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May 24, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

55:06

Celebrity Death Match: Trump vs. Pelosi | Ep. 788

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	President Trump and Speaker Pelosi snipe at each other, Julian Assange faces charges, and we check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, it's a busy Friday.
	The president's also declassifying all sorts of material via his attorney general, William Barr.
	We'll get to that.
	Theresa May, the prime minister of Britain, stepping down.
	We'll get to that as well.
	We'll get to all these things.
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	Alrighty, so we begin today with the crazy fight between President Trump and Nancy Pelosi.
	So we, as we've been discussing for the past several days, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat strategy for 2020 is to make Donald Trump appear to be a crazy person.
	This is their chief strategy.
	And Nancy Pelosi is basically a suicide bomber doing this.
	I mean, I don't mean literally, obviously.
	I mean, politically speaking, Nancy Pelosi is basically strapped on the crazy vest.
	And she says, "If I act crazy, it will get Trump to act crazy.
	I'm only elected by the people of San Francisco.
	President Trump is elected by the people of the United States.
	And that means people in San Francisco don't care if I'm crazy, but people broadly across the United States do care if Trump is crazy." So in a crazy fight, Trump is always going to lose because the referendum is gonna be on Trump as president of the United States.
	Everybody understands what Nancy Pelosi is at this point.
	And it doesn't matter because again, she's elected by crazy people in San Francisco.
	Donald Trump has to win a majority of the voters of the United States, at least in the Electoral College.
	It's hard to do that when people widely perceive you as being volatile.
	Nancy Pelosi knows that, and that is why she has been basically jabbing at President Trump over and over and over again, saying that he's engaged in a cover-up, saying that he's unstable and all this sort of stuff.
	President Trump, because he's a counterpuncher, has a natural tendency to then engage in precisely the reverse sort of behavior, which is to rip on his political opponents and also to get supremely defensive about his own mental status.
	So, Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that President Trump wants us to impeach him.
	This is what she says, that President Trump is a crazy person, he's getting nothing done, and he wants us to impeach him in order to save himself.
	Here is the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, jabbing at Trump, deliberately, deliberately poking at Trump in an attempt to get Trump to fire back at her in the most volatile possible fashion.
	You said in private, you suggested it today, that the president wants, on some level, to be impeached.
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, there's no question.
	The White House is just crying out for impeachment.
	That's why he flipped yesterday, because he was hoping, when he saw that... See, he's saying, oh, you called that meeting at 9 o'clock.
	No, we have the meeting.
	Mr. President, it's not about you.
	That was what disappointed him, because he didn't see this rush to impeachment coming out of our caucus in our 9 o'clock meeting, which he thought was called specifically for him.
	OK, so then President Trump fired back.
	So with Nancy Pelosi jabbing at him over and over and over, President Trump fired back yesterday repeatedly.
	So first, Trump ripped crying Chuck and crazy Nancy.
	He did this in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, flanked by farmers who he was giving a sort of bailout to in the aftermath of his Chinese trade war.
	Here's President Trump ripping into Crying Chuck and Crazy Nancy.
	Again, as I've been saying for days, I have a lot of sympathy on an emotional level for President Trump, who's being slapped around by Democrats, who's being unfairly treated by Democrats.
	I really do think that these investigations are not directed toward criminal activity.
	They're directed toward getting under Trump's skin.
	Democrats have successfully done that, and that's why the president should not allow them to do it.
	Look, that's a hard job.
	I've been through it myself.
	It's very rough.
	But the president, if he wants to win re-election, This is not the strategy for doing it.
	Here's the president ripping into Cryin' Chuck and Crazy Nancy.
	She said I walked into the room right next door yesterday and walked in and started screaming and yelling.
	Just the opposite.
	Just the opposite.
	Because I know that they will always say that, even if it didn't happen, because this happened once before.
	I walked out, I was so calm.
	So I walked into the cabinet room.
	You had the group.
	Cryin' Chuck.
	Crazy Nancy.
	I tell you what, I've been watching her and I have been watching her for a long period of time.
	She's not the same person.
	She's lost it.
	So he's firing back.
	And listen, as a Republican, as a conservative, Nancy Pelosi has a lot of this coming.
	But that's not really the question.
	The question is, is this strategically smart for the president to get down in the mud with Nancy Pelosi and have a crazy fight when, again, he is the one who's going to be up for presidential re-election?
	And then it gets worse because President Trump then calls up his own aides, people who work for him, to testify that he did not throw a tantrum.
	Well, if you're trying not to appear volatile, probably the worst way to do that is to get your own employees.
	Come on over here, Bob, and tell them I'm not volatile.
	Come on over here.
	Tell them I'm not crazy.
	Jim, you work for me.
	Tell them I'm not crazy.
	This is not the way to do this.
	There's the president doing this.
	How was my temperament yesterday?
	Mercedes, you're always a straight talker.
	You were in that room yesterday?
	Yes, sir.
	What was my attitude when I walked in?
	Did I ever scream?
	cancer, rage, lost it, that's just a lie.
	-Mercedes, you're always a straight talker.
	You were in that room yesterday?
	-Yes, sir.
	-What was my attitude when I walked in?
	Did I ever scream?
	-No, you were very calm and you were very direct.
	And you sent a very firm message to the Speaker and to the Democrats.
	-What was my attitude yesterday at the meeting?
	-Mercedes right, Callie Ann's right. You were very calm and you laid out the case. You had a lot of numbers.
	Oh, no.
	Do you laugh or do you cry?
	I mean, really, Mr. President, if you do not want to appear volatile, if you don't want to appear like a crazy person, probably what you shouldn't do is appeal to all the people who work for you to testify as to what a great dude you are.
	Let's say that somebody called me volatile.
	You know what I probably wouldn't do is call in my producers.
	I wouldn't call in Nick and both Mike's.
	I wouldn't call in my producers and then say, guys, tell them I'm not volatile.
	Tell them right now.
	Tell them I'm a wonderful boss.
	That just what?
	What?
	Like, how is this in any way strategically smart?
	Again, I get it emotionally.
	I do.
	I'll say that a thousand times over.
	I get where the president is coming from emotionally.
	I get where Trump is coming from.
	But if the rip on you is that you're volatile and then you proceed to show that you're volatile by calling on Mercedes Schlapp, who works for you, and Kellyanne Conway, who shills for you on television to testify as to your innate genius.
	I don't know what.
	How is that productive?
	And then Trump keeps doubling down.
	He says, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a mess.
	Again, all of this may be true.
	Nancy Pelosi is a mess.
	Yesterday, I played a clip of her on my radio show in which she is utterly inarticulate.
	It sounds like she's doing a Dadaist poem from the 1930s with some jazz music in the background.
	She's not speaking complete sentences.
	But I am a podcast and radio host.
	I'm not the president who has to get reelected.
	Here's President Trump going after Nancy Pelosi again.
	Well, they're being very nice to her because they really, you know, she's a mess.
	Look, let's face it.
	She doesn't understand it.
	And they sort of feel she's disintegrating before the rush.
	She does not understand it.
	They want to have her understand it before we... It's finished.
	It's signed.
	As you know, Mexico's approved the deal.
	Canada's approved the deal.
	And they're waiting to get a signal for her.
	Pelosi does not understand the bill.
	She doesn't understand it.
	Even though unions are in favor of it, farmers, manufacturers, everybody just about is in favor of it.
	Okay, so, and then he concludes this little riff, which went on for many, many minutes in the middle of this press conference with the farmers standing behind going, oh my god.
	Trump concluded this.
	I mean, this all goes under bad Trump, honestly.
	There's good Trump and bad Trump in my good Trump, bad Trump matrix.
	This is all bad Trump.
	Not because it's morally evil or anything.
	The president has said some very immoral things.
	Nothing he's saying here is immoral.
	But it is ill-advised at the extreme level of ill-advised.
	And then Trump finishes with his favorite line.
	He says he's an extremely stable genius.
	This is like when people tell you they're exorbitantly wealthy or incredibly brilliant.
	When people have to tell you They very often are not.
	And when the president... When's the last time you told your friends that you were an extremely stable genius?
	Here's the president of the United States doing that yesterday.
	For whatever reason, you'll explain this to me, I always get a lot of publicity.
	So if I said something, even as a private builder or whatever I was doing at the time, I would get a lot of publicity.
	And without a lot of trying.
	And I was against certain things, but if you look and you take a look back, you'll see all of the things that you're talking about and all of the things that you're asking about, I was against at that time.
	And I'm still against.
	I haven't changed very much.
	Been very consistent.
	I'm an extremely stable genius.
	Okay, and obviously he's saying that a little bit tongue-in-cheek because the president is a stand-up comedian, but that then opens the door to Nancy Pelosi doing this.
	So Nancy Pelosi then tweets at the president about the extremely stable genius line.
	She says, Now, this is supremely cynical from Nancy Pelosi.
	She's not interested in working with Trump on anything.
	Her entire goal here is to drag Trump into this fight, to get under his skin, to make him crazy.
	That's what she's trying to do here.
	This move where she says, you know, I pray for him.
	He needs an intervention.
	He's engaged in a cover up.
	And then as soon as Trump comes back at her and says that she's a mess, then it's, well, I was happy to work with him.
	But then he decided that he wasn't going to work with me.
	That routine from Nancy Pelosi, it's really galling and it's really perturbing.
	But with all of that said, is it smart for President Trump to jump into a personal catfight with Nancy Pelosi?
	Here's the thing, the image that he needs to propagate from now until Election Day is of, if not an extremely stable genius, an extremely stable person, or at least a stable person, right?
	That would be, that would, that, the entire Democratic pitch is Trump is too crazy.
	The economy is good right now.
	On foreign policy, we're heading in the right direction.
	Democrats must create the image that the president cannot be trusted with power because he's a crazy person.
	And thus, you must hand it over to Old Joe.
	Slow Old Joe.
	You remember Old Joe.
	That's really their campaign.
	They should make their campaign slogan, Democratic Campaign Slogan 2020.
	You remember Old Joe.
	That's, that's the entire pitch.
	I've been saying for years, the Democratic campaign was going to be the 1920 Warren G. Harding campaign, a return to normalcy.
	That was Warren G. Harding, the Republican Party's pitch in 1920.
	Woodrow Wilson had lost it.
	He was senile at that point.
	And the Democratic Party had followed him so far down the chute that Woodrow Wilson's wife effectively governed the country as president of the United States in the middle of Woodrow Wilson's senility as of 1919.
	And so Republicans said, okay, we just want normal.
	How about normal again?
	That's what Democrats are trying to do.
	In order to make that happen, they have to portray the president as abnormal.
	The president should not be helping them out in this quest.
	And yet, and yet, the president's counter-punching tendencies lead him to do the wrong thing.
	We'll get to that in one second.
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	OK, so President Trump finishes his attacks on Pelosi.
	Again, justified morally, not smart politically.
	The president finishes attacks on Pelosi by tweeting out a video of her stumbling over her words.
	And there was a lot of talk yesterday about a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi that made it look like she was slurring her words.
	I don't know why you'd have to doctor a video of Nancy Pelosi in order to come up with that conclusion.
	She stumbles over her words routinely.
	She has odd pauses in her verbiage.
	And this is one of the effects of being 1,000 years old.
	And Nancy Pelosi has been doing this for a long time.
	This is not a shock.
	Well, the president then tweeted out a compendium of Nancy Pelosi stumbling over her words.
	Now, all of that may be true.
	It is also true that there are similar videos of the president stumbling over his words.
	I will say that the media coverage of this is insane and insipid.
	The media coverage was, how could President Trump do something like this?
	So cruel, so terrible.
	They even suggested that this video was doctored.
	This video is not doctored.
	These sorts of videos existed about Barack Obama.
	I remember them.
	There were these long montages of Barack Obama just saying, uh.
	Like lots of, he'd be like, um, uh.
	Huge montages of Obama saying that sort of thing.
	There's the same thing with George W. Bush.
	As long as video has existed, as long as the capability of cutting video has existed, these sorts of compendiums are put out.
	Trump puts it out, and suddenly, it's the worst thing that has ever happened.
	The president tweeted out, Pelosi stammers through news conference.
	In all caps.
	And then here is the actual video of Pelosi stammering through her news conference.
	We had a little long, took a little longer on the floor custody, custody of the border, the border.
	Everyone started making, sending signals to U.S., Mexico, Canada.
	If that's not the accurate category.
	Some people call it AFTA-NAFTA, some call it NAFTA 2.0.
	We're working together to pass that.
	There are three things.
	There are three things.
	We're very busy people.
	Okay, that three things, thinks she's holding up two fingers at a time.
	So Trump tweets that out, the media go crazy.
	I will point out the media have been saying that Trump is a nutcase who can't speak English for years, and he's the president of the United States, whether they like it or not.
	Is any of this wrong?
	It's not wrong, but it is not strategically advisable.
	I assume his comms team has told them this, but they cannot control him any more than you can control the wind.
	That is just not the way this works.
	Meanwhile, the president is fighting back against the Allegations that have been made that the FBI and CIA and the Obama administration were targeting him.
	He is now attempting to declassify a bevy of materials.
	Now, I've been saying for years that the president should declassify as much as humanly possible.
	I'm amazed by Democrats who today are claiming that it's a cover up when the president declassifies material.
	So just to review, when the president says that William Barr, the attorney general, has to keep certain things classified because the federal rules of criminal evidence require that grand jury information not be released into the public, That's a cover-up.
	So if the president uses classification properly, that's a cover-up.
	Also, if the president declassifies, that is a cover-up.
	Now, the argument from the left is, well, he's only selectively declassifying.
	Yeah, except he made the entire Mueller report, which he could have remained classified.
	He made that entire thing public.
	He made the entire thing public.
	So I don't get the argument.
	This is what Adam Schiff has been saying.
	So Adam Schiff, who a moment ago was saying that William Barr was ugly.
	He literally said that on stage yesterday.
	Really classy Adam Schiff.
	I defended Adam Schiff against allegations he was a pencil neck.
	But Adam Schiff is out there ripping on William Barr and saying that he's an ugly human being.
	Adam Schiff ain't no Brad Pitt.
	Adam Schiff tweeted out, So what exactly is so un-American?
	Trump has now given Barr the power to declassify intelligence related to the Russia probe.
	Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies.
	The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase.
	This is un-American.
	So what exactly is so un-American?
	Trump has now given Barr the power to declassify intelligence related to the Russia probe.
	So just to get this straight, Schiff is accusing Barr and Trump of using classified information against their political enemies.
	But this information is not classified anymore.
	Trump is declassifying information.
	So is the complaint that Trump is keeping things secret or that he is making things open?
	The Washington Post reports today, President Trump has granted Attorney General William Barr full and complete authority to declassify government secrets, issuing a memorandum late on Thursday that orders U.S.
	intelligence agencies to cooperate promptly with Barr's audit of the investigation into Russia's election interference in 2016.
	Now, the reason that Trump is issuing that order is because Trump suspects And it may be right that there are members of the FBI and the CIA who are going to attempt not to comply with his orders, not to comply with Attorney General Barr, and to throw stonewalls in the, to stonewall Barr in this particular investigation.
	The president has long suspected that there are institutional forces working against him inside the intelligence community, the so-called deep state.
	And there were, in fact, those forces working against him during the 2016 campaign.
	I mean, this is not under controversy.
	Peter Strzok was openly texting his mistress, Lisa Page, about setting up insurance programs against Trump being elected and talking about how Trump would never become president and all of the rest of this.
	I mean, it was so bad that the inspector general of the DOJ, Michael Horowitz, chided Strzok and Strzok ended up being fired.
	According to the Post, the president's move gives Barr broad powers to unveil carefully guarded intelligence secrets about the Russia investigation.
	Now again, I think this is a good strategy.
	General requested to allow him to quickly carry out his review, according to the memo.
	The White House said today's action will ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred and the actions that were taken during the last presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.
	Now, again, I think this is a good strategy.
	I think the president should have done this a long time ago.
	There were a lot of complaints that the FISA warrant against Carter Page was unjustified, that it was based solely on the Steele dossier, that it was basically concocted by Trump's enemies to go after people who worked with Trump And I've been saying for years on this program, OK, so why doesn't the president just declassify that?
	If that's true, just declassify it.
	I am for more information in the public view.
	By the way, I was for the Mueller report becoming public.
	I'm still for as much of the Mueller report becoming public as is legally permissible.
	I'm not in favor of any sort of cover-up.
	I want more in the public eye, not less in the public eye.
	And I am happy with the president's decision to declassify a lot of this stuff and to leave Barr to do it.
	I don't think that Barr is a political hack in the way that Democrats are claiming he is a political hack.
	I think the president has legit questions.
	I think Trump has legit questions.
	About what exactly went down during the Trump-Russia investigation.
	And those questions are not illegitimate in the way that so many Democrats seem to be suggesting that they are.
	Conservative lawmakers have insisted to friends in the administration that declassifying documents will help Trump protect his presidency and further distance himself from any political fallout from the Russia investigation.
	The move is likely to further anger Democrats who have said that Barr is using his position as the nation's top law enforcement official to aggressively protect the president and attack his critics.
	Again, declassifying material that we've been talking about for three years seems to me a much better strategy than allowing selective leaks of those materials from Congress From members of the intelligence community.
	Remember, Andrew McCabe, for example, lost his pension and his job with the FBI because he was leaking material to, I believe it was the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
	That material happened to be about Hillary Clinton and the FBI's ongoing investigation.
	Nonetheless, if it comes to selective leaks being made by so-called members of the deep state versus broad declassification of materials that we've been talking about for years, I'm very much in favor of Trump declassifying a lot of this stuff.
	Now, is Trump right to be suspicious about the handling of the Trump-Russia collusion case?
	I think there are certainly questions to be asked at this point.
	Aaron Klein has a really interesting piece over at Breitbart.
	Aaron is a good reporter, and he has a piece talking about William Barr's statements last week.
	So last week, William Barr appeared on TV, and there he explained that what was interesting is that this investigation was handled at the very senior level of these various departments.
	It wasn't handled sort of in ordinary fashion.
	The thing that's interesting about this is that this was handled at a very senior level of these departments.
	It wasn't handled in the ordinary way that investigations or counterintelligence activities are conducted.
	It was sort of an ad hoc small group and most of these people are no longer with the FBI or the CIA or the other agencies involved.
	I think there's a misconception out there that we know a lot about what happened.
	The fact of the matter is Bob Mueller did not look As Aaron Klein points out, there was a report from the Washington Post back in June of 2017 specifically talking about how this investigation was carried out.
	In a second, I want to talk a little bit about some of the questions that are legit about the investigation, the Trump-Russia investigation.
	Again, I am skeptical of the claims that this thing was initiated totally in bad faith.
	My considered take, based on the evidence at this point, is that it may have been initiated in good faith, and then it quickly morphed into a bad faith effort that may not have been completely conscious.
	It was people who were simply looking for evidence that confirmed their prior biases against President Trump, and that's how that investigation seemed to proceed.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	So why exactly would President Trump and William Barr be suspicious of the way in which the Trump-Mueller investigation was pursued?
	I think one of the reasons they'd be suspicious is because, as Barr says, this thing was pursued at the top levels of the Obama administration.
	Aaron Klein over at the Washington, over at Breitbart, points out a Washington Post article published in June 2017.
	According to that report, CIA Director John Brennan convened a secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI.
	Apparently the unit was so secretive it functioned as a quote-unquote sealed compartment, hidden even from the rest of the U.S.
	Intelligence Committee.
	The unit reported to top officials, the newspaper documented.
	They worked exclusively for two groups of customers, officials said.
	The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government.
	The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA, and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.
	The number of Obama administration officials, says Aaron Klein, who are allowed access to the Russian intelligence was also highly limited.
	At first, only four senior officials were involved.
	John Brennan, the Director of Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and then FBI Director James Comey.
	Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings and gradually that circle widened to include Biden.
	Agendas were sent to cabinet secretaries and they arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open.
	This is not according to Breitbart, this is according to the Washington Post.
	Does all of this make you at least a little suspicious?
	I think it's not unreasonable to be suspicious.
	That's why declassification would be useful.
	The more we see, the better at this point.
	during meetings so that aides were not able to see what exactly was going on behind closed doors.
	Does all of this make you at least a little suspicious?
	I think it's not unreasonable to be suspicious.
	That's why declassification would be useful.
	The more we see, the better at this point.
	And meanwhile, in other news, Theresa May, the prime minister of Britain, is now officially making it clear that she has resigned.
	She's making way for a new prime minister after she failed to shepherd through Brexit.
	For folks who don't remember the whole Brexit controversy, basically, the people of Great Britain voted that they no longer wish to be part of the European Union.
	They were sick of the regulations from unelected bureaucrats at the EU level.
	They were sick of all of the industrial regulations, the immigration regulations that were coming down from Brussels.
	These were people they had not voted for.
	And basically, They kicked back.
	They said, we're not interested in this.
	They voted for Brexit.
	And then the politicians in Britain got scared of the EU because the EU said, OK, well, if you leave, we're not going to make a deal with you on trade.
	If you leave, then we are basically going to blackmail you.
	And the politicians in Britain said, well, we're scared of that, so we're not going to leave, basically.
	And they kept proposing deal after deal after deal.
	They kept being rejected deal after deal after deal.
	May finally turned in the keys to the car.
	She basically said, "I can't do this anymore.
	I don't have any deals on the table.
	I am capable of pushing at this point." Here she was today explaining why she's leaving. - It is and will always remain a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.
	It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honors the result of the referendum.
	I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold.
	The second female Prime Minister, but certainly not the last.
	I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.
	Yes, obviously she's pretty upset about everything that's been going on.
	She was trying to negotiate a deal, like in her defense, she was trying to negotiate a deal that allowed Britain to keep a lot of the trade benefits of being part of the EU without keeping some of the regulations.
	And she presented a deal that was insufficient.
	She kept presenting it over and over.
	People kept voting it down.
	The people of Britain want out.
	How do we know they want out?
	Because in new polls, the Brexit party, which did not exist until five minutes ago, led by Nigel Farage, has become sort of an American fixture in media, thanks to the popularity of Brexit.
	Nigel Farage is now leading in the polls.
	His party is getting more voters combined than Conservative and Labour.
	Which is an amazing, amazing statement right now.
	Now, is he going to end up being prime minister?
	Probably not.
	Probably the Conservative Party is now going to nominate somebody to put forward somebody at the top of their list, like Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, who is this very colorful figure, almost a Trump-like figure at the head of their party, who will likely be the next prime minister.
	He's the Anzan favorite in betting markets to be the next prime minister of Britain.
	His sole job will be to deliver Brexit.
	If that's a clean Brexit, it's a so-called no-deal Brexit, then it's a no-deal Brexit, meaning they don't make a pre-existing arrangement with the EU, they just say we're out.
	Now I think that what May was trying to mitigate against was leaving, and then there were some economic consequences to that because the EU tries to punish the UK for leaving.
	And at that point, the Conservative Party pays the price for having implemented Brexit.
	But it's obvious that her own party wants it.
	She can't stand up to her own party.
	The people of Britain want this, and they are sick of being told by their political class not to move forward with this.
	We spoke yesterday on our radio show with Douglas Carswell, who is the founder of Vote Leave and a former member of the UK Independent Party, and he discussed the fact That all of this was eventually going to lead to the people of Britain getting what they wanted.
	There was a referendum.
	That referendum remains popular.
	That referendum was to leave the EU.
	And the Remainers, who are much of the political class, are simply not up for it.
	Carswell, by the way, is not a trade restrictionist.
	So there's been a lot of lying press about what exactly Brexit is designed to do.
	That Brexit is designed to basically erect a wall around Britain or something like that.
	I know many of the leaders of the Brexit movement, including people like Daniel Hannan, who was pushing to eliminate his own job.
	He was a member of the EU Parliament and he was pushing to eliminate his own job.
	And he's been saying for a long time he's a free trader.
	But having a free trade relationship with the EU does not require you to accept Brussels' determination on who gets to live in Britain, for example.
	May said she said that she said, quote, I believe it was right to persevere even when the odds against success seemed high.
	It is and will always be a matter of deep regret.
	I have not been able to deliver Brexit.
	So she now joins a series of conservative prime ministers who have fallen over the question of Britain's relationship with Europe.
	David Cameron, John Major, Margaret Thatcher.
	All of them were ousted in part because they could not get their party to agree on how closely tied Britain and the continent should be, according to the Washington Post.
	May had spent two years negotiating in secret a Brexit withdrawal deal with the EU, only to see it rejected three times by the House of Commons.
	Many of her own conservatives refused to support her.
	Earlier this week, she was still vowing to push on, offering a tweaked version of her Brexit plan.
	It was rejected so swiftly and resoundingly by so many lawmakers, including members of her own cabinet, it became clear that she was going to be ushered out Very, very soon.
	Now, there are a bunch of people who are jockeying for position inside the, inside the Conservative Party.
	As I say, Boris Johnson, who once said that his chances of being Prime Minister are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, is the current favorite in opinion polls and betting markets to become the next British Prime Minister.
	On Friday, Johnson came forward and complimented May on a very dignified statement.
	He tweeted his thanks to her for her stoical service and said it was now time to follow her dreams to come together and deliver Brexit.
	Nicola Sturgeon is a leader of the Scottish National Party and added that Johnson was some form of hypocrite.
	Johnson is popular with the conservative grassroots.
	He served two terms as mayor of London, which traditionally votes Labour, proving he has some cross-party appeal.
	He lost support in some circles after the 2016 referendum.
	He put himself forward as the face of the Brexit campaign.
	He served as foreign secretary under May, but he had already left.
	Anybody who is still basically in this cabinet is not going to be prime minister anymore.
	Other possible contenders, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, environmental secretary Michael Gove.
	Raab is sort of the outsider pick to be prime minister if it is not Boris Johnson.
	Any lawmaker can put their name forward as long as they have the backing of two conservative members of parliament.
	So it'll be interesting to see where they go from here.
	It is obvious, though, that the people of Britain have effectively rejected and conservative party members have effectively rejected the idea of some sort of soft deal with the EU, which hopes to govern them from above.
	And frankly, good for them.
	Good for them.
	I was in favor, as much as I followed it, I was in favor of Brexit and the British people voted for what they want and they should get it.
	Alrighty.
	So in a second, we're going to get to The news that Julian Assange is now being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, we'll talk about the complications inherent in that sort of prosecution first.
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	Okay, in a second we'll get to Julian Assange, the Prosecution against him on espionage charges.
	We'll get to that.
	Plus, we'll get to the mailbag.
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	All righty.
	So, meanwhile, in other news, the DOJ is now accusing Julian Assange of violating the Espionage Act, According to Politico, the Justice Department has hit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Espionage Act charges, escalating a legal fight against the high-profile activist, alarming press freedom activists.
	The DOJ had previously only indicted Assange on a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.
	Thursday's revelation of the additional 18 charges filed in the Eastern District of Virginia means that Assange could face significantly more prison time if found guilty.
	The alleged Espionage Act violations relate to Assange's complicity with Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning, a former U.S.
	Army soldier who was convicted in July 2013 of violating the Espionage Act after she, He shuttled troves of classified government information to Wikileaks.
	Officials said that Assange solicited the information from and then brazenly published details that put the government's human sources at risk.
	Now, the original charges suggested that Assange was working with Manning to actually hack the government.
	That was the original charge.
	And that charge may or may not have been sustainable.
	Now they are charging him under the Espionage Act.
	Now traditionally the Espionage Act has been used against government officials like Manning because if you are a traitor to the United States who decides to hack into classified information and then reveal it to the public, you're violating public trust.
	You're not allowed to treat classified material that way unless you happen to be Hillary Clinton.
	But Under the Espionage Act, it's been pretty controversial whether you can prosecute a quote-unquote journalist for publishing that material.
	So, for example, in the Pentagon Papers case, the Pentagon Papers case surrounded the release of the Pentagon Papers, which were these secret studies about Vietnam, by the New York Times.
	The Supreme Court rejected the government's attempts to prevent the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing a leaked copy of a top-secret study of the Vietnam War.
	The court had an opinion.
	It simply said that the government had not met its heavy burden of justifying a prior restraint on publication.
	So in other words, they couldn't say preemptively that the New York Times and Washington Post could not publish.
	However, the court did say that you might be able to punish somebody after the fact for having published.
	Prior restraints require a greater burden of proof than punishment after the fact.
	Also, you have to ask, what kind of classified material is being published?
	Is it classified material that does damage to the United States in terms of PR, or does it actually put human beings at risk?
	So, for example, Justice Potter Stewart, who wrote a concurring opinion in that case, he said he was convinced that the executive is correct with respect to some of the documents involved, but I cannot say that disclosure of any of them will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our nation or its people.
	Well, that's not the case with a lot of the documents that were promoted by WikiLeaks.
	They included actual material sources of intelligence, the names of people who are cooperating with Americans in Afghanistan, in Iraq.
	They put people's lives at risk.
	The State Department begged Assange not to release that stuff.
	Assange went ahead and released that stuff anyway.
	Now, one thing that's always been very fuzzy is, does this mean that the press have some sort of different rights than any other normal human being?
	Like, freedom of the press under the First Amendment is not a suggestion that you get a badge that says journalist on it and now you have extra rights.
	Freedom of the press means that the government cannot stop you from printing things.
	However, can the government stop you from revealing classified information that endangers American soldiers overseas?
	The answer there is probably yes.
	Otherwise, they couldn't really prosecute anybody for even hacking into America's documents and then revealing them.
	Why there should be a journalistic exception to this rule is beyond me.
	The government should in fact have to prove that the material that they seek to restrict is presenting a serious danger because otherwise you can't have any government oversight at all.
	You can't have whistleblowers, you can't have leakers, you can't have any of that stuff.
	So this does present a serious constitutional issue.
	One of the issues also is whether Julian Assange is entitled to those protections given the fact that Julian Assange may in fact be basically a Russian front.
	If Julian Assange is a Russian front, then this is not just a matter of a quote-unquote journalist revealing information, then it's a matter of an enemy party revealing information about the United States directed at damaging the United States.
	It raises all sorts of kind of fascinating legal issues.
	There's a really interesting piece from a few years back from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press about WikiLeaks.
	And in that piece, they basically suggest that journalists have never been successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
	So the question is going to be whether Assange changes that precedent.
	Whether he can be successfully prosecuted under the act.
	Barack Obama, by the way, repeatedly invoked the Espionage Act in order to prosecute people.
	He prosecuted something like seven people under the Espionage Act.
	They weren't journalists.
	It was people leaking to journalists.
	So the question is, is Assange a journalist?
	Is Assange a leaker?
	Was he participating in the hack?
	That's the real question here.
	But it's kind of fascinating because obviously Assange raises serious press freedom issues.
	And as I say, I don't think this is unique to the Trump administration.
	The attempt by the press to play this as Trump cracking down on the press because he doesn't like Julian Assange.
	I was there like five minutes ago.
	when President Trump was praising WikiLeaks.
	So this is not personal animus that Trump has against Julian Assange or anything like that, or personal animus for the DOJ against WikiLeaks.
	WikiLeaks has been an extraordinarily dangerous player in this space for a decade at this point.
	Alrighty, it's time for some mailbag because it is a Friday, so let's jump.
	Right in.
	Javi says, Hi, Ben.
	I'm a 17-year-old high school student at a school that is about 99% leftist, not liberal, in Los Angeles.
	I've been listening to you almost every day for about a year and wanted to say thank you for everything you do.
	My question is, I just gave a full pro-life statement to my high school newspaper, and I'm wondering if you have any advice on how I can weather the storm I'm sure to receive from classmates, friends, and even teachers that will call me all sorts of names and attack my character.
	Thank you.
	Well, I mean, this is a character-building exercise, dude.
	I gotta say, you know, as somebody who's been in the public eye since I was basically 17 years old your age, You think that you've grown a thick skin, and then you realize every five minutes that you need to grow another layer of skin.
	I mean, at this point, I basically look like The Thing, in terms of personality, from The Fantastic Four.
	I mean, you just grow layers and layers of thicker and thicker skin until you look like a rock human.
	That's effectively what you have to do here.
	You're gonna take hits, but that is what being in the arena is all about.
	Just stand strong.
	I would say don't go out of your way to insult anybody.
	It's not a rule that I've always kept myself, but Most of my regrets happen to be insulting people that I look back and I say, well, that's probably not something I should have done.
	It's something I've been trying to work on myself.
	So if I have advice to young people, it is only speak when you are particularly sure of what you are saying.
	Make sure that you are double sure of what you are saying, because the fact is that we now live in a media environment where anything you say publicly when you are 16, or privately as it turns out, when you are 16 or 17 years old, can be used against you by your political opponents.
	So you just have to be extraordinarily careful.
	And also, try to cultivate a level of character that you wish that your opponents had.
	So, try not to engage in character attacks.
	Instead, debunk arguments.
	And if they engage in a character attack, then you are fully justified in saying that they are being a jerk.
	That you are fully justified in saying.
	As I've said for years, and I continue to maintain.
	If somebody attacks your character, you have no obligation to sit there and take it.
	You are fully justified in responding by saying that they are badly motivated.
	You are fully justified in saying that they are acting like a jackass.
	You are fully justified in doing all of those things when somebody attacks your character.
	Don't be the first person to attack character.
	Attack political point of view instead.
	Rohan's has been.
	New subscriber here, I have a question regarding your recent book.
	In the book, you argue that Judeo-Christian morality and Greek natural law built the foundation for scientific progress in the West.
	If this is true, what about other civilizations such as ancient China and India?
	These civilizations made important discoveries as well, but did not have the same foundation as the West.
	Also, the Roman Empire made great technological advances before Judeo-Christian influence.
	Thank you for all you do, best Rohan.
	Well, the truth is that the vision of modern science, the idea of hypothesis and hypothesis being rejected by evidence, that sort of science, experimental science, is unique to the West.
	There's a difference between technological progress, which does exist in a vast number of civilizations, and that technological progress is generally linked to the human need to overcome the environment around them.
	There's a difference between that and the pure idea of exploring science for its own sake, which then has technical applications later.
	That is something that seems fairly unique to the West, which is why you see thinkers in the West, like Isaac Newton, who are trying to figure out general rules of the universe.
	In a way that very few people were doing in other civilizations.
	That doesn't mean that every other person in every other civilization was incapable of doing this.
	Obviously, there were strides in science and mathematics particularly in the Indian world, as in like India, in the Indian world in the first millennium.
	But, in the first millennium.
	But the great expanse of science was deeply wedded to, historically speaking, the Judeo-Christian belief that in order to investigate God, you had to investigate God's universe.
	And that was tied to a Greek natural law evidentiary-based position that the way to discover natural rules was to look at the evidence.
	I mean, that's an Aristotelian idea.
	So, as I say, this is not to discount any of the discoveries of other civilizations.
	The question is why the West did it best.
	And the answer is that the West did it best not just because they were making technological advances.
	Again, technological advances.
	exist throughout history.
	The question is, why is it that the West came up with this idea of science, this generalized idea of science, which was then used to create tremendous technological change far beyond what you get if you were just in a field and you needed to figure out how to make a plow work better, for example.
	There is a difference between generalized science and technological and kind of incremental technological change.
	Eli says, hi Ben, it's my birthday.
	Can I get a shout out?
	You just did, my friend.
	Michael says, Ben, what do you think of the post-Keynesian argument that says government deficit spending, as long as we're not at full employment, is a net positive on the economy?
	That it's putting more money into the economy than it's taking out, while surpluses are a net drain, since the government is taxing more out than it is spending back in.
	Well, I don't believe in government surpluses as a general rule.
	I don't think that the government should be taking in money unless they intend on using that surplus for something useful.
	A government surplus is effectively the government confiscating wealth from people that they do not use, and that seems to me a confiscation that is unjustified.
	As far as the post-Keynesian argument, the general argument that government deficit spending is inherently a good, that widespread government deficit spending is inherently a good, it's good until it's not.
	It's just like credit card spending is good until it's not.
	It's great, you can buy all sorts of stuff, and then the credit card bill comes in, and then things go to hell in a handbasket.
	Right now, the United States is riding on the fact that we are the most powerful economy in the world and in world history, that there are no near rivals for it, and thus the dollar remains strong, people continue to invest in our bonds, and all of the rest.
	That's true, so long as we don't radically regulate our economy, raise taxes, engage in Green New Deal-type silliness.
	But there will come a point where people are going to recognize that $21 trillion in debt ain't getting paid off anytime soon.
	And when that happens, then we're cruising for a bruising.
	Joshua says, First of all, thank you so much for your service.
	You're doing something I didn't do.
	I have nothing but admiration and really respect for that.
	Law has been something I've always been interested in.
	I was wondering what law books you could recommend to learn the basics of constitutional law and or criminal law.
	Thanks.
	Well, criminal law, I mean, there are some pretty good criminal law textbooks that are out there.
	I would say in terms of constitutional law, some of my favorite books on constitutional law include A Matter of Interpretation by Justice Scalia, a very slim volume that sort of explains constitutional theory.
	I disagree with him about stare decisis, but his general take on how to read constitutional text is correct.
	I think that you should check out Robert Bork's The Tempting of America, which is a really nice history of the court and what exactly the court has done throughout American history.
	Mark Levin has a really good simplified version, I think, of Bork's book called Men in Black from maybe 15 or 20 years ago that's a pretty good synopsis of court All that stuff is pretty good and then obviously read the basics, the Federalist Papers, read the Constitution itself.
	The Heritage Foundation has a wonderful guide to the Constitution with case references and everything.
	I'd recommend going and picking that up from Amazon.
	Why isn't making adoption more affordable at the top of most Republican policies?
	I know Alabama, where I live, is kicking butt at adoption in the state right now.
	My wife and I have looked into ourselves a few times.
	The financial side can be pretty daunting.
	Generally, I'm in favor of government being involved in it as little as possible, but can it be considered conservative to think that tax dollars should go toward taking care of orphans and putting them in a loving home?
	Trying to reconcile my feelings on adoption with my small government feelings.
	Shapiro Haley 2024.
	2024.
	So as far as making adoption simpler, yes, regulations on adoption should be largely relieved.
	It should be easier for people to adopt.
	As far as tax incentives being driven toward adoption, I think that tax rates generally should be lowered.
	As far as tax incentives being driven toward adoption, As a libertarian, I'm not generally in favor of the government quote-unquote promoting policy via tax dollars.
	With that said, you know, we do have a tax system that right now has to care for people who cannot take care of themselves.
	And that going toward the taking care of orphans and then shifting them toward adoptive homes seems like a not terrible idea to me.
	I mean, that is all the bar exam is.
	I just graduated from law school last weekend.
	Any stories or tips you can share on how to study for the bar exam?
	Memorize, memorize, memorize.
	I mean, that is all the bar exam is.
	It is just an enormous amount of memorization.
	So sit down with your text, with, I always use flashcards, Make a bunch of flashcards and then just drill yourself on the flashcards.
	Ryan says, Hey Ben, I was wondering your opinion on Edward Snowden.
	Is he a hero or an enemy to the United States?
	Do you think he should be pardoned?
	Also, do you think if Edward Snowden changed his name and sex like Manning's, you think he would have gotten a pardon from Obama too?
	Well, apparently that was the pattern because there was no reason for Chelsea Manning to actually be pardoned.
	Chelsea Manning was not in any way contrite about having hacked U.S.
	classified materials and then exposed it to WikiLeaks.
	Chelsea Manning should still be sitting in jail, obviously.
	When it comes to Edward Snowden, I think two things can be true at once.
	One, some of the information we got from Edward Snowden was important for the public to know.
	And two, Edward Snowden is not a hero.
	Edward Snowden was pretty obviously working with the Russian government, and Edward Snowden Which is why he tried to take refuge in Russia.
	And Edward Snowden, I do not think is a good guy.
	So, good people can sometimes, bad people can sometimes give you material that you need.
	This does not make you a hero.
	It means that you did something that is wrong, but it revealed good information to the public.
	This does happen on occasion.
	So the answer is sort of both.
	I don't think it's heroism to hack America's classified documents and hand them over in bulk to people who do not care about America's national security.
	At the same time, I'm glad some of that stuff is available to the American public so we know the extent of the government's surveillance upon us.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, this is a stupid, wonderful movie.
	The movie is Olympus Has Fallen.
	I know it's old.
	I was only made aware of this recently.
	Sonny Bunch, who I will admit is my favorite movie reviewer, he said that Olympus Has Fallen was a great movie, which is to say that it was going to be retrograde and politically incorrect and all the rest.
	And the movie basically is.
	Effectively, the movie is just diehard in the White House, except without half the clever dialogue.
	That's all the movie is.
	And it's fun.
	It's really fun.
	Also, I happen to really like Gerard Butler.
	I like Aaron Eckhart.
	So here's a little bit of the trailer.
	Mr. President, five minutes, sir.
	Evening, ma'am.
	Merry Christmas, Mike.
	Mustang, this is Big Top, bringing out the full package.
	Where'd that come from?
	It's a camera!
	Everybody knows you did the right thing on that bridge.
	Even the president knows.
	Okay, so the film is so silly, and yet it's so kind of great.
	It's basically, if Bruce Willis didn't have anything witty to say in Die Hard, this is the film.
	But it's kind of clever and fun.
	You can go check out Olympus Has Fallen.
	I haven't seen London Has Fallen yet.
	I've heard it's even more reactionary, so that means that I'll probably have to watch it.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	OK, thing that I hate, number one.
	So Stacey Abrams continues to trot around claiming that she's the actual governor of Georgia.
	I mean, this is just this is just crazy towns at this point.
	At a certain point, you do have to accept the reality that you lost the Georgia election by some 55,000 votes.
	That's not supremely close.
	That's 55.
	That's a lot of votes.
	She still is walking around like she is governor of Georgia.
	It's astonishing.
	I mean, it really is.
	This has now reached the delusional.
	What she's about to say right here is delusional on so many levels.
	It's like an onion of delusion.
	It's like you just continue to carve into the onion and there are more layers of delusion beneath the layers of delusion.
	Here's Stacey Abrams, a woman who is being thought of as a possible VP contender on the basis of losing a Georgia gubernatorial race, talking about how she's the actual governor of Georgia and how she won.
	For those of us who are in this coalition of new and engaged, who are in this pursuit of progress, we have to recognize that the internal threat we face is a fear of who we are.
	The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the last 10 years and it's been used as a dog whistle to say that we shouldn't pay too much attention to the new voices coming into progress.
	I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are, and it's exactly how we won.
	By centering communities in Georgia, we not only increased voter participation, we brought new folks to the process.
	Identity politics isn't just who we are, it's how we won?
	One, you didn't.
	You lost.
	Second of all, identity politics is not who we are.
	If you're a rational human being, you try to get beyond the identity politics, you try to get beyond the notion that you are just what your group identity says that you are, that you are not merely a person who is quote-unquote Born a Jew, ethnically, or born black, in the case of Stacey Abrams, then instead you're supposed to find a set of ideas that you wish to espouse and then have discussions about those ideas with others.
	This is the basis of a republic, particularly a multi-ethnic republic.
	If you're going to have a multi-ethnic republic in which everybody sort of reverts back to their own innate genetic identity, and that's the only argument that you can make, you can't have a republic.
	So, layers of delusion from Stacey Abrams.
	The fact that she's been so widely praised by the media is Absolutely astonishing to me.
	She may be a good speaker, but she is also at this point engaged in tremendous levels of delusion.
	Okay, other things that I hate.
	John Walker Lynn, the American Taliban, is out.
	So that's great.
	So John Walker Lynn, you'll remember all the way back from the beginning of the war on terror.
	He was 17.
	He left his home in California in 1998 to study Arabic in Yemen.
	He then went to Pakistan in 2000, and then he went to Afghanistan, and he served as a Taliban volunteer in Al-Qaeda training camp.
	And then, he was held at a prison near Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan, where an uprising claimed the first U.S.
	casualty of war, a 32-year-old CIA officer named Johnny Michael Spann.
	Spann was killed after questioning Lind, although the government didn't offer evidence that Lind had participated in the revolted trial.
	He pled guilty to charges of providing support to the Taliban and carrying a rifle and a grenade.
	Now, in days past, this person would have been put up against a wall and shot for treason.
	Now, he gets put in jail, taken care of for 20 years, and then let out despite the fact that according to the National Counterterrorism Center, Lind had quote, continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.
	That's as of 2017.
	Another 2017 assessment from the Bureau of Prisons said he had made supportive statements about the Islamic State.
	Yeah, that is not good U.S.
	policy to be letting people, I mean, he hasn't even served his full sentence.
	The sentence was 20, he served 17.
	This is madness.
	The good news is that eventually he'll end up as a professor at a major American university, because that's pretty much all it takes these days is to hate America with a deep and abiding passion.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of Ben Shapiro Show, or we'll see you here on Monday, and have a wonderful weekend.
	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.

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