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May 10, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

54:03

Trump Gets Tough | Ep. 778

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	President Trump faces down China, North Korea, and Iran.
	2020 Democrats swing further to the left, and we check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Wow, a lot to get to today.
	Actually, a pretty busy news day, shockingly.
	It's not even time for the Friday news dump yet.
	I'm sure there'll be more happening later on today.
	We'll get to everything.
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	Okay, so we begin today with the media's attempts to continue to paint the Trump administration as engaged in some sort of cover-up.
	Last night, James Comey appeared on CNN.
	And appearing on CNN, he was asked basically to rip everyone inside the Trump administration, to talk about how evil the Trump administration was, to talk about how President Trump obstructed justice.
	Now, James Comey has a dog in this fight.
	Okay, James Comey, his firing led off the entire obstruction of justice debacle.
	It was James Comey's firing, which, by the way, was perfectly appropriate.
	He should have been fired as soon as President Trump took office.
	Frankly, Obama should have fired him after he did that press conference about Hillary Clinton back in July of 2016.
	But James Comey was fired for a cause.
	He was bad at his job.
	He was politically motivated.
	His politics were all about preserving his picture of the FBI as an institution.
	But Trump fired him.
	And then Trump basically said that he fired him because Comey wouldn't say publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation.
	Which was true.
	Trump was not under investigation.
	Comey wouldn't say it.
	He explained to Trump why he wouldn't say it.
	Trump got frustrated.
	Trump fired him.
	Then Trump went on national TV and said, well, I guess this Russia stuff is done because now we can openly say I'm not under investigation.
	That's what Trump meant.
	James Comey and the rest of the media took that to mean Trump fired Comey in order to stymie the investigation.
	Now, as we know, the investigation was not stymied.
	We keep hearing there's been a cover-up, there's been obstruction.
	We keep hearing that President Trump is involving himself in the nitty-gritty details of the Mueller report, of the investigation, in an attempt to prevent public knowledge of the nefarious activities in which he participated.
	I've seen not a lot of evidence of that.
	The fact is we are all privy to the Mueller report.
	The fact is Robert Mueller, James Comey was fired in the middle of 2017.
	It is now the middle of 2019.
	It is two years later.
	That is when we got the Mueller report.
	So for two full years, Robert Mueller had access to pretty much everyone inside the Trump administration, to millions of documents, to grand jury testimony.
	So the idea that James Comey's firing represented some sort of obstruction of justice is simply absurd.
	But Comey is very invested in that narrative because otherwise he got fired for being crappy at his job, and that James Comey can't accept.
	So he's been going around for the last couple of years taking Taking aspirational pictures of himself in great places of nature, looking up at the forest, looking down at the ocean, and then pondering life.
	Well, now he's back on CNN.
	He's being brought back forth by the media to explain exactly why it is that President Trump is a very, very bad, cruel, bad orange man.
	So here is Comey explaining that Trump obstructed justice, according to James Comey.
	I'll explain how absurd this is in just a second.
	There are now, I think it's up to 800 former federal prosecutors who have worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations who have signed a statement saying that Mueller's findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump if he weren't president.
	Do you agree?
	Yeah, I agree.
	No doubt.
	No doubt.
	Again, there's 10 different episodes.
	I actually think the ones that would be most likely charged are not necessarily the ones that involved me, but particularly this McGann episode and another episode where he was trying to get the Attorney General to limit the investigation only to future elections are examples that any reasonable prosecutor would charge.
	Okay, so that is really an amazing statement by James Comey.
	Now, the reason it's an amazing statement is because the reason that Trump could not be charged with obstruction of justice is because obstruction of justice is, in fact, a crime that requires intent.
	It's a crime that requires you to intend to obstruct justice.
	You want to stop the investigation because you think it's going to uncover something.
	In the absence of an underlying crime, it's very difficult to obstruct justice.
	Because what exactly would your intent be?
	Just because you're annoyed?
	Like, that doesn't really meet the intent portion.
	Which is why, when William Barr explained why he had not decided to indict Trump on obstruction of justice, he pointed to two factors.
	One, Trump's mental state.
	And two, the fact that there was no underlying collusion for Trump to cover up.
	That was William Barr's take, and that is a correct take.
	James Comey is saying that take is entirely wrong.
	Trump had the requisite intent.
	Okay, question.
	It was James Comey, I remember, who said about Hillary Clinton that Hillary Clinton was not guilty of violating rules about classified material because she did not have the requisite intent.
	You know where intent is not an element of the crime?
	When it comes to the mishandling of classified material.
	You do not have to intend to expose classified material to prying eyes.
	You do not have to intend to do anything wrong.
	It is a strict liability crime.
	If you take classified materials and you put them in public view, you are guilty of the crime.
	James Comey personally wrote intent into a law that had no intent, and now he's writing intent out of a law to castigate President Trump, which does demonstrate a fair bit of political bias on the part of a guy who proclaims that he is a wonderful law enforcement officer without any bias.
	James Comey went on to explain that the DOJ should actually charge President Trump when he is no longer president.
	You think he should be charged when he's out of office?
	Based on what Mueller has shown?
	Well, I think the Justice Department will have to take a serious look at that.
	Whether it's a wise thing to do to a former president, I don't know.
	That's a harder question, a much bigger question than the facts of the case.
	But do you think the evidence is there to prosecute?
	Sure looks like it's there with respect to at least a couple of those episodes of obstruction.
	So, you know, the idea that he is going to now push forward that Trump should be prosecuted when he's no longer president.
	Well, again, you know who could have made that call?
	You know who could have said that?
	Robert Mueller could have said that.
	Robert Mueller had every capacity to say, listen, according to the DOJ rules, according to the Office of Legal Counsel, it is unlikely that you can prosecute the president on these charges.
	However, I would recommend an obstruction charge against the president were it not for these OLC rules, meaning that he should be prosecuted when he's no longer president.
	Robert Mueller could have said that.
	He had every ability to say that.
	He did not say that.
	Why?
	Not because he didn't want to.
	I mean, it's pretty clear that his team wanted to get Trump.
	It's pretty obvious his team thought that Trump did immoral, bad stuff.
	That's the entire volume two of the report.
	But the fact that Mueller didn't do it is somewhat telling.
	Here's what's really going on.
	James Comey is mad because he got fired.
	And he effectively admits as much to Anderson Cooper.
	You were at an FBI bureau, I think in Los Angeles, and you actually saw it on CNN that you had been fired.
	I'm wondering, two years later, with all that's happened, how do you look back on that moment?
	I was numb because I didn't expect to be fired.
	I was actually in a room about this size talking to custodial staff employees about the importance of the FBI's mission.
	I looked over their heads and saw first it said Comey resigns, which I thought was probably a prank, and then it said Comey fired.
	And I know this may sound strange, but I didn't expect to be fired.
	It never entered my mind.
	I knew by that point the president didn't like me, but I thought that's OK because that'll keep a separation.
	So it still feels a little bit numbing, frankly.
	It's numbing.
	It's hurting.
	There's a lot of emotion in James Comey for a guy who pretends that he is just motivated, that he is just motivated specifically by all of this, that he's motivated specifically by a desire to enforce the law.
	Now, hilariously, Comey was asked about the FBI under his auspices.
	Two of his top agents were Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
	They're having an affair with one another.
	Strzok was personally heading up Both the Hillary investigation as well as the Trump investigation.
	And Comey admits, uh, yeah, they may have made us look bad, you know, with the whole texting each other and talking about how much they hated Trump.
	And then Peter Strzok manipulating the investigation, the timing of the investigation.
	That's not according to me.
	That's not according to Trump.
	That's according to the inspector general of the DOJ, Michael Horowitz, who found that ironically, that struck had actually put the Hillary investigation on the back burner in favor of the Trump investigation.
	And the irony comes in in that because he put the Hillary investigation on the back burner, the investigation only started to look at Huma Abedin's computer like a week before the election.
	And if he had not done that, then they probably uncovered that a month earlier and they take care of it a month earlier.
	And Hillary has a better shot at winning the election.
	Here is Comey admitting, yeah, you know, I was running the FBI, but my top agents, they made us look real bad.
	Do you acknowledge that this whole episode with Strzok and Page, that it damaged the reputation of the FBI and perhaps tarnished the investigation?
	Definitely.
	Yeah, very painful.
	It was important that it be investigated and important that there be discipline that follows it.
	But yeah, it made us all look bad.
	Peter Strzok is a very talented agent.
	It's a personal tragedy for him.
	But as much as I care about individuals, I care about the institution more.
	It hurt the institution.
	OK, so you know what else hurt the institution?
	You overseeing all of that.
	You overseeing all of that hurt the institution.
	So the fact that James Comey is still being trotted out as some sort of authority on this stuff does demonstrate that the media are pretty biased on this sort of thing.
	I mean, they could be asking James Comey all the same questions that I'm asking.
	What is your evidence that Donald Trump had requisite intent?
	We know that he fired you not because he wanted to obstruct the investigation.
	The investigation was not obstructed.
	So what exactly are you talking about?
	Don't you have a personal stake in making this case?
	But they're going to keep trying.
	It's amazing how all you have to do to become a hero of the resistance is stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president and then yell at President Trump.
	Amazing.
	If it were not for James Comey, much better shot Hillary Clinton is sitting in the White House right now.
	If it were not for James Comey, Then it's quite possible that the entire Trump-Russia collusion investigation would have gone down the drain much earlier.
	So the whole thing is pretty amazing.
	In just a second, we're going to get to the actual big story of the day, which is not any of the fake obstruction stuff.
	It's not any of the ridiculous Senate investigations or House investigations.
	The big story of the day is that we may be in a full-on trade war with China.
	Which is dangerous stuff.
	I'll get to that in a second.
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	Okay, well the actual big story of the day is the possibility of a trade war with China.
	China said on Friday it's going to retaliate because the United States did move to increase tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products on Friday, effectively breaking a month's long truce, seriously complicating ongoing talks according to the Global Times, which is a Chinese publication.
	The Chinese side deeply regrets the U.S.
	actions and will have to take countermeasures.
	The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement after the United States started to raise tariffs on Chinese goods.
	Following through on earlier threats by U.S.
	officials, the U.S.
	raised a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese products, including electronics, clothes and toys, to 25 percent starting at 12.01 p.m.
	Friday, Beijing time.
	The higher tariffs will apply to U.S.-bound products that left China after 12.01 a.m.
	on Friday, U.S.
	time, according to Reuters.
	Citing the U.S.
	Customs and Border Protection, such a grace period was not offered in the previous three rounds of tariffs.
	Apparently, the government of China's statement did not specify what countermeasures China would take and when it would implement those countermeasures, but analysts said there were several measures China could take that would inflict pain on the United States economy and that the measures would be announced shortly.
	He Weiwen is a former senior Chinese trade official.
	He told the Global Times, I think China will respond very soon.
	China will also have to make good on its own words.
	Otherwise, it will be at a huge disadvantage to the US team at the negotiations.
	Now, one of the things that has been happening is that President Trump has been sending some mixed signals on all of this.
	Now, what you want when it comes to foreign policy, particularly, is a very consistent policy, as I've been saying for years.
	President Trump's view of tariffs is wrong.
	His view of tariffs is that tariffs make America richer.
	That if all we did was raise trade barriers on imports of products from other countries, we would actually be bringing manufacturing home, and the American people would be more prosperous and richer.
	Manufacturing would return to America's shores.
	Historically, this is not what tariffs have done.
	Historically, what tariffs have done is decimate your capacity to compete on a global level, lead to outsourcing by companies, job loss, and stagnation in the country in which the tariffs are applied.
	That's because costs go up.
	We are all not just producers, we are all consumers.
	What tariffs do is they benefit a specific segment of the market at the expense of all the other consumers.
	So, let's say you have a tariff on Chinese steel.
	That benefits the American steel producers, because now they no longer have to compete with the Chinese steel producers, but American steel consumers, including the car companies, those people are going to be paying higher prices.
	That is reflected onto consumers, and so it's less money in your pocket.
	Tariffs foster political dysfunction by creating conflict between various interest groups in the United States, as well as with foreign countries.
	Now this does not mean that tariffs can't be a useful tool of policy.
	And this is where it's important to understand what President Trump is doing and important for him to be consistent.
	In just a second I'm going to explain.
	So, the consistent policy here should be, and would be, Look, we don't want any tariffs.
	No tariffs at all.
	The only reason that we have tariffs right now is because China is cheating on trade.
	And by cheating on trade, we don't mean that they're subsidizing particular core industries.
	That's not cheating on trade.
	They get to do that.
	It's their policy.
	It's dumb.
	Government top-down policy that subsidizes certain industries at the expense of other industries typically does not end well, even for those industries.
	Because once those companies are taken off the subsidies, they fail to be competitive.
	The free market is great at creating durable companies that are capable of competing in a global market without subsidies.
	Once you start subsidizing things, people become dependent on the subsidies.
	This is what happened to the American car companies in the 1950s and 60s.
	America's car companies used to run the world.
	Then we started subsidizing them.
	We had lots of tariffs against foreign imports, and America became much less competitive vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
	So if other countries choose to subsidize those industries, that's not really an excuse for us to tariff them.
	What is an excuse for us to tariff them is them cheating on intellectual property.
	For example, the government participating in stealing American intellectual property.
	Now, we've taken These cases to the World Trade Organization.
	China has not been a good actor in the World Trade Organization with regard to paying up when they've been found guilty.
	Those procedures take a lot of time.
	So if you really want to inflict pain on China to get them to stop stealing intellectual trade property, intellectual property, then that is at least understandable.
	The problem for President Trump is that he sends mixed signals.
	One signal is we don't want any tariffs, but if we have to punish you, we will.
	And the other signal that sort of Larry Kudlow signal, the other signal is tariffs are great.
	So, President Trump today, for example, is tweeting out about how tariffs are a wonderful thing.
	So, President Trump is tweeting out right now that if you produce in America, there will be no tariffs.
	He says, Great consumer price index just out.
	Really good.
	Very low inflation.
	We have a great chance to really rock.
	Good numbers all around.
	Your favorite president.
	Your all-time favorite president.
	So Trumpy.
	Your all-time favorite president got tired of waiting for China to help out and start buying from our farmers, the greatest anywhere in the world.
	Build your products in the United States and there are no tariffs.
	He says, if we bought $15 billion of agriculture from our farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than $85 billion left over for new infrastructure, healthcare, or anything else.
	China would greatly slow down and we would automatically speed up.
	Tariffs will make our country much stronger, not weaker.
	Just sit back and watch.
	In the meantime, China should not renegotiate deals with the United States at the last minute.
	This is not the Obama administration or the administration of Sleepy Joe, who let China get away with, quote unquote, murder.
	So again, this is the mixed signal.
	We want free trade, but we don't want free trade.
	Tariffs are actually good.
	Tariffs are actually wonderful.
	And this is the push that Trump himself is making.
	And that is sending mixed signals to the market, because the market is saying, okay, well, if he is happy with the tariffs, if he likes the tariffs, if all of this was an excuse to get to the tariffs, then maybe he just wants to leave those in place.
	And if he just wants to leave those in place, that could cost all of us a lot of money, because tariffs actually, as just a policy, Not as a tool of leverage, but as a policy, are pretty bad.
	This is what the UK Sun reports today.
	Donald Trump wiped nearly $1.5 trillion off global markets with a single Twitter blast, vowing to double tariffs on Chinese goods after they broke a crucial trade deal.
	That was two days ago.
	The US president renewed hostilities between the two economic giants by threatening to once more ramp up the cost of Beijing trading in the United States.
	He pledged to hike tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from Friday, rocking equity markets across the world.
	And that's because equity markets have typically thought that Trump was a lot of bluster.
	But once these things kick in, the feeling is that Trump wants to leave them in place not because they're good policy, but specifically because he actually likes tariffs.
	And now he is causing all sorts of confusion again on Twitter.
	According to Bloomberg, President Trump, the morning after levying fresh tariffs on China, caused confusion among traders by tweeting that there is no need to rush on China trade.
	Meaning, okay, maybe we'll just leave these tariffs in place for a while.
	And the markets went, oh boy, that's not good.
	Now, one of the things that people have been ignoring about the fact that the markets have been quite hot to this point is that there has been a bit of anticipation of this in the markets.
	The markets were anticipating at the end of last year that tariffs were going to kick in, and so they accelerated a lot of their buying from foreign manufacturers.
	And that led to an increase in the amount of spending, the amount of dollars flowing through the United States economy.
	It caused a lot of imports to be bought, for example.
	That's why the trade deficit has actually been getting worse under President Trump.
	An earlier tweet was deleted and then reposted with minor changes.
	He tweeted out this morning, Well, that's not really how tariffs work.
	That really is not how tariffs work.
	I mean, tariffs only work if you buy a product.
	as tariffs are now being paid to the United States by China of 25% on $250 billion worth of goods and products.
	These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the United States.
	Well, that's not really how tariffs work.
	That really is not how tariffs work.
	I mean, tariffs only work if you buy a product.
	It's a tax on a product.
	Consumers feel the brunt of that.
	It's not as though China just pays the tax and then sends its product into our market at its previous price.
	That's not how any of this works.
	Tariffs, he said again, would make the United States much stronger, not weaker.
	Just sit back and watch.
	China, of course, has said that it wants to retaliate.
	So there's a battle inside the Trump administration right now between the Larry Kudlows and between President Trump and Peter Navarro, who's one of his trade advisors on China, who really is not particularly good at his job.
	All of this is creating disquiet in the markets.
	Again, I think that if President Trump were using trade barriers as leverage to push China to start adhering to intellectual property law, that would at least be excusable.
	I think there are other measures that can be used, but that at least is an excuse.
	For him to be proclaiming that tariffs are inherently good is just not true.
	The Smoot-Hawley tariffs at the beginning of the Great Depression helped exacerbate the Great Depression by leading other countries to raise their tariffs as well.
	And all of that led to less of an export market for American goods and higher prices for American workers.
	That's what tariffs effectively do.
	It doesn't create more jobs.
	It doesn't create more prosperity.
	It creates more conflict.
	It creates higher prices.
	It creates less of an export market for competitive American goods.
	In a second, We'll get to where things are going on China Plus, conflict brewing with North Korea as well.
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	All right, so the New York Times reports that now President Xi is facing a dilemma.
	Should he fold or should he double down?
	And this is where the good side of President Trump's push could be.
	If you're using tariffs as a leverage point and not as a national policy, there's a case for that.
	Here's what the New York Times says.
	As Chinese and American officials try to reach a trade deal, President Xi Jinping faces a painful, possibly damaging choice to try to protect his aura of indomitability or retreat after President Trump accused China of reneging on the terms of a draft agreement and threatened to raise tariffs.
	The stakes rose sharply for the Chinese leader this week after Mr. Trump and his chief trade representative Robert Lighthizer publicly accused China of backing down on commitments.
	The sticking point appeared to be a late decision by Mr. Xi to reject American demands that China change laws constraining American businesses.
	When Trump leapt onto Twitter to complain, it was a public rebuke that put Xi in a tight spot.
	Xi is China's most powerful leader in decades.
	He guards his image as a visionary statesman guiding his country to greatness.
	China's relationship with the United States is its most important relationship.
	If ties between the countries are mismanaged, that could damage China's economy and tarnish Xi's image.
	Trade talks that just last week seemed close to fruition have abruptly become a flashpoint in the rocky relationship.
	Xi now faces questions at home over whether he miscalculated Trump's resolve.
	Domestic rumblings could grow if the United States forces Xi to make concessions, or if the talks break down.
	According to Paul Henley, a former China director on the National Security Council, who now runs the Carnegie Xinhua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, quote, Xi is walking a tightrope.
	He is going to be the one that has to make the most concessions, and that makes this all the more difficult for him.
	On Thursday, shortly before the trade talks were set to resume, of course, North Korea shot off short-range missiles.
	The United States had been pushing China to get involved.
	Even if the timing of the launch is a coincidence, perhaps that puts pressure on the United States to point out that China needs to be a partner.
	Liu He is China's chief negotiator.
	He said, quote, I come bearing sincerity and hope in the current special circumstances told a reasoned frank exchange of views with the U.S. side.
	China believes that increasing tariffs won't solve problems, won't benefit China or the United States, nor will it benefit the global economy.
	China had been willing to protect intellectual property and open its markets to American business, but the Trump administration wanted the agreement to specify that some of those changes actually be made in Chinese law.
	Apparently, China didn't want to do that.
	They wanted to make an informal policy and Trump was saying, no, you need to change your law so that formally you cannot renege on this agreement.
	Wang Yong is a director of the Center for International Political Economy at Peking University.
	He said, Trump, of course, doesn't care too much about that.
	Trump is trying to push for a public concession.
	I guess the idea here is that Trump, if he pushed for a private concession, maybe they would do it.
	Who the hell knows whether that is true?
	According to Professor Tu, everyone may have greater doubts and uncertainty about the future of the Chinese economy, Chinese-U.S.
	relations, or the global economy.
	This uncertainty will certainly affect production, investment, and consumption.
	Chinese officials are still struggling to understand the president, according to the New York Times.
	Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said, quote, there are a lot of voices in Washington that are either sharply or harshly critical of China's action in trade, in their military expansionism, in their actions in the South China Sea, fill in the blank.
	So as I say, Trump being strong with China is fine.
	Trump embracing tariffs is not so fine.
	The question is which one of these things is correct?
	What's actually happening here?
	Now maybe, maybe this works out to the tune of China takes Trump's warm embrace of tariffs as more of a credible threat than they would otherwise.
	That Trump's team and Trump himself think that if he just says tariffs are wonderful, then China will back down because they don't want the tariffs and the tariffs hurt China worse than they hurt us.
	With that said, as a general point of policy, I don't think that that is correct, obviously.
	And also, I don't actually think you need to say that.
	I think that you can simply say to them, listen, we are reluctantly imposing these tariffs because you won't do X. But, you know, maybe this is President Trump selling past the sale, as Scott Adams likes to say.
	That is a possibility as well.
	We'll obviously be watching this closely.
	It's a high-risk move for President Trump, politically speaking.
	The reason that it is a high-risk move for President Trump is because if the tariffs continue, it will undoubtedly damage the United States economy.
	There's already been talk about how much more robust the recovery would be, how much more robust the United States economy would be right now if we were not engaged in sporadic trade wars with various folks.
	It does raise the question overall, by the way, as to whether, for example, the United States ever should have worked on opening China in the first place.
	The case for opening China is that it would make China more liberal, more democratic.
	That, of course, has not happened.
	Of course, it's more prosperous for both us and China to have an open trade relationship.
	That is true regardless of who exactly is in charge.
	With that said, would it have been better in the 1970s if we didn't open China when they were on a serious trajectory toward collapse?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I mean, it's certainly possible that that is the case.
	U.S.
	officials say that they have more than promises to stop China from stealing intellectual property rights.
	This time, Robert Lighthizer, who's the head of the U.S.
	Trade Association, has pushed an enforcement system that gives the U.S.
	the right to impose tariffs if it decides that China is not living up to the deal.
	China barred from responding in kind, so China wouldn't be able to respond against us.
	Cleet Williams, a former senior White House trade official, who is at Akin Gump, a major law firm, he said, we've had these conversations with China for years.
	If you don't have specific commitments backed up with enforcement, you don't have anything.
	So again, if this is President Trump being tough with leverage, for it.
	If this is President Trump embracing tariffs the way he, on a gut level, seems to do, not really in favor of it.
	Meanwhile, chaos still breaking out on the North Korean peninsula, on the Korean peninsula.
	Over the over the course of the last two days, the United States seized a North Korean freighter that was caught shipping coal in violation of United States of UN sanctions.
	Rather, the Justice Department revealed on Thursday, the 17,000 ton cargo ship called the Wise Honest was stopped in Indonesia last year after it was found to be carrying coal.
	The ship's captain charged with violating Indonesian law.
	Last July, the United States filed an action to seize the ship.
	And finally, they went ahead and did that.
	North Korea, of course, has also fired a couple of rockets This week in a major move toward reigniting a lot of the conflict between North Korea and the United States.
	Presumably that is because the Trump administration has been moving away from concessions to the North Koreans as they should.
	So, there are a couple ways to read this.
	Overall, overall, the way to read this could be that President Trump is getting very tough on foreign policy and that's great.
	The other way to read this is that this is a bit chaotic, that we don't actually know what his foreign policy is and that foreign actors are taking advantage of that or acting from confusion.
	I hope that it is the first.
	I think that it feels like more of the first, but it certainly could be the second.
	OK, in just a second, we are going to get to the latest on the Democrats declaring that the that the Russia probe is not over.
	We're also going to get to the 2020 race and we got to do mailbag today.
	So we got a lot coming up first.
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	OK, in just a second, we are going to get to the Democrats' Russia probe push.
	We are also going to get to the Democrats in the 2020 presidential race growing more and more radical.
	Bernie Sanders now openly campaigning with AOC.
	So things are getting wild.
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	All righty.
	So let's talk a little bit about the Democrats and the Russia probes.
	So they continue to claim that obstruction is occurring.
	Obviously, the media are relying on James Comey, but the Democrats just keep saying that there's obstruction, there's obstruction, there's obstruction.
	They keep pushing this.
	I don't think there's a lot there for them to grab.
	So Jerry Nadler keeps saying this is obstruction without any proof of obstruction.
	Okay, tell us about it, Representative Nadler.
	The Attorney General has told us repeatedly, and all the Republicans, Senator McConnell and others have told us, that the finding of the Mueller report was no collusion, no obstruction.
	If that's true, why are they trying to hide it?
	It's obviously not true.
	Private citizens or employees of the Justice Department must testify for a congressional or a court subpoena.
	It's not optional, unless they have a legal reason not to.
	And this so-called executive privilege is nonsense.
	Alrighty, so this, of course, is untrue.
	You know, the idea that any obstruction is taking place, he has no actual evidence of this.
	Mueller is going to testify.
	Every aspect of this, where they say President Trump is obstructed, the only area where you can credibly claim that President Trump did not give all the information to Mueller is the area where he didn't sit down with Mueller, which no lawyer in their right mind would allow Trump to do.
	This is all manufactured.
	Nancy Pelosi says she supports Jerry Nadler, however, and she thinks that William Barr should presumably be held in contempt.
	If she had the courage of her convictions, she'd call for impeachment, but she's not doing that.
	We're talking about a cumulative effect of obstruction that the administration is engaged in and the president declaring that he is Not going to honor any subpoenas from the Congress.
	So I support the path that our chairman are on, and I do believe that it will establish the case for where we go from here.
	Alrighty, so again, the fact that she is continuing to push this demonstrates how dishonest all of this is.
	I'm with President Trump when he says that this has now become a hoax and a witch hunt.
	Again, I was very skeptical of that sort of language, but now at this point with the Democrats having the Mueller report in front of them and continuing to maintain this stuff, I'm with President Trump now when he says that this is a hoax and a witch hunt.
	Meanwhile, the 2020 race heating up.
	Joe Biden is moving ever to the left in an attempt to cut off Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and all the rest What you do is you work on this idea of earned citizens.
	So Vice President Joe Biden, look at how he has switched on illegal immigration.
	So it used to be that he thought illegal immigrants should be deported.
	Now he thinks illegal immigrants should get free health care, effectively speaking.
	Here is Joe Biden now versus then on illegal immigration.
	What you do is you work on this idea of earned citizens.
	You make them all return to the border to get a tamper-proof car.
	You force everyone to have a criminal background check.
	You require that they have to have, prove they have a job.
	You have to require you prove that they have, are paying Social Security and paying their taxes.
	And then, if they do that, and are prepared to pay a fine, over the next six years they can earn their way to citizenship and learn to speak English and learn to deal like everyone else did in order to gain citizenship.
	But if they don't, then you send them back.
	Do you think that undocumented immigrants who are in this country and are law-abiding should be entitled to federal benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, for example?
	Look, I think that anyone who is in a situation where they're in need of health care, regardless of whether they're documented or undocumented, we have an obligation to see that they're cared for.
	That's why I think we need more clinics around the country.
	Oh, funny.
	So it seems like he has changed his tune just a little bit.
	What happened to they need to speak English, they need to pay their taxes, they need to pay back taxes and all of this?
	Pretty amazing.
	He is moving to the left because the entire Democratic Party is moving to the left.
	How far to the left?
	Bernie Sanders is a mainstream guy.
	AOC is a mainstream gal.
	Yesterday, they sat next to each other.
	The amount of brainpower in that room, man, that could toast a piece of bread lightly if it were channeled in electricity.
	Here's Bernie Sanders and AOC proposing that we make banks out of the post office.
	Many poor people don't have access to banking services.
	That's right.
	Because the big banks are not worried about somebody who, you know, makes 10 bucks an hour.
	They can't make enough money off of that.
	So we have got to move toward universal banking through the postal system.
	You've got post offices in almost every community in America.
	They should be available to provide basic banking services so that people do not have to go into payday lenders.
	Okay, so it's pretty amazing.
	Even people on the left understand that what Bernie Sanders and AOC are proposing here, making banks out of the post offices, is very, very dumb.
	Kevin Drum has a piece from years ago about all of this.
	Kevin Drum is a columnist for Mother Jones, which is a far-left magazine.
	And he says, what exactly is the core competency that would allow the Postal Service to excel at banking?
	So they say what would make it good is that there are lots of post offices.
	You know what else there are?
	Lots of banking outlets.
	Lots of banks, like 100,000 across the United States.
	What else would make these great for banks?
	Trust and familiarity with the postal brand?
	Again, not a lot of people actually trust the post office.
	And also, when Sanders and AOC are talking about what exactly should happen with these small accounts, small accounts do exist at banks.
	And also, there are such things as payday lenders.
	And the biggest problem with providing very small loans from banks is that the default rate is extraordinary.
	So what AOC and Bernie Sanders really are talking about is the federal government subsidizing people with another entitlement program that will give loans to people who they know will not be able to repay those loans in small amounts via the post office.
	That's the agenda here.
	But this is the Democratic Party that Joe Biden is trying to fend off.
	And that is why Joe Biden is moving ever more to the left.
	I mean, Bernie Sanders is openly claiming that we should cap credit card rates.
	So he wants to take control of the entire credit industry of the United States.
	Can't see how this goes wrong.
	If interest rates otherwise are set by the market, why have you decided that a 15% cap is where to go?
	Half of the American people today have no wealth at all.
	They're living paycheck to paycheck.
	You got a medical emergency, your car breaks down.
	These are desperate people.
	And then they go to Wall Street.
	And they're charged outrageous interest rates.
	Wall Street profits are soaring.
	People get further and further in debt while wages remain stagnant.
	This really is disgusting.
	And it has got to, we have to stand up to the greed of Wall Street and change it.
	If you voluntarily sign a credit card statement, if you sign a contract with a credit card company, then you take out a bunch of credit and then you can't pay it, that would be on you.
	That is a you problem.
	But Bernie Sanders wants to make every you problem a we problem, an all of us problem.
	The problem is, when you collectivize individual problems, the collective tends to fail at the same rate as the individual.
	Okay, you know what?
	Let's do some mailbag here, because it's a Friday.
	Let's chill out a little bit.
	Kelly says, If William Barr, the AG, cannot release unredacted information as it against the law, how can Congress legally compel a U.S.
	citizen to break the law?
	Does Barr have recourse for this illegal activity against him?
	Yes.
	If they hold him in civil contempt for this, it will end up in the Supreme Court.
	He will sue them on the basis that this is not appropriate and that they are compelling him to violate American law.
	I think he'd be likely to win in that case.
	Sarah says, Hey Ben, I'm an English teacher in public high school.
	This year, for the first time in my career, I had a parent strongly object to the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
	She claimed it was inappropriate and outdated, and it made her daughter uncomfortable.
	And of course, I was racist for choosing to teach it.
	To my shame, I gave in and decided not to teach the book this year.
	I noticed on Twitter you said you consider it one of the top American novels.
	Some teachers have a bans in the book because they argue it others African American students and should be replaced with a book written by a person of color.
	I was wondering what is your argument for the value of teaching To Kill a Mockingbird To kill a mockingbird is one of the great American novels.
	It is not only beautifully written.
	It is a story about the inculcation of civilization and morality in children and the need to defend people who specifically are being treated as other for unjust reasons.
	To kill a mockingbird is one of the great moral stories.
	It's almost part of the American mythology.
	This great moral story of Atticus Finch, a Southern lawyer who is standing up for a wrongly accused black man in the in the Jim Crow South.
	And the consequences of doing that, the consequences for, how you could read that as a racist book is absolutely beyond me.
	I do not understand how that is possible.
	But it does show how the nature of our view of race in America, and really, not even race in America, of how America should view race has changed.
	To Kill a Mockingbird is an aspirational book.
	It's about how we should treat each other with regard to race.
	We should treat each other as individual human beings with innate human decency, and we should aspire to be Atticus Finch.
	A few years back, Harper Lee's estate released an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird in which Atticus Finch is basically an old racist.
	And it's about Harper Lee writing about her father and the entire book cast Atticus Finch as an old style, brutal Jim Crow racist.
	And the critics were talking about, many of the critics were talking about how this book is more of a real appreciation of what America is and was than To Kill a Mockingbird.
	Well, it is true there were a lot of old-style Jim Crow racists in the South during Jim Crow.
	It is also true that if you want to teach people about what America can be, you teach them about To Kill a Mockingbird.
	If you want to teach people about what America was, then you actually just show them tape, because we have video.
	James says, Hey Ben, how do you talk to your kids about the Holocaust?
	I want to know how best to talk to my kids about the horrors of slavery without them viewing themselves as victims.
	P.S.
	Can you wish my wife, Audrey, a happy birthday?
	She got me a subscription to Daily Wire as a gift.
	Well, Audrey, happy birthday.
	That's awesome.
	And thank you for rewarding your husband with a subscription to Daily Wire.
	How do I talk to my kids about the Holocaust?
	They're too young right now.
	One is five and one is three.
	I think they will be old enough maybe when they hit seven or eight years old.
	And what I will talk about is that There is a long history of persecution against Jews in a variety of countries, culminating in probably the worst persecution in the history of mankind, the Holocaust.
	It's deeply disturbing stuff.
	This is why you should be grateful that you live in the greatest time, in the greatest civilization, in the greatest country.
	And you should be grateful for the people around you who fought to end that Holocaust.
	You should be grateful to America, which fought to stop that Holocaust.
	You should understand that there's a potential for grave evil in every human heart, including your own.
	And we should work to wipe away that evil.
	You should understand that the power of the collective is so intense that sometimes people who even consider themselves decent go along with evil.
	And you need to stand up and say, no, you use it as a moral teaching tool.
	The same thing I would assume is true of slavery.
	I wouldn't teach it as you're a victim because the Holocaust happened.
	I would teach it as evil is possible.
	Evil does sometimes specifically target Jews, just as evil does sometimes specifically target black folks.
	And the only way to fight it is to stand up and shout about it and rally good people around the cause to fight against it when appropriate, without considering yourself a victim in a society that has fought to end slavery, in a society that has fought to stop the Holocaust, in a society that ended Jim Crow.
	I mean, it's great to live in a country where we can say all of those things, isn't it?
	Kyle says, In some of the research I've come across, I've seen the comparison between CEO wages compared to their other fellow employees has grown to around 400 times the average worker over the past two decades.
	I am curious as to the validity of this information, and if it is true economically, is there something we can do?
	Or is this something the economy will sort out on its own, given enough time?
	Well, I don't really see why the gap between the CEO wages and fellow employees is of concern.
	The question is whether people are being underpaid.
	People have said this about, you know, the CEO of McDonald's.
	McDonald's has tens, if not hundreds of thousands of employees, and the CEO makes a few million dollars a year.
	Well, the average McDonald's employee is making whatever it is, 12 bucks an hour or something.
	If you were to fire the CEO and redistribute his salary, everybody'd get maybe a five cent raise, 10 cent raise, something like that.
	The The question is not what the CEO makes.
	When you decide whether to hire a CEO, you have to pay him market wages to get whoever you think is best at that job.
	And that's something approved by the board in order to bring in talent.
	And being a CEO requires years of education.
	It requires years of hard work and a skill set.
	And if that person's bad, they get all the blame, obviously.
	So I'm very little concerned about this.
	This is just a general point.
	I do not care very much about income inequality.
	I care a lot about what happens to people at the bottom end of the scale and whether in fact there are systematic obstructions being put in their way to grow their income.
	If not, then I'm not concerned that the CEO makes a lot of money.
	He's not stealing that money from people who are working the counter at McDonald's or something.
	I think that if Biden wins the nomination in 2020, he's the odds-on favorite to win.
	I mean, just by statistics.
	Patrick Betavid, in the interview, you stated, if Biden runs in 2020, he'll win in 2020.
	Do you still feel this way?
	If not, what has changed your mind?
	I think that if Biden wins the nomination in 2020, he's the odds-on favorite to win.
	I mean, just by statistics.
	He's more popular than President Trump on a national level.
	President Trump has a good economy going for him.
	He's an incumbent president.
	You know, there are some things that Trump can do to be competitive, but I think that if he had to put money on it, it's at best a 50-50 shot that Trump wins against Joe Biden in a reelect effort.
	Natalie says, Hi Ben.
	With the recent rocket attacks in Israel over the weekend, a Jewish law question came into mind.
	Are Jewish soldiers who protect Israel exempt from observing Shabbat?
	Yeah, they are given what is called a heter.
	They are allowed to protect Their fellow Jews, because it is a situation of what we call pikuach nefesh, a life being in danger.
	When a life is in danger, you're allowed to violate virtually every commandment in the Torah, with the exception of you're not allowed to kill somebody.
	like an innocent person, if your life is in danger, you're not allowed to commit a sexual sin if your life is in danger, and you're not allowed to defame the name of God, basically commit idolatry if your life is in danger.
	Otherwise, you're allowed to violate any of the rules.
	Rice says, Dear Ben, I live in the UK.
	People on the left often bring up the example of Saudi Arabia as a country we sell arms to and have an economic relationship with, despite the human rights atrocities they engage in, saying this proves our foreign policy is all about power and oil.
	What are your thoughts?
	So would I prefer that Saudi Arabia were a thriving westernized democracy?
	Yeah, that would be awesome.
	respond to these oversimplifications.
	So the question in foreign policy, unfortunately, is what is the alternative?
	So would I prefer that Saudi Arabia were a thriving westernized democracy?
	Yeah, that would be awesome.
	Also, if we don't support Saudi Arabia in the region, then Iran takes power.
	That is a very bad thing, because Iran is much more dangerous than Saudi Arabia in terms of its regional aspirations, as well as its global terror reach.
	We always have to consider the alternative when it comes to foreign policy because, again, foreign policy doesn't happen in a vacuum.
	William says, hey, Ben, in history class, we are learning about the Social Security Act and FDR's policies as governor and president.
	I was wondering what your critiques of his policies are and how we can reduce the welfare state today.
	Well, his his socialist his social policies weren't socialist policies.
	His policies were very bad for the economy.
	There's a study from UCLA that suggests they lengthened the Great Depression by up to eight years.
	As far as his Social Security Act, that has effectively taken over 33% of the federal budget and will be bankrupt by 2030.
	It is my view that, as opposed to seizing money from people and putting it in a government account that is then used for other purposes in what is effectively a pyramid scheme, if you actually wanted to have the government involved in retirement, which I don't think that it should be, but if you were going to, what you would do is set up a personalized savings account, put the money in the personalized savings account for the person, and then that would be it.
	Then at least they're saving the money.
	But that's not what Social Security does.
	There is no lockbox.
	You put the money in Social Security, that Social Security money then gets sent to somebody else.
	Teresa says, as a 100% Ashkenazi Jew, do you speak Yiddish?
	I do not.
	I have a very low command of Yiddish.
	No more than I think the average American Jew, at least.
	Let's see.
	Drew says, Hey, Ben, I'm a big proponent of a flat tax rate.
	What are the objections to it?
	Why should a person living off the system have a vote equal to someone who pays over 30 percent of their income?
	I also am a big proponent of a flat tax rate.
	Usually people say, well, dollars matter more as you go lower down on the scale.
	So therefore, people lower down on the scale should keep a heavier chunk of their income.
	But that's what percentages are.
	Meaning that if I pay 30% of my income, no matter what my income, that's going to be a heavy chunk of my income.
	And it's a lot more absolute money when you are wealthy than when you are poor.
	In fact, the United States has one of the more progressive income tax rates in the Western world.
	Rich people pay way more than poor people.
	And if we actually had a quote-unquote socialist system, it's the poor who would pay for it, the middle class and the poor, which is why the highest tax brackets in many Scandinavian countries starts at around $60,000.
	around $60,000.
	Jake says, Hey Ben, love the show.
	Since it is impossible that Trump wins California, would you consider voting for Howard Schultz as an independent candidate instead if he has a competitive chance?
	Obviously, you don't agree with him on a lot of issues, but in terms of fiscal responsibility and identity politics, he's far more reasonable and moderate Well, if the idea is that that would throw the electoral votes away from the Democrats and toward Howard Schultz and prevent a Democrat from reaching 270, then yeah, that's just strategic voting.
	So, I think strategic voting is sometimes justifiable.
	As a conservative, I'm very skeptical of government mandates on what should be personal choices, but not vaccinating your children can put others at risk.
	What are your thoughts?
	Yes, I'm in favor of the government mandating vaccinations.
	I know this is unpopular with a certain segment of my audience.
	I understand that.
	That is your prerogative.
	I disagree.
	When it comes to vaccinations, vaccinations do create externalities.
	Lack of vaccination of your child does not just impact your child, it makes your child a potential carrier for people who cannot get vaccinations, including kids who have cancer, pregnant mothers, and babies under one year of age.
	It's why we've had a return to a measles outbreak after that disease had effectively been wiped out of the United States decades ago.
	Okay, final question here.
	Should the United States recognize the Republic of China, aka Taiwan, as the rightful government of mainland China?
	Very difficult to recognize Taiwan as the rightful government of mainland China when they don't have any control over mainland China without that amounting to an effective declaration of war against China.
	So, on a realpolitik level, I can't see that happening.
	All right, let's do some stuff I like and then some stuff that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	So, I have to acknowledge that it is amusing to watch as Democrats make claims about the economy that are just outright false.
	So, Senator Richard Blumenthal, who says a lot of very weird things, was on CNBC.
	And he started talking about Facebook.
	And he makes the case that breaking up companies like Facebook would increase jobs and prosperity.
	I think that Facebook needs to be broken up.
	The acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp need to be unwound.
	And there needs to be Department of Justice scrutiny about appropriate antitrust remedy.
	So we're not talking about attacking prosperity or jobs.
	In fact, increased jobs and greater prosperity in more competition.
	And really, Facebook here is the only company that we're talking about.
	So, you know, when he talks about, you know, breaking up, breaking up companies creates jobs and prosperity.
	So I guess the idea is that if you have lots of competition in a sector that creates jobs and prosperity, isn't that the underlying logic there?
	Oh, wait, that's what we say about everything in the free market.
	They only say it when they want to break up a company that is successful and not jacking customers.
	All righty.
	So we will be back here next Monday.
	I hope that you have a wonderful, joyous and calm weekend.
	We'll be back here next week to rehash everything.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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