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July 24, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:18

Mueller Lite | Ep. 824

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	Robert Mueller testifies on the Hill, the media defend Ilhan Omar, and the Justice Department targets Big Tech.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Oh, man, it was the biggest news of the day of the year of the century, right?
	Robert Mueller was going to appear before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
	And my goodness, we were going to find out at long last what President Trump had done.
	I mean, sure, there was already a 448-page report about it.
	Sure, I remember.
	I seem to remember reading the whole thing because it was super boring and had some spicy moments.
	I mean, it wasn't a great book or anything.
	And then I remember coming on this show and summarizing it in detail for like three straight days.
	But that wasn't enough.
	The Democrats had to bring Robert Mueller in because they wanted to grill him.
	And they wanted to demonstrate that in reality, despite the fact that Robert Mueller had said he was not hindered in his investigation, despite the fact that the investigation, in fact, found no collusion with the Russians, despite the fact that the obstruction charges were not sufficient to bring a prosecution and that Robert Mueller had begged off.
	The Democrats were under the weird assumption that Robert Mueller was going to show up and he was going to say, guys, time for me to drop the pretense and drop the pretense right now.
	Trump is guilty.
	And you only you can impeach him.
	That was what the Democrats were hoping for from this.
	And so the buildup to this event was magnificent.
	Folks in the media were really, really excited about all of this.
	Folks in the media thought, well, this will be the moment.
	This will be the moment when finally Trump is brought to heel.
	And so were Democrats.
	Democrats were very excited about this.
	So you had Representative Ted Lieu from the state of California saying, mines are gonna be blown.
	It's gonna be incredible.
	Basically, this was like the buildup to Ishtar.
	We're gonna spend an awful lot of money, and there's gonna be a lot of press, and then the movie's gonna be not very good.
	Well, that's how it kinda ended up.
	Here is Ted Lutho, really, really pumping up this thing, as though it was Alita Battle Angel.
	He's like, we're just gonna pump this thing up.
	Here he is explaining, guys, it's gonna blow your mind, it's like a James Cameron movie, except boring and with an old guy.
	For people who have read the Mueller report or follow the issues, this will not be surprising tomorrow.
	But for people who have not read the report or have only listened to Bill Barr or Donald Trump, their minds may be blown.
	Because they're going to see facts that they never saw.
	They're going to be seeing that the president directed his White House counsel to fire the special counsel.
	That's a crime.
	You're going to see that the president directed his White House counsel to then cover that up and create a fake document.
	That's a second crime.
	And then you're going to see that he directed Corey Lewandowski to ask Jeff Sessions to limit their investigation into Donald Trump.
	That's a third crime.
	OK, none of those are crimes.
	OK, none of those are crimes.
	The first and the third particularly are not crimes.
	He could have fired the special counsel at any time.
	It would have been impeachable.
	It would not have been a crime.
	He could have had Jeff Sessions limit the scope of Mueller's investigation.
	That wouldn't have been impeachable.
	It would not have been a crime.
	As far as instructing Don McGahn to create a document for the press, that was not a crime, right?
	I mean, that probably was not a crime, at least not sufficient to charge, according to none other than Robert Mueller, in any case.
	The media had really built this thing up.
	There's a piece by Bloomberg talking about, in high stakes Mueller hearing, there are big risks for everyone.
	They say, Robert Mueller has vowed he won't go beyond what he's already written about Russia, Donald Trump, and obstruction of justice when he testifies on Wednesday.
	But there's a lot at stake in how much or how little he brings to life the dry specifics of his 448 page report.
	Wow, it was going to be supremely exciting.
	And Democrats were hoping that Americans would tune in.
	Well, if they did, they were asleep by the end of the first inning.
	If this is a baseball game, they were out by the end of the first inning.
	Representative David Cicilline, he says, this is Congress saying no one is above the law.
	Here's Chris Cuomo getting super excited with David Cicilline.
	Well, you're not going to learn anything tomorrow that you don't know already.
	The Democrats aren't going to learn if they've done their homework.
	But our responsibility is also to be sure that the American people understand.
	Understand?
	I get it.
	This is their democracy that was attacked.
	They have a right to know this.
	This investigation was conducted on their behalf.
	It's important that the person who led the investigation report to the American people about his findings, about the evidence that he uncovered.
	And then it will be incumbent on Congress to hold him accountable.
	In fact, Mr. Mueller, in the very final paragraphs of the report, It says this is Congress's responsibility to demonstrate that no one is above the law, including the president.
	So Mueller's performance was going to be the big thing.
	Now, it's worthwhile reviewing what the Mueller report actually found.
	So there were several key claims in the Mueller report.
	The first is that the Trump-Russia collusion claims were farcically overblown, like really, really overblown.
	There are certainly members of the Trump team who acted suspiciously, including President Trump, who continued to tell the American public no work was occurring on the Trump Tower Moscow deal during the 2016 campaign, which, of course, Was not true.
	But the Mueller report makes it clear that all of this was really, really exaggerated.
	There's a quote from the Mueller report.
	Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally for information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
	The Mueller report also never really referred to the Steele dossier, which apparently was the basis of a lot of the investigation in the first place.
	The Mueller report revealed that when it came to obstruction of justice, that they had no real clear definition sufficient to prosecute the president or recommend prosecution.
	It found that Trump acted perversely in a lot of ways, this report.
	It found that he was threatening to fire people.
	He was trying to push his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to lie to the press regarding Trump's desire to fire James Comey.
	And there's a lot of ugly stuff in the report, but there is nothing that rises to the level of criminally prosecutable behavior.
	Trump's team basically stopped him from violating the law time and time again.
	What the report mostly reveals when it comes to obstruction is that Trump was just ticked off at his own DOJ and at his own FBI because he felt he was being unjustly persecuted by them.
	The real takeaway from the Mueller report was, here is a bunch of information.
	If Congress wants to go forward with it, if Congress wants to impeach, then that is a Congress problem.
	Congress tried to throw this back in Mueller's lap today.
	They tried to basically get Mueller to testify that Trump should be impeached.
	And Mueller, that's not how it went.
	Now, Republicans basically expected this was going to happen.
	So Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, he said, we're not going to find anything out that's new here.
	How many times we got to watch this movie, guys?
	It seems to me, I don't know how many times we want to see this movie again, but I think the American people have moved on past this.
	Okay, and he's not the only one.
	Lindsey Graham said, I've heard all I want to hear on this thing.
	It won't reshape my dynamic.
	I've heard all I need to hear from Mueller.
	I've read his report.
	I accept the findings.
	I don't think it's going to change public opinion.
	Having been involved in the Clinton impeachment, if the public's not with you, you'll pay a price.
	And I don't think anything Mueller can say that's going to change anybody's mind.
	Now, again, in the run up to this, there was a lot of talk about maybe the Trump administration was going to restrict what Mueller could testify about.
	There's a lot of talk about a particular letter sent from the DOJ to Robert Mueller that basically said, stick to the report.
	So why did that letter come about?
	As it turns out, William Barr, the attorney general, says that Mueller actually requested the letter so that he could point to the letter when it came time for him to testify.
	You know, at his press conference, Bob had said that he intended to stick with the public report and not go beyond that.
	And in conversations with the department, his staff was reiterating that that was their position.
	And they asked us for guidance in writing to explain or to tell them what our position was.
	So we responded in writing.
	The department sent the guidance they had requested.
	Okay, so this was all the buildup.
	In a second we are going to get to the punchline because it turns out that the punchline didn't exactly match the buildup first.
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	Okay, so, as I say, the media were prepared.
	They were prepared.
	Their body was ready.
	Stephen Colbert last night, he was like, yeah, this is gonna be the moment.
	It's clip 21.
	This whole thing is damning evidence.
	It's gonna be, oh, it's gonna be.
	He turns into Meg Ryan from When Harry Met Sally.
	The Justice Department has told Mueller to limit his testimony to what is in his report.
	Oh no!
	Now all he's got is 448 pages of incredibly damaging evidence that the president committed 10 separate instances of obstruction of justice and that at one point he said, and I quote, Okay, well, again, they're so excited.
	Did it turn out to be exciting?
	Did it turn out to be wonderful?
	Not really.
	Now, imagine that you're Robert Mueller.
	Imagine that you spend two years working on this report.
	Or, as it turns out, that you spend two years chain-smoking cigars out back while your team writes your report, as it appears is what actually happened.
	Imagine that that is your life.
	And then, you walk off America's stage Into the sunset, having done your work.
	And then they call you back in and they're like, tell us what, tell us, tell us what you said.
	And you're like, God, don't you people know how to read?
	That's pretty much how this went, except that Robert Mueller was not the steadfast, thorough, Solid public servant that the people thought he was.
	He looked pretty precarious out there.
	And this was the critique from both right and left.
	David Axelrod was saying he looked old.
	He looked a little bit dithering.
	He looked like he didn't really know what was going on, which did raise the question as to how much of this report he actually wrote.
	This was a serious question because there was a claim by President Trump that it was actually Mueller's team that did most of the writing.
	Mueller's deputy, a guy named Andrew Weisberg was a Hillary Clinton I mean, who's at Hillary Clinton's election headquarters the night that the election actually happened.
	He was a big Hillary Clinton fan.
	He apparently was the lawyer for one of Hillary Clinton's aides who helped smash her blackberries with a hammer.
	That guy was involved in the writing.
	And so there's claims today that given how dicey Mueller was on the stand here, how dicey he was in his testimony, that maybe he wasn't actually in control of this report in the first place.
	That would explain why you got that bizarre letter from Mueller's team to William Barr Suggesting that he did not fully elucidate the findings of the report or that there had been some sort of cover-up.
	Mueller doesn't look like he's in control of the report.
	He didn't look like he was in control of himself.
	It was not a good showing for Robert Mueller, who I think, again, is a good man.
	I have no evidence to the contrary.
	But he didn't look like he was in control today, and that was the widespread critique.
	Here is a mash-up of Robert Mueller repeatedly asking for questions to be repeated.
	This is clip 18.
	You could not publicly state that in your report or here today?
	Can you repeat the question, sir?
	Is it correct that if you had concluded Okay, and there's a lot of this over and over.
	Could you repeat the question?
	I don't, I can't hear what you're saying.
	Could you please repeat that?
	Mueller did not look as though he was on top of his game.
	That, for sure.
	And, that was kind of the story.
	That was kind of the story.
	Now, the Democrats got a couple of talking points, and the Republicans got some talking points.
	So, the Democratic talking point was obvious.
	President Trump oversold the findings of the report in his own favor.
	So, President Trump kept going out there and saying, I'm exonerated, I'm cleared.
	And, as I said at the time, no you're not.
	You're not exonerated.
	You're not cleared, particularly when it came to obstruction.
	Maybe on collusion, but not on obstruction.
	And yet you're going out there and saying, totally exonerated, totally cleared.
	That, of course, was never true.
	The wording of the report suggested it wasn't true.
	So that was always going to be an easy spot for Democrats to hit.
	And sure enough, they did in fact hit that.
	This clip 20, Robert Mueller being asked if he exonerated President Trump.
	The president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him.
	But that is not what your report said, is it?
	Correct.
	That is not what the report said.
	So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice.
	Is that correct?
	That is correct.
	And what about total exoneration?
	Did you actually totally exonerate the president?
	No.
	Now, in fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president.
	It does.
	OK, so that was the talking point for the Democrats coming out of this hearing.
	But there's one problem, which is that it wasn't Mueller's job to exonerate the president.
	He's a prosecutor.
	It was his job to determine whether there was a prosecutable offense.
	And this became obvious in clip 16 when Representative Ratcliffe, he said to Mueller, you know, you say you didn't exonerate the president.
	Who said it's your job to exonerate the president?
	Can you think of another instance in which a prosecutor's job is to exonerate anybody?
	Can you give me an example other than Donald Trump where the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined?
	I cannot, but this is a unique situation.
	Okay, well, you can't.
	Time is short.
	I've got five minutes.
	Let's just leave it at you can't find it because I'll tell you why.
	It doesn't exist.
	It was not the special counsel's job to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or to exonerate him.
	Because the bedrock principle of our justice system is a presumption of innocence.
	It exists for everyone.
	Everyone is entitled to it, including sitting presidents.
	Okay, that of course is exactly right.
	That's exactly right.
	And so that's the takeaway from the Republicans.
	So the takeaway from Democrats is he wasn't exonerated, maybe out there.
	Lurking somewhere like the X-Files is the actual damning material and then John Ratcliffe from Texas there He says, um, dude, that's not your job.
	You don't exonerate people.
	You're not in the exoneration people business That's for defense counsel during a prosecution.
	Your job is to determine whether there is evidence sufficient to prosecute And Mueller basically admits, yeah, I guess that's kind of right.
	I guess that's kind of right.
	Well, in one second, we're going to get to the rest of Mueller's lackluster performance at best.
	I mean, it really was lackluster.
	He opened his performance by suggesting, for example, that he could not speak about the The beginnings of the investigation.
	He suggested that he couldn't speak about the Steele dossier, so there were key topics that were left off the table, which immediately makes this much less interesting.
	He suggested in the middle of this hearing he didn't know what Fusion GPS was, which, again, was the company that was hired by Hillary Clinton's law firm to create the Steele dossier.
	It was really a bad performance for Robert Mueller and not a good performance in favor of Democrats.
	We'll get to that in a second.
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	Okay, so.
	Is it true the evidence gathered during your investigation did not establish that the president was involved in the underlying crime related to Russian election interference as stated in volume 1 page 7?
	The answer is no.
	Representative Collins asks him about this.
	Again, this does not cut against the president.
	Is it true the evidence gathered during your investigation did not establish that the president was involved in the underlying crime related to Russian election interference as stated in volume one, page seven?
	We found insufficient evidence of the president's culpability.
	So that would be a yes.
	I'm pardon?
	That would be a yes.
	Thank you.
	OK, so that not good for Democrats, right?
	Insufficient culpability on the underlying crime of collusion.
	And then he is asked, OK, so you say that you didn't find conspiracy and then you say that you're unclear on collusion.
	But in your own report, it says that collusion and conspiracy are basically the same thing.
	Doug Collins is questioning from Georgia is very good right here.
	And Mueller just stumbles over himself.
	Mueller does not know his own report.
	I mean, that is very obvious from this testimony.
	He keeps having to refer back to his report.
	The members of Congress know his report better than he does.
	And that's because his team probably wrote the report.
	OK, what is clear now is that Mueller was not doing the vast majority of the work in compiling the report.
	It was his team, which makes sense.
	I mean, he had a big team of lawyers.
	He oversees that team of lawyers.
	He probably reads the final report and then gives his sign off on it.
	But in no way is Mueller the expert on his own report.
	And that is obvious because he keeps getting caught off guard when people ask him specific questions about his own report.
	And again, he started off this thing by saying that he was not going to comment on some of the most confusing aspects of the report, such as, for example, why Fusion GPS is basically not mentioned.
	I mean, that was an intelligence gathering group hired by Hillary Clinton's law firm in order to go get the Steele dossier, which was used as the basis for much of the investigation.
	How was that not within the FBI's purview?
	How about the beginning of the investigation?
	He says, well that was before my time and not within my purview.
	Well, the entire investigation was about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
	So wouldn't you want to know how the investigation was initiated?
	Considering that the Republicans have been accusing the investigation of being initiated off the basis of Russian interference in collusion basically with Hillary Clinton's campaign.
	So you took a bunch of key issues off the table from the very beginning.
	Here is Doug Collins forcing Mueller to stumble on collusion and conspiracy, and pointing out that when you say that you're unclear on collusion but there's no conspiracy, you're really saying no collusion.
	Although your report states collusion is not a specific offense, and you said that this morning, or a term of art in federal criminal law, conspiracy is.
	In the colloquial context, are collusion and conspiracy essentially synonymous terms?
	You're going to have to repeat that for me.
	Collusion is not a specific offense or a term of art in the federal criminal law.
	Conspiracy is.
	In the colloquial context, known public context, collusion and conspiracy are essentially synonymous terms.
	Correct?
	No.
	No, so they're not synonymous terms.
	And then Collins goes on and he actually refers specifically and specifically to a quote from the from the actual.
	Manifesto from this 448 page report in which they equate collusion and conspiracy and Mueller is forced to refer back to the report.
	I mean, it was really, really a bad thing for him.
	It just it did not.
	It did not pay off for Robert Mueller or for Democrats at any point here.
	It was a very, very bad day for Democrats.
	Mueller was asked by Representative Collins.
	Here's a key takeaway.
	Representative Collins says to Mueller, was your investigation hindered at any point or curtailed?
	That would be the key question when it comes to obstruction.
	Did anybody do anything to your investigation?
	And Mueller says, no.
	No.
	At any time in the investigation, was your investigation curtailed or stopped?
	Or hindered?
	No.
	Okay, that would be the key takeaway.
	Now, what Democrats are trying to latch onto is this suggestion that, in reality, Mueller wants Trump prosecuted after Trump leaves office.
	And they're hanging that coat on a very, very slender hook, okay?
	And that is an exchange in which Robert Mueller is asked specifically if President Trump could be prosecuted after he leaves office.
	And this is the new clip, okay?
	And here is Mueller's answer, and I'll explain why Democrats are wrongly jumping on this answer.
	Could you charge the President with a crime after he left office?
	Yes.
	You believe that he committed... You could charge the President of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?
	Yes.
	Okay, so Democrats are saying, well, that's the key takeaway, isn't it?
	I mean, he could be charged after he leaves office.
	Technically, he can be charged after he leaves office.
	This does not answer the question as to whether he should be charged after he leaves office.
	I could be charged today.
	That doesn't answer the question as to whether I should be charged today.
	As a matter of law, of course the president can be charged after he leaves office for crimes committed while he is president of the United States.
	However, that was not the question that Mueller was asked and had he been asked that question, presumably he would not have answered the question properly.
	Again, the Democrats are really attempting to spin this into something that it is not because the answer is this has been a giant nothing burger and Mueller does not acquit himself well.
	Mueller said that the investigation did not establish Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia.
	He said that openly.
	The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election.
	And then Mueller basically said, that's all I'm talking about.
	I'm talking about the stuff that's in the report.
	I'm not going to talk about any of the other stuff that you guys want to know about.
	So he won't talk about Fusion GPS.
	He apparently doesn't know what Fusion GPS... I mean, this was an amazing moment.
	You're the head of the Mueller investigation because your name is Robert Mueller and it's your investigation.
	You've never heard of Fusion GPS?
	Is there anybody who has been following this thing for two years who doesn't know what Fusion GPS is?
	And yet Mueller, Clip 22, When you talk about the firm that produced the steel reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS.
	Is that correct?
	I do.
	Everyone who's been following this does.
	I thought that you wrote the report, dude.
	When you talk about the firm that produced the steel reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS.
	Is that correct?
	I'm not familiar with that.
	Well, let me just help you.
	It was.
	It's not a trick question.
	It was Fusion GPS.
	Now, Fusion GPS produced the opposition research document widely known as the Steele dossier.
	And the owner of Fusion GPA was someone named Glenn Simpson.
	Are you familiar with?
	This is outside my purview.
	Okay.
	Oh, it's outside his purview.
	Why?
	Why is it outside his purview?
	Again, the entire investigation was about Russian interference in the election.
	If Fusion GPS was funneled Russian disinformation via Christopher Steele and that became a part of the investigation, how exactly is that outside the purview of his investigation?
	And it gets worse.
	Mueller says, I can't answer any questions about the initial opening of the FBI investigation.
	Really?
	Why?
	Wouldn't that be sort of important to determining, for example, how this whole thing came about and whether it was legit or not?
	The Justice Department has asserted privileges concerning investigative information and decisions.
	ongoing matters within the Justice Department and deliberations within our office.
	These are Justice Department privileges that I will respect.
	The Department has released a letter discussing the restrictions on my testimony.
	I, therefore, will not be able to answer questions about certain areas that I know are of public interest.
	For example, I am unable to address questions about the initial opening of the FBI's Russia Okay, so, in the end, trainwreck.
	Trainwreck.
	And Matt Gaetz followed up on all of this.
	He said, Can you state with confidence the Steele dossier was not part of Russia's disinformation campaign?
	And Mueller says, With regard to Steele, that's beyond my purview.
	And Matt Gaetz says, It's exactly your purview.
	The organizing principle was to fully investigate Russia's interference.
	Well, yes.
	Yes.
	What a mess.
	What an absolute mess.
	And it's not just conservatives who are saying so.
	So Chris Wallace is one of the more objective reporters on Fox News.
	And he says correctly, he says, this thing was a disaster for Democrats.
	It was a disaster for Mueller.
	He looked terrible.
	It was awful.
	Frankly, I think you've both been very kind.
	I think this has been a disaster for the Democrats, and I think it's been a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.
	He has seemed very uncertain with his brief.
	He doesn't seem to know things that are in the report.
	He's been attacked a number of times, and you would think that almost anybody else would have defended his own integrity and the integrity of the investigation.
	Okay, but that's not what happened.
	So in the end, does any of this matter?
	No, it doesn't.
	So Democrats who have been trying desperately to continue to push the Russia stuff, desperately trying to push the obstruction stuff, it's just going to fall apart on them.
	It's absolutely going to fall apart on them, and it should fall apart on them.
	It was a mistake for them to call Mueller.
	Mueller was never going to give them what they wanted.
	The best that he was going to do was repeat some of the more incendiary reports from the report.
	But everybody had that out there, and Democrats can cut ads on that stuff anytime, or give speeches on it at any time.
	Mueller appeared confused.
	It appeared as though he wasn't in control of his own team.
	He didn't know his own report.
	It basically looked like when your parent wrote your book report for you in third grade and you went in there and your teacher was like, so tell us what happened in Bridge to Terabithia.
	You're like, uh, what?
	Because your parents read it?
	That's what it felt like from Robert Mueller.
	Can you repeat the question?
	Bad, bad showing for Robert Mueller and worse showing for Democrats who thought that this was going to be the moment, finally the moment, when President Trump went down.
	Not the case.
	Giant fail.
	Now, the testimony is going to continue to be a news story, but I don't think that this is actually going to be news.
	I don't think anyone cares about this, frankly.
	I think that this was over the moment that the report came out and there was no recommendation of prosecution.
	There's no place for Democrats to go from there.
	If Democrats want to impeach on this basis, I don't think the American people are for it.
	I don't think that the polls show that the American people are for it.
	And bringing Robert Mueller up there, hoping that he was going to open some other can of worms or point to the shadowy man in the back and say, ah, deep throat, here he is.
	It never happened.
	It wasn't going to happen.
	So, end of story.
	But will it be the end of... Well, what will CNN do for the next two years?
	That really is the question.
	Meanwhile, the media have another purview.
	They have another agenda.
	And their agenda is they must, at any cost, defend Ilhan Omar.
	So President Trump has decided he's going to go to war with Ilhan Omar.
	That's going to be his 2020 campaign.
	Ilhan Omar versus President Trump.
	And that's pretty smart, because the fact is that Ilhan Omar is not popular.
	The more people see of her, the less popular she is.
	That is not because she is black.
	That is not because she is a woman.
	That is not because she is Muslim.
	It's because she's terrible.
	It's because she says routinely anti-semitic things.
	It's because she says things like some people did something on 9-11.
	It's because her sneering tone of voice when she describes the United States is extraordinarily off-putting.
	It's because she treats, I mean, she literally said legislative bodies in the United States are more interested in treating dogs decently than humans.
	There's a reason folks are not real fond of Ilhan Omar.
	President Trump has decided he's going to make her his bait noir in all of this.
	So you're speaking at Turning Point USA, great organization, and here is President Trump making this point.
	And she starts screaming.
	And this is not a sane person, folks, when you look at that.
	And this is what we're up against.
	You have some of that.
	Now, your other friend from an incredible state, right?
	A state that I'm going to win.
	Minnesota.
	You know that one, right?
	And you know why I'm going to win the state?
	Because of her.
	I almost won it last time.
	We came with just about a point.
	That's a very, because Minnesota's a very hard one for a Republican to win.
	We almost won it one more night.
	I wanted to go there one more time.
	I said, I'm telling you we're going to win Minnesota.
	Okay, so Trump is really leaning heavily into the Ilhan Omar of all of this.
	And again, that makes sense.
	When I say that she's an anti-Semite, it's because she's an anti-Semite.
	She accused Israel of, quote-unquote, hypnotizing the world, which is not an accusation of Israeli policy being bad.
	It's an accusation that the Jewish state is hypnotizing the world.
	She suggested that American support for Israel is, quote-unquote, all about the Benjamins.
	She accused everybody who supports Israel of having dual loyalty to the state of Israel, and she's backed the anti-Semitic BDS movement.
	So what are the media doing?
	They're out there in force defending Ilhan Omar.
	In one of the great gaslighting articles I've ever seen, there's a BuzzFeed contributor named Chase Madar, who wrote a piece called, Just like hippies spitting on Vietnam vets, or welfare queens sipping champagne, Omar's antisemitism has become a structural support beam for American politics.
	And then he says, well she never actually said anything that was antisemitic.
	Really?
	So then why did she apologize under pressure from Nancy Pelosi and other top members of the House Caucus just a couple of months ago for her anti-Semitic remarks?
	And then, like two weeks later, she went right back to the anti-Semitism.
	Why was her first move, since national prominence hit her again, why was her first move to sponsor a resolution comparing Israel to the Nazis from 1933 to 1941?
	She's not an anti-Semite, though, according to the press.
	This is all, everything, According to the press, everything Trump says is wrong.
	So even when he says something right, they treat it as though it is wrong.
	Our indubitably wonderful fact-checkers and decent people in the media, don't worry.
	They're here just to tell you the truth.
	Defending Ilhan Omar.
	We'll get to more of that in just one second.
	And why this actually is really bad for Democrats.
	Why they'd be better off cutting her loose and recognizing her for what she is.
	They're making a large-scale mistake.
	But first, This month marks the 50th anniversary since we first put a man on the moon.
	There's an exciting new podcast by Esoteric Radio Theater.
	It's called Apollo 11.
	What we saw, it immediately rocketed to number three on iTunes Apple Podcast.
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	It is fantastic.
	Almost 1 million people have listened to the podcast or watched on YouTube so far.
	You should be one of them.
	The host is Bill Whittle, author, pilot, NASA enthusiast.
	He knows more about NASA than pretty much anybody that I've ever heard of.
	He tells you the story of the journey of getting to the moon and what happened when we got there and how things almost went horribly wrong.
	All four episodes are available right now.
	Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe today to Apollo 11, what we saw.
	You can also watch, we produced this beautiful video episodes.
	They include tons of amazing space, historical footage.
	Over there at Esoteric Radio Theater YouTube channel really is worth the watch.
	Go check it out right now.
	Also, make sure that you tune in today at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, 4 p.m.
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	So as I say, the media are out in full force defending Ilhan Omar.
	Why?
	Because Donald Trump opposes her, of course.
	So this means they are now going to gaslight all of us.
	It's so funny.
	The media are constantly accusing Trump of gaslighting Americans.
	And there's some truth to that.
	Trump says things routinely that are simply not true in order to achieve a partisan political end.
	In this, he is mirrored by the mainstream media, which have been doing this for my entire lifetime.
	They've been doing this for my entire lifetime, and they have not stopped one iota.
	They've accelerated that problem since President Trump became president.
	So BuzzFeed has an entire article today about how Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism is a myth.
	It's a myth.
	Okay, there's a columnist who says the rabidly anti-Semitic comments that Omar never made, along with the equally fictitious Jew hatred of her allies in the so-called squad, have swiftly become a load-bearing myth in U.S.
	politics.
	Really?
	It's a myth.
	Okay, so Rashida Tlaib associating with a bevy of anti-Semites.
	Inviting an open anti-Semite to give her a painting at her inauguration.
	Ilhan Omar hanging out with Linda Sarsour, rabid anti-Semite, AOC doing the same thing.
	All of them hanging out with Jeremy Corbyn.
	The first resolution that Ilhan Omar sponsors being a resolution that compares Israel to the Nazi party.
	And then Rashida Tlaib getting up on the floor of the U.S.
	House and doing the same thing.
	It's all a myth.
	It's all in your head, guys.
	So either this BuzzFeed columnist fell and hit his head and ended up in an alternative reality like sliding doors, or We all did.
	Because I'm living in the reality where Rashida Tlaib yesterday said this on the house floor.
	So I can't stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government and the state of Israel.
	Americans of conscience have a long and proud history of participating in boycotts specifically to advocate for human rights abroad.
	Americans boycotted Nazi Germany in response to dehumanization, imprisonment, and genocide of Jewish people.
	Okay, and the media are out defending this, in force today.
	Dana Milbank, columnist over at the Washington Post, has a piece called, Ilhan Omar, quintessentially American.
	Quintessentially.
	I mean, not just she's American, true, she's an immigrant to the United States, who is legal, and has her citizenship, she is American.
	Quintessentially American, like the most American.
	The most American.
	Why is she the most American?
	Well sure, she says stuff on a routine basis that's gross.
	Sure she does.
	But I mean, but really in the end, isn't she more American than Trump?
	This is Dana Milbank's case.
	She says, Omar remains ill-defined beyond the monstrous caricature the president has made of her with his racist slander.
	Okay, it's not a monstrous caricature to point out that she has gone easy on terrorists.
	She did.
	She wrote a letter in support of people attempting to join ISIS to a judge in which she suggested that those are people who are just angry because of their socioeconomic status and that they should be let off the hook because they are just pursuing change by other means.
	She says that in her letter.
	She is, in fact, an anti-Semite.
	She has not made any secret of this.
	Minnesota Democrats in her own district have said that for years she has been saying this sort of stuff.
	But it's a monstrous caricature.
	She's one of four non-white Congresswomen, the Squad, who Trump proposes should go back to the countries from which they came, even though three were born in the United States.
	By the way, Little side note, both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have told people to go back where they came from in the past few years on Twitter.
	I'm just going to point that out.
	That does not justify what the president says, but let's just say that these women have not been shy in their own rhetoric about people they... Rashida Tlaib in 2015 told Trump that he should be deported.
	Okay, so...
	Before everybody starts going off on, like, no one who is rational would say this sort of thing, I agree.
	It is not a rational thing to say, Rashida Tlaib and President Trump.
	Like, it's funny that the media just dismiss it when it comes from Rashida Tlaib.
	When Trump says it, of course, then we have to take it super, super duper seriously.
	But Rashida Tlaib is the greatest and most innocent and wise among us.
	Same thing with Ilhan Omar.
	Well, not totally unsubstantiated.
	The Minneapolis Star Tribune has been investigating that, and there's fairly good evidence that she committed some sort of immigration fraud with this dude.
	on this show condemned in very harsh terms and of Trump's unsubstantiated suggestion that she once married her own brother.
	Well, not totally unsubstantiated.
	The Minneapolis Star Tribune has been investigating that and there's fairly good evidence that she committed some sort of immigration fraud with this dude.
	She certainly committed marital fraud when she filed her tax returns.
	Yeah, that's what it is.
	That's surely what it is.
	the stage Tuesday at the Muslim Caucus Education Collective Conference in Washington, Trump tweeted about America hating anti-Semite representative Omar, who along with the others in the squad is a nightmare for America.
	For Trump's racist base, Omar has it all.
	Black female Muslim immigrant.
	Yeah, that's what it is.
	That's surely what it is.
	Because that same base, by the way, despises Nancy Pelosi.
	But Dana Milbank says, Omar, he admits.
	This is the part where they admit, well, you know, she's not, she might have a few problems, but in the end, isn't she more American than you?
	Dana Milbank says, Omar previously heard her cause when her criticism of Israel crossed into anti-semitism, displaying the same sort of prejudice that is often directed at Muslims.
	I even love the phraseology there, right?
	That the real problem with what Ilhan Omar said about Jews is that it really mimics what people say about Muslims.
	Not that it's bad in and of itself, but that, you know, just as people say this stuff about Muslims, she kind of, she slipped into it.
	Slipped.
	She may revert again, says Dana Milbank, but the woman I saw Tuesday represented American values far better than the bigoted demagogue who has made her his bete noir.
	Really?
	She may revert again.
	I love that.
	Can you imagine that in any other context?
	Sure, he just slipped right into racism.
	He may revert again, but isn't he super-duper American?
	Isn't he the most American, actually?
	And the media out in full force to defend Ilhan Omar.
	By the way, the Democrats are not out in full force defending Ilhan Omar.
	So, Ilhan Omar sponsors this resolution that would cut in support of boycott, divest, and sanctions from Israel.
	One month ago, Nancy Pelosi spoke at AIPAC and called that exact policy anti-Semitic.
	One month ago.
	Not a word from Nancy Pelosi, she's still not been asked about it.
	But, presumably foreseeing that she might be asked about it, Nancy Pelosi then sponsored an anti-BDS resolution on the House floor.
	And this anti-BDS resolution basically said BDS is a bad idea.
	It was a non-binding resolution that opposes the boycott movement against Israel, a measure that won broad bipartisan support, but faced pushback from some high-profile progressives.
	Let me note here, Let me note here the headline from CNN.
	So, House approves resolution opposing Israel boycott movement in divisive vote.
	Can you imagine any other vote that goes 398 to 17 that is called divisive?
	Any other vote?
	That is what we call nearly unanimous.
	So we're not talking about, like, 200-something to 200-something.
	That's not what we're talking about here.
	We're not even talking about 230 to 198 or something.
	We are talking about 398 to 17.
	And CNN calls it divisive.
	Why is it divisive?
	Because members of the squad were on the side of the 17.
	The resolution was introduced in March, not long after Democrats faced a bruising internal debate over how to handle comments and tweets by Representative Ilhan Omar that were criticized as being anti-Semitic.
	Now, notice again how CNN characterizes this.
	So when Ilhan Omar says something anti-Semitic, it's that they were criticized as being anti-Semitic.
	But when Trump says something that is criticized as being racist, they just say racist, straight out, right, in the headline.
	So it's always Ilhan Omar, controversial figure, Donald Trump, racist.
	The way they cover this stuff is wildly inconsistent, of course.
	The resolution supports a two-state solution, argues that BDS movement is an effort to delegitimize Israel, which is true, of course, and urges Israelis and Palestinians to return to direct negotiations.
	Omar, as well as Rashida Tlaib, have been openly supportive of the BDS movement and critical of the resolution.
	AOC also voted against the resolution.
	By the way, AOC's quote on this is astonishingly bad.
	So AOC was asked about why she voted against a resolution to condemn BDS.
	And her answer is wild.
	She actually suggested that the reason that you shouldn't oppose BDS is because if you oppose BDS, it might force people into violence.
	So you should support soft antisemitism, softer antisemitism, because otherwise you might lead to violent antisemitism.
	Can you imagine her saying that in any other context?
	No, we should really, like, be okay with white supremacist rhetoric, because you never know, they might turn into terrorists.
	So better that they should kind of just talk about it than be terrorists.
	This is all insane.
	It's all insane.
	And of course, it's very bad for the Democratic Party, so keep it up, guys.
	Well done, everybody.
	And meanwhile, in other big news, the Justice Department is now looking at going after big tech.
	According to Brent Kendall over at the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition.
	Adding a new Washington threat for companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple.
	The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media, and retail services.
	The department said, confirming the review shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported it.
	The new antitrust inquiry under AG Barr could ratchet up the already considerable regulatory pressures facing the top U.S.
	tech firms.
	Now, as I've said before, I am not in favor of regulating big tech unless they've actually violated the law.
	But the big problem for big tech is that they've been utterly non-transparent in many cases to what they are doing.
	This is particularly true of the social media platforms.
	Basically, people see data points and then they assume that the data points are representative of broader trends inside these various companies.
	And this leads them to be angry and feel like they are out of control and feel like they were lied to because, for example, if you use Google and you think that Google is going to provide you with some sort of unbiased result, and then it turns out that behind the scenes Google is manipulating the algorithm and not making clear to you what exactly they are doing, then it makes you feel like you are being taken advantage of.
	And lack of transparency also doesn't really allow for the sort of competition that you'd want because suspicion alone is really not a great basis to form a company.
	Like if Google were to just say, listen, You want your left-leaning search results?
	You come to us, and people would start going to DuckDuckGo, and they would actually get less biased results.
	Same thing is true with Facebook.
	And so, I've met with some of these tech leaders, and I've said to them, you want not to be regulated?
	I'm not in favor of regulation.
	I think putting the government in charge of stuff is a really bad idea, but...
	The drive for this is stemming directly from your lack of transparency.
	And you need to be transparent with the American people.
	And you have not been transparent on everything from privacy to how you make decisions on who gets banned and who gets demonetized.
	And if you're not going to be transparent, people are going to take their suspicions and they are going to suggest that that actually is the governing fact.
	Now, using antitrust to go after these companies seems to me a massive mistake.
	The reason being, particularly with Amazon, for example, What exactly did Amazon do wrong that they have violated antitrust?
	So there are two models of antitrust and they're in conflict.
	Model one of antitrust law was sort of the pre-Robert Bork model.
	So Robert Bork wrote a very famous book called The Antitrust Paradox.
	The Antitrust Paradox posited that antitrust laws were designed for consumer benefit.
	That the reason you break up a company is because the company is anti-competitive and is harming consumers.
	So for example, you have two companies and they would be in competition with one another, lowering price, but they decide to make a regional split.
	And you take the Western United States and we take the Eastern United States and we will collude to keep prices up, right?
	That would be anti-competitive and thus would be subject to antitrust in the Robert Bork view.
	However, you have one company that is providing you with wonderful services and that those services are really good and there are no competitors because it's just a good business.
	And it's efficient?
	Bork would say that's not an antitrust problem.
	The other model is that any company that is too big should be broken up.
	And I fear that model because it is completely subjective.
	What exactly is too big?
	What does too big look like?
	How do you decide that Walmart shouldn't be broken up, but Amazon should?
	How do you decide that big firms that you like should not be broken up, but big firms that you don't should not be broken up?
	Is it like a dollar cutoff or a market percentage cutoff?
	How do you decide if a company decides to purchase, vertically integrate its own business?
	Is this monopolistic now just because they wanted to save money by not having to outsource their labor?
	Most companies at some point will do some sort of vertical integration with an independent company that they were once doing business with.
	So, for example, we here at Daily Wire bought a marketing firm that we were doing business with.
	Why?
	Because it was cheaper for us to buy the marketing firm than it was for us to simply outsource to the marketing firm.
	That doesn't violate antitrust.
	That is us growing our business in the most efficient way.
	And a lot of places do this sort of stuff.
	The problem with the model that is being used to go after a lot of these tech companies is it's extraordinarily vague.
	You have to find the wrongdoing before you start accusing antitrust.
	So, to take an example of the vagueness, Andrew Ross Sorkin over on CNBC is interviewing Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, and Mnuchin is talking about Amazon, and here's what he has to say.
	Justice said yesterday that they're going to look into some of the big tech companies that were at the White House yesterday, in fact, and consider the antitrust issues that are involved.
	Do you believe that they are hurting competition?
	I think, as you know, if you look at Amazon, although there's certain benefits to it, they've destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there's no question they've limited competition.
	There's areas where they've really hurt small businesses.
	So I don't think this is a one-size-fits-all, and I don't have an opinion going in other than I think it's absolutely right that the Attorney General is looking into these issues.
	You think I'm a little bit off base when I say that the government shouldn't be in charge of these issues?
	That is the vaguest, stupidest standard I've ever heard.
	Of course Amazon has hurt the retail industry.
	Why?
	Because you're getting products cheaper delivered directly to your door via Amazon than you would if you went out to the retail store.
	That's not Amazon's fault.
	That's because brick-and-mortar installations have been on the downturn for approximately a decade and a half.
	And that's because there's a thing called the internet and shipping.
	That's not Amazon unfairly restraining business.
	That's ridiculous.
	And you think I want to put the FTC in charge of Facebook?
	Policing content neutrality?
	What happens when Kamala Harris is president, and then appoints the majority of the FTC?
	And she decides that neutrality means that you have to get rid of voices she doesn't like.
	By the way, that's something the left is perfectly fine with doing.
	Folks on the left suggest that neutrality does not mean that the right should be allowed on the platform.
	They believe that neutrality means only facts should be spoken, and when they say fact, what they mean is leftist perspective.
	This is an agenda that is pushed by an enormous number of people on the left where they say, well, we don't want fake balance.
	What we actually want is just the truth.
	And the truth is the world is how we see it.
	This is why I push back against a lot of the push from the right that we should regulate Facebook.
	But as I say to these companies, you want the right to rally around a sort of libertarian principle that you should be left alone.
	You need to be transparent.
	You need to tell us what you are doing.
	That doesn't mean you have to give away proprietary algorithms.
	It does mean we need to know the inputs.
	We need to know what are the factors you are using to decide whether or not to downgrade news.
	When you say, at Facebook for example, that we need trusted sources, how are you deciding what a trusted source looks like?
	Is that decided by the same people who like CNN and the New York Times?
	Because then you're taking the endemic mistrust of the media and you're filtering it up to Facebook.
	We didn't trust CNN or the New York Times.
	Now you're calling them trusted sources and benefiting them.
	What do you think we are going to think of you?
	Do we feel like that is a restraint of trade in the sense that you're downplaying particular companies without actually telling them that's happening and there are no rivals in the market?
	It leaves the door open.
	So more transparency from big tech is the solution to this.
	Government pressure for more transparency, voluntary transparency seems good.
	The sort of arbitrary nature of antitrust law being used to target businesses that are not liked on one side of the political eye or another, I think it's a huge, huge, huge mistake.
	Wait till Elizabeth Warren is in charge, guys.
	And then you'll see how much you enjoy this routine.
	Okay, time for some things that I like.
	So, things that I like today.
	There is a series that I was unaware of called Legion.
	It is based on comic book series.
	And it stars the dude from Downton Abbey.
	I can never remember his name.
	Dan something.
	Dan Stevens.
	And the series is really quirky and really weird.
	And it's also pretty compelling.
	It's about a superhero who's a telepath, but he thinks that he's a paranoid schizophrenic.
	And so, it's shot in this really weird, jolty, bizarre style.
	It's kind of fascinating.
	It's pretty psychedelic.
	Here's a little bit of the preview of Legion.
	Just tell me what happened next.
	Look.
	I don't know.
	It's fuzzy.
	You went off your medication.
	Wait.
	Why?
	Looking for the truth.
	Which you promised to tell.
	I told you they took her.
	I told you they took her.
	Sydney Barrett, the girl who disappeared.
	She didn't disappear.
	She took my place and I took hers.
	Wait, what?
	The show is really weird and really quirky and quite bizarre.
	So you can check it out.
	It's kind of fun.
	OK, other things that I like today.
	So today is the day.
	Today is the day in which all secrets are revealed.
	We learned earlier today that Robert Mueller basically had nothing.
	He suggested at one point during his testimony that he did not indict Trump because of the OLC opinion that you can't indict a sitting president.
	But then he also suggested that principles of fairness The principles of fairness were involved.
	In other words, there are no real big talking points for the Democrats coming out of that hearing.
	Mueller had nothing, right?
	Mueller did not have the goods on President Trump.
	And Democrats were hoping that he would spill the goods on President Trump.
	That all fell apart for them.
	So there was a day of that secret revealed.
	It is also a day in which the story of State Representative Erica Thomas completely comes apart.
	So you'll recall State Representative Erica Thomas of Georgia.
	Just a few days ago, she claimed over the weekend that she was at a Publix grocery store and she was in the checkout line.
	And she was in the express checkout line with 15 to 20 items.
	And a man said to her, Ma'am, you are in the express checkout line and you have too many items.
	And she apparently, according to the dude, started screaming at him, at which point he called her lazy.
	And then she claims that he told her to go back where she came from.
	Deliberately evoking the words of President Trump with regard to the squad, and deliberately evoking the chants of the crowd with regard to Ilhan Omar.
	That was the pitch.
	The pitch for the story was that Trumpian racism and xenophobia is broadly crossing the country, and here is an example of it hitting somebody in their everyday life.
	She's just an innocent woman at the grocery store, and this evil white Republican And then she comes up and starts quoting Trump at her while wearing a MAGA hat and carrying a Subway sandwich or something.
	And then, it turns out, not so much.
	The guy who she confronted, who confronted her, was apparently a Cuban Democrat.
	Not only that, he fully denied that she ever said that.
	And then she came out and said, yeah, he might not have said, go back where you came from.
	I might have just sort of made that up.
	Well now, there's witness testimony as to what exactly happened in this case.
	This is according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
	A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state rep Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn't hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report.
	A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas continually tell Eric Sparks to, quote, go back where you came from, but did not hear Sparks utter those words to Thomas.
	So in other words, it sounds like she completely made this up, and not only did she make it up, she's the one who said this to the guy, right?
	So, she claims this white man came and said, go back where you came from, and then she's weeping, in the video she's crying, because how could this sort of racism and bigotry exist in America?
	And then a woman was like, uh, actually lady, you said that to him.
	So you got this right, but like, not at all.
	Lefoto negative.
	Sparks admitted calling the Democrat an expletive during the run-in, saying he was upset she was at an express aisle in the grocery store with too many items, but he said he didn't tell her to go back where she came from.
	Thomas' attorney, Gerald Griggs, said the officer's report shows the case needs additional investigation.
	Aha.
	Because the employee and another witness, who also said he didn't hear Sparks use the phrase, quote, didn't hear the initial argument.
	He said he's interviewed three other customers who heard the exchange.
	Top authorities said they don't intend to file criminal charges in the case.
	Right, because it's not criminal.
	Even if he said that, that's not criminal.
	This is still the United States.
	We don't prosecute people for saying mean things to one another.
	The back and forth has led to new scrutiny, says the AJC, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that mirrors the nation's political divide.
	Some conservatives cast Thomas as a version of Jussie Smollett.
	I mean, so far, that's sort of the evidence, isn't it?
	So all of this has fallen apart for her.
	It is a day of secrets revealed.
	It turns out that she apparently said exactly the thing, according to witness testimony, that she claims that the bad guy said.
	Sparks made a statement on Tuesday.
	He said he wasn't surprised the cop authorities decided not to file charges.
	He said the police report speaks for itself.
	He says, everyone that knows me knows I'm anti-hate, anti-bigot, anti-racism.
	Sadly, too much of media isn't fact-checking items, or they're just taking the word of a politician when they do a live Facebook or a Twitter post.
	Correct.
	OK, so that is a story of the day when it comes to secrets being revealed.
	Other secrets being revealed.
	According to Amanda Prestigiacomo over at DailyWire.com, Senator Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign has been hit with an unfair labor practice complaint, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
	It turns out that he is a vicious, brutal capitalist.
	Turns out that Bernie Sanders, as I've said before, Marx in the streets, Hayek in the sheets, baby.
	That guy is ready to crack down on his labor force when he needs more work from them for the same pay.
	The complaint was filed on July 19th by an individual in Indiana who claims that the Sanders campaign took part in illegal employee interrogation and retaliation against staffers.
	According to Bloomberg Law, a copy of the charge has not yet been made public, but the agency's July 22nd docket lists five potential violations of the National Labor Relations Act.
	Here are the five allegations.
	One, concerted activities, retaliation, discharge, discharge, discipline, repudiation, mediation of contract, and interrogation, including polling.
	The complaint is just more embarrassing news for the self-identified democratic socialist.
	Over the weekend, of course, Bernie Sanders had to cut staffers hours to accommodate his routinely advocated $15 minimum wage.
	He also scolded some on his campaign for going to the press to discuss the internal negotiations.
	Pretty awesome stuff.
	So the National Labor Relations Board is going to now be investigating Bernie Sanders because all justice shall be done.
	So, good times, good times.
	I'm pleased to see that Bernie Sanders is learning that his own employees may not, in fact, be the best employees, and that Bernie Sanders has been relegated to now treating them in vicious, capitalist, terrible, terrible ways.
	I will say, it would not surprise me at all if it turns out that one of these staffers is just basically a member of another campaign in disguise, and this is an attempt to take down Sanders.
	I think that's a possibility.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Now at the same time that Democrats like Bernie Sanders Bill de Blasio is pitching a new bill of rights for employees that would outlaw firing them.
	Here is Bill de Blasio with his crazy plans as he strangles a groundhog under the table.
	Giant weird Bill de Blasio, unpopular in his own town, now campaigning for president on the basis of being a weirdo.
	Here he is.
	My proposal is really clear.
	I call it a bill of rights on purpose.
	Because it's not just enough to give lip service to working people.
	We need to enshrine these rights.
	So for example, right now in America, folks can get fired for no cause whatsoever.
	This legislation I'm proposing, what I would enact as president, is that there has to be just cause for any termination.
	There has to be due process.
	Right now in America, there's no guarantee of time off, no matter how much you work.
	Every other industrialized country in the world guarantees paid vacation days, but this one?
	My proposal is minimum two weeks paid vacation for every American worker.
	We're going to put that into law in New York this year.
	Okay, so you are going to have a right to a voice on the job, so apparently you can completely humiliate your employer and say whatever you want in the workplace, which is going to work until somebody says something conservative, at which point they're fired.
	There will be a right to paid time off, which, again, is a right against an employer that you bargained with to take the job.
	What if you don't want to take the paid time off?
	Or what if the employer can't hire as many people, specifically because now he has to pay you to take vacation?
	But most of all, the idea that an employer is supposed to tell the government why they're firing an employee You wanna gum up the labor market?
	You wanna make it so that people are less likely to hire people they find risky?
	This is the way to do it.
	Really, the predictable result of this is that people are less likely to hire the marginal employee.
	So you're only going to hire the employee that you think is guaranteed to do the job.
	So the people who are gonna be hurt the hardest by this, the hurt the most, are people who have a bad record of employment, people who probably, I would guess, just based on statistics, are minorities.
	Because if you hire somebody who is a minority and then they claim that you're firing them 'cause of racism and you say, "Well, no, I'm just firing you 'cause you're a bad employee." It's a lot harder to do that than presumably if you hire a white employee and you fire him because he's doing a bad job.
	It's hard for him to claim racism.
	There are predictable effects to all of this.
	But Democrats don't care about predictable effects.
	All they care about is the virtue signaling of claiming that employers are evil and employees are wonderful.
	All of which is sometimes true and is mostly not true.
	Mostly, it turns out that employers and employees are fairly good people overall.
	And that when people get fired, very often it's because they're not doing the job or because there's a conflict.
	Trying to police this stuff on the government level is pretty tyrannical, but I guess Bill de Blasio is used to that.
	Okay, we'll be back here later for two additional hours of content.
	More on the ongoing Mueller saga.
	We'll be back then.
	See you then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
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	Edited by Adam Sievitz.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
	Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	Robert Mueller is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, and earlier this morning, a Volkswagen pulled into the Capitol Rotunda, and onlookers watched with delight and wonder as all 235 congressional Democrats poured out of the car until Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler finally emerged, wearing a baggy polka dot outfit, gigantic shoes, white makeup, and a fright wig, and announced to reporters that he did not want the hearing to turn into some kind of circus.
	We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.

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