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Sept. 27, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:41

Is The Democratic Theory Already Collapsing? | Ep. 870

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	Impeachment moves forward, but what if there's no cover-up and no quid pro quo?
	Plus, President Trump calls a whistleblower a spy.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	All righty, so let's start with the latest developments according to ENM News, which I have not heard of, but they are in fact reporting that Democrats are aiming for a fast-focused impeachment inquiry They want to get this thing done before the end of the year.
	According to E&M News, a crucial cache of evidence in hand, House Democrats moved quickly on Thursday with an impeachment inquiry they said would be focused tightly on President Trump's dealings with Ukraine, using an incendiary whistleblower complaint as a roadmap for their investigation.
	The complaint landed like a bombshell on Capitol Hill Thursday morning after its release by the House Intelligence Committee.
	Democrats quickly seized on its narrative of allegations against Mr. Trump, chock full of potentially damning detail, intriguing threads, and characters who could become witnesses in the nascent inquiry as an outline for their work.
	After months of plotting investigation to determine whether they had grounds to impeach Mr. Trump, Democrats were working feverishly to build a case on the Ukraine matter, with some lawmakers saying they could move within a month or six weeks, possibly drafting articles of impeachment by the end of October.
	So in a second, we're going to go through the actual allegations because as I have been saying all along, there are only a few theories of impeachment that even theoretically work.
	One is quid pro quo, right?
	That's an actual theory of impeachment.
	The president committed some sort of actual crime of bribery in which he held back Ukrainian military aid and made clear to the Ukrainians that this was unless they investigated his chief political rival in the 2020 election as he sought Joe Biden, right?
	That'd be the quid pro quo argument.
	Then there was the cover-up argument.
	That was the idea that the Trump administration had tried to cover up the so-called quid pro quo, or tried to cover up illegally materials that Congress should have.
	And that goes back, that theory, to the Watergate cover-up-is-worse-than-the-crime theory of impeachment.
	And then finally, there was the kind of miasmatic theory of impeachment.
	And the miasmatic theory of impeachment is President Trump is generally corrupt.
	We don't like him so much.
	And so we'll sort of suggest that generally he shouldn't be telling the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on his political rivals, even if he is not withholding U.S.
	taxpayer dollars or using his power as the president to do this sort of stuff.
	And that theory really does not hold water because the fact is the presidents are constantly talking in both their capacity as presidents and as candidates.
	Barack Obama did this famously in 2012 when he said to Dmitry Medvedev, then the president of Russia, that he would give the Russians flexibility after the election if they would back off for now.
	Was that an abuse of his power?
	Yeah, kind of.
	But did that mean it was impeachable?
	Probably not, because the president does have wide powers inside the purview of foreign policy.
	Okay, with all of that said, the going theory here is that if the Democrats impeach Trump and it's on weak grounds, then it sort of hurts them.
	And the polls are not showing that so much.
	The polls have immediately shifted In favor of impeachment, not totally, but at least it's now even support, which is what you would expect.
	Because the fact is that as soon as Democrats launch something, and people who are generally imposed to impeachment, suddenly a bunch of Democrats snap into place, and they are very much in favor of impeachment, and all the Republicans rally to Trump's defense.
	So basically, his approval ratings mirror his support against impeachment, and then there are like 17% of the American population, 15 to 17% of the American population, We don't know enough to know the answer as to whether Trump should be impeached or not.
	Okay, the latest poll on this comes courtesy of Morning Consult.
	According to Morning Consult, voter support for impeachment matched its highest point of Donald Trump's presidency as he faced a whistleblower allegation that he pressured Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, with more impeachment supporters than ever before saying he committed an impeachable offense, according to Morning Consult political polling.
	The new September 24th to 26th poll of about 1,600 registered voters conducted as Nancy Pelosi endorsed an impeachment inquiry and details emerged about the president's pressure on Ukraine found the public divided at 43% on the question of whether Congress should begin proceedings to remove Trump from office.
	Okay, so that's not even a divide on impeachment itself, right?
	That's a divide on whether they should begin proceedings.
	So a lot of folks are like, okay, we can begin proceedings, but where are we on total impeachment?
	That is, however, a net swing of 13 percentage points in favor of impeachment since a poll conducted over the weekend.
	The figure for support rose seven points.
	The opposition dropped six points.
	Now, that is what you would expect given the massive amount of media coverage that has attended the Ukraine story.
	Most of the shift occurred, a lot of the shift actually occurred among Democrats.
	There's a 13 point shift in favor of impeachment among Democrats, there's about a 6 point shift in favor of impeachment among Independents, and about a 5 point shift among Republicans in favor of impeachment.
	Those numbers nearly matched an August 2018 poll conducted as Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, and Michael Cohen, his ex-personal lawyer, were both convicted of crimes stemming from the Mueller investigation.
	In that poll, 42% of voters supported impeachment, 42% opposed it.
	So in other words, every time there's a story that raises above the waterline with regard to impeachment, people are immediately split half and half.
	But, as the details come out, we tend to recede back into, nah, we're not so up for the impeachment thing, and really, if you want to get rid of him, then what you could do, if you really want to, is you could, you know, let us vote.
	And I think that's where we will end up.
	I think that as time goes on, the American people are less and less likely to support impeachment, and more and more likely to say, guys, looking at the calendar, it's already the end of September.
	I mean, we're basically 13 months out from an election here.
	If you can't hold on for 13 months, I don't know what to tell you.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	So as I say, the polls are demonstrating that the American public are kind of split half and half, but that just means that this thing is up in the air.
	And Democrats want to move fast, which makes sense if they think they've got enough evidence, but here's my problem.
	I'm not seeing the evidence that they've got enough evidence.
	Multiple Democratic lawmakers, according to the Washington Post, Are suggesting that there is no formal timeline for the inquiry, but the need for speed comes as Nancy Pelosi is under pressure from vulnerable freshmen to keep the investigation narrowly focused and disciplined.
	And this means that all of the swing district Democrats are saying, let's get this thing done, because at the very least, if it goes sideways, we still have a year to recover from the fact that the impeachment effort went sideways.
	The emerging strategy of a rapid investigation focused mainly on the explosive accusation that Trump urged Ukraine's president to dig up dirt about a political rival comes as lawmakers prepare to leave Washington on Friday for a two-week recess.
	In addition to Trump's call, a whistleblower complaint claimed that unidentified White House officials tried to keep the conversation a secret within the government.
	Pelosi told reporters earlier in the day, the consensus in our caucus is that our focus now is on this allegation.
	This is a cover-up.
	So, this whole thing now is about Ukraine.
	It's not about anything else.
	It's not about Russia.
	It is not about emoluments.
	It is about solely, apparently, and completely the Ukraine allegations.
	Okay, so now we arrive at a serious question, which is whether the Ukraine allegations are actually the grounds to go after President Trump.
	Number one, whether they are legitimate, and number two, we do have to ask, because of the way in which this came up, whether this might be a setup.
	Now, I think that the whistleblower, and based on the evidence right now, the whistleblower heard something he thought was suspicious, reported it up the chain, but, but, but, there is a caveat.
	And that is that Representative Adam Schiff is someone who I believe to be deeply corrupt.
	And the reason I think that Adam Schiff is deeply corrupt is not because I think somebody's paying him off, but because I think he will cut any corner, bear any burden, in order to get President Trump.
	And that was evidenced by his behavior during the Trump-Russia investigation.
	During which he went on television each and every night and claimed that he had somewhere hidden in the back room he had his secret information that was certainly going to get Trump over and over and over every night on CNN there's a bombshell coming there's a bombshell coming and then here came the bombshell and it was nothing right there's nothing there and so Schiff has now shifted his focus to the Ukraine investigation and this has led him to do things like
	What he called a parody conversation where he basically made up a conversation between Trump and Ukraine and claimed that that is what the tenor of the conversation was without proper evidence and It would raise serious questions to me about the whistleblower.
	It would.
	It would raise serious questions about the nature of the whistleblower if it turned out that the whistleblower didn't go through proper channels.
	So, so far, the honesty of the whistleblower is only in question.
	It's only in question with regard to whether he followed the proper protocols.
	If he followed the proper protocols, there's really nothing to see here, right?
	And so what you see is Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, testifying yesterday that he believes that the whistleblower did the right thing.
	You don't have any reason to accuse them of disloyalty to our country or suggest they're beholden to some other country, do you?
	Sir, absolutely not.
	I believe that the whistleblower followed the steps every step of the way.
	However, the statute was one in this situation involving the President of the United States who is not in the intelligence community or matters underneath my supervision did not meet the criteria for urgent concern.
	I'm just asking about the whistleblower right now.
	I think the whistleblower did the right thing.
	Okay, so that's McGuire defending himself as well, saying, yes, the whistleblower did the right thing, but also I did the right thing, because this didn't actually meet the definition of urgent concern.
	But the point here is not actually McGuire, the point is Schiff.
	Because Schiff goes on to accuse McGuire of a cover-up, as though there was this whistleblower report, and the whistleblower report went through all the proper channels, then McGuire tried to cover it up.
	But as we will see, there's a little bit of evidence today that maybe the whistleblower didn't actually go through the right process.
	And I'll explain in just one second.
	Here's Adam Schiff blaming McGuire, saying McGuire broke the law.
	By law, the whistleblower complaint, which brought this gross misconduct to light, should have been presented to this committee weeks ago, and by you, Mr. Director, under the clear letter of the law.
	And yet it wasn't.
	Why you chose to allow the subject of the complaint to play a role in deciding whether Congress would ever see the complaint.
	Why you stood silent When an intelligence professional under your care and protection was ridiculed by the president.
	We look forward to your explanation.
	Okay, so the idea here is that McGuire did something deeply, deeply corrupt.
	And then, this is backed, supposedly today, by a piece in the New York Times.
	Julian Barnes, Michael Schmidt, Adam Goldman, Katie Benner.
	They got the whole team together for this one.
	And the argument of the piece is that the White House was aware of the whistleblower allegations soon after President Trump's call with Ukraine's leaders.
	They knew about it and then they tried to quash it as the narrative that they're trying to build.
	It says the White House learned that a CIA officer had lodged allegations against President Trump's dealings with Ukraine even as the officer's whistleblower complaint was moving through a process meant to protect him against reprisals.
	People familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
	The officer first shared information about potential abuse of power and a White House cover-up with the CIA's top lawyer through an anonymous process, some of the people said.
	The lawyer shared the officer's concern with the White House and Justice Department officials following policy.
	Around the same time, the officer separately filed the whistleblower complaint.
	Okay, well, once they shared the officer's concerns with the White House and Justice Department officials, following policy, nothing illegal has happened here.
	Nothing bad has happened here.
	Right?
	Once, like, if the policy is that the White House is supposed to be notified, and then they're notified, then that's not a cover-up.
	But there is something that is suspicious about how the whistleblower went through the process.
	And that is Adam Schiff.
	Okay, so Adam Schiff, August 20- Here's the timeline.
	This phone call happens, July 25th.
	The whistleblower starts pushing this complaint around through the system August 12th.
	The Congress is made aware of the existence of the whistleblower complaint on September 9th.
	That is when Congress is made aware by the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community that there is this whistleblower complaint that he has deemed an urgent concern.
	That's September 9th.
	Here's a tweet from Adam Schiff on August 28th.
	August 28th.
	More than two weeks before Congress is supposed to be aware that the complaint exists.
	It is more than two weeks.
	Adam Schiff tweets out, Trump is withholding vital military aid to Ukraine while his personal lawyer seeks help from the Ukraine government to investigate his political opponent.
	It doesn't take a stable genius to see the magnitude of this conflict or how destructive it is to our national security.
	Okay, that is the whistleblower complaint, right?
	He is now tweeting out two and a half weeks in advance of Congress knowing about the complaint, what the complaint actually says.
	So either that is a massive coincidence, or Adam Schiff can read tea leaves like no one else, or somebody in the whistleblower's camp is talking to Adam Schiff.
	And the latter seems most likely, considering that the original whistleblower complaint was addressed to Richard Burr and Adam Schiff.
	So what that means is that all of the talk about the whistleblower going through proper procedures and protocols, which is what McGuire said he did, that raises some questions about whether or not this actually was more than that and may in fact be a politically motivated hit in which the whistleblower went around the proper procedures and protocols and directly started coordinating with Adam Schiff, just in time for Adam Schiff to blow this whole thing up.
	You know, why does that matter?
	Well, it matters as to the credibility of the whistleblower.
	It matters as to whether we consider the whistleblower a true whistleblower who saw something disturbing and decided to elevate it up the chain using protocols, or whether the whistleblower was in fact a partisan who was coordinating with fellow partisan Democrats in order to put together a sort of thinly sourced story that is impeachable conduct on the part of the President of the United States.
	Now in a second, we'll see the Democrats are very enthusiastic about it, but as I say, there are three theories of impeachment.
	All three are kind of falling apart on impact.
	I mean, like, within a week of the allegations first breaking.
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	Okay, so the Democrats are going to ignore for the moment whether or not the whistleblower followed appropriate protocols.
	That Schiff tweet.
	To me, raises some very serious questions about that.
	And they're very enthusiastic.
	Chris Matthews over at MSAC last night.
	Very enthusiastic.
	They got him.
	They finally got him.
	This is the moment little Trumpy goes down.
	Chris Matthews, go!
	Democrats, if they've got brains and any political savvy, will grab this moment.
	No more hearings, no more subpoenas, no more contempt citations, no more process.
	They've got him.
	And they got him because imagine this is a high crime.
	It's not something in the statutes.
	Imagine if in the summer of 1940, Churchill facing the Nazis all alone.
	It's like the O.J.
	trial.
	You get the focus on who killed the woman, who killed the other guy, who did it, and a year later, it focuses all over the place.
	They don't need more hearings.
	They don't need more evidence.
	They got him.
	It's like O.J.
	Simpson.
	I come on in here, my hair's all rumpled, looking like I just slept two hours after a drinking binge.
	Just kind of roll on in here and talk about how they got him.
	They finally got him.
	They finally got little Trumpy.
	Chris Matthews, I mean, let me say, So, um, no.
	And then Maxine Waters, the most intelligent among us.
	I mean, Maxine Waters is really a stellar exemplar of congressional brilliance.
	She was on with Matt Fredo on CNN, and she explained that the grounds for impeachment are there.
	What exactly are those grounds, Maxine Waters?
	Please do tell us.
	There is enough here for articles of impeachment.
	Absolutely.
	Already.
	The president himself admitted that he had a telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine.
	He also said he did talk to him about Biden.
	And I believe that in that conversation, he did exactly what is being said about the conversation by others, that he was asking this president to help him with the kind of investigation That would lead to dirt on Biden.
	You would accept no other explanation?
	No, there is no other explanation.
	Okay, well, that's not enough.
	Okay, that's not enough.
	If the allegation is that Trump asked for dirt on Biden, you know who else asked for dirt on their political opponent during the 2016 campaign?
	From the Ukrainians?
	That'd be Hillary Clinton, of course.
	By the way, side note to that Adam Schiff tweet, the one from August 28th, two and a half weeks before he's supposed to know about the complaint.
	The first reply on that tweet is from Alexandra Chalupa.
	She tweeted, I have a lot of information on this topic, Congressman.
	Well-documented information that may be of use to your committee, including coordination of the Trump administration and the Russian Federation to target American citizens and obstruct justice.
	Who's Alexandra Chalupa?
	She was the DNC source working with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Ukrainian embassy in 2016 to target Trump.
	So, all of this kind of stinks to high heaven.
	Okay, so, with that said, we have now come to the two theories of the crime.
	Theory number one, President Trump is engaged in a cover-up.
	So CNBC reported about the whistleblower complaint yesterday.
	Damning allegations against President Donald Trump and White House officials were exposed Thursday with the release by Congress of a complaint by a whistleblower who's a member of the U.S.
	intelligence community.
	Among them is the whistleblower's belief that Trump's actions were so obviously egregious that White House officials promptly launched a cover-up to minimize the chance that Trump's efforts to have a foreign power dig up dirt on leading Democratic presidential contender would become public.
	The complaint says that more than a half dozen U.S.
	officials provided information details in the report over a four-month period.
	Okay, and the deepest, most difficult allegation, and this is the one that was headlined by both the New York Times and the Washington Post, is that senior White House officials intervened to quote-unquote, lock down records of the call with the Ukrainian president, which quote, according to the whistleblower, underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
	And so that is the allegation.
	That White House lawyers directed White House officials to remove the electronic transcript of the Zelensky call from the computer system where such transcripts are normally stored.
	The transcript was then loaded into a separate electronic computer system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.
	Okay, so the claim here seems to be twofold.
	One is that it's somehow a violation of law for Trump to store a transcript in one place versus another place.
	That's crap.
	The president's the head of the executive branch.
	He can store this information however he wants.
	He can classify, he can declassify.
	There's no regulation on the books, there's no law on the books that suggests that Trump has to hand around transcripts of confidential conversations that he has with foreign leaders to everybody in the executive branch.
	So that is not in and of itself a law-breaking activity.
	So the claim has to be instead that President Trump specifically hid this conversation because he was afraid that this conversation was going to get out.
	So it's not criminal for him to hide the conversation, but it is indicative of a mindset in which he felt he had done something wrong and in which his lawyers felt he had done something wrong.
	There is only one problem with this story.
	That problem It was uncovered by none other than Josh Dowsey and Carol Lennig over at the Washington Post.
	And they don't understand what they did in this piece.
	Because they have a piece today called, So everybody is going to studiously ignore the points of this article.
	But this article completely eviscerates the argument that Trump was covering up the Ukrainian phone call because this phone call was specifically bad.
	What does this article say?
	It says that it was common practice in this White House for years to hide the transcripts of phone calls with foreign leaders.
	Why?
	Because they figured that the administration was leaky.
	Why would they figure the administration was leaky?
	Because the administration's leaky!
	Because this Ukrainian transcript was immediately circulated to the extent that some rando in the CIA apparently got a hold of the basic idea of it with specifics broad enough that he could file a whistleblower complaint.
	You wonder why maybe Trump wanted to keep his conversation secret?
	Maybe because he doesn't trust people in what he calls the deep state.
	And for good reason, meaning there are career employees in the intelligence community and inside the State Department and inside his own administration who don't like him and would like to leak that information to the public.
	And so for years, this is the Washington Post, not me, for years, Trump has been taking this sort of stuff and putting it in secret compartments.
	Which means that this specific conversation is not the rationale for the hiding.
	He's been hiding this crap for years, not because he's corrupt, but because he's sick of being leaked on.
	Here's the piece from the Washington Post that completely destroys the cover-up narrative that Democrats are pushing today.
	First of all, the cover-up narrative makes no sense.
	It really doesn't.
	I mean, what is the cover-up exactly?
	He's covering up a transcript that he released this week?
	To the public?
	That both you and I have read?
	That he's covering up the whistleblower complaint that we read yesterday on the air?
	That's a bleep cover-up.
	I mean, it's a crap cover-up right there.
	That is a crappy cover-up.
	Anyway, the Washington Post reports, the White House has taken extraordinary steps over the past two years to block details of President Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders from becoming public, following embarrassing disclosures early in his administration that enraged the president and created a sense of paranoia among his top aides.
	The number of aides allowed to listen on secure drop lines was slashed.
	The list of government officials who could review a memo of the call's contents was culled.
	Fewer copies of transcripts went to agencies, and they were stamped with the eyes only do not copy.
	And some officials who deliver call memos had to sign for the records to create a custody record if they were to leak, according to people familiar with the moves, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them.
	At one point in 2018, Defense Department officials were asked to send back transcripts of calls to the White House after Trump aides grew worried they could be disclosed, according to former senior administration officials.
	And then they say that this Ukrainian thing is part of a pattern.
	Okay, so let me get this straight.
	It's a cover-up if he's been doing the exact same thing with every other call for two years?
	That ain't gonna cut it, that ain't gonna cut it, so we'll get to more on the so-called cover-up in one second, then we'll get to the quid pro quo, which in and of itself is collapsing.
	We'll get to that in one second as well.
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	Okay, so once again, just to restate, the three theories of the case of impeachment.
	I'm gonna keep saying this because it's important that we clarify and we're organized in our thinking.
	Key theory number one, Trump merely asking the Ukrainians for information on Biden is impeachable.
	Nope.
	Not.
	Not true.
	Okay, not true.
	It isn't.
	It's not a crime.
	It's not a misdemeanor.
	No.
	It's bad.
	He shouldn't do it.
	He shouldn't be telling the Ukrainians to investigate his political opponents.
	I don't like it.
	You don't like it.
	Nobody likes it.
	Not impeachable.
	Okay, theory number two.
	There's a massive cover-up.
	Trump took the doc- he knew something was wrong.
	He took the documents, he stacked them in an electronic folder, and then he covered it up.
	Except that you have access to the transcripts, I have access to the transcripts.
	The House was given access to the complaint, you were given access to the complaint, I was given access to the complaint.
	So this is the worst cover-up in all of human history.
	And third point, he didn't specifically cover up this transcript.
	According to the Washington Post, he's been doing this sort of thing for years because he's afraid of leaking.
	Why would he be afraid of leaking?
	Well, maybe because things like the content of the whistleblower complaint are being leaked weeks in advance to Adam Schiff, who's then tweeting them out to the broad public weeks before they are publicly available.
	Maybe that.
	Okay, so this brings us to the final and most powerful theory of the impeachment case, and that is the quid pro quo.
	That is the idea that President Trump withheld the military aid in favor of trying to get the Ukrainians to investigate all of his favorite political causes.
	That's the theory.
	And the transcript comes out earlier this week, and the transcript at least lends credence to that theory.
	The transcript can be read in a couple of different ways.
	One of those ways is Zelensky trying to pry military aid from President Trump.
	And President Trump basically saying, I need you to do a bunch of things.
	I want you to investigate the 2016 election.
	Also, if you could investigate Joe Biden, that'd be great.
	That's one way of reading it.
	The other way of reading it is Zelensky trying to wheedle Trump for help.
	And Trump basically being like, you know what?
	I need you to not be corrupt.
	And my elements of corruption are, I need you to investigate all of these things.
	And also, I'm not making your aid conditional on that.
	I'm just saying that's something that I'd like to see you do.
	Those are the two ways of reading that conversation.
	Well, obviously the Democrats would like to read this in the most nefarious way, and so Cory Booker, the failing presidential candidate from New Jersey, the senator from New Jersey, Mr. Potato Head, he's on with Ali Velshi over on MSNBC, and he suggests that President Trump is withholding aid, and that is in fact an act of treason, which I guess means that you're gonna what, take Trump out and shoot him?
	It's an act of treason.
	By the way, Bernie Sanders also called President Trump treasonous yesterday.
	Local man who has praised every communist dictatorship of the last 50 years has words about treason.
	Anyway, here's Cory Booker making that same general point.
	It's not surprising that Donald Trump doesn't know the difference between patriotism and treason.
	If there's any treasonous actions here, it is coming from the White House as is being indicated by what we're discovering.
	And so here again is Donald Trump with sounding more like a threatening thug than giving forth the ideals of a statesman.
	And and his rhetoric, you know, God, he gives license to people to do dangerous things from his failure to condemn white supremacists to even the way he talks about what is patriotic duty.
	OK, so this is this is a bit of an overreach.
	The reason that it's a bit of an overreach is because we're going to go through a couple of rather important notes here.
	Okay, and here's the point.
	If you're gonna make a quid pro quo, then you actually have to make the quid clear.
	If I'm gonna threaten you, then I actually have to make the threat clear.
	If I want you to cast Johnny Fontaine in your new movie, I'm gonna need to leave a horse's head in your bed.
	If I want you to cancel your contract with the bandleader, I'm gonna need your brains or your signature on the piece of paper.
	A threat is a threat only when there is an actual threat, and only when you know there's a threat.
	Because if I just say to you, I'd love for you to cast Johnny Fontaine in your latest picture, and you say no, and I say, No threat has taken place.
	That's called a conversation.
	Once the horse's head shows up in the bed, then the threat is made amply clear.
	Hey, so, the transcript of the conversation is read in a certain light.
	Only if the Ukrainians know that military aid is being withheld.
	And it seems pretty simple.
	It seems like a pretty simple precondition.
	If they know that the aid is being withheld, then that obviously creates a darker look for the conversation.
	Because if they don't know the aid is being withheld, then they're negotiating for what?
	Like just generalized better relations with Trump.
	If they know the aid is being withheld, then obviously that makes the conversation look more desperate.
	It makes it look like President Trump is pressuring.
	Well, there are a bevy of sources, as we are about to explore, that suggest that the Ukrainians had no idea that the military aid that was being withheld by the Trump administration as of July was actually being withheld.
	Really?
	That's not me saying that.
	That is the Whistleblower complaint saying that.
	That is the New York Times saying that.
	That is ABC News saying that.
	That is the Washington Post saying that.
	So we're supposed to all believe that a quid pro quo happened, but the baseline sources here say that the Ukrainians weren't even aware that there was a quid.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about relaxing, feeling better about life, feeling better about yourself, giving up to God, what it is that he is in control of.
	You can only control the stuff that is in front of you.
	One of the things that I do as an Orthodox Jew is I pray three times daily.
	And it is a comfort to me.
	I think that it is important.
	It puts me back in touch with things that are larger than myself.
	Well, if you haven't really had time to take the time out to pray, or if maybe your praying hasn't been exactly what you want it to be, there's a great, great new app and new website out there, and it's called Pray.com.
	It's the number one app for prayer and sleep.
	Both anxiety and sleep deficiency can do serious damage to your brain and your body.
	High stress, lack of sleep can make you more prone to accidents and weight gain and depression.
	With Pray.com, You'll discover a new daily and nightly prayer routine, as well as inspirational Bible stories designed to strengthen your faith and lift your spirit.
	It's got Old Testament stuff, it's got New Testament stuff.
	Pray.com gives you motivational daily prayer plans, private and inclusive prayer communities, relaxing bedtime Bible stories that can help you fall asleep.
	I remember I used to have insomnia problems when I was over at Harvard Law School and I'd call up my dad and he would say, you know, why don't you pray a little bit?
	Really, because then you give up control, and it does allow you to relax a lot more.
	Well, this is one thing that Pray.com is great for.
	Hear the Bible come to life through stories like Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments.
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	Right now, my listeners get 60% off a Pray.com premium subscription.
	I think it's wonderful.
	By downloading the Pray.com app at Pray.com slash Ben.
	That's P-R-A-Y.com slash Ben.
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	Find out why at Pray.com slash Ben.
	Pray.com slash Ben.
	It really is awesome and I think fulfilling and pretty terrific.
	Check them out.
	Pray.com slash Ben.
	Okay.
	So, I have a special treat for you today.
	I'm not going to cut off the stream.
	We're going to go all the way to the end because there's too much breaking news.
	We'll get to all that in just a second.
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	Okay, so Quid McPros.
	So we're told that there's a quid-pro-quo.
	Quid-pro-quo.
	Cory Booker says there's a quid-pro-quo.
	Elizabeth Warren says quid-pro-quo.
	Right?
	That it's there.
	That for sure, Trump threatened the Ukrainians.
	He pressured the Ukrainians.
	Pressured and threatened and pushed.
	In order for there to be pressure and threats and pushing, you have to push with something.
	I have to threaten you with something.
	What if you're not aware of something I'm pushing you with?
	Yeah, I remember a while back.
	I have a brother-in-law who is an engineering student, really brilliant kid over in college.
	I won't mention which one for his own safety.
	And I remember when he was a little kid.
	I've been married for 11 years, so I've known him since before he was bar mitzvah.
	And I remember when he was a very little kid, there was a girl in his class who he was sort of friends with and then not friends with and then friends with and not friends with.
	And at one point, I remember him announcing to the table that he was no longer friends with this girl.
	And we said, why aren't you friends with this girl anymore?
	He said, well, she earned too many negative points.
	And we said, well, what do you mean?
	He said, well, I have a system and every time she says something I don't like, I put a point on the board against her and then she earned too many negative points and I don't want to be friends with her anymore.
	And we said, well, was she aware that you had this system, this point system?
	And he said, no.
	And we all laughed because that's silly.
	Meaning like, if you want to incentivize a behavior, you have to make people, you may have to make the consequences clear.
	Okay, so what if, what if, just putting it out there, what if Ukraine had no idea that Trump was withholding military aid?
	What if they had no clue?
	What if that whole conversation with Vladimir Zelensky, between Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, took place with Trump understanding that he was withholding military aid, but Ukraine not knowing at all?
	Not knowing.
	That would be weird, wouldn't it?
	That would sort of undercut the quid pro quo argument, would it not?
	I quote to you today from the Washington Post.
	The whistleblower complaint doesn't dwell upon the quid pro quo too much, saying it wasn't clear Ukraine was even aware that aid was being withheld What it does say is that officials believe Trump dangled a meeting with Zelensky as a reward to play ball.
	So, in other words, it wasn't about military aid at all.
	It was about just, like, the prestige of meeting with Trump.
	That was the big quid pro quo?
	Really?
	That Zelensky had to go investigate Biden or Trump wouldn't, like, get together with him or something?
	Seriously?
	That's the quid pro quo?
	That is a little different, in nature and kind, from, I'm withholding $400 in crucial military aid in a time of war, unless you investigate my political opponent, is it not?
	Little bit different.
	And by the way, that quote from the Washington Post is merely paraphrasing what the whistleblower complaint itself says, quote, As of early August, I heard from U.S.
	officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S.
	aid might be in jeopardy.
	But I do not know how or when they learned of it.
	Now, I'm no expert on time.
	There are people, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who can explain the physics of time to you better than I can.
	But I am of the solid belief that early August is after late July.
	So if Ukrainian officials were only aware that Ukrainian aid was being withheld in August, and the call with Zelensky happened in July, then there can't be a quid pro quo on the call in July, can there?
	Because the quid is not made clear.
	Okay, but don't take my word for it or the whistleblower's word for it.
	Let's take the New York Times' word for it.
	This is a story four days ago, right before the release of the transcript.
	Quote, Mr. Trump did not discuss the delay in the military assistance on the July 25th call with Mr. Zelensky, according to people familiar with the conversation.
	A Ukrainian official said Mr. Zelensky's government did not learn of the delay until about one month after the call.
	So again, the entire theory of the quid pro quo is that Zelensky's sitting there, you know, really sweating it because Trump is withholding 400 million bucks in military aid in a time of war.
	I mean, that was what Chris Matthews said, right?
	That this is just like 1940, if Churchill was fighting the Nazis and the United States tried to pressure Churchill to investigate domestic political opponents, to receive aid during Lend-Lease or something.
	Except that Ukraine was not aware that military aid was being withheld, according to the New York Times.
	Now, wouldn't you imagine?
	Let's say that we had an honest media for just a- I know, I'm being silly.
	I know it's silly.
	But let's imagine we had an honest media for a moment.
	It seems that there would be a few questions they'd want to pursue in this investigation.
	One of them, a serious question would be, did you even know that military aid was being withheld when you were talking to Trump?
	If the answer is no, it's gonna be kinda hard to claim a quid pro quo.
	And it turns out that ABC News did try to follow this rabbit hole, and it ended up completely blowing up on them.
	According to the Washington Free Beacon, an ABC News report that an advisor to the Ukrainian president said any communication with President Trump had to include discussion of former VP Joe Biden, published Wednesday night, fell apart within hours.
	ABC credited its scoop to Sergei Lashchenko, a former member of Ukraine's parliament and a former advisor to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
	Leschenko now disputes the story, denying he told ABC News that discussion of a potential probe into the Biden family's business activity in the country was a precondition for communication with Trump.
	ABC quoted Leschenko as saying, quote, It was a clear fact that Trump wants to meet only if Biden case will be included.
	According to ABC, he added the Biden case was raised many times.
	And Ukrainian officials understood.
	I quoted this story yesterday on the show because this was a very big story.
	Just hours after it was published, Leschenko rejected the story.
	He told Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's Christopher Miller he did not tell ABC that insistence for leaders to discuss the Biden probe was a precondition for the call.
	Leschenko also spoke to BBC's Jonah Fisher, who added that the former Ukrainian official learned of the quid pro quo rumors only from media reports.
	So in other words, what happened here?
	This guy heard the media rumor mongering about a quid pro quo and then he was asked about it and he's like, sounds plausible.
	And then the media ran with that and said, oh, he's a source.
	He has inside information.
	There was a loop, an informational feedback loop.
	Unbelievable.
	Okay, so we now have no information that Zelensky even knew.
	All we need is Zelensky saying the other way, right?
	There are no Ukrainian sources to this point of whom I am aware saying that they knew that military aid was even being withheld when Zelensky has this conversation with Trump.
	I mean, that pretty much takes that quid pro quo case and trashes it, doesn't it?
	Or at least it severely damages it.
	So, in the last 24 hours, the quid pro quo case has started to collapse in on itself like a dying star.
	And the cover-up case, which already was super weak since all the materials are publicly available, it now turns out that was completely exploded by the Washington Post pointing out that, oh, by the way, it wasn't just the Ukraine conversation that Trump was attempting to hide, he's been hiding all his conversations.
	Okay, well, unless you think Trump was trying to bribe everyone on Earth, Then maybe that's just common practice.
	And maybe the reason it's common practice is because Trump correctly is afraid that people inside the administration do not like him and want to leak information about him to Democrats and the press.
	I mean, I don't like... So Trump yesterday, he got in a lot of hot water because he was talking about the whistleblower and people who had talked to the whistleblower and he was ripping on so-called spies.
	He said that these are... Are they whistleblowers or are they spies?
	Spies need to be punished.
	Here's President Trump going off on it.
	I want to know, who's the person that gave the whistleblower?
	Who's the person that gave the whistleblower the information?
	Because that's close to a spy.
	You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, right?
	The spies and treason, right?
	We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.
	Okay, so obviously you don't want the President of the United States going out there and saying that whistleblowers are like spies and should be shot.
	I will point out that Bill Weld did say that the President is a traitor.
	The penalty for treason in the United States is still death.
	Cory Booker said the same thing, but do you want Trump saying that?
	No.
	However, his ire about the whistleblower?
	It's really not justified unless you believe that the whistleblower is a leaker.
	Unless you believe that the whistleblower did not follow proper protocol.
	Now, the acting DNI said that he thought that the whistleblower did follow proper protocol.
	But to go back to that Schiff tweet from August 28th, I'm wondering where he got that info, guys.
	It's a little weird.
	It's a little weird that Adam Schiff, two and a half weeks before the existence of this intelligence complaint, the whistleblower complaint, was even reported to Congress.
	Adam Schiff was tweeting out its contents.
	That makes me think that maybe, just like with the Mueller report, just like with the people in the FBI who didn't like Trump, that maybe there are in fact people inside the administration who do not like Trump.
	And that when a transcript is disseminated, and they interpret it in the worst possible way, because they honestly don't like Trump and they honestly think he's corrupt, and then they all talk about it with each other, and then that is formulated into a whistleblower complaint, and then that whistleblower complaint is leaked to Democrats, in advance of going up the chain.
	That's a problem.
	That is a problem.
	You don't want just, and it's a, by the way, it's a bipartisan problem.
	You don't want the president's private conversations with foreign leaders being subjected to congressional scrutiny at every turn.
	You cannot have a functioning foreign policy that way.
	Congress has the power to declare war, but the president has to have confidential discussions with foreign leaders all the time.
	It was true of Barack Obama.
	It was true of Donald Trump.
	It was interesting.
	Yesterday, there was a woman who called in and she said, you know, to the radio show, and she said, yeah, President Trump, He's constantly in this gray area, right?
	All these conversations show him in this gray area.
	And then another caller called in and said, well, you think Obama wasn't in a gray area when he was like talking with Iran?
	It turns out that the president is constantly operating in this sort of fuzzy gray area when it comes to foreign policy.
	Now, Trump may step into the dog-do on a regular basis.
	He may bring his bizarre sense of what is important, like crowd-strike stories, into conversations with Ukraine.
	But is he acting wildly out of concert with former presidents who are constantly negotiating with foreign adversaries and foreign allies for information, for things we want them to do?
	We don't know, in many cases, because those transcripts aren't made public.
	And Trump, because he is worried, correctly so, about people inside the executive branch who don't like him, has been hiding this stuff for years.
	And then, by the way, again, it's not a cover-up if you say to him, Mr. President, turn it over, and he's like, okay, here.
	That's not a cover-up.
	That's not a cover-up.
	So, here's where we are.
	There is no quid pro quo that we are aware of.
	That transcript, which could be read in a couple different ways, it looks a lot better for Trump if the Ukrainians didn't know that military aid was being withheld.
	And also, the cover-up thing is just not a thing.
	So, where is the impeachable offense, again?
	Where is this?
	Democrats have to charge hard forward, because now that Nancy Pelosi has pre-committed, she has to do it.
	Is it gonna damage her?
	Probably not.
	People who hate Trump, hate Trump.
	People who love Trump, love Trump.
	People in the middle may be annoyed with Nancy Pelosi, but I've never been of the theory that impeaching a president means that you are doomed to lose the next election.
	That's not what happened with Bill Clinton.
	I'd hurt Newt Gingrich to impeach President Clinton, but George W. Bush may have become president in 2000 because Bill Clinton was impeached.
	Remember, Al Gore could not campaign with Bill Clinton because he was so afraid that Bill Clinton's Reputation for being a hound dog would really hurt him.
	It's the reason why Al Gore was tonguing his then-wife, Tipper, on the stage at the DNC, because he was trying to prove what a grand example of fidelity he was.
	Turns out later... But, at the time, that campaign was George W. Bush saying, I'm gonna restore honor to the White House, and Al Gore saying, no, honor is already in the White House.
	Also, Bill Clinton, can you exit through the back door over here?
	So impeachment doesn't necessarily hurt the party that undertakes the impeachment.
	I think Pelosi knows that.
	With that said, I don't see the grounds for impeachment here.
	I don't.
	You want to prove it to me?
	You want to provide me the information?
	I'm always willing to change my opinion with new information, but not based on this information.
	Now, there are a bunch of people in the media who are circling in on comments that have now been made by a couple of different Republicans about how many Senate Republicans would vote for Trump's impeachment if there were a secret vote.
	So Jeff Flake, who is the former senator from Arizona, and obviously he and Trump have been longtime adversaries, he apparently suggested, quote, I heard someone say if there were a private vote on impeachment in the Senate, there would be 30 Republican votes.
	That's not true.
	There would be at least 35.
	And people are taking that to mean, oh, well, that means that secretly they want to impeach him, but they're cowards.
	Secretly, they know he's a criminal, but they're cowards.
	Or alternatively, in wish fulfillment land, a lot of Republicans are tired of defending every silly thing that Trump says.
	And in the best of all possible worlds, they would love Trump's policies without the Trumpian nonsense.
	But that does not mean that they would actually vote to impeach him.
	That hypothetical makes no sense.
	If voting in the Senate were secret, then you could simply vote for anything that you wanted.
	The whole point of a representative democracy is that we know how people vote so we can make them answerable to us.
	If I could get everybody in our office together and we could all take a secret vote on how many of them would like to kill me and take my money, I have a feeling it would be fairly unanimous.
	However, that does not mean that if we took an open vote, the feelings would be the same, because there are consequences to voting, and there are standards that have to be upheld when it comes to voting.
	What a dumb line, and the media have been following that line.
	Oh, well, this means that the Republicans, you know, they really want to impeach Trump.
	Okay, no, what it really means is that a lot of Republicans are annoyed with having to defend Trump all the time.
	I'm sure that is true.
	I'm sure, by the way, I'm sure that was true the day after he was elected.
	I'm sure that if Republicans had the magical ability in the Senate to snap their fingers and make Trump be replaced by Mike Pence on January 21st, 2017, they would have done it.
	I'm sure they would have.
	Why?
	Because it makes their life easier.
	Because then they don't have to deal with whatever nonsense Trump is saying on Twitter in their Senate elections.
	But that's not how the system works, nor is that how the system should work.
	Now meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, I mean, I will say, White House, Mr. President, stop sending Rudy Giuliani on TV.
	It's a very bad idea.
	Rudy Giuliani's terrible on TV.
	Stop it!
	Turning into Jim Gaffigan over here.
	Stop it!
	Rudy Giuliani was on Laura Ingraham's show suggesting that he is the real whistleblower.
	Like, what is the point of having Rudy Giuliani on TV?
	We don't have to do this.
	You know, the president is pursuing what the Washington Post today has called a scorched earth defense policy.
	It's not necessary.
	It was not necessary with Mueller.
	It wasn't.
	You know why?
	Because they didn't have the goods.
	If they don't have the goods here, it ain't going nowhere.
	And sending out Rudy Giuliani to rail at the wind, a la King Lear, in his crazy stage is not actually a great idea.
	Here's Rudy Giuliani shouting about how he's the real whistleblower.
	I actually think they should all congratulate me.
	Because if it weren't for me, nobody would have uncovered and faced massive corruption by the Vice President of the United States.
	In fact, I'm a legitimate whistleblower.
	I have uncovered corruption that this Washington swamp has been covering up effectively for years.
	And his State Department, you know, asked me to do this.
	So Mike, if you're unhappy with me, I'm sorry, but I accomplished my mission.
	Okay, so again, this does raise, again, there are a couple of outstanding questions that the Trump administration should answer.
	Why is Rudy Giuliani being deployed by the State Department to Ukraine is a big one.
	Like isn't that, like I said all along, there are two questions I don't know the answer to.
	Why Trump withdrew aid from Ukraine in the first place?
	I think that should be answered.
	And two, why the hell is Rudy Giuliani being deployed by the State Department to Ukraine?
	So I'm not saying they're not questions that should be answered by the White House.
	I'm saying that the burden of proof is on Democrats and so far their entire impeachment case hinges on either a cover-up that doesn't exist or a quid pro quo of which by best sourcing, and I'm talking New York Times, whistleblower complaint itself, Washington Post, ABC News, The quid pro quo was not even made, like the Ukrainians weren't even aware of it.
	So you're gonna have to do better than that.
	Also, Trump should, like, really stop.
	Why is Rudy Giuliani on TV?
	Like, what?
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I like.
	So, thing that I like number one today.
	So, as you all know, we advertise with, Birch Gold Group advertises with us.
	And I had the opportunity to sit down with Philip Patrick yesterday and talk a little bit about the reasons why you might want to invest in precious metals, at least take some of your money and diversify a little bit.
	Here's what it sounded like.
	Well, as you know, we here at the Ben Shapiro Show are big fans of Birch Gold.
	Why?
	Well, because I know the people at Birch Gold and they are reliable.
	They're going to give you all the information that you need about investing in precious metals.
	As it turns out, now is a very good time to invest in precious metals, thanks to all the uncertainty and instability.
	Here to discuss all of that is Philip Patrick.
	He's the precious metals specialist over at Birch Gold Group.
	Philip, thanks so much for joining the show.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thanks for having me.
	So, why don't you explain kind of where we are in the market.
	So, last time you were on, last time we chatted, we were talking about the inverted yield curve and the possibility of a market downturn.
	So, where do we stand with that particular factor?
	Yeah, last time I was on, it was back in December and there was a partial inversion of the yield curve, essentially on the 3 and the 10-year Treasury.
	Recently, we've seen a full inversion, which is the 2 and the 10.
	That is essentially a major indicator of recession to follow.
	It means two-year interest rates are currently higher than 10-year interest rates on treasuries.
	One of the most accurate indicators of recession of any other, in fact.
	For the last 50 years, the yield curve has inverted prior to every major recession, with no exceptions.
	And it typically gives us a time frame, on average, of about 12 to 18 months until we see recession.
	And that's because people are running to invest in short term bonds because they're afraid of the stock market, correct?
	Correct.
	Yeah.
	Long term prospects for the market don't look good.
	So short term looks attractive, you know, as opposed to sort of timing the market out longer term.
	So what exactly are the factors that you're looking at when you when you worry about what's going to happen with the stock market?
	Obviously, the stock market has been consistently going up.
	It's sort of faltered.
	It's sort of been flat over the past year.
	Which factors are you looking at?
	Look, there's a lot of different things.
	We mentioned the yield curve last time I was on.
	We discussed price to earning ratios, which are historically out of whack right now.
	I mean, just looking at the market in general, it is cyclical, right?
	We can go back Almost as long as we like to see that.
	It'll grow aggressively but also correct almost as a rule once every decade.
	This is now officially the longest bull market in history.
	Never have we seen 11 years of consistent and uninterrupted growth without correction.
	So I think timing alone is starting to tell us we've got a crash on the cards.
	And you were telling me before the show that you're actually looking at some indicators that corporate insiders, people who know a lot about companies, are selling their stocks more often because they're looking at the market and they're pretty nervous about it.
	That's absolutely correct.
	I mean, we've seen institutional investors tend to have an uncanny ability to preempt a crash.
	We have seen significant insider selling of stocks recently.
	August we saw $60 million a day and August was the fifth month of this year that we've seen over $10 billion of institutional money flowing out of the markets.
	The only other time we've seen this sort of level was back in 06 and 07, the period before the last bear market in stocks and ultimately the 08 crash.
	So it's a real sign.
	So what is the best way, as if we didn't know, but what is the best way to protect yourself against this sort of stuff?
	Because there's a lot of worry about inflation of the currency in order to battle the possible economic downturn.
	President Trump keeps talking about lowering the interest rates, which obviously would have an impact on the currency and the levels of lending.
	So why should people look at precious metals as opposed to some of the alternatives?
	Look, gold and silver are strong safe havens.
	They perform during times of market correction.
	They're designed really over longer periods of time to hold value.
	I think the key in this climate is very much to try and be preemptive.
	We mentioned institutional money.
	Flying out of the market recently it did so back in oh six as well The key is the mindset, you know individuals often can be very reactive, right?
	They wait for something to happen Panic and react to the market oftentimes.
	The opportunity is lost at that point The key is to be preemptive the old saying goes it's better to be six months too early than just a second too late And one of the things that you've talked about before is that, you know, it's not a risky move to move into precious metals.
	It is actually a safer move, at least in terms of diversification.
	You've never suggested that everybody should sell every stock they own, buy gold bars and bury them in the desert.
	No, a hundred percent not.
	No, you hit the nail on the head.
	It's about diversification.
	I think ultimately putting together a hedge.
	Gold, precious metals are contrarian to the markets.
	So the idea by taking a portion and putting it into a safe haven, if we see losses on one side, the idea is that that climate should drive safe havens up.
	And the idea is that losses on one side can be mitigated by growth on the other.
	And I think that's the key.
	So I've talked about Birch Gold Group, why I think they do a great job with helping you invest in precious metals.
	Why don't you talk a little bit about what is sort of the advantage of Birch Gold Group as opposed to buying from somewhere else?
	Of course.
	I mean, it's our size, our buying power.
	And ultimately, I think we take a very educational approach, right?
	For us, it's all about the customer understanding the benefits.
	And really, I think if you have comfort level with a move, it allows you to make a decision from a fully informed perspective and in the right way.
	And that's key for us.
	Well, you see why I trust the people at Birchgold Group.
	I trust them because they will answer your questions.
	As I say, you should give them a call at Birchgold Group.
	You should check them out online.
	And then you should ask all of your questions.
	People like Philip will be there to answer those questions.
	Get educated.
	Make sure that you feel comfortable.
	And then when you are comfortable, then maybe you should think about taking at least some of your money and putting it into precious metals as a method of diversification.
	Philip, thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thanks for having me.
	Okay now another quick thing that I like because here's the deal folks I am off on Monday and Tuesday unless something breaks over the weekend in which case I would record a show on Sunday maybe for Monday but because it's Rosh Hashanah I'm not gonna be on for another four days so I want to leave you with a good feeling so yesterday I have kids who are five and three and they have never seen Hook I know this is one of those movies where if you were an adult in like 1991 1992 and you saw this movie like oh god that was a long movie I didn't like that movie so much and if you are a kid this was iconic I was born in 84.
	So, when I watch this movie, I have so much nostalgia for this movie, it's crazy.
	And now, obviously, because of what happened with Robin Williams, you have even more nostalgia and there's a certain sadness attached to it.
	It's not a great movie, but it has some really great moments.
	It does.
	Also, weird note, Dustin Hoffman modeled his accent in the movie as Hook on William F. Buckley.
	But in any case, there's one moment in the movie that is just...
	A beautiful, beautiful moment, and now that I'm a parent, being a parent wrecks you.
	I mean, it really does.
	Like, I used to be imperturbable.
	I used to have no emotions at all.
	I still have very few.
	But, being a dad really screws you up.
	And so, I was watching this scene last night with my kids.
	I got my son, who's three, on one side of me, and my daughter, who's five, on the other side of me.
	We're all watching this movie together.
	We get to the scene, and I am crying like a baby.
	Here is the best scene in the movie.
	If you've never seen Hook, spoiler alert, you can watch it later, but, Here is part of the best scene in the movie.
	Peter Pan, who is played by Robin Williams, has grown up and he's now in his 30s and he's got a couple of kids.
	And he's forgotten that he's Peter Pan.
	His kids get kidnapped by Hook.
	This is the basic plot of the movie.
	And he ends up having to go back to Neverland in order to save them.
	But he's forgotten that he's Peter Pan.
	And so the movie is about him remembering that he's Peter Pan and remembering how to fly.
	And of course, to fly, according to the Peter Pan story, you need to have a happy thought.
	His whole life has been I can see why you have trouble finding a happy thought.
	So many sad memories, Peter.
	trouble and sad, right?
	He's an orphan who lives by himself, and then he gives up being with the lost boys in order to go back to the real world, and then he ages.
	So what exactly is his happy thought?
	And this is where Peter remembers his happy thought.
	I can see why you have trouble finding a happy thought.
	So many sad memories, Peter.
	Bye, Daddy.
	Not Daddy.
	Daddy.
	Daddy.
	Oh, Peter.
	Peter, you're a daddy?
	Hi, Jack.
	I know why I came back.
	I know why I grew up.
	I wanted to be a father.
	I'm a daddy.
	My happy thought.
	I got it.
	I got it!
	I found it!
	I lost it!
	Just hold that heavy thought, Peter!
	It's a great scene.
	And of course this is when he remembers that he is in fact Peter Pan and he can fly and the whole deal.
	I'm telling you, being a parent, it totally changes your life.
	So if you're thinking about it, and you're married, go make it happen.
	It'll make your life better, it'll make your life richer, and it'll completely wreck you emotionally.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with a couple additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we will see you here next week.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
	And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.
	Edited by Adam Siovitz.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
	On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.
	We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.

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