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April 19, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

52:13

Fallout Day | Ep. 763

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	We recap the Mueller report, Democrats call for impeachment, and the media change their tune from collusion to obstruction.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, it's the day after and the radiation is wafting in the wind, the ashes falling from the sky.
	And we're going to recap exactly where we stand in the aftermath of the bombshell Mueller report that was supposed to shake the earth and make the trees tremble.
	We'll get to all that in just a second.
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	Okay, so.
	We have now all had a chance to sit and think and digest with regard to the Mueller Report.
	And last night, I was sitting and thinking and digesting after doing 1,000 hours on air about the Mueller Report, and I came to a few conclusions about the Mueller Report that I think are worthy of note.
	And it's funny, I got a lot of flack from everybody yesterday because I thought Attorney General William Barr was correct not to push prosecution on obstruction of justice.
	I also think that the Mueller report shows that President Trump lies a lot and that he is dishonest in his dealings with others.
	These two statements piss off pretty much everybody on the left.
	The idea is that if Trump lies sometimes, but not illegally, then he should go to prison.
	And on the right, the idea is that if Trump was exonerated on obstruction, meaning that he wasn't really exonerated on obstruction, but at least he wasn't prosecuted on obstruction, if he was acquitted of obstruction or non-prosecuted on obstruction, if that's the case, then he is a grand and glorious man who has never lied ever.
	None of these things are true.
	Two things can be true at once.
	Trump is who Trump is.
	We all know who Trump is.
	Trump is not world's most honest guy.
	He will tell you this himself.
	I mean, he is honest about his dishonesty.
	It's one of the charming things about the man.
	That is true.
	It is also true that the offenses that he committed here are not criminally prosecutable offenses.
	No prosecutor in their right mind would take up the case as placed before them by Robert Mueller.
	So we'll get to that in just one second, kind of what Mueller was doing here.
	But there are a bunch of points that I want to make about the Mueller investigation and about the Mueller report in totality.
	So point number one, and this is where we always have to start, is that the Trump-Russia collusion claims were farcically overblown.
	Farcically so.
	What's amazing is that the first half of the report does not actually deliver the goods on anything remotely resembling Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.
	Even the stuff that the press really blew up.
	I'm talking about the stuff where they suggested that the RNC had rewritten its own platform with regard to providing lethal aid to Ukraine in service to Vladimir Putin and the Trump campaign.
	That turns out not to be true.
	It was a low-level aide who thought that President Trump was friendlier to Russia than other candidates had been.
	And so he suggested the change.
	The change was made.
	That was that.
	All the talk about Paul Manafort providing early polling to Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian oligarchs.
	That's true, but it had nothing to do with the campaign per se.
	There's no evidence it had anything to do with the campaign.
	So there are a bunch of these kind of little narratives that have been strewn about by the media over the past couple of years.
	Michael Cohen going to Prague.
	No evidence he ever went to Prague.
	President Trump supposedly facilitating meetings with Natalia Veselnitskaya, knowing about the Trump Tower meeting.
	No evidence that he knew in advance about the Veselnitskaya meeting.
	Donald Jr.
	knowing in advance about WikiLeaks hacks.
	None of that is true.
	So a lot of the media narratives that were put out there were simply overblown or untrue.
	BuzzFeed's big report saying that Michael Cohen had been instructed to lie to investigators by President Trump, which would constitute subordination of perjury.
	That would be an actual crime.
	The crime for which President Clinton was impeached in the House.
	That turned out not to be true either.
	None of that was in the Mueller report.
	So all of the talk about Trump-Russia collusion, that was really, really overblown.
	The Mueller report itself states, quote, although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
	Period.
	End of story.
	The report makes a bunch of statements that are just like that repeatedly.
	It turns out that when it comes to Russian collusion, there was some smoke and no fire.
	There was no actual fire.
	And the people who were even prosecuted, people like George Papadopoulos, were basically dupes, not active agents of the Kremlin.
	People who were prosecuted, like, like, Papadopoulos, who else was prosecuted?
	So Manafort was prosecuted, but he was prosecuted for crimes involving his kinship with the Ukrainian oligarchs based on activity back in like 2013-2014.
	So the idea that the campaign itself was involved in collusion was just wrong.
	Now, the media are not totally ready to let this go.
	John Carl, over at ABC News, doing a terrible job covering this, actually, he said, listen, the evidence shows that while there wasn't actual conspiracy, there was certainly collusion.
	OK, well, if you're not shifting the goalposts to the point that collusion is not conspiracy, that collusion is somebody received information from a Russian source that was public already and then used it in OPPO research, That ain't what you were talking about.
	You were talking about the election being skewed because of cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
	That is not what happened.
	Jonathan Karl still tried to push that one yesterday.
	There's significant material in here that we did not know on the question of collusion.
	Now, of course, there's no finding that anybody in the Trump campaign was guilty of a criminal conspiracy in terms of dealing with the Russians on this.
	But the chapter on collusion shows significant contact between people on the Trump campaign Oh, you might say collusion, might you?
	Well, no.
	the conclusion here in the special counsel was it did not rise to the level of a violation of the law, but there is significant contact here.
	You might even say collusion.
	Oh, you might say collusion, might you?
	Well, no, you wouldn't say collusion because there wasn't actual collusion.
	Adam Schiff is still going around trying to promote the idea that collusion occurred because he spent years lying to the American public that he had secret knowledge, secret inside information about the level of conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
	The man had set up a pump tent outside the CNN headquarters and he basically left his job in Congress so he could hang out at CNN full-time and be best friends with Wolf Blitzer.
	Well, now he's back on CNN yesterday trying to cover his butt after it turns out that his entire claim fell apart yesterday.
	Many of us do think the president's unfit for office, but unless that's a bipartisan conclusion, an impeachment would be doomed to failure.
	I continue to think that a failed impeachment is not in the national interest.
	Whether these acts are criminal or not.
	Whether the obstruction of justice was criminal or not, or whether these contacts were sufficiently illicit or not to rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy, they are unquestionably dishonest, unethical, immoral, and unpatriotic, and should be condemned by every American.
	That is not the subject of vindication.
	That is the subject of condemnation.
	And that is how I think we should view the Mueller Report.
	Okay, that is moving those goalposts.
	We should view the Mueller Report as moral condemnation of President Trump.
	Really?
	Because that's not what you promised, dude.
	You promised criminal conspiracy.
	You promised that President Trump was hanging out with Vladimir Putin down by the pool, figuring out how to shift those votes in Wisconsin.
	You said you had inside information to that effect.
	So Adam Schiff has lost all credibility on this.
	So the collusion stuff was wildly overblown, the media wildly overplayed it, and they deserve all the criticism that they are receiving today.
	Second.
	Second point about this report.
	The original suspicions regarding the Trump team might not have been unreasonable.
	Now, I know this one is controversial with a lot of people on the right who believe that the investigation was initiated in bad faith, that the Obama team and its intelligence team decided, you know what?
	We don't like Donald Trump.
	We're going to come up with an excuse to target him and his team.
	And so on the basis of skimpy evidence, they decided to launch an internal investigation that would eventually take down the president and provide fire insurance against the possibility of him winning.
	Now, I'm open to the argument based on the evidence that is already out there.
	That the investigation became that, because Peter Strzok was in fact a politically motivated player.
	James Clapper was a politically motivated player.
	John Brennan was a politically motivated player.
	I'm fully willing to hear the case, based on the evidence that is already public, that the investigation became something bad, and became something corrupt, as people fell into a habit of listening to everyone in their echo chamber, fell into confirmation bias.
	There is still not enough evidence for me to believe the case that the investigation was initiated originally under false pretenses.
	Because that has been one of the popular talking points.
	There was plenty of smoke in the early days of the investigation.
	George Papadopoulos meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a suspected Russian asset who allegedly bragged that he had access to Hillary Clinton's emails and then Papadopoulos trying to pass that up the chain.
	Roger Stone bringing WikiLeaks promises to the attention of the Trump campaign.
	Trump's dishonesty regarding the continuation of Trump Tower Moscow negotiations.
	His open commentary in which he continued to praise Vladimir Putin puzzling pretty much everyone.
	Now we know, by the way.
	That that praise of Vladimir Putin?
	That's just the way that Trump does business.
	When he's dealing with other people who he thinks are strong men, he likes to deal with them by flattering them, right?
	He does this with Kim Jong-un.
	He's done this with Erdogan.
	He's done this with a bunch of people who are sort of bad actors on the world stage.
	President Trump, though, was involved in dishonesty regarding the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations.
	He lied to the public about it.
	The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, of course.
	Carter Page's coordination with Russian fronts while working for the Trump campaign.
	Paul Manafort's involvement in the campaign while simultaneously doing the dirty work of Ukrainian oligarchs, right?
	All of that stuff was happening.
	And so it's not totally unreasonable for people inside the intel community to say, well, Trump is surrounding himself with a lot of bad people.
	This looks a little suspicious.
	Is it possible that it was launched under false pretenses?
	Sure, Annie McCarthy at National Review makes that case.
	I know Devin Nunes makes that case.
	Both of them we had on the radio show yesterday and made that case.
	I'm willing to hear the case.
	I need more evidence on the case before I take it super seriously.
	So that is point number two with regard to the Mueller report.
	I'm trying to just be as fair about this as I possibly can be.
	We'll get to some more commentary on the Mueller report and then the reaction In one second.
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	Okay, so back to the Mueller report.
	Point number three.
	Point number three.
	So point number one, you'll recall, is that the Trump-Russia collusion claims were farcically overblown by the media, which they were.
	The press humiliated themselves here.
	That does not mean that every individual report about Trump fulminating on obstruction was false.
	A lot of those reports were true, and a lot of that reporting was good.
	But the reports on Trump-Russia collusion Almost all of that blew up in the faces of the media.
	Point number two is that the original suspicions regarding the Trump team might not have been unreasonable.
	Point number three, the Steele dossier is nowhere to be found.
	And this is where I say I think the investigation went wrong.
	I think that Peter Strzok and other politically motivated actors inside the intelligence apparatus hated President Trump and were willing to use overblown information, scanty information, Thin information, easily debunkable information in order to target Trump and his team.
	I do think that's what this investigation eventually became under the auspices of people like Peter Strzok.
	Why?
	Well, because they used the Steele dossier over and over in the original investigation to get FISA warrants against people like Carter Page.
	That Steele dossier is the intelligence mishmash that was funneled to the Obama intelligence agencies, the Effusion GPS and Oppo research firm working on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
	But the Steele dossier barely comes up in the Mueller report.
	So you would figure that if that Steele dossier were so important, if it were so filled with golden nuggets of information that provided the basis for further investigation and deeper digging, that that would appear, you know, like, Three times?
	Maybe?
	Maybe in the Mueller report.
	Instead, it appears, I think, twice in the course of 448 pages.
	Yet it was repeatedly used as the basis for a FISA warrant against Carter Page.
	It was presented directly to President Trump by former FBI director James Comey and then broadly reported on by the press.
	There's a theory that I don't find implausible that James Clapper was working to release the Steele dossier in public.
	And so James Comey went to President Trump and that provided the news hook for BuzzFeed to print the Steele dossier in the first place.
	It does raise serious questions as to how much that investigation morphed over time.
	Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to more of the analysis of the Mueller report.
	Okay, point four on the Mueller report.
	This one really is important.
	Team Mueller has a very, very broad definition of obstruction of justice.
	So obstruction of justice statutes are extraordinarily broad in how they are drawn.
	There is a what they call a catch-all provision in 18 section 1512.
	That catch-all provision is really broad.
	It basically says anybody who attempts to impede the process of justice is guilty of a crime.
	Well, there are a thousand ways to read that.
	It's a badly written law.
	One of the things you learn as a lawyer is that you try to draw laws as specifically as possible, you try to draw contracts as specifically as possible, so you know what applies and what does not apply.
	That is not really present in the obstruction statutes and that creates a lot of play in the joints and it creates enough room for there to be controversy between T. Mueller and Attorney General William Barr on whether President Trump's activity actually constituted obstruction of justice.
	Under Barr's analysis, he says, To obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, this is in his March 24th four-page letter, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding.
	And then Barr clarified his standard in his press conference yesterday.
	And this standard, I think, is correct.
	He says, Although the Deputy Attorney General and I disagreed with some of the Special Counsel's legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we did not rely solely on that in making our decision.
	Instead, we accepted the Special Counsel's legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the Special Counsel in reaching our conclusion.
	So Barr is trying to argue that he used the standard that Mueller was using for obstruction of justice, and even under that standard, it wasn't obstruction.
	I think that's a slightly dicey case for Barr.
	I think if you use Mueller's standard for obstruction, then some of what Trump did looks like obstruction.
	But I don't think that Mueller's standard is correct, which is why you see Barr say here, we had some disagreements about the theory.
	In assessing the president's actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context.
	President Trump faced an unprecedented situation as he entered into office and sought to perform his responsibilities as president.
	Federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office And the conduct of some of his associates.
	At the same time, there is relentless speculation in the news media about the president's personal culpability.
	Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.
	And as the special counsel's report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, fueled by illegal leaks.
	Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation, providing unfettered access to the campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, asserting no privilege claims.
	Now, that one line is being taken out of context, the one where he says, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation.
	People are rightly pointing out, well, Trump didn't sit down for an interview, did he?
	That's not exactly full cooperation.
	And Trump was constantly fulminating publicly and privately about the Mueller investigation, and President Trump was creating these incentives for people not to talk to the Mueller investigation by tweeting out things to Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.
	All of that is true.
	And so Barr is wrong in that language.
	The White House did not, quote unquote, fully cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
	But the truth is they mostly did.
	They mostly did.
	They didn't insert executive privilege.
	They did allow everybody inside the White House to talk to the special counsel's office.
	I know this because I've talked to many people who have talked to the special counsel's office.
	At the same time, the president took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.
	And this is true too.
	The president did not simply say, you can't talk to this guy because this guy over here, I'm asserting executive privilege.
	He didn't do that.
	Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the president had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.
	And that last phrase is the one that matters because the crime of obstruction requires corrupt intent.
	I noted this yesterday with regard to contrasting Hillary Clinton's behaviors with President Trump's behaviors.
	Hillary Clinton taking classified material and storing it on a homebrew server was de facto just facially illegal.
	It's facially illegal because there is no element of intent in the crime.
	If I take classified material from the VA and I accidentally leave it on the front seat of my car and someone smashes the car window and takes the data, I am guilty of a crime.
	It doesn't matter if I just accidentally left it in my backpack or something.
	None of that matters.
	Intent is not an element of the crime for Hillary.
	The FBI did this bizarre trick where they read back into the law intent in order to let Hillary Clinton off.
	Intent, however, with obstruction of justice is an element of the crime.
	You have to have corrupt intent.
	So what Barr is saying is it's not corrupt intent for President Trump to fulminate publicly about the Mueller report.
	That doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to stop it.
	It doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to end the investigation, and it certainly doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to do all of this with an intent toward thwarting finding out of underlying crime, because there was no underlying crime.
	So those are the two facts that Barr keeps relying on in saying no prosecution is available here.
	One, no underlying collusion for Trump to hide, and two, no corrupt intent to hide something that was not really there.
	Right?
	You can't suggest that this is Al Capone's vault here, that President Trump was throwing up obstacles to you finding nothing.
	So that is Barr's standard.
	I think that's the correct standard.
	That is not the standard that the Mueller report suggests for obstruction.
	According to their broader standard, obstruction of justice law reaches all corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered regardless of the means employed.
	That is a quote from a particular circuit court case.
	That's an extraordinarily broad standard.
	All corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered.
	So now we have to analyze every term there.
	Corrupt conduct.
	What makes conduct corrupt per se?
	Presumably intent.
	So Barr would say, OK, well, the intent still wasn't there.
	Capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered.
	OK, well, if Barack Obama said about the Trayvon Martin case that Trayvon could have been his son, was that obstruction of justice?
	I don't think so.
	But it could theoretically fall under that rubric here.
	The Mueller report says an improper motive can render an actor's conduct criminal even when the conduct would otherwise be lawful and within the actor's authority.
	So in other words, President Trump fires somebody within his office.
	That would be criminal conduct if the intent is wrong?
	Well, that's an insanely broad standard.
	That means the prosecutors are now mind readers and it is their job to go through and read minds.
	A defendant need not directly impede the proceeding.
	The requisite showing of motive is made when a person acted with an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.
	Again, the question is, did Trump violate his official duty or the rights of others here?
	I don't think he did.
	But still, this is incredibly broad.
	It's incredibly broad.
	While mere abstract talk does not suffice to create the crime of attempt, any concrete and specific acts that corroborate the defendant's intent can constitute a substantial step.
	The Omnibus Clause of 18 U.S.C.
	1503 prohibits an endeavor to obstruct justice, which sweeps more broadly than Section 1512's attempt provision.
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	Okay, so as I say, when it comes to the Mueller Report, two separate definitions of obstruction.
	One from Barr is fairly clear.
	That you need to have corrupt intent and that means that you have to have intended to obstruct the investigation because what you were trying to do was stop the investigation from finding underlying crime.
	And so there's no underlying crime, therefore no corrupt intent.
	Trump was just mad.
	Trump's emotional state comes into play here.
	The Mueller report provides an obstruction of justice definition that encompasses pretty much everything.
	Now, that is a plausible read inside the statute, but as I say, the statutes are broadly drawn, too broadly drawn, particularly 1503, 18 U.S.C.
	1503.
	I mentioned 1512 because that defines attempt earlier.
	This broadly defined version of obstruction, where the president could undertake an otherwise legal act so long as it is capable of producing an effect, even if it does not directly impede a proceeding, so long as the person acts with an intent to obtain improper advantage, allows the Mueller report to consider whether Trump tweeting about Michael Cohen being a rat or Paul Manafort being a solid citizen amounts to obstruction of justice.
	The report even says that.
	I mean, directly.
	They say, quote, Well, that's an overbroad reading.
	To my mind, that is an extraordinarily broad reading of obstruction of justice and it is non-prosecutable.
	to influence the jury.
	Well, that's an overbroad reading.
	To my mind, that is an extraordinarily broad reading of obstruction of justice, and it is non-prosecutable.
	No prosecutor would be able to get that through a court.
	The president still has First Amendment rights.
	To suggest that the president publicly criticizing Robert Mueller, which comes up a lot in the report, every time Trump tweeted about Mueller, it's basically named in the report, or publicly praising Paul Manafort, or ripping into Michael Cohen, to say that that amounts to criminal obstruction of justice, that does require an extraordinarily broad reading of obstruction of justice statutes.
	That's also true of the presidential pardon power and the presidential power to fire.
	So if the president just fired Mueller, would that be a criminal offense?
	Probably not.
	It's impeachable.
	Certainly, but it's not criminal.
	We'll get to the impeachment stuff in just a second.
	Trump has constitutional powers.
	Simply applying an intent test to those powers turns prosecutors into all-powerful mind readers, which was not what the statutes were designed to do in the first place.
	A fifth point to be made about the Mueller report, and this one is very controversial.
	I know for folks on the right, many of whom want to believe that President Trump is as honest as the day is long.
	Honestly, I would find it difficult to believe that even President Trump would make that argument, but there are people who defend President Trump who suggest that this report really suggests his honesty.
	There is no way to read the second half of the Mueller Report, Volume 2 of Kill Bill.
	There is no way to read it.
	And that is the nexus of obstruction of justice.
	Urging people to fib to the public.
	That's something that all presidents do.
	Now, this is the other point.
	There is no evidence that he urged other people to lie to investigators.
	And that is the nexus of obstruction of justice, urging people to fib to the public.
	That's something that all presidents do.
	Now, this is the other point.
	Trump is not unique in this capacity.
	Barack Obama spent years maintaining he did not have the legal authority to actually do DACA, to just legalize the dreamers.
	President Obama spent years assuring Americans that if they liked their plan and their doctor, they could keep their plan and their doctor.
	That was a blatant, overt lie.
	President Obama and his administration lied for years, that the Iranian government was moderating, and that he had not in fact cut a secret deal with the Iranians to send them pallets of cash.
	All of this stuff was blatant bullcrap.
	So all administrations lie, but to pretend that Trump is somehow more honest than other administrations, he's only more honest in the sense that he's pretty open about the fact he does this stuff.
	And President Trump is extraordinarily cynical about politics.
	He always has been.
	It's one of the charms of the man.
	It's why he used to say during the campaign, Yeah, you know, when I was looking into politics, I used to bribe politicians.
	I mean, he basically said that straight out.
	He said, they can't pay me off.
	I know, because I used to pay them off.
	That was one of his talking points.
	So Trump doesn't hide the ball here, but still you have to be kind of stunned by the level of the activity that he was attempting to push down on other members of his team.
	If the other members of his team had not stopped him, if they'd gone forward with this sort of activity, much, much better case for obstruction of justice.
	The fact that they did not go forward with it suggests that obstruction of justice is harder to prove.
	What are some of the activities that I'm talking about?
	Well, first of all, he acted embarrassingly.
	Repeatedly with regard to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
	Now, let me be clear.
	I'm not saying that President Trump is an embarrassment as president because of this.
	I'm not saying that President Trump is embarrassing because, like, a lot of his policy is good.
	Is his activity here immoral?
	Is his activity here embarrassing?
	Yes, and he knew it was immoral and embarrassing because then he tried to cover it up with more embarrassing and immoral but non-criminal behavior.
	This is true for all of his scandals.
	All of President Trump's scandals begin with President Trump doing something immoral and unethical and very bad and very embarrassing.
	And then him trying to cover that up with something immoral and bad and very embarrassing.
	With Stormy Daniels, he strips a porn star while his wife is pregnant.
	And then he lies about it to the public.
	He says, I don't even know who Stormy Daniels is.
	And then it comes out that he paid her.
	So he did two immoral things.
	He lied to her, and then he paid her off to shut up.
	And then he lied about paying her off to shut her up.
	I mean, so, like, this is what Trump does.
	He lies, he does a bad thing, and then he lies about the bad thing, and then he lies about the lie, and then it's turtles all the way down.
	Well, this is sort of the same thing.
	That doesn't mean that the lies are illegal.
	It does mean that as moral human beings, we should point out that the president seems to lie a lot, which is true.
	He acted embarrassingly a lot during the 2016 campaign.
	He lied about Trump Tower in Moscow to the American public for months.
	He was praising WikiLeaks, he was suggesting that WikiLeaks was not a Russian friend, he didn't know anything about WikiLeaks, all of that.
	And then he acted even more embarrassingly and immorally in order to avoid the consequences of his original activity.
	So, for example, he instructed his own son, Donald Trump Jr., to lie to the press in his statement about the Trump Tower meeting.
	And Donald Trump Jr.
	wrote a statement.
	Trump personally edited the statement and urged him to remove a line That made more clear what the meeting was about.
	And then, when his press team was queried about it, then President Trump ran away from it and said, I had nothing to do with it.
	And his press team went out there and repeated the lie.
	That's bad, right?
	Can we just say it's bad?
	Okay, it's not criminal, but just as moral humans, we should be able to say that things are bad.
	He tried to push his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to lie to the press regarding his desire to fire James Comey and Robert Mueller.
	He tried via Corey Lewandowski, To push Attorney General Sessions to talk about his innocence and constrict the scope of the Mueller investigation.
	He tried to have Corey Lewandowski send a letter from him to Sessions trying to dictate what Sessions said.
	He tried to pressure Sessions to unrecuse himself and publicly browbeat him to do so.
	A lot of this stuff was happening and we knew about it.
	He tried to get Don McGahn to fire Mueller based on nonsensical accusations of conflict of interest.
	All of this is immoral and bad and terrible behavior.
	He encouraged Sarah Huckabee Sanders to lie about the firing of Comey.
	Flashback, here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders talking about how the reason that Comey was fired is because he was unpopular inside the FBI and then she admitted in the Mueller report to the Mueller team she had no evidence of this.
	I've heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President's decision.
	I've certainly heard from a large number of individuals, and that's just myself, and I don't even know that many people in the FBI.
	You said now today, and I think you said again yesterday, that you personally have talked to countless FBI officials, employees, since this happened.
	Correct.
	I mean, really?
	Between like email, text messages, absolutely.
	Look, we're not going to get into a numbers game.
	I mean, I have heard from a large number of individuals that work at the FBI that said that they're very happy with the president's decision.
	OK, according to the Mueller report, this was nonsense.
	She told the Mueller report, she told the Mueller team that this was completely baseless, that it was not true.
	So she was asked about that today.
	And then she says, well, I'm sorry I wasn't a robot or something.
	Okay, come on guys.
	Come on.
	Why can't you acknowledge that what you said then was not true?
	I said that the word I used countless, and I also said if you look at what's in quotations for me, it's that, and it's that it was in the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point.
	I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democrat Party.
	Okay, so again, this is not a good defense.
	President Trump was encouraging his people to lie for him, as I've said before.
	Obama also encouraged his team to lie for him.
	I mean, this is something that happened.
	He asserted executive privilege to protect his own attorney general from a contempt charge from Congress.
	But we do have to note immorality when it occurs, or we are morally compromised.
	And this is true for everyone.
	You can still like his tax cuts.
	You can still like his foreign policy.
	You can still like his tweets.
	You can still like a lot of stuff about President Trump.
	This report does not reflect well on the president's character.
	End of story.
	Okay, now, a couple more points that I want to make about the Mueller report, and then we'll get to all the blowback on the Mueller report.
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	Okay, so I have more to say about the Mueller report, obviously, and more on the blowback, and more on the talk of impeachment.
	But first, you're going to have to go subscribe.
	So go check us out right now, Daily Wire, $9.99 a month, $99 a year.
	And when you spend $99 a year, you get this, the very greatest in beverage vessels.
	Check it out, the leftist year's hot or cold Tumblr.
	Now we have something that we do every Friday here on the program.
	We give a shout out to one of our Daily Wire subscribers today, MSSR Walter on Instagram.
	There's a lot going on in this picture.
	For one, Brian does not look happy about his situation.
	Sorry, Brian.
	I think he'd rather be drinking from the bottle that is probably next to him.
	tumblr he will grow to be big and strong with tremendous brain power there's a lot going on in this picture for one brian does not look happy about his situation sorry brian i think he'd rather be drinking from the bottle that is probably next to him second move brian away from the knives I mean, that's true.
	Childproofing, probably a good idea here.
	But really, thank you for being a subscriber all the way from Paris too, which is pretty awesome.
	Certainly Paris is on our mind this week, so this is really great.
	And you too can enjoy the Leftist Tears Tumblr when you subscribe.
	And if you send us a photo like this and you hashtag it LeftistTearsTumblr, then you may be featured next week.
	On the Ben Shapiro show, so who knows?
	That's pretty awesome.
	Also, when this kid grows up, this is going to be a treasured possession, I think.
	I think he's going to hold this in high esteem.
	So this is very exciting stuff.
	Also, there's a reason that you should subscribe.
	Not only do you get two additional hours of the show every day, and yesterday's show was great because we had a bunch of legal experts who were breaking down the Mueller report all day, every day.
	It was great.
	You can go check that out.
	Plus, Get access to Ask Us Questions on Daily Wire backstage, which we did last night to break down the Mueller Report even more, as though you weren't Mueller'd out already.
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	All right, a few more points with regard to President Trump and the Mueller report.
	So, President Trump's team repeatedly stopped him from following through on his worst instincts.
	And this matters, because the president expressing stupid thoughts, and then people on his team just going, nah.
	That's not obstruction.
	Him saying, you know what would be awesome?
	If you fired Mueller.
	And then Don McGahn going, you know what?
	Not doing that.
	And if you want to do that, you're going to have to fire me too.
	We're not doing the Saturday Night Massacre here.
	No.
	That was good.
	McGann stopped Trump from firing both Sessions and Mueller.
	He refused to comply with Trump's order to lie about the Mueller incident in a statement to the public.
	Jeff Sessions refused to unrecuse himself and fire Mueller.
	Chris Christie, even Chris Christie, refused to facilitate bizarre phone calls with James Comey.
	When Chris Christie is saying, dude, you're going too far, you may be going too far.
	Rick Dearborn refused to threaten Jeff Sessions.
	Corey Lewandowski refused to directly carry a letter.
	I mean, when Corey Lewandowski is the angel on your shoulder, you're doing things wrong.
	James Comey didn't end his investigation of Mike Flynn and Trump didn't pressure him to continue to do so.
	As the report notes, quote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.
	So what that statement is basically saying there for Mueller is, you know, we wish we could charge him with obstruction, but he didn't actually obstruct.
	And one of the reasons he didn't obstruct is because his team prevented him from doing that, which, good for them.
	Also, Trump doesn't know what obstruction of justice is.
	Also, Trump doesn't understand how many things work inside the government, and so he says lots of stuff.
	There's an upside to that, which is that he violates long-held taboos that happen to be stupid.
	The downside of that is that he gets himself in trouble an awful lot by violating taboos that are there for a reason.
	Okay, point number seven on the Mueller report.
	Trump probably was not trying to cover anything up.
	He was just correctly pissed off.
	Okay, this one is absolutely true.
	I've been saying this since the day he fired James Comey.
	Go back and listen to the podcast.
	I've been saying this for absolutely years at this point.
	This was William Barr's point.
	It is true.
	Take, for example, Trump's reaction to Mueller's appointment.
	Now, the media are taking this wildly out of context.
	According to the report, Trump apparently, quote, slumped in his chair and then shouted, Oh my God, this is terrible.
	This is the end of my presidency.
	I'm...
	Trump then added, Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent councils, it ruins your presidency.
	It takes years and years, and I won't be able to do anything.
	This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
	The worst.
	And I've been through two divorces, man.
	So, you know, that last line right there, that's the one that matters.
	So the press took that first line out of context, the one where it says that he is effed, this is the end of my presidency.
	They took that out of context to suggest that the president of the United States was saying he's guilty of something and now Mueller is going to uncover the guilt and now he is obstructing because Mueller is going to uncover the guilt.
	But that's not what he's saying at all.
	What Trump is saying rightly is that this entire investigation is stupid.
	There's no reason for the collusion investigation because there's nothing there.
	And now this is going to drag out.
	It's going to cost everybody millions of dollars.
	I'm going to lose staff because you have to pay your own lawyers.
	I'm going to lose people.
	I'm not going to be able to get anything through.
	The media are going to spend all their days fulminating over nonsense.
	It's going to be the end of my presidency.
	That's what Trump was saying.
	That is not only not unreasonable, that is factually true.
	So when Trump said that, and then the media doing what the media do, take that out of context to suggest this was some sort of admission of guilt.
	It's an absurdity on its face.
	Again, note Trump didn't say he was upset Mueller might find something.
	He was worried about the time suck.
	Trump routinely expressed his anger that the Mueller investigation kept going.
	He was pissed at James Comey for failing to publicly declare he wasn't under investigation, which would have been true.
	He was enraged at Jeff Session for failing to limit the scope of the investigation, which is also true.
	Again, no underlying collusion to cover up.
	This was Trump lashing out.
	End of story.
	His aides stopped him and Trump tweeting his rage at the universe.
	That's not corrupt intent.
	It's immature.
	It's bad, but it is totally understandable rage combined with ignorance about the nature of the presidency and his job description.
	Just a second.
	A little bit more on the Mueller report.
	And here we get to the crux of the matter.
	What is Mueller doing with this report?
	This is the crux of the matter.
	What is Mueller actually doing with the report?
	So the first half of the report, Mueller does his job.
	He checks into collusion, and then he says, not evidence sufficient to prosecute, effectively exoneration.
	Second half of the report is him naming incident after incident after incident in which Trump acted badly, but borderline non-criminally, meaning that President Trump told people to lie to the media.
	Bad, not criminal.
	President Trump told Katie McFarland he wanted her to write a memo.
	That was false.
	She refused.
	Borderline criminal, not actually criminal, because no corrupt intent and no actual work product.
	And this sort of thing runs through.
	I mean, this is the common thread that runs through here.
	So Mueller had basically four choices here.
	He had four choices after looking at all the material.
	Choice number one, recommend obstruction of justice charges against the president.
	Now, there are some burdens that prevent him from doing that.
	One, an obstruction of justice charge is very difficult to prove.
	Two, an obstruction of justice charge against the president of the United States exercising his lawful authority under the executive branch is very difficult to prove and the president's own branch indicting him.
	for obstruction of justice is questionable at best.
	It's a kind of weird legal theory.
	And Mueller even says that.
	He says, we could recommend that obstruction of justice charges be brought against him, but they may not be able to be brought until after he is no longer president.
	If he's in the White House, then that provides him with a certain level of immunity.
	So there are a bunch of problems with option number one, recommend obstruction of justice charges.
	Option number two, say not evidence-sufficient to prosecute.
	Now, this is the one that actually applies.
	Because there is not evidence sufficient to prosecute.
	I've talked to several prosecutors over the last 24 hours.
	I don't know a prosecutor who would have been able to successfully prosecute this case or even would have taken this case.
	There is just too much reasonable doubt.
	In fact, this is basically a 50-50 coin flip at best for the prosecution.
	I think it's more like a 20-80 coin flip for the prosecution.
	It's a weighted coin.
	Because the most plausible explanation for all of Trump's behavior is not corrupt intent, it's dude's pissed off and immature, and so he does pissed off immature things.
	And that's, that's the best explanation.
	So that was option number two.
	And Mueller didn't take it.
	Which brings us to option number three.
	Him just saying, there's nothing here, acquittal, exonerated, be on your way.
	He wasn't going to say that, because Mueller uncovered all of this activity and he didn't like the activity, and so he wasn't just going to say there's nothing here.
	So again, of the three options stated so far, number two was the best.
	The second option was the best.
	That option that stated that there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute.
	Because not sufficient evidence to prosecute is accurate.
	It doesn't mean there's no evidence.
	It doesn't mean that Trump did everything right.
	It just means you can't prosecute this because there's not enough evidence to win a conviction.
	That's the right answer.
	That is not what Mueller did.
	What Mueller did instead, as Andy McCarthy has pointed out at New York Post, instead what Mueller did is something different.
	Mueller said, you know what?
	Here's all the evidence.
	Go with God.
	Up to you, man.
	You do what you're going to do.
	That's not his job.
	His job is to recommend either a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
	That's it.
	That is his job.
	Which means that what Mueller is actually doing here, and pretty much everybody is onto the game, what Mueller and his team are doing here is they don't like Trump very much.
	They think that Trump is corrupt.
	They think that Trump is a liar.
	They think that Trump was, in fact, attempting to obstruct justice, but they don't have evidence sufficient to prosecute.
	So instead of just saying, no evidence sufficient to prosecute, they say, it's on you.
	Which means, here's the grounds for impeachment.
	If you wish to move forward with an impeachment, this is the way to do it.
	That's what Mueller is doing here.
	Andy McCarthy correctly writes, if special counsel Mueller believed there was an obstruction offense, he should have had the courage of his convictions and recommended charging the president.
	Since he wasn't convinced there was enough evidence to charge, he should have said he wasn't recommending charges.
	But he didn't do either of those things, which means he copped out because what he actually wants is an impeachment hearing on all of these things.
	So the question is, did Mueller abdicate his responsibility here?
	What is his actual responsibility here?
	So the case in favor of Mueller, to be fair to him, is that the immense public scrutiny on this investigation meant that his report was going to be public.
	And because his report was going to be public, he did not want to be in a position of acquitting the president on charges.
	He felt that his job here was not, in fact, to recommend an up or down.
	It was to provide the information to the American public.
	That was half his job.
	Now, that really should not be his job.
	Remember, this started off as a counterintelligence investigation, trying to uncover nefarious activities by foreigners interfering in American elections, and it morphed into a criminal investigation.
	Under the auspices of a criminal investigation, as McCarthy says, this should be an up-or-down thing.
	This should be up or down.
	But it is not up or down.
	Why isn't it up or down?
	Why is it that both James Comey and now Robert Mueller are playing the same game?
	Really, the same game.
	James Comey, in 2016, famously went out there and laid forth all the grounds for Hillary Clinton's guilt and then said, not recommending prosecution.
	And people went, wait, what the hell?
	And there are people who are fighting mad on the left at Comey saying, why did you lay out all the grounds?
	If you're not recommending prosecution, just say no prosecution recommended.
	Why are you laying out all the reasons she's guilty?
	Mueller basically does the same thing here, except kind of in reverse.
	He says, here are all the reasons that Trump is guilty and I'm not going to let him off the hook.
	Right?
	That is what Mueller is doing here.
	Why is that the job of the FBI?
	The answer is it's not the job of the FBI.
	The job of the FBI is not to do this.
	Now, maybe the FBI feels a newfound public responsibility to be the public relations branch of every investigation.
	But the problem is that because this investigation was run that way, that's one of the things that led President Trump to be as obstructive and thwarting In his attitude as he was.
	It's what led to his antagonism.
	Because Trump felt correctly throughout the entire investigation that every five minutes somebody was leaking something about Trump-Russia collusion or obstruction to the press.
	And then he got even more upset.
	And he got more paranoid.
	And this led him to be more antagonistic.
	If the FBI did its job, they would have just recommended an up or down.
	This is true for both Hillary, and it's true for Trump as well.
	They did not.
	They came out publicly, and they exposed all of this information.
	Now, I thought that that was a good idea, and I still think it's a good idea for all the information to be in the public eye, because this is what we expect.
	But, as a balance of powers question, this is inside Congress's purview.
	It is not the job of the FBI to provide the grounds for impeachment.
	It is up to the FBI to provide the grounds for a criminal indictment.
	If that is not forthcoming, Then they were really supposed to shut up.
	The fact the process works the way it works is not on Mueller.
	It is an indictment of the entire system, which should not work this way.
	If Congress wants to subpoena people and create grounds for impeachment, that is their job.
	It's not up to the executive branch to do the dirty work of providing the grid work for getting rid of other members of the executive branch on behalf of the legislature.
	It's a serious balance of powers problem.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, starting tonight, it is Pesach, it is Passover.
	Obviously, this is a rich and worthwhile holiday.
	It's, I think, my favorite holiday.
	There are two that compete for it in Judaism.
	One is Sukkot, which is the festival of booths, and the other one is Passover.
	Passover is great because the kids really, really get into it.
	The whole night is really about getting kids to and getting kids to engage and ask questions and learn the story of their heritage.
	And it's really fantastic.
	So you can go get, you should go, honestly, everybody should own a copy of a Haggadah.
	Or a Haggadah, as the Ashkenazim say Haggadah and the Sephardim say Haggadah.
	So in any case, you should go get a Haggadah.
	It's really cool.
	It tells you the whole story of the Exodus in a really creative and interesting way.
	If you've never been to a Seder, you should go to a Seder, whether you are a Jew or a non-Jew.
	We've had non-Jews to our Seder for many years, and it's really great.
	People want to engage with their heritage.
	By the way, the reason that Good Friday happens to usually coincide with Passover is because the Last Supper was presumably a Passover meal.
	It was supposed to be a Pesach Seder.
	It's really cool.
	So if you're trying to reacquaint yourself with your roots, go check it out right now.
	Also, today happens to be the, let's see, 1943.
	1943.
	So it happens to be the 70...
	Why am I not able to do math today?
	I'm out of it.
	The 76th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place on the second night of Passover.
	Great story of heroism.
	Very cool thing happening this year.
	The first Seder is being held in the Warsaw Ghetto area.
	Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the middle of World War II.
	One of the great stories of Jewish heroism in history.
	People standing up to the Nazis and fighting them.
	The fact that Jews have clung to the Haggadah, they've clung to their story for thousands of years despite enormous persecution.
	It is one of the great stories of human history.
	So go check it out.
	It's really cool.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so a quick thing that I hate today.
	Well, first of all, the entire media is suggesting that impeachment should be on the table when they really don't have the grounds for impeachment.
	But the other kind of silly thing that I hate today is we now have to retroactively go back and dig up people's bodies to yell at them.
	This is the new thing.
	So the Yankees have decided they are no longer going to play Kate Smith's rendition of God Bless America.
	After learning her history of racist song lyrics.
	She was a famous singer during World War II and usually they play her version of God Bless America.
	But apparently, she was a famous singer and previously recorded a song titled, Piccaninny Heaven.
	The tune was directed at colored children who had fantasized about an amazing place with great big watermelons.
	And the video that accompanied the song was shot in an orphanage for black kids and included imagery that was startlingly racist.
	Smith also reportedly recorded a tune called, That's Why Darkies Were Born, which includes the lyric, someone had to pick the cotton, that's why darkies were born.
	So that is indeed super racist.
	Also, this lady's been dead for half a century.
	So, are we just looking for excuses to be pissed off right now?
	Like, if we're really going to spend all of our time digging up old bodies and yelling at them, and then wiping away the contributions that we like from history, we do have to, to a certain extent, separate the art from the artist.
	There are lots of bad people who have been artists.
	Lots of people who believe terrible things.
	Who have provided art that we really enjoy.
	Is the idea that we are no longer allowed to enjoy their art because they said bad things in the past?
	I enjoy a lot of the art created by open communists during the 1950s.
	Do I have to not enjoy the music of Dmitry Tyomkin anymore?
	Am I supposed to pretend that I hate John Wayne movies because he gave a bad Playboy interview in 1972?
	Is that the way this is going to go?
	And are you really angry at Kate Smith?
	I mean, really, are you angry at Kate Smith today?
	You can say that she was bad, because that sounds like pretty bad stuff to me.
	You can say that that was immoral stuff at the time, which it sounds like it was.
	Are you really angry at her?
	Like, is this what you're going to spend your day doing?
	And every time you hear her sing that song, do you think, aw, there's that vicious, racist Kate Smith?
	Or do you think, oh, listen, somebody's singing God Bless America in a nice way.
	Cool.
	The fact that we are now going through history to dig up all the bad things of the past?
	Why don't we start with the songwriters?
	There are plenty of songwriters who have done terrible, terrible things over the course of history.
	Virtually every composer, many composers, were not very nice human beings.
	At what level do we stop doing this?
	It makes for a worse world.
	If you are looking for reasons to be offended, you will certainly find them, but I would suggest that you're not gonna live a very happy life if you do.
	Alrighty, so we will be back here next week with much more.
	So I'm not doing the radio show next week because of Passover.
	I will still be here every week that is not a Yom Tov for the podcast, Yom Tov, meaning a holiday.
	And so we will see you here next week.
	If you're celebrating Passover, have a wonderful Passover.
	If you are celebrating Easter in the upcoming future, have a wonderful Easter.
	Really, it's a great time of the year.
	Enjoy your weekend, and we'll be back here to tell you about everything that's happening on Monday.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
	And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.
	Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, the media has coincidentally, magically, stopped suddenly talking about collusion.
	Now that Trump has been vindicated of the charge, they're not talking about it anymore.
	So we'll discuss that.
	Also, a truly horrific story out of Bangladesh that I think proves, yet again, that we should not engage in cultural relativism.

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