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May 31, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:13

Mexican Stand-Off | Ep. 792

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	President Trump prepares to drop tariffs on Mexico, controversy breaks out over the U.S.
	Census, and we check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	You finally made it.
	It's the end of the week.
	I mean, that's exciting stuff.
	It was a short week, but I will tell you here at The Daily Wire, it was not a short week at all.
	So I'm very grateful it is a Friday, but we're going to get to all the news in just one second.
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	Alrighty, so.
	Fallout from Robert Mueller's big statement continues.
	It is obvious that the Democrats, the mood in the room is it's time to impeach President Trump.
	Now, William Barr, the attorney general, continues to maintain that he did nothing wrong in reaching the finding that he reached.
	I agree with the attorney general.
	I do not think that William Barr did anything wrong in reaching the decision that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute obstruction of justice.
	Nor do I think that William Barr was lying when he went in front of Congress and said that Robert Mueller told him that it was not true, that the only reason that he didn't prosecute Trump was because of DOJ regulations.
	Remember, this is the current line.
	The current line from Democrats and the media is that if it were not for DOJ regulations, if it were not for the Office of Legal Counsel saying you can't prosecute a sitting president, then Mueller would have recommended indictment of Donald Trump.
	Barr says that's not what Mueller said.
	According to Barr, he asked Mueller straight up, is the only reason that you're not indicting the president because of these DOJ regulations?
	And Mueller said no.
	And in fact, Mueller has never said that in the absence of DOJ regulations, he would recommend that the president be indicted.
	In fact, he never reached that determination.
	That's the whole point.
	He never said that.
	And if he wanted to say that, he could have.
	This is exactly what William Barr was asked on CBS this morning.
	Here's what he had to say about Robert Mueller and whether he could have reached a decision on obstruction of justice, even with the DOJ regulations on the books.
	I personally felt he could have reached a decision.
	In your view, he could have reached a conclusion.
	Right, he could have reached a conclusion.
	The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he's in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and I'm not going to, you know, Okay, so this is exactly right.
	I mean, what William Barr says here is exactly right.
	So he has done his job, right?
	He said, I got all the information.
	that was necessary for us as the heads of the department to reach that decision. - Okay, so this is exactly right.
	I mean, what William Barr says here is exactly right.
	So he has done his job, right?
	He said, "I got all the information.
	I made the call.
	I took credit for the call.
	This is what should have happened with regard to James Comey, who came out and made the call instead of Loretta Lynch.
	Loretta Lynch should have owned it, and William Barr is owning it.
	Good for William Barr.
	I mean, William Barr was asked, OK, so what about your legacy?
	Wouldn't your legacy have been different if you had ruled differently here?
	And William Barr's like, listen, forget about the legacy.
	I have a job in front of me.
	This is the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer.
	This is the difference between a good judge and a bad judge.
	People who are tasked with implementing the law, their job is not to, quote-unquote, do justice.
	Their job is to implement the law that is in front of them.
	If you want to change the law, you become a legislator.
	You become a politician.
	If you are a person who is tasked with carrying out the law, you are in the executive branch, or you are tasked with interpreting law, you are in the judicial branch.
	Your job is not to, quote-unquote, do justice or create a legacy for yourself.
	All of that is nonsense.
	There's a famous story about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, very famous justice in the early 20th century.
	In the United States on the Supreme Court.
	And there's some case that came up before the Supreme Court and Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the court at the time.
	He was at some dinner party.
	And as he's leaving the dinner party, he gets into he gets into a carriage to drive away.
	And some man runs up to him knocking on his window and Holmes rolls down the window.
	The man says, Mr. Justice, Mr. Holmes.
	Do justice, sir, do justice.
	And Holmes looks at him and says, it's not my job to do justice.
	It's my job to interpret the law.
	This is correct.
	So William Barr is asked, well, why didn't you, why didn't you do the fair thing on CBS this morning?
	He says, listen, that's not my job.
	My job is to do the legal thing.
	And if that means that my legacy is not to be sung about in odes, then I guess that's my legacy.
	You're at the end of your career?
	I'm at the end of my career.
	It's a reputation that you've worked your whole life on, though.
	Yeah, but everyone dies.
	I don't believe in the Homeric idea that immortality comes by having odes sung about you over the centuries.
	So you don't regret taking the job?
	Okay, so good for Barr, right?
	I think that Barr has done the right thing here.
	I think all of the talk about how William Barr is some sort of corrupt official, like Eric Holder acting as the president's wingman, I do not see the evidence of that.
	I think that the left is trying to swing it that way to make it look as though the Trump administration would have been indicted in the absence of William Barr, that if the process had gone the way it was supposed to go, that Trump would be in jail now, and thus impeachment is on the table.
	Well, look, people on the left are going to read this the way they want to read it, and they are reading it exactly that way.
	So Robert De Niro, It wouldn't matter.
	I mean, Robert De Niro would indict a ham sandwich if the ham sandwich had an R stamped on it.
	Robert De Niro, legal expert, because he once played a lawyer on TV, I think, maybe.
	I mean, you know, when he wasn't playing like a gangster or something.
	Robert De Niro cut a PSA about the state of the law on obstruction of justice.
	Now, I challenge Robert De Niro to read me the obstruction of justice statute and explain it to me.
	I do not think that Robert De Niro has ever read the obstruction of justice statutes.
	There are several of them.
	I do not think that he has a law degree, last I checked.
	I don't think he's a legal expert in any way.
	But here is Robert De Niro, leading former prosecutors in a public service announcement that there is clear evidence that President Trump committed obstruction of justice and therefore he is impeachable.
	This is where the heart and soul of the Democratic Party base is.
	Not only with impeachment, but also in Hollywood, Robert De Niro, the man who gets up on stage and bravely says to a crowd of fellow Hollywoodites who hate President Trump, F Trump, and gets a standing ovation, his bravery has extended to new heights with this public service announcement.
	Recently, over a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents have united to sign a statement to help Americans understand what's actually in the Mueller report.
	Their conclusion should trouble us all.
	Listen to them in their own words.
	If you or I did what President Trump did, we'd be facing prison.
	And we all strongly believe that there is more than enough evidence to indict President Trump for multiple felony counts of obstruction of justice.
	If you or I did what President Trump did, we'd be facing prison.
	And no one, not even the president, should be above the law.
	In the words of the Mueller report, no person is above the law.
	OK, so Robert De Niro leading the charge here.
	A couple of things.
	One, if the president were not the president, this investigation never would have begun in the first place.
	Let's be real about this.
	The fact is that Paul Manafort was walking around at large until he made the unfortunate decision of joining the Trump campaign, at which point he went directly in the crosshairs of the FBI.
	Paul Manafort was doing this crap.
	For years.
	For years.
	And the FBI knew about it.
	In fact, he was indicted on charges that spring from activity long before he joined the Trump campaign.
	The idea that if Trump were not in a position of power, that he would be guilty of obstruction of justice?
	Well, that's not really true.
	And the reason that's not really true is because he's not been held to be indictable on obstruction of justice charges with regard to the people he worked with.
	For example, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
	So Michael Cohen has tried to provide evidence that President Trump ordered him to lie But even Cohen won't say openly that Trump ordered him to lie, which means no obstruction of justice.
	See, the difference between this and Bill Clinton is that Bill Clinton openly ordered people to lie to people.
	That is obstruction of justice.
	Donald Trump, and when I say ordered them to lie, I mean officials.
	Donald Trump told people to lie to the press.
	That's bad.
	That is not obstruction of justice.
	Donald Trump told his advisors he'd like to see Robert Mueller fired.
	And then when they said no, he didn't follow up.
	That's not obstruction of justice.
	That's him acting like a tool bag.
	That's not the same thing.
	And it's very easy for former federal prosecutors to sit there and say this sort of stuff.
	But if they were on the job, I really doubt they would be indicting.
	I don't think that they think that they could get any sort of actual.
	Actual.
	So here's where Democrats are.
	If you're a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, you basically have one choice and one choice only.
	And that choice is that you push impeachment.
	And the reason you push impeachment is because there's no effect on you to not pushing impeachment.
	If you're Nancy Pelosi and you still want to be Speaker of the House, it's going to be very difficult for you to retain the speakership.
	If you push impeachment, given the fact that there are a lot of suburban people, suburban women particularly, who are not all that interested in impeachment.
	See, here's the truth.
	Most Americans like stability in politics.
	They like the idea that they can go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning without having to feel the sense of crisis on their souls.
	It's the it's the lead reason why the chief threat to President Trump's presidency is, in fact, President Trump.
	The more chaotic President Trump is, the more people feel uneasy and the more the Democrats sort of 1920 return to normalcy Warren G. Harding campaign has has legs.
	Americans want to be able to feel that their government is basically in safe hands, that in the same way that you go out for the night with your spouse and you leave the kids with the babysitter and you don't want the babysitter to be a pyromaniac.
	Yeah, it's the same sort of feeling with regard to government.
	You want to be able to go to sleep at night, take your wife out for a night on the town, and when you open up your computer afterward, you don't want to see that the world has imploded.
	Well, the media have done a good job of exacerbating President Trump's tendency toward chaos, but the same thing is true on the other side with regard to impeachment.
	Impeachment is inherently destabilizing.
	Most Americans aren't in love with the idea of impeachment.
	In fact, they think that impeachment is likely to lead to more chaos and more destabilization.
	If people want to get rid of Trump, they believe, there's an election coming up in a year and a half.
	And we've lasted for two and a half years and things have been pretty much fine.
	Yes, there's been a lot of chaotic headlines, but the economy is fine.
	No foreign crises.
	All that's cool.
	So Democrats are playing a dangerous game.
	But if you're a 2020 candidate, you cannot afford not to call for impeachment because your case is that President Trump is a force of chaos.
	President Trump is a criminal.
	So this is the happy medium that Democrats have to sort of push.
	That Trump is impeachable, but We'll get to 2020 candidates sounding off on this in just a second.
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	Alrighty, so the Democratic presidential candidates naturally have to push the idea that President Trump is a criminal.
	They will continue to push that without actually pushing impeachment.
	Beto is really like, I mean, that skateboard has run out of juice.
	He's really on a pot low.
	He's having a tough time.
	It's falling apart for him.
	But he says impeachment should be on the table because brah, if it isn't, I'm basically effed.
	Here's Beto O'Rourke talking about impeachment in the weirdest possible way.
	Like what I'm about to say as Beto doesn't make any sense.
	But I'm talking to Chris Cuomo and I said it doesn't have to because Chris Cuomo doesn't understand things, so that's fine.
	We were attacked by a foreign power in 2016, an attack that was invited by the candidate who is now our president.
	An investigation into that attack was obstructed by this president.
	Unfortunately, the House of Representatives today has stalled in their pursuit of these facts and the truth.
	Only impeachment gives them the leverage and the mechanism necessary for us to know exactly what has happened and who is responsible for that.
	Oh, oh, so we're still going to go with the collusion thing happened.
	After 200 pages of the collusion thing didn't happen, we're still going to go with the collusion thing happened.
	And the reason that we need an impeachment hearing is that we know what happened with Russia.
	Well, that is a different story than even Democrats.
	So they're shifting back to Russia now.
	So remember, this thing started with Trump-Russia stuff and then it moved over to obstruction of justice.
	And now when it looks like the obstruction of justice thing is kind of falling apart, they're going to move back to.
	And the reason we need to investigate.
	So let's let's get this straight.
	We need to investigate obstruction of justice because there's Trump-Russia stuff.
	And now the reason that we need to investigate obstruction of justice on the impeachment level is to get to the underlying question of Trump-Russia stuff.
	So it started Trump-Russia, it moved to obstruction, now it's moving back to Trump-Russia.
	I feel like you might be shifting the goalposts a little bit here, people.
	Getting a little dizzy.
	Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren, whose basic campaign is, I will be the craziest person in the field.
	I mean, no matter what, I will be the craziest person in the field.
	I'll be crazier than Bernie.
	I will give you free everything.
	Everything.
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	For you.
	Now Elizabeth Warren is pitching the vision of President Trump being frog-marched out of the White House in chains.
	Here she is, Elizabeth Warren.
	Donald Trump did everything he could to derail, stop, halt, obstruct that investigation.
	That is a violation of the law.
	If he were anyone other than President of the United States, he would be in handcuffs and indicted.
	Okay, so no.
	That is not true.
	Again, that is not true.
	No prosecutor worth their salt would indict a case like this.
	There just is not enough evidence.
	You need to have corrupt intent.
	That is a very, very high bar.
	It's not clear in the absence of an underlying crime that corrupt intent is present.
	And meanwhile, the pitch has been put out there that President Trump is unique, that he's being uniquely protected.
	Now, this is very rich stuff coming from members of the Obama administration.
	So Valerie Jarrett, who is the sort of right-hand woman to Barack Obama in the White House, she appeared on some SiriusXM show yesterday and she said, you know, Barack Obama would have been impeached in a nanosecond if he acted like Trump.
	President Obama had done half of the things and said half of the things that President Trump is saying even as recently as this morning.
	Would he have been impeached and how long do you think it would have taken?
	About a nanosecond.
	I think that the standards have slipped dramatically and there's no earthly way President Obama could have gotten away with any of this.
	Not just the words and the content, but just the policy reversals and what we're doing to the fabric of our country.
	Oh, OK, so yeah, that, OK, why?
	OK, it's not true.
	Barack Obama, his administration was rife with scandal.
	People covered up those scandals from beginning to end.
	Barack Obama asserted executive privilege to protect his own attorney general in the same way that Donald Trump just asserted executive privilege.
	Over documents supposedly to protect William Barr, except Trump had much more excuse given the fact that so much material has already been spilled in front of Congress.
	It's just, it's just sheer nonsense.
	Impeachment against Obama was never pursued because it wouldn't have been concluded successfully and because the grounds were not strong enough.
	The same thing is true for Donald Trump.
	Meanwhile, new information emerging about disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the Trump-Russia investigation as well as the Hillary investigation.
	Fox News is now reporting that Strzok, who was later removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team for sending anti-Trump texts, was a central coordinator for the FBI on the defensive briefing, which included multiple agencies.
	Three weeks earlier, Strzok had opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation into campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
	A source familiar with sensitive records documenting the August briefing told Fox News that Strzok was in a unique and apparently conflicted position.
	Strzok opened the FBI investigation into Russian outreach to Trump campaign aides, while at the same time, he was supposed to be warning the Trump campaign about Russian activities.
	So one of the questions that Trump has always asked about this entire investigation is, why didn't you guys just tell me that this was going on?
	If you suspected that my campaign aides were acting in nefarious fashion, then why in the world would you not actually just tell me about it so I could fire them?
	And folks in the FBI are like, well, it's because we suspected you.
	But the people who were not informing Trump were people like Peter Strzok.
	Peter Strzok's job was to inform Trump what was going on and give intelligence briefings to Trump.
	Peter Strzok, at the exact same time that he was refusing to turn over this information to Donald Trump, whose campaign this was, At the exact same time, Peter Strzok was texting with his paramour Lisa Page about their insurance policy against then-candidate Donald Trump, as Ryan Saavedra writes over at Daily Wire.
	Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page, quote, I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office, that'd be Andrew McCabe's office, that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.
	It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.
	As I wrote at the time, that looks an awful lot like motivation for launching an investigation into Trump in order to sink Trump as a hedge against Trump's victory.
	The FBI's investigation into Russian governmental interference in the election began in July 2016, just weeks before Strzok's text message.
	And that means there's now more of a smoking gun of FBI corruption against Trump than there is of Trump colluding with Russia.
	Herridge also notes that, Catherine Herridge at Fox News, she also notes that just a couple of days before the infamous insurance policy text message, the two anti-Trump agents had the following text message exchange.
	Page.
	Trump's not ever going to become president, right?
	Right?
	Struck.
	No.
	No he won't.
	We'll stop it.
	And as I wrote at the time, this is an explicit admission that high-ranking actors in the FBI saw preventing Trump's presidency as paramount.
	Barring some highly damning information demonstrating the full legitimacy of the Russia investigation, this text from Struck to Page could and should completely destroy whatever faith that America still had in the legitimacy of the Russia investigation.
	John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News, quote, There was a defensive briefing of candidate Trump on August 17th of 2016.
	And I can tell you what he wasn't told.
	He wasn't warned about a Russia investigation that Peter Strzok had opened 18 days earlier.
	Why would Strzok, who would participate at Jim Comey's direction in a defensive briefing designed to protect and warn a candidate, be the same person who is in fact at that time already investigating the candidate's campaign?
	That shouldn't happen and there should be answers to those questions.
	President Trump's questions about the Trump-Russia investigation I do not think are illegitimate.
	And people treating them as illegitimate have a bit of an axe to grind.
	We'll get the answers.
	But I'd like the answers and I think that Trump is entitled to the answers.
	I think the American people are in fact entitled to the answers.
	My going theory is that this investigation was launched in good faith and that it quickly morphed into an exercise in confirmation bias from people who despised President Trump and already saw him as a Russian tool.
	That's my going theory.
	I mean, the more cynical theory is that the thing wasn't even launched in good faith.
	And that theory has been put out by people, including Andrew McCabe over at National Review, that basically the Obama administration saw Trump as a threat and therefore they authorized the FBI to go after him.
	I haven't seen the evidence of any of that at this point, but I think it's pretty obvious that there was some serious corruption going on inside the FBI with regard to how they decided to conduct the investigation.
	Meanwhile, the other big story of the day is that President Trump says that the United States will impose 5% tariffs on all Mexican imports beginning June 10th in a dramatic escalation of the border clash between the United States and Mexico, as according to the Washington Post.
	President Trump on Thursday said he would impose a 5% tariff on all goods entering from Mexico unless it stopped the flow of illegal immigration to the United States, a dramatic escalation of his border threats that could have sweeping implications for both economies.
	Now, I gotta say, I do not understand this move by the president.
	I don't think the president should ever have had this sort of tariff authority.
	You know, as somebody who believes in the checks and balances of the Constitution, it is not the job of the president to set tariffs.
	It is the job of the legislature to set tariffs.
	If Congress wants to take back that power, they absolutely should.
	And if Democrats move to take back tariff power, then Republicans should move with them to do so.
	This is a constitutional issue.
	It's not even a Trump issue.
	The president should not have unilateral trade authority.
	Congress has the power to take back all of this authority.
	If you're going to sign some sort of trade treaty, then the Senate is supposed to ratify that treaty.
	And if you're going to set tariffs, that should be happening at the congressional level, not unilaterally at the presidential level via emergency executive order.
	It's nonsense.
	I don't like it from Obama.
	I don't like it from Trump.
	I don't like it in either direction, by the way.
	The president unilaterally lowering tariffs is a violation of the constitutional order.
	The Constitution prescribes that the legislature of the United States is supposed to be responsible for the policy decisions.
	The President of the United States is responsible for implementing those policy decisions and working with Congress to come up with things that can pass both the legislative and the executive veto.
	This has been completely skewed over the history of the Constitution into the president can do whatever he wants.
	I don't like it.
	I'll talk more about it in one second.
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	OK, so as I say, President Trump says he's now going to impose tariffs.
	On all goods entering from Mexico.
	The problem is that he's basically taxing the American people.
	A tariff is a tax on Americans.
	Now, you can say that the tax on Americans is designed to elicit changes in policy from another country.
	So this has been the case that's been made to me by folks, including Newt Gingrich, with regard to President Trump's tariff fight with China, saying the only way to get China to stop cheating is for us to tariff China and it'll hurt them more than it hurts us.
	Yes, it will hurt American taxpayers, but that will be temporary because we will force the Chinese to stop cheating.
	That, at least, is arguable.
	And I think there's something to it in the sense that China is an actual geopolitical rival to the United States attempting to maximize its power.
	So if they are getting richer, and we are getting richer, but they are getting richer at a faster rate than we are getting richer, that may not, in fact, be good for us.
	I think there's an open argument, historically speaking, as to whether Richard Nixon should have opened China in the first place.
	There were complicating factors at the time, like the fact that we were trying to separate off the Chinese from the Soviet Union, but There's a case to be made that the attempted thought experiment that if we just allowed the economy of China to liberalize, that the politics of China would liberalize, that that thought experiment has basically failed and that was a mistake.
	That's why I think that putting tariffs on China is not quite the same thing as what Trump is doing here with tariffs on Mexico.
	What exactly does he hope to accomplish by slapping tariffs on Mexican goods other than the president kind of likes tariffs?
	Well, he says he wants to stop illegal immigration that way.
	This policy is not designed to elicit the proper response.
	It is not.
	So you slap tariffs on Mexican goods.
	You're going to accomplish a couple of things.
	One, you're going to tax American citizens.
	Because the fact is that Mexico is our third largest trading partner.
	I believe that it goes China, EU, Mexico.
	That's not great for Americans.
	And these tariffs are going to escalate.
	It's going to start at 5%.
	It's going to go all the way up to 25%.
	So get ready for your products to get more expensive.
	So not good for the economy in a near-election year for the president.
	And for you, right?
	I mean, you are the taxpayer.
	Number two, it's going to impoverish the economy of Mexico.
	Now, what Trump would say is, right, that's the threat.
	If I impoverish the economy of Mexico, the Mexican government is thereby incentivized to stop illegal immigration.
	But there's one, there are two problems with that.
	One, if the economy in Mexico is worse, where do you think those people are going to go?
	Where do you think the Mexicans who are living in a bad economy are going to move?
	Do you think they are not going to move north through our poorest border?
	In fact, every period in American history where the American economy is doing really well and the Mexican economy is not doing really well, you know what's a thing that happens a lot?
	Illegal immigration.
	Also, do you really think that the Mexican government, which is politically accountable, remember, that the Mexican government is going to crack down on illegal immigration in the midst of a bad economy?
	Do you really think that's going to happen?
	Because that's still an elected, that's still an elected government.
	How popular do you think that government would be?
	Do you think that government would be real popular if they were like, you know what?
	We're shutting down illegal immigration so that people can't travel across the U.S.
	border and then ship the money back to Mexico, which is very often what happens.
	We're doing it at the behest of Donald Trump.
	Yeah, I'm sure that that government will be long for this earth.
	So none of this is actually geared toward success.
	You know what would have been geared toward success would be a border wall.
	That'd be really great.
	The border wall would have been much more geared toward stopping illegal immigration without wrecking the economy to the south of us and taxing American citizens to do it.
	This is not smart policy.
	The White House plans to begin levying the import penalties on June 10th and ratchet the penalties higher if the migrant flow isn't halted.
	Here's the other problem.
	There's no actual measure of what a halt in migrant flow looks like.
	Also, how in the hell are you going to determine if the migrant flow has halted in like six weeks?
	Because the first deadline on this thing is July 1st.
	That's the first deadline on this thing.
	After the 5% tariffs are imposed on June 10th, the White House said it would increase the penalties to 10% on July 1st, and then an additional 5% on the first day of each month for three months.
	So let me get this straight.
	You are now giving the Mexican government approximately five minutes to stop the illegal immigration flow.
	And you haven't actually measured what that looks like.
	So let's say that it just lessens.
	Let's say it slows a little bit.
	Is that enough to relieve the tariffs?
	Or does it have to stop ultimately?
	And if it doesn't stop ultimately, you're just going to keep ratchet like forever?
	Also worth noting, President Trump is not a fan of NAFTA.
	So he promptly proceeded to rewrite NAFTA and basically pass most of NAFTA with a few improvements in the US-Mexico trade deal.
	That trade deal is basically going to fall apart now.
	So one of the signal accomplishments of his trade policy, US-Mexico trade, is basically going to fall apart now for a policy that is not going to accomplish what he seeks to accomplish.
	The economic consequences of Trump's new plan could be swift and severe.
	Tariffs are paid by companies that import products.
	So U.S.
	firms would pay the import penalties and then likely pass some costs along to consumers.
	Mexico exported $346.5 billion in goods to the United States last year, from vehicles to fruits and vegetables.
	Many manufactured items crossed the border several times as they are being assembled.
	White House officials didn't immediately explain how driving up the cost of Mexican goods would stem the flow of migrants.
	Mexico vowed a response that could pitch the Trump administration into a full-scale trade war.
	Mexico's deputy foreign minister for North America, Jesus Shad, said the threatened tariffs would be disastrous and added that Mexico would respond strongly.
	In a letter sent Thursday evening, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addressed Trump in harsh terms, a marked change from the diplomatic posture he has tried to adopt.
	He said President Trump's social problems can't be resolved through taxes or coercive measures.
	He also unloaded on Trump for his administration's immigration policy.
	As I say, illegal immigration is very popular in Mexico.
	Do you really think that killing their economy is also going to lead the government to suddenly do what Trump wants them to do?
	That seems not like a particularly smart policy.
	You want to keep people in Mexico, you have to make the economy of Mexico better, and you have to build a wall.
	Those are the two things.
	And Trump hasn't built the wall, for all the talk about it.
	And also, the economy of Mexico is only going to get better if we are trading with them.
	Which, by the way, is also good for American citizens.
	OK, in just a second, we're going to get to more on this.
	We're also going to get to a U.S.
	census controversy that I think is being overblown.
	I'll explain in just a second.
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	Alrighty, we're going to get to this controversy over the census.
	We are also going to be getting to controversy over Martin Luther King Jr.
	But first, you're gonna have to go subscribe.
	It is a glorious time of the week, let me point out, when I give a shout-out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
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	So there's a controversy that's been breaking out.
	One of the great lies, I think, that the Democratic Party continues to tell is that the Trump administration and Republicans in general are vicious racists who are seeking to water down the vote of minorities because they don't like minorities.
	This is untrue.
	What is happening, and has always happened, is that gerrymandering is designed to benefit your political party.
	And that means drawing lines around your political opponents and watering down their districts or consolidating their districts so they're more competitive districts for you.
	This happens in every Democratic state.
	It happens in every Republican state.
	The reason this has become a national issue now is because the Trump administration is considering asking a citizenship question on the U.S.
	Census.
	Now, this seems like a no-brainer, right?
	It seems like we should know how many illegal immigrants live in the United States.
	And it seems like we should really know that for purposes of apportionment.
	Because one of the weirder things about the American political system is that we have to decide exactly how seats are apportioned in the United States Congress.
	Remember, every district, we have a one-man, one-vote rule when it comes to the House of Representatives.
	But the way that that works is that we measure the population of a district, and each district has to be equivalent in terms of population.
	So what that means is that a district in Montana may cover the entire state of Montana, and a district in California may cover a slice of Los Angeles.
	And how you draw those districts matters an awful lot.
	But in terms of citizenship, we measure the population of the district.
	We do not measure the number of registered voters in the district.
	So in other words, if you have 100,000 illegal immigrants living in a district and one registered voter living in that district, that district, that one voter will have as many representatives as another district with 100,001.
	100,001 registered voters, right?
	You could have a district where it's only registered voters and a district that is one registered voter and 100,000 illegal immigrants, and they will have the same number of representatives.
	That's how apportionment works.
	So, the Trump administration has been moving toward the idea that apportionment should not be taking place on the basis of people who legally should not be in the country.
	Which makes perfect sense to me.
	But now, the left is trying to make the argument that to even ask the citizenship question itself is racist, of course.
	So in an argument over at the Washington Post, a long article at the Washington Post, despite Trump administration denials, new evidence suggests census citizenship question was crafted to benefit white Republicans.
	And here's the way that they tell the story.
	Just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, new evidence emerged Thursday suggesting the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites.
	Now, again, if inherently you denigrate the populations of a district because it is largely illegal immigrant Hispanics, that is going to benefit other populations in the country, including Republicans and whites, but not limited to those groups, obviously.
	The evidence was found in the files of prominent Republican redistricting strategist Thomas Hoefeller after his death in August.
	It reveals that Hoefeller played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
	Plaintiffs' lawyers challenging the question wrote in a letter Thursday morning to U.S.
	District Judge Jesse Furman.
	The lawyers also argued that Trump administration officials purposely obscured Hoefeller's role in court proceedings.
	The letter drew on new information discovered on hard drives belonging to Hofeller, which fell into the hands of his estranged daughter, who then promptly shared them with Common Cause, which is a very left group.
	The files show that Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats and benefit white Republicans in redistricting.
	Again, that is just statistically true.
	That does not necessarily mean that it is statistically racist in the same way that if you redistrict and you basically Take a district that was heavily Democrat and heavily Black and you split it into two districts where now Black Democrats have a 51% majority in those two districts.
	Now Black Democrats have two seats, presumably, that they get to take as opposed to one in this particular district, just statistically speaking.
	That's not a racial breakdown question.
	It's just a recognition that many groups in the United States tend to vote in terms of polarized racial blocs.
	Now the media are spinning this as, this is because they're trying to be racist.
	No, this is because Republican strategists are trying to be Republican.
	That does not mean they don't want Hispanic people to vote.
	It does not mean they don't want black people to vote.
	It does not mean they don't want Democrats to vote.
	It means they want to redistrict to help Republicans, just as Democrats have always wanted to redistrict to help Democrats.
	And also, as a general rule, it is worthwhile noting that districts should not represent people who do not belong in the country.
	I don't even know why that's remotely controversial.
	A Justice Department spokesman issued a statement disputing the report of new evidence.
	They said these 11th hour allegations by the plaintiffs, including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior Department of Justice official, are false.
	They said that Hofeller's study played no role in the department's December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census.
	Again, race plays a role in American politics.
	Unfortunately, it does.
	And Barack Obama had African-Americans for Obama.
	He went out there during the 2016 election, and he said that he would take it as a direct insult to his own presidency if black voters didn't show up in droves to vote for Hillary Clinton as a referendum on his presidency.
	It's very funny how high and mighty the same people who purport to believe in intersectional politics and race-based politics get uptight when people point out that Democrats think that way, and therefore redistricting should take into account Political factors.
	I mean, it's pretty amazing.
	Now, again, I would prefer that redistricting didn't take into account race at all.
	And the Supreme Court says that it should not.
	I agree with the Supreme Court, obviously.
	But as a result of redistricting, will people be split up differently?
	Yes, they will.
	And that will benefit certain groups at the expense of other groups, because every line you draw benefits certain groups at the expense of other groups, unfortunately.
	So the media, I think, are covering this in a slightly unfair way, at the very least, at the very least.
	We'll see how the Supreme Court rules on it.
	It's definitely an interesting issue.
	So we'll keep an eye on that.
	Meanwhile, there's a story that got very little attention this week, even though it is a bombshell.
	And according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Martin Luther King Jr.
	allegedly had sexual relations with at least 40 women, from prostitutes to people within his inner circle, according to explosive new research published Thursday by David J. Garrow, one of the civil rights leader's foremost biographers.
	The most shocking allegation, culled from decades-old FBI files, details a 1964 incident in which King reportedly looked on, laughed, and offered advice to a fellow preacher who was raping a woman in a hotel room.
	Garrell recounts other allegations from formerly sealed FBI documents, including that King fathered a love child and participated in an orgy with a female gospel legend in an eight-page essay he wrote for Standpoint, a British cultural and political magazine.
	The incidents emerged as part of a National Archives data dump related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
	In 2018, President Donald Trump ordered the release of more than 19,000 Kennedy-related documents.
	The documents included some surveillance summaries of FBI wiretaps of King, between 1963 and 1966 in his home office and hotel rooms, as well as information from informants who had infiltrated King's circle.
	The FBI allegations chronicled by Garrow could trigger an examination of the civil rights hero's personal life.
	And second, I wanna talk about why this matters and why it doesn't.
	So this of course has been largely ignored by most of the mainstream media.
	Now imagine that it came out that Ronald Reagan had engaged in this sort of behavior.
	The calls for the statues of Ronald Reagan to come down immediately would break out.
	The calls have not been issued for Martin Luther King's statues to come down.
	And I don't think MLK's statues should come down.
	Why?
	Because this goes to the heart of how we think about people in the past.
	People in the past are fully shaded human beings.
	A lot of those people engage in true evils.
	If these allegations are true, I mean, this is truly evil behavior.
	A lot of people engaged in truly evil behavior, but also did good things for the world.
	The complexities of human behavior, human beings are not all white hat or all black hat.
	They're not all good or all evil.
	Human beings do good things and they do bad things.
	Human beings sin and they commit great acts of courage.
	The reason we build statues to MLK is not because we are enshrining his personal love life.
	Not because we are enshrining his treatment of women.
	The reason statues are built of MLK is because MLK was instrumental in ending state-sponsored discrimination in the United States in a unique way that brought Americans together.
	That is why we build statues.
	And it's the same thing with regard to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.
	The reason you build a statue to George Washington is because he was the father of our country.
	Because he was the most important leading founding father figure in America.
	We're not building a statue of him because we are enshrining his views on slavery or his own personal behavior with regard to slavery.
	The same thing is true of Thomas Jefferson.
	Now things get more dicey when you talk about building a statue of a Confederate general.
	Because then the question is what are you paying tribute to?
	Are you paying tribute to the Confederacy?
	Which was an evil organization in its promulgation of slavery?
	Are you building a tribute to the person for their personal courage?
	Is the statue built because you are admiring the courage of the man?
	With MLK, it's pretty obvious.
	You're not building a statue because of his treatment of women.
	You're building a statue because of his role in the civil rights movement.
	If we are now going to tear down statues of everybody who did a great thing but also bad things, even though the statue really is meant to commemorate the great thing, there will be no statues.
	It turns out all human beings do some really crappy stuff.
	So this MLK thing should be a great reminder to folks who are intent on tearing down every monument or chipping names off every building that simply building monuments or putting names on buildings is not an endorsement of every aspect of a human being's life.
	Neither is voting for someone, by the way.
	If you vote for someone, that does not mean that you endorse every aspect of what they do or who they are.
	If you personally then go on to endorse all the aspects of what they do or who they are, that is a you problem.
	But, simply voting for someone, even building a monument to someone, doesn't mean you endorse everything about them.
	So we ought to keep that in mind, because even people who made tremendous contributions to humanity, allegedly, can do some truly evil things if these stories about MLK are true.
	Okay, time for some mailbagging, so let's get to it.
	Alrighty, Joel says, Shalom from Toledo, Spain.
	Cool.
	As a conservative, I've been posed the following question.
	Given that we have public services for safety, such as fire and police departments, why should healthcare not be public?
	I've tried to argue that there are personal decisions that affect the type of healthcare needed, but there are still some contagions that cause externalities beyond one's personal choices.
	How would you argue the difference between these services?
	What are the general principles that would constitute a service to be public?
	Okay, so.
	There's a basic view in economics that there is a difference between so-called public goods and private goods.
	Public goods are goods that are what we call non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
	So, sunshine is a non-excludable, non-rivalrous good, meaning your enjoyment of the good does not decrease my enjoyment of the good, and it's non-excludable.
	I can't stop you from enjoying the sunshine.
	We tend to view police and firefighters in that way.
	That police and firefighters are non-excludable, non-rivalrous goods.
	You get to take advantage of the fire department, I get to take advantage of the fire department.
	Your enjoyment of the fire department does not decrease my enjoyment of the fire department.
	Your enjoyment of the police department does not...
	Change my enjoyment of the police department.
	Now, it's true that on the very extreme edges here, then it could be rivalrous, theoretically, right?
	I mean, you have a small police department and too many citizens.
	So that means that my enjoyment of the police department does in fact deprive you of your enjoyment of the police department.
	But overall, the idea that the police and firefighters, the building of roads, that these things are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, that you enjoy it, I can't stop you from enjoying it.
	The same thing holds true for the army, right?
	Non-excludable, non-rivalrous.
	The army defends my town, which means it defends you too.
	And my enjoyment of the military does not decrease your enjoyment of the military.
	Those would fall under the category of public goods.
	Private goods are both excludable and rivalrous.
	I own my home, and I can keep you out of my home.
	I can exclude you, and my enjoyment of my home prevents you from enjoyment of my home.
	That is, any typical good is a private good.
	So, is healthcare more like a non-excludable, non-rivalrous good, or is it more like an excludable rivalrous good?
	And the answer is, my enjoyment of my doctor prevents you from enjoying my doctor.
	And that doctor has a right to exclude you from service.
	The doctor does not have a duty to serve you.
	So it is more like a private good.
	Healthcare is more like a private good.
	Now, you talk about contagion.
	Contagion now moves into the issue of externalities.
	This is where regulations are necessary.
	So this is why, for example, I'm in favor of government mandated vaccinations.
	Because now you've gotten, or I'm in favor of the government taking a role in preventing the outbreak of contagion.
	For example, but when it comes to you broke your leg and now you want to go to the doctor and get your leg fixed, that has nothing to do with me.
	That is a you problem, meaning that it's an excludable rivalrous good.
	You're going to go to the doctor, you're going to pay.
	I'm not going to the doctor.
	I'm not paying.
	It ain't my leg.
	That is not the same thing as police or fire, both of which are designed to protect an entire community.
	And in fact, crime in my neighborhood is dependent on crime being stopped on my front door.
	A healthcare in my neighborhood is not dependent on you not being able to heal your broken leg.
	This is why it changes a little bit with regard to contagious disease.
	Chris says, what do you think causes most big cities to lean so heavily to the left?
	Is there ever a world in which cities turn red or are they just naturally inclined to be blue?
	No, I think that cities tend to turn blue because the reality is that when you live in an area that is more dispersed, you are less likely to encroach on other people's property, other people's way of life.
	You just don't see other people that much.
	When you're in a crowded room, the ground rules need to be set, and those ground rules need to be complicated, and they need to set what the common good is, and that means there needs to be some sort of overarching authority that sets how that works.
	Zoning restrictions don't seem to apply as much in areas of widely dispersed populations, but if you and I live next door to each other, we're now going to have to have a rule about whether you can erect a smokestack on your property or not.
	When you cram people together, that requires a lot of government in order to ensure that those people are not harming each other.
	That's the way it works.
	More people, in a small amount of space, means that there's a lot more externalities, which naturally means a lot more government.
	Once the government is involved in every aspect of your life, it's easier to also call on that government to be involved in the problems that, quote unquote, you want to solve.
	That's that cities have historically been much more liberal than the country.
	They will continue to be, which is why for conservatives, they're going to have to find a different appeal to people in cities.
	And I think that the culture wars provide that appeal.
	Frankly, the fact that the left has gotten so over overbearing in its attempts to cram down those common rules, even in cities, means that the backlash is coming.
	And the ineffectiveness of government has always been a strong pitch for conservatives, but overwhelmingly cities will remain liberal.
	The question is only whether that liberalism is 90-10 liberalism or 55-45 liberalism.
	Stephen says, which trilogy is better, the original Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?
	Lord of the Rings.
	Okay.
	John says, I think that's such a clear cut answer that it doesn't even require explanation, particularly because Return of the Jedi has some very serious flaws to it.
	Also, Lord of the Rings is deeply moving, has something spiritual to say.
	Listen, I love Star Wars too, but the original Star Wars trilogy, whenever the best movie of a trilogy is the second movie, It's not the best trilogy.
	I think that's fair to say.
	Okay, John says, Hey Ben, I'm really excited to see the Sunday special with D-Day veterans.
	These men are truly amazing.
	I'm looking forward to hearing their stories.
	I wanted to know if you think there's any historical aspect or part of World War II that is understudied, misunderstood, or that people should be more aware of.
	I've always been very interested in military history.
	I'd like your thoughts on this.
	Thank you and have a great weekend.
	Well, I think that there are a lot of aspects to World War II that are understudied or misunderstood.
	Some of those aspects include the origins of World War II and Stalin's role in helping to initiate World War II by siding with Hitler, obviously.
	I think that there are a bunch of military operations that are really ignored.
	For example, there was something called Dieppe, the Battle of Dieppe, that is a fascinating, fascinating incident in World War II.
	It was before D-Day, and the Allies wanted to see exactly how German defenses would respond to an amphibious invasion.
	And so they actually organized a small amphibious invasion in a place called Dieppe.
	And they sent a bunch of Canadian, it was mostly Canadian troops, to Dieppe to fight on the beaches, knowing full well that these guys were basically going to get slaughtered.
	The notion that in war, People go willingly to their death knowing that their mission is basically only to gather information, for example.
	I mean, that's true heroism, and it does demonstrate the bloody sacrifice of war.
	I think that we wildly understudy the Pacific War in World War II, and we study a lot the Atlantic War.
	We study a lot the war in Germany and the war in France.
	We study the Holocaust a lot.
	We don't study nearly enough what Imperial Japan was, and truly how evil Imperial Japan was.
	I mean, the Rape of Nine King, which happens before World War II, is absolutely shocking in its brutality.
	The fact that the Pacific War is understudied is a reflection of certain sensibilities on the part of historians to focus in on Europe in a way that they are not focusing in on what actually led to America's involvement in World War II, which was frankly the attack on Pearl Harbor and the idea of Japanese imperialists to maximize power in the Far East.
	Let's see.
	Christopher says, I've lived in California all my life.
	I'm now thinking about moving to another state due to the cost of living, coupled with the raising of a family, a 15-month-old son.
	As a Christian, I'd love to live in a state and community that share traditional values, but it seems even red states are becoming more and more blue.
	If you had to move your family out of California, where would you move and why?
	Thanks, Chris.
	Well, I have concerns that other people don't have, right?
	I'm an Orthodox Jew.
	That means I have to find an area that has Orthodox Jews in it because I have to be within walking distance of a synagogue.
	There have to be at least some kosher markets, maybe some kosher restaurants.
	So that, there have to be Jewish day schools, so that limits sort of where I can go.
	So the biggest Orthodox Jewish populations in the United States are unfortunately all in very liberal areas.
	It is New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, in order of populations, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and then Dallas.
	I believe Dallas is a growing community, so we'd probably consider Dallas.
	Houston has a growing Orthodox community, we'd probably consider Houston.
	Texas has a lot of things going for it.
	That's a personal concern that I have that other people would not.
	But listen, I think there are lots of red areas around the country that have a really great cost of living, have a lot of burgeoning jobs.
	If I were not Orthodox, if I were not Jewish, I'd be looking to places further north.
	I'd be looking to Iowa, I would be looking to Maybe South Dakota.
	I've been looking into some of these places that have booming economies and that are smaller states, and that means that the smaller states are unlikely to go deep blue anytime soon, just because, again, smaller states with more dispersed populations are less likely to have big cities governing them.
	Um, let's see.
	Tess says, Hey Ben, tomorrow we celebrate my dad's retirement from the U.S.
	Coast Guard after 30 years of service.
	Do you mind giving him a shout out to congratulate him on this amazing accomplishment?
	I wish you'd included his name so I could give him a direct shout out, but definitely congratulations and thank you for your service, sir.
	That is amazing stuff.
	Well, it depends.
	So, there are many Israeli-Arab citizens.
	1.2 million at last count.
	I'm a Canadian fan.
	Is it true that Palestinians in Israel are not allowed to vote nationally?
	How are Palestinians treated in Israel overall?
	Thanks, Brody.
	Well, it depends.
	Are the Palestinians Israeli citizens?
	So there are many Israeli Arab citizens, 1.2 million at last count.
	And they represent about 20% of the voting base in Israel.
	Somewhere between 15 and 20% of the voting base in Israel is in fact Arab.
	There are several Arab parties in the Israeli Knesset.
	Some of those Arab parties have openly called for the destruction of the state of Israel.
	Amir Bashar leads one of them.
	So the fact that Arabs in Israel vote is true.
	Arabs living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority don't vote in Israeli elections because they're not ruled by Israelis.
	Israel has set up military blockades, basically, in order to prevent the invasion of people who wish to kill Israeli citizens.
	But Palestinians have been engaged in self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for a long time.
	It's more self-rule in the Gaza Strip than even in the West Bank, because the West Bank is more integrated territorially with Israel than the Gaza Strip is.
	But the Gaza Strip has been engaged in, like, why should Palestinians living under Hamas, who elected Hamas in 2006, why exactly should they be voting in Israeli elections?
	Why should Palestinians who live under the Palestinian Authority, I was informed that that was, effectively, that Palestinians should have autonomy, why should they vote in Israeli elections any more than the Israelis should vote in the Gazan elections?
	Alex says, Hey Ben, I was listening to a podcast on Locke and the subject of property and productivity.
	The host argued that with no property tax, there's no incentive.
	The land can sit there and waste if the owner so decides.
	But with the tax, at least something is gained and it can also encourage productivity in order to pay the tax.
	What are your thoughts on the taxing of private property as a means to encourage owners to make the land in which they own productive?
	Love the show.
	Well, I'm against property taxes because once I pay for it, the government no longer has a role.
	There's no other product in the United States where you pay a sales tax on it, and the next thing you know, you have to keep paying a tax on it every single year.
	When I buy a car, I don't keep paying a tax on the car every single year.
	When I buy property, I pay a certain sales tax, effectively speaking.
	And then I'm supposed to pay for the value of the property every single year, a percentage of the value of the property?
	I'm very much against property taxes.
	And I do not think that it creates an incentive to cultivate the land.
	Presumably the reason that you paid to buy the land in the first place is because you want to cultivate it.
	Also, Locke was a fan of what was called adverse possession, which is the idea that if you buy a piece of land and you just leave it there fallow for 20 years, and you never visit it, and somebody comes and establishes their own house on your land, And then proceeds to cultivate the land that it becomes theirs.
	This is actually a part of American law, adverse possession.
	I believe there was even a case, if I'm not mistaken, against like Oprah Winfrey a while back in which somebody actually did this.
	It was basically squatter's rights.
	They went and squatted on some property that you never visited.
	Debbie says, with the speech that Mueller gave yesterday on his way out the door, as predicted, it has ramped up the Democrats call for impeachment.
	Obviously, now it looks like it could become a timing game with the election around the corner.
	If the House were to impeach next year, does the Senate have to vote on it?
	Would it be possible that the Republicans could find themselves without a viable candidate on Election Day due to incumbents typically not being primaried?
	How would the Republicans safeguard against that?
	Do they have to primary him?
	Last but not least, if Trump were to be impeached in his second term and Mike Pence became president, how would the office for vice president be filled?
	So the factual question of who replaces the vice president is to be a candidate.
	It's not a constitutionally appointed office.
	So my understanding is that Pence could appoint the replacement VP.
	I don't think that there is provision for this.
	You know what?
	I'm not actually sure that question.
	That's a really good question.
	That might be in the constitutional amendment about the line of succession.
	I'm going to check that out because it slips my mind, frankly, at this point.
	So I will check.
	I don't think that it's like the Speaker of the House then kicks up to the Vice Presidency.
	I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
	I think that the office might even remain vacant.
	I'm not sure.
	Really good question.
	With the speech that Mueller gave yesterday, let's see, if the House were to impeach, does the Senate have to vote on it?
	No, the Senate does not have to vote on it.
	Theoretically, they could just kill it and not do anything, but they would vote on it and they'd vote to end it.
	The Republicans will not find themselves without a viable candidate on Election Day.
	That's not a thing.
	Well, he has the ability to recommend indictment in the absence of the DOJ rules, which is an effective recommendation of impeachment.
	That's what Barr said today.
	I think that is correct.
	There is nothing in the DOJ rules that says in the absence of this rule, we would vote to indict, right?
	Or we'd push to indict.
	He could have said that.
	That would have led to impeachment.
	There's nothing that officially says he can't say that Trump should be impeached.
	He could have gotten up there at his statement and said that.
	Because, again, impeachment is a political matter, not a criminal one.
	What's weird about what Mueller did is that he was appointed to investigate criminal matters, and then he didn't rule on the criminal matter.
	Instead, he basically quasi-said impeach.
	Kevin says, Hey Ben, if you had to guess, what do you think it's like in the Oval Office when Trump and Pelosi have meetings?
	Do you think they are as mean to each other face to face as they are publicly?
	I laugh out loud thinking about the awkwardness in that room.
	Love the show.
	Thanks for your crazy dedication to bringing us the truth.
	Well, Kevin, I appreciate it.
	No, I think they probably get along until the cameras go on and they're mean to each other.
	Because I know many Democrats in Congress.
	I know many Republicans in Congress.
	And that's basically the way this works.
	If people understood how chummy everybody is behind the scenes, I'm not sure whether they would be happier or more angry.
	But the fact is that a lot of this is for public show.
	President Trump and Nancy Pelosi were getting along up until the point where she basically called him crazy and said he should be thrown out of office.
	Remember, Trump was getting along with Dianne Feinstein so much at a gun control meeting that Republicans had to re-inform President Trump to stick with his principles as opposed to getting chummy with people in front of him.
	All right, time for a quick thing that I like, and then we will do a thing that I hate.
	So because I have young children, this means that I get to watch kids' movies, which is fun.
	One of the kids' movies that I watched the other day with my daughter, she is obsessed with How to Train Your Dragon.
	She loves it.
	And she had not seen How to Train Your Dragon 2 or 3.
	I still will not show her 2 because she's a little bit too young to understand like parental death.
	I think that would upset her too much.
	She'd have nightmares.
	But How to Train Your Dragon 3 is a really nice, cute, innocent movie.
	It's worth the watch.
	It's good for kids.
	A little too scary for kids who are maybe under five or six.
	But beyond that, definitely doable.
	Here's a little bit of How to Train Your Dragon 3, The Hidden World.
	There were dragons when I was a boy.
	Where they went, only a few know.
	It's pretty fun.
	It's a kick, and it's got some really great scenes.
	It's got humor.
	Also, the music is great.
	John Powell, who did the music for How to Train Your Dragon, incredibly talented dude.
	Also did the music for Born Identity, among other films.
	So go check it out.
	It's good for kids.
	By the way, I did look up, while that trailer was playing, who replaces the VP if the VP becomes president, and my original answer was correct.
	He does select his own VP at that point.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So this was just hilarious.
	Charlemagne the God has a show called The Breakfast Club, and he had on Senator Elizabeth Warren.
	And things did not go great for Elizabeth Warren.
	He started asking her about why she claimed that she was Native American for years, and it was awkward.
	Your family told you you were Native American?
	Charlamagne tells me I'm Dominican, but I don't believe him.
	You are.
	How long did you hold on to that?
	Because there were some reports that said you were Native American on your Texas bar license, and that you said you were Native American on some documents when you were a professor at Harvard.
	Like, why'd you do that?
	So, it's what I believe.
	Were there any benefits to that?
	No.
	Boston Globe did a full investigation.
	It never affected, nothing about my family ever affected any job I ever got.
	You didn't get a discount in college?
	No.
	You kind of like the original Rachel Dozal a little bit.
	Rachel Dozal's a white woman pretending to be black.
	Well, this is what I learned from my family.
	Ouch.
	Ouch.
	Yeah, that's gonna sting a little bit.
	Wow.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so the quick thing that I hate, it turns out North Korea is super evil.
	And by North Korea, I mean the dictatorship of North Korea.
	So remember that time that President Trump says that he trusts Kim Jong-un, that Kim Jong-un is a really strong, young leader?
	Yeah, here's what happened in the aftermath of some negotiations that went wrong.
	According to USA Today, North Korea executed its special nuclear envoy to the United States as part of a purge of senior officials over the failed summit between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump, according to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
	Kim Hyuk-chol was executed by firing squad in March along with four other foreign ministry officials, the paper reported.
	North Korea neither confirmed nor denied the report.
	South Korea's government was not able to confirm the claim.
	They reported that Kim Hyuk-chol and other senior officials were shot after being accused of spying for the United States.
	The paper reported that Kim Jong-un ordered the purge amid mounting dissatisfaction with the summit in Hanoi, the second time Kim and Trump met face-to-face for talks.
	In Vietnam, they failed to reach a deal because of conflicts over the White House's calls for complete denuclearization.
	Since then, amid a diplomatic standoff, North Korea has resumed short-range ballistic missile testing.
	Trump has tweeted out, North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbs some of my people and others, but not me.
	Okay, this suggests that maybe we shouldn't be treating Kim Jong-un as either an authority on Vice President Joe Biden's intelligence or on international affairs generally or trusting him.
	Probably you shouldn't trust the guy who the negotiations went bad and he just shot everyone.
	That seems kind of like a problem.
	Just gonna put that out there.
	All right, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of Ben Shapiro's show.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday.
	Have a wonderful, relaxing weekend.
	Stay off Twitter, folks.
	Just stay off of it.
	We'll see you here on Monday.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
	And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Caromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.
	Betting markets, election models, and a political scientist who has correctly predicted nine presidential elections all say Trump is headed for victory in 2020.
	We will examine why.
	Then Liz Warren gets wrecked on the radio, the world's tiniest baby ever is born, Elton John hates his country, and conservatives open up a major fight over the definition of conservatism.

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