by people who are pro-traditional marriage, and that's very bad.
	Chick-fil-A sells chicken sandwiches, if you didn't know.
	That's what they do.
	I wasn't aware that the chickens were gay or straight.
	I wasn't aware that they barred gay people from buying their chicken sandwiches.
	In fact, they didn't do any of that stuff.
	You'll recall that Chick-fil-A opened on a Sunday, which they don't normally do, in the middle of the Orlando Pulse shooting to help take care of people who are doing rescue and cleanup and protesting and all of that sort of stuff.
	But Chick-fil-A very, very bad, and so they must be shut down.
	People who don't know basic religious philosophy make assumptions about religious people that are simply false.
	That religious people are malicious.
	That religious people think that if you sin, then this makes you an inherently bad human being in a way different from people who are religious.
	That religious people believe that only religious people can be good, which is obviously false.
	It's so funny.
	My new book, The Right Side of History, I've been asked about it a few times on left-wing podcasts.
	There was one from The Economist the other day where they asked me this, and the first question people always ask is, so what you're saying is that religious people are the only good people.
	It's like, no, I'm not saying that.
	Read the book.
	Of course I'm not saying that.
	There are lots of great atheists, and there are lots of bad religious people.
	What I'm saying is you can't build a civilized foundation on the basis of pure scientific materialism.
	That's the case that I'm making.
	In any case, silliness about religion is undergirding part of the attack on the West, and that's a problem.
	All right, well, we will be back here for two more hours later today.
	We'll have updates.
	We have great guests today.
	Like, I'm very excited about our guests today showing up a little bit later today.
	Thomas Sowell will be stopping by to discuss his book, Disparities and Discrimination.
	We'll talk about racism and disparities in various areas of American life.
	We'll also be talking with Majid Nawaz, who is a philosopher and Reform Muslim.
	He will be stopping by to talk about the problem of radical Islam, among other issues.
	Also, we should be having on Rafer Weigel from Chicago, from ABC7 in Chicago, to talk about The Jussie Smollett case.
	Lots of good stuff happening this afternoon.
	Please go and make sure that you subscribe.
	99 bucks a year gets you a subscription.
	And we'll see you a little bit later today or we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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	Democrats, already in the throes of their worst week since 1865, now suffer a further indignity.
	A federal court has invalidated Obamacare in its entirety.
	The DOJ agrees.
	It just keeps getting better and better.

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