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Oct. 7, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

50:34

The Second Whistleblower | Ep. 874

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	A second whistleblower comes forward in the Trump impeachment saga, Rudy Giuliani and President Trump play defense, and Chuck Todd goes off.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Podcasts.
	Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
	Alrighty, so the big news of the day is that a second whistleblower has now come forward.
	Ooh, everyone is so excited!
	A second whistleblower!
	The first whistleblower didn't have a lot to say other than what was actually in the transcript of the Ukraine phone call.
	Remember, this whistleblower, the first whistleblower, turned out to be a registered Democrat who was working inside the intelligence community.
	He was a CIA officer, and it looks a lot like that whistleblower was working in cahoots with Adam Schiff on the House Intelligence Committee, and that the two of them were sort of playing an inside-outside game.
	Now, Whether that's the fault of the whistleblower or whether that just means that the aide to Adam Schiff was passing the information along to Adam Schiff and he was then pressing for information from the outside, the whole thing looked at least a little bit fishy.
	Well, now we have a second whistleblower.
	Ooh, how exciting!
	So what do we know about this second whistleblower?
	As it turns out, Not much.
	Here's what the Associated Press reports today.
	Now, here's the thing.
	What could a whistleblower even say at this point that would radically shift the case?
	Well, presumably the whistleblower could say that they have evidence that Donald Trump specifically said that he was creating a quid pro quo for the purposes of getting Joe Biden, not merely targeting corruption generally and Joe Biden as an aspect of that, but to get Joe Biden regardless as to whether Joe Biden was guilty or not.
	And that this whistleblower had actual firsthand or hearsay knowledge that Trump had said this directly to somebody.
	That's not what the whistleblower is saying.
	However, remember the first whistleblower, we already have the transcript.
	So what is the second whistleblower going to say that the first one didn't?
	Attorney Mark Zaid represents both whistleblowers.
	He said in a text message to the AP that the second person has spoken to the ICs, that's the intelligence community's internal watchdog, and can corroborate information in the original whistleblower complaint.
	Which, like, what is in there aside from the transcript of the phone call and stuff that we already sort of know from the text messages between Kurt Volker, who is the Special Envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, who is the U.S.
	Ambassador to the European Union, and Bill Taylor, who is the...
	Temporary ambassador to the Ukraine like we already know all that stuff because all those texts were released So what can the second whistleblower actually do other than just sort of add fuel to the fire because whoo whistleblower whistleblower?
	We're all we are all very fond of this term whistleblower and so that means that they must have something relevant to say well what if there's not all that much there we're gonna find out because Who the hell knows what this whistleblower has to say.
	I'll explain in just one second.
	First, there's a lot of talk of impeachment, obviously, in Washington.
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	Okay, so as the Associated Press reports, the new whistleblower is apparently just going to corroborate Well, we already have all the documents, so I'm not sure exactly what the new whistleblower is going to say.
	Apparently, the new whistleblower works in the intelligence field and has first-hand knowledge of key events.
	So, I guess that could change things.
	I mean, if the whistleblower is not just speaking on third-hand knowledge like the first whistleblower, but actually has heard Trump say something, that might change something.
	The emergence of the second whistleblower threatened to undermine arguments from Trump and his allies to discredit the original complaint.
	They have called it politically motivated, claimed it was filed improperly, and dismissed it as unreliable because it was based on second-hand or third-hand information.
	Now, as you'll know from listening to this show, I have never claimed that the actual whistleblower complaint was deeply unreliable.
	In fact, it seemed mostly accurate.
	The big problem with the whistleblower complaint is whether it actually Whether it represented something that was truly impeachable.
	I shouldn't say truly troubling, because I am troubled by it.
	I am.
	I'm troubled by President Trump going to Ukraine and then throwing Joe Biden's name out there because obviously it raises the ugly specter of the President of the United States, even possibly.
	Putting pressure on a foreign country to investigate a domestic political opponent?
	That's not something you want to do lightly.
	And then when President Trump goes out there and doubles down on it, and says things like, like, that doesn't help.
	That doesn't help.
	The reason it doesn't help is because Trump's entire defense right now, his entire defense, rests on something very simple, which is he is saying, I was targeting corruption in Ukraine, and thus all of my threats to withhold aid, all of my threats to keep Vice President Pence from meeting with Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, all of my threats not to meet with Zelensky myself, all of that was predicated on my desire to fight corruption.
	And Joe Biden, well, that's because, you know, listen, that stuff's corrupt, right?
	Hunter Biden, I think it's corrupt.
	Burisma, it's corrupt.
	And so I told them, investigate that as an aspect of broader corruption investigations.
	Now, that only works if you believe that Trump's primary or main or even admixed motivation has to do with corruption.
	If you actually believe that Trump wanted to go after Biden and that all the corruption stuff is basically just nonsense that he added on top, it's sort of a facade, and you rip away the facade and all that's there is his desire to get Biden, well, that's impeachable.
	But if he's ripping on corruption, well, Frankly, that is what Joe Biden did, right?
	I mean, Joe Biden did, in fact, threaten to withhold $1 billion in loan aid to Ukraine contingent on Ukraine fighting corruption.
	And one of the aspects of corruption that Ukraine was supposed to fight was getting rid of a prosecutor who may or may not have been investigating Burisma, the oil and natural gas company on which Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was sitting.
	He was sitting on the board at the time, taking down $50,000 a month for basically being a person with the last name Biden.
	According to the Associated Press, Democrats have zeroed in on the State Department in the opening phase of their impeachment investigation.
	The Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs Committees have already interviewed Kurt Volker, a former Special Envoy to Ukraine who provided the text messages.
	At least two other witnesses are set for depositions this week.
	Gordon Sondland, the U.S.
	Ambassador to the European Union, and Marie Yovanovitch, who was abruptly ousted as the U.S.
	Ambassador to Ukraine in May.
	Now, Volker's testimony did not actually help President Trump a whole hell of a lot.
	There were some people who were trying to spin it that way.
	It helped Volker.
	Because what Volcker said is, listen, I didn't talk to the Trump administration about Biden.
	In fact, I told Rudy that I thought that the Biden stuff was way overblown.
	And I encouraged the United States to work with Ukraine to root out corruption and to get them their aid.
	But Volcker didn't actually say that nobody inside the administration ever said anything about Biden.
	He never suggested that Giuliani was not whispering sweet nothings into Donald Trump's ears.
	In fact, Volker sort of suggested the opposite.
	He sort of suggested that Rudy Giuliani, as the chief envoy to Ukraine, basically, for the Trump campaign, was in fact the go-between that the Ukrainians were having to please.
	Right, so Volker's testimony was not particularly helpful.
	Gordon Sondland, he's gonna be showing up to testify.
	The reason Gordon Sondland is important is because Bill Taylor, who was the acting U.S.
	ambassador to Ukraine, texted Gordon Sondland and said, this sounds like a quid pro quo to go after Biden.
	And Gordon Sondland texted back, no, that's not true.
	Give me a call.
	Democrats presumably will hone in on that and suggest that the reason that Sondland wanted this to be a call as opposed to a text message is because he was going to explain offline that maybe in fact, this was in fact a quid pro quo to go after Joe Biden.
	And finally, Marie Yovanovitch, who was the U.S.
	ambassador to Ukraine, she was ousted, and the claim has been that it's because she was not going to pressure the Ukrainian government to go after Biden, although that is still, again, unclear, because she was ousted based on general belief that she was a pro-Democrat And you have to understand that a lot of what President Trump does on a daily basis is coming from a lack of security in his own administration.
	It's coming from a belief that inside the administration there are people who are leaking against him, which is true.
	There's a belief that there are people inside the administration who are looking for excuses to come after him to undermine his presidency.
	That's kind of true.
	And it does make one suspicious if it turns out that this is now what the third whistleblower inside of a week and a half who's now using the whistleblower status in order to pump some sort of quasi scandal into the public viewpoint without proper information being made public in the first place.
	According to the Associated Press, Trump and his supporters deny that he did anything improper, but the White House has struggled to come up with a unified response.
	No administration officials appeared on the Sunday news shows to defend the president, while other Republicans focused mainly on attacking Democrats.
	A few Republicans suggested that Trump was only joking this past week when he publicly called on China to investigate the Bidens.
	Well, as we will discuss in just a little while, there is a reason why Republicans are not appearing on national television, and it is not really fear of the media.
	It is fear that President Trump will reverse course on them.
	In a matter of a heartbeat, and then they'll be stuck holding the short end of the broom, and things are not going to go great for them at that point.
	They'll go out there, they'll defend President Trump, and then he will just go on Twitter and completely blow up that defense.
	He has done that repeatedly.
	President Trump himself is tweeting.
	He wrote, the great scam is being revealed.
	He painted himself as the victim of the deep state.
	Again, there may be a case that there are people inside his own government who are who are militating against the success of his administration.
	After all, the FBI was in fact investigating him for two years on the Mueller stuff and came up with basically nothing that was criminal in terms of behavior.
	Trump also decided to go after Nancy Pelosi.
	He tweeted out, Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people in the form of a fraudulent speech knowingly delivered as a ruthless con and the illegal meetings with a highly partisan whistleblower and lawyer.
	This makes Nancy nervous every bit, nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as little Adam Schiff.
	He always puts it like a little apostrophe at the end of little, which that's not how English works.
	Little Adam Schiff for high crimes and misdemeanors and even treason.
	I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly colluded with them must all be immediately impeached.
	Yeah, he also would later go after Chuck Todd, as we'll see in just a few minutes.
	So, this is the real reason why Republicans are sort of all over the place with President Trump.
	The answer is because how exactly are they supposed to defend a guy who has a series of shifting defenses every five seconds?
	It's very difficult.
	Imagine that you're a Republican who went out there like, you know what?
	President Trump definitely, definitely was not calling on governments to investigate Joe Biden specifically.
	And then the next day he comes out and he's like, I would like for China to investigate Joe Biden specifically.
	What are you supposed to do with that if you're a Republican?
	Put you in such an awkward position.
	We'll get to more of this in just a second.
	We'll get to, again, why the Democrats seem to be so reliant on whistleblowers.
	And part of the reason is because they think there's criminal activity inside the administration.
	That's the obvious reason.
	Then there's the non-obvious reason, which is they won't use their investigative power as members of Congress.
	Instead, they're waiting for people inside the administration to militate against the administration from within, which is driving Trump's paranoia, which in turn is driving him to Believe in certain conspiracy theories that he is then seeking to justify, that he is seeking to evidence by sending people like Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine.
	We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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	So as I say, the Democrats are over the moon about this whole whistleblower thing.
	Dr. Allison Stranger has a piece in the New York Times today called, Well, sometimes they're partisans, sometimes they're stewards of our constitutional democracy, and sometimes they're both.
	Sometimes they're stewards of our constitutional democracy, and sometimes they're both.
	The question is, what are these whistleblowers?
	It's just not true that everybody who claims to be blowing a whistle is doing a grand public Sometimes the person blowing the whistle is alleging a crime that doesn't actually end up being fulfilled.
	This is why Trump is so paranoid about people inside his administration.
	This is why he was putting his conversations, his transcripts with foreign leaders in this classified file.
	This electronic file that nobody was able to get access to.
	Why?
	Because there were people inside his administration who kept running the media every five seconds.
	That, by the way, has prompted a federal judge to order the White House to preserve a wide range of evidence about President Trump's dealings with foreign leaders, including his interactions related to Ukraine that have fueled an impeachment investigation in the House.
	U.S.
	District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the order on Thursday, directing that White House officials not destroy records of meetings, phone calls, and other communications with foreign leaders.
	The judge's order also appears to specifically address reports that the Trump White House set up a special system to limit access to certain records of presidential conversations with foreign leaders.
	Jackson, of course, is an appointee of Barack Obama.
	It is a very weird thing, by the way, to suggest that the White House has to preserve records of foreign conversations with foreign leaders.
	That is a strange thing.
	It's one thing to suggest that if they are under subpoena, you have to preserve the records.
	It's another thing to suggest that they have to preserve the records even when they're not under subpoena.
	I think it's probably a good thing as a general rule that these things are preserved, but if the idea is that the executive branch must turn that stuff over to the legislative branch, I'm not sure that's always the case.
	The president does have plenary power over foreign policy, whether you're Barack Obama signing a crappy deal with Iran or whether you are Donald Trump saying ill-advised things to foreign leaders.
	Meanwhile, the Democrats are expanding their rage against William Barr, who's the attorney general, obviously.
	There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal today talking about Attorney General Barr going to various foreign capitals to seek help in reviewing the origins of the U.S.
	counterintelligence investigation begun during the 2016 presidential campaign.
	And this is where we start getting into this very dicey territory.
	And a lot of people on the left today, and they keep saying, why are so many Republicans not just saying impeach already?
	Why aren't they saying impeach already?
	And the answer is twofold.
	One, you actually have to prove the elements of the crime.
	And two, you also have to prove that the elements of the crime committed are beyond any crime committed before by a president that was not used as the basis for impeachment.
	In other words, there is the legal standard for impeachment, which is basically anything.
	And then there's the criminal standard for impeachment, which is you must commit a crime.
	And then there's the James Comey standard for impeachment.
	Remember the James Comey, when he was talking about Hillary Clinton, he said, listen, yes, intent was not an element of the crime, of misuse of classified information.
	But our history of prosecution suggests that we don't have any similar cases like Hillary's, where we actually went forward with prosecution.
	Precedent suggests that she not be prosecuted.
	And people like me who said, whoa, hold up, that's not right.
	You're supposed to stick with the statute.
	OK, well, that is that is generally true.
	I will, however, point out that there is a case to be made that what Comey was saying was at least correct in terms of prosecutorial discretion.
	And when you're talking about impeachment and you're talking about impeachable offenses, here's the reality.
	Nearly every president commits some sort of impeachable offense.
	I mean, there's a good case to be made that Barack Obama, the IRS droning American citizens.
	There's a lot of stuff that Barack Obama was doing that at the very least fell into the category of criminality.
	Right, whether it required more proof to actually prove it for impeachment purposes, probably.
	But I mean, I wrote an entire book called The People vs. Barack Obama, where I talked about the various activities that bordered on the criminal inside the Obama administration.
	Was he impeached over any of that?
	No.
	So, in order for Democrats to now claim, here's the thing, in order for Democrats to claim that Republicans should get on board for an impeachment, what they must show is not merely that a crime has been committed, they must show that the crime is different in kind than anything that they justified themselves.
	That was the difference between the Nixon activities and activities by prior presidents.
	The fact is there were prior presidents, like I believe LBJ actually, bugged Barry Goldwater's headquarters in 64.
	But the reality is that it was proved with Nixon, the cover-up was proved with Nixon, and Republicans said, listen, this is beyond anything that we've actually seen before, so we're jumping on board.
	Democrats are holding a standard, and that standard should be upheld.
	We saw with Bill Clinton committing perjury, that it was completely partisan.
	There was nobody on the Democratic side of the aisle who actually supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
	But Republicans at least could make the case that the president had committed perjury, and this was a new standard of low.
	So, you need two things.
	You need to prove one criminal activity, in my opinion.
	Right, again, this is all opinion, because the fact is you don't have to prove anything for an impeachment.
	An impeachment is completely political.
	The provisions about impeachment say nothing about an actual crime being committed.
	It says high crimes and misdemeanors, but that is a political term.
	With that said, I think the standard for impeachment should be twofold.
	One, criminal activity occurred, and we can all agree criminal activity occurred.
	And two, that criminal activity was so far and above beyond what had come before and was not the basis of impeachment that it justifies impeachment.
	That would be the twofold standard.
	So when Democrats are going after Attorney General Barr and saying that Attorney General Barr is doing something deeply wrong in talking with foreign allies to review the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, and they say by meeting directly with foreign leaders rather than relying on investigator-to-investigator channels, Mr. Barr has stirred up domestic politics in some of the countries he has tapped for assistance because he talked with Italy and he talked with Australia and people were getting super uptight.
	Is that impeachable stuff?
	I struggle to see why it is, considering that three Democratic senators earlier this year called on the government of Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller report and in fact investigate allegations regarding Russian election interference.
	So when it comes to impeachment, if you want a bipartisan impeachment, then it really does have to be what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
	In other words, it's got to be some sort of standard that rises beyond partisanship.
	And that is exactly what we are not seeing at this point from the Democrats.
	First of all, we don't see the full extension of the crime.
	Because as they say, in order to prove the crime here, in order to prove the quid pro quo that is criminal in nature, Not just a quid pro quo, but a quid pro quo for something criminal.
	You have to prove that it wasn't about corruption at all.
	It was just about getting Joe Biden.
	Rudy Giuliani is a very awkward human being, but Rudy Giuliani did in fact make this point.
	He said, listen, we have a mandate to investigate corruption.
	And just because Joe Biden gets caught up in that does not mean that Joe Biden is the target or that it is improper to investigate Joe Biden in the first place.
	No, not at all.
	There's nothing wrong with her doing it.
	I mean, the fact is the President of the United States has every right to ask countries to help us in a criminal investigation that should be undertaken.
	That happens to involve a political opponent.
	Well, I can't help that.
	I mean, suppose the political opponent committed murder.
	What are we going to do?
	He's a political opponent, so you don't investigate him?
	OK, well, there's some truth to that.
	It is also true that Joe Biden is not the nominee.
	Joe Biden is not the nominee.
	The Trump, the Obama administration.
	Actively investigated Paul Manafort in Ukraine.
	They didn't stop that investigation when Paul Manafort became the Trump campaign manager.
	In fact, they intensified the investigation into the Trump campaign overall.
	They didn't go to Trump and warn him.
	They didn't say, by the way, you're a campaign manager.
	He's under investigation for the possibility of criminal activity in Ukraine.
	Instead, they broadened out the investigation to include the entire Trump campaign.
	Right?
	To include Trump himself.
	So before we get into like, this is something completely different in kind, I don't really see how it's something completely different in kind unless, unless, unless this thing, and this is what we have yet to see, unless this thing was solely about getting Joe Biden and it was not at all about corruption.
	I'll show you another example in a second of the media trying to pretend that certain activity that may be something you don't like is somehow only bad when one side of the aisle does it.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	And then you can enjoy the candy because, hey, if you die early from some sort of horrible Okay, so, as I say, one of the reasons why Republicans are not jumping on the bandwagon is because every piece of news seems directed toward ignoring Democrats doing sort of the same thing.
	So, let me give you a perfect example.
	Big headline from NBC News today.
	Trump blames Energy Secretary Rick Perry for Ukraine call at Center of Impeachment Inquiry.
	So President Trump is mad at Rick Perry.
	Why?
	Because Rick Perry was pushing for the call.
	Why was Rick Perry pushing for the call?
	Because he wanted to open up natural gas and oil development in Ukraine to the West.
	Why does this matter?
	Because then the AP has a piece called Profit Not Politics, what some Trump allies did in Ukraine.
	As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump's main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet Republic.
	Their aims were profit, not politics.
	This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine's massive state gas company.
	Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.
	The effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of a gas company called Naftogaz would be taken up by Ukraine's new president, with Ukraine's new president, by U.S.
	Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry's past political donors.
	Now, you may be saying to yourself, hold up a second.
	Am I supposed to be suspicious of Rick Perry because Rick Perry has friends who are in the Ukrainian natural oil and gas sector and maybe are using, dropping names in order to get ahead?
	What if I switched that name for you, and instead of Rick Perry, I just said Joe Biden?
	Are we allowed to be suspicious anymore, or does the suspicion disappear?
	Poof!
	We're supposed to pretend it's not suspicious at all when Hunter Biden ends up with no oil or natural gas experience, pulling down 50 grand a month, because his daddy is the Vice President of the United States.
	Right, like that, is that really?
	Is it, like, this is why people are going nuts.
	Like, okay, so you're gonna tell me it's super corrupt when friends of Trump are doing business in Ukraine with oil and natural gas, but when it's Joe Biden's son, then we're supposed to pretend that none of this matters at all.
	Like, at all, at all.
	We're supposed to pretend that Joe Biden is pure as the driven snow, and so is Hunter Biden, and any questions you ask about them are fully illegitimate.
	Now again, for the 1,000th time, if Donald Trump has no evidence and no serious questions to be asked about Joe Biden or Hunter Biden, he's just going after them for political purposes by leveraging military aid to a country under the threat of the Russians in order to go after his political opponents solely and completely because of not corruption, and not because of 2016, and election interference, not because of any of that, but simply because he doesn't like Joe Biden, not only is that wrong, that's impeachable, but are we there yet?
	I think we have a ways to go there at first.
	I do find it somewhat hilarious that you get people like Cory Booker, who says that the minute you ask him a question about Joe Biden, it is completely unfair.
	Cory Booker, which show was he on?
	I'm trying to remember.
	He said that even asking questions about Joe Biden is unfair at this point.
	If you could just stop it, stop asking those questions.
	Are questions about Hunter Biden fair in the context of a president who is accused of doing really what I would think were unimaginable things?
	As I said, shocking me?
	Is it questions about Hunter Biden in this context?
	Somebody who has been investigated, somebody who from the Ukrainians to Americans to Europeans, there's no evidence whatsoever.
	So no, it is not fair that the president of the United States is trying to get all of us to be talking about someone else Other than him.
	Okay, and then it'll be fun to watch CNN immediately shift in the next segment to let's talk about Rick Perry's energy connections in Ukraine, guys.
	Let's talk about the Trump administration's energy connections in Ukraine.
	And by the way, the Washington Post will give a full op-ed to Joe Biden called Trump Won't Destroy Me and He Won't Destroy My Family.
	And it's all about how Joe Biden is a wonderful dude and anybody who asks questions about Hunter Biden is just wrong and it's all mean and it's all terrible.
	He says end to Trump and those who facilitate his abuses of power and all the special interests funding his attacks against me.
	Please, no.
	I'm not going anywhere.
	You won't destroy me.
	You won't destroy my family.
	Come November 2020, I intend to beat you like a drum.
	Come November 2020, dude, you are going to be eating early bird dinner at Denny's because you are not the nominee.
	Elizabeth Warren is going to win this nomination.
	So that is not a thing that is going to happen.
	Okay, I'm going to get back into this double standard.
	And again, this is not whataboutism.
	It's very bad for Trump to say things like China should investigate Joe Biden.
	It's very bad for Trump to say that Ukraine should investigate Joe Biden and not be clear that he's talking about corruption more broadly.
	The question is twofold.
	Did he commit a criminal act?
	Two, is that criminal act impeachable?
	Because not every criminal act is impeachable.
	So we're going to get back to the double standard, which sets the standard for that second question, right?
	Is this something brand new and beyond the pale?
	And why Republicans seem to be kicking back so hard against the idea that this is something brand new and beyond the pale.
	It's funny, Democrats seem to believe that the world began spinning with Trump.
	And so you have all these articles today about, well, the unworkability of American government and this feeling of cynicism that is spread across the country.
	I'm old enough to remember a president before Trump named Barack Obama.
	Some of us are pretty cynical about politics because of that sort of manipulation.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	First, sometimes you just need to pray, okay?
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	In fact, I'm about to spend an entire day at prayer on Yom Kippur.
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	Okay, in just a second, we're gonna continue discussing these double standards and the media's outrage at Republicans who refuse to immediately cave in to, it's time to impeach, it's time to impeach.
	By the way, They asked Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat in the Senate, about whether she would impeach, and she was like, I'm not going to answer it.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	So as I say, when you're talking about the double standard in which the left engages, So John Brennan, I mean, this is just insane.
	So John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, he was on the news over the weekend being newsy.
	And I don't even know why exactly this dude is considered a reliable pundit in any way.
	He's on Meet the Press, and he says the CIA would literally not assess America as a democracy any longer.
	We're supposed to take John Brennan seriously about this.
	This is gaslighting of the highest order.
	We would look at it as a very corrupt government that is under the sway right now of this powerful individual who has been able to just corrupt the institutions and the laws of that country.
	What would you say about the stability of the democracy?
	I think it's no longer, you know, a democracy if an autocrat has it in his hands.
	And people like Johnson and others are putty in his hands, which means that the democratic principles upon which this country was founded are eroding right now.
	Okay, they're eroding?
	You know what?
	...tended to erode the democratic principles when you lied in front of the Senate repeatedly.
	In 2014, John Brennan, who is the CIA director, lied emphatically, according to Victor Davis Hanson, that the CIA had not illegally accessed the computers of U.S.
	Senate staffers who were then exploring a CIA role in torturing detainees.
	Liberal senators started going after him, and Brennan had to apologize.
	In May 2017, as an ex-CIA director, he again almost certainly did not tell the truth to Congress when he testified and answered to Representative Trey Gowdy's questions that he neither knew who had commissioned the Steele dossier, nor had the CIA relied on its contents for any action.
	Then he spent two years Claiming that he had secret information that the other shoe was about to drop in the Russia investigation.
	Like, that dude did more to undermine confidence in America's institutions than virtually anybody in American public life for the last five to ten years.
	And yet, you got Chuck Todd, that wonderful Do you understand how we got here?
	creator yeah i mean chuck todd just really sterling stuff over the weekend saying you know john brennan does he ask him a follow-up about that you know when you talk about destruction of american institutions were you instrumental in any of that mr mr no it's why is everyone so mean to you john brennan why are people so mean to you do you understand how we got here and how would you explain to somebody you've been completely character assassinated and eviscerated and And it doesn't matter whether people like you or hate you.
	I think everybody can agree, you've been put through this.
	Do you understand how you got here?
	Now, come on!
	That was the question.
	That was the question that led to, oh, now the institutions have been led awry.
	Again, you think the Republicans are immediately going to cave to, yes, I think that the Democrats are not pursuing a partisan impeachment.
	I think they're being completely above board.
	Listen, Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota running for president, she was asked straight up, would you vote to remove the president from office today?
	And even Amy Klobuchar was like, eh, I'm not sure I can say that because Amy Klobuchar is the only non-crazy person running for president.
	Jake, I have been very clear.
	I think this is impeachable, that the case should be heard by the House and it should come over to the Senate.
	Now, I don't know what counts they're going to have or how they're going to do this.
	Okay, so again, she's kind of unclear there.
	Don't know exactly what's going to happen there.
	Maybe it'll be this, maybe it'll be that.
	Now, we get to the Republican response.
	Now, over the weekend, the big hubbub, of course, was that Republicans were apparently just covering for Trump.
	Now, here is the biggest problem for Republicans, and it is a problem.
	There's a very... The most convincing defense of President Trump is that President Trump says dumb crap repeatedly.
	That has always been the most convincing defense of President Trump.
	You know why?
	Because it is highly plausible.
	You know how we know that?
	Because we watch him.
	Because he has a Twitter account in which he doesn't spell things correctly and in which he capitalizes random words.
	Says dumb crap repeatedly.
	It's pretty much his motto, right?
	It's like on his business card.
	And then I became famous, like, what are we talking about?
	And yet, and so when it comes to scandals, when it comes to, President Trump came up with a plan.
	The plan was deploy Rudy Giuliani to uncover the specific corruption of Joe Biden, and then leverage the Ukrainian government to help Rudy Giuliani to go after the specific corruption of Joe Biden because the man, he has a gimlet-eyed, sharp-eyed, steely, steely-missile-man-eyed plan.
	He is just gonna carry that.
	Here's the best defense.
	No.
	Right?
	That's the best defense?
	No.
	You gotta be kidding.
	No.
	This is not a dude with a plan.
	And the problem for Republicans is that you're not allowed to say that.
	That's the problem for Republicans.
	Is that if you're a Republican Senator and you say that, Trump might attack you.
	Trump might go after you.
	So instead, you have to somehow plan that you have to say this is all 4D chess.
	But the problem is if you say it's 4D chess, then he's capable of seeing what he's doing.
	And if he's capable of seeing what he's doing, it makes him look more guilty, not less guilty.
	So, here's the thing.
	As every good defense lawyer knows, there are a few defenses that are available when it comes to crimes of intent.
	And when it comes to a bribery situation like this, like a bribery case that they're trying to make, or a quid pro quo, or a targeting case, which is what they're talking about, an abuse of power, you sort of require intent as an element of the crime.
	The quick answer for a defense lawyer is intent was not here.
	There was no intent.
	The intent was not present.
	And here's the beautiful thing about Trump as a client.
	The intent is almost never there.
	Because Trump doesn't have requisite intent for nearly anything.
	The man has the attention span of a gnat.
	That doesn't mean that he can't actually do wonderful things as president.
	He's done many wonderful things that I appreciate.
	It's why I'm more likely to vote for him now than I was in 2016.
	I get all that.
	I get that he's delegated a lot of stuff.
	That's great.
	He's done a lot of things I think no other Republican would do.
	Sometimes it's great that he's punching back at the media.
	All of that is granted.
	Taken for granted.
	If you are his defense lawyer, his best defense too, he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden is, dude doesn't have plans.
	Here's the evidence.
	He doesn't plan things.
	Ever.
	When is the last time Trump had like a four-step plan?
	He just doesn't, and he has great instincts, great political, no plan.
	And this is why, so I'm gonna give you an example.
	So Jim Jordan, the Republican from the House from Ohio, he was on with, what was it, with Chuck Todd, was it?
	And Jim Jordan, yeah, sorry, he was on with Stephanopoulos, rather, and Jim Jordan, He was asked about Trump's China comments.
	Now the obvious answer to Trump's China comments is, dude says a lot of dumb stuff.
	Right?
	Says a lot of dumb stuff.
	Like my first response was, right.
	And he asked for, and he asked for the DOJ to investigate Netflix because Obama signed the deal with Netflix.
	And then he asked the DOJ to investigate SNL and the FCC to investigate SNL.
	Like, come on.
	Like if you asked Trump, any random country, like if you just put, if you said to him five minutes before he went out on the South lawn, the country of Malaysia.
	He would just be like, sure, Malaysia should investigate Biden.
	Why not?
	Why not?
	I don't know what Biden did in Malaysia.
	It doesn't matter to him.
	He doesn't care.
	It's just somebody had said to him that Biden did something corrupt in China.
	And so he mentioned Biden in China.
	The answer is there's no plan, right?
	Jim Jordan tries to say that, but what it comes off as is Jim Jordan saying that he's joking, but that's not what Jim Jordan even means.
	George, you really think he was serious about thinking that China's going to investigate the Biden family.
	He said it right there in public.
	I think he's getting, as I think Senator Rubio said a couple days ago, I think he's getting the press all spun up about this.
	Remember, this is the president who's been tougher on China than any other president.
	He wants to make sure China quits stealing America's intellectual property.
	He wants to make sure they start abiding by international trade norms.
	Okay, now what Jordan is saying here, what Representative Jordan is saying here is true.
	It's also not the convincing defense, right?
	He starts off right, and then he doesn't go to the obvious place.
	When he says, you think he was serious there?
	You think he was serious?
	And then he's like, he's really tough on China.
	That wasn't the answer.
	The answer was, you think he was serious there?
	When's the last time you heard President Trump being serious about investigating anybody?
	He said that people should investigate Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Hillary Clinton, the congressman from Baltimore, Elijah Cummings.
	He said Elijah Cummings should be investigated.
	He said SNL should be investigated and Netflix shouldn't be investigated.
	He has said that, I believe he has said that the NBA should be investigated.
	He said pretty much every major organization in the United States should be investigated.
	That's the proper answer here.
	So this is the one where you choose to take him super seriously, George?
	Like, you know better than that, right?
	That's the proper... But the problem is, Trump watches TV.
	So if Jordan says that, then Trump might tweet out against Jordan.
	And you get this from all the Republicans.
	So Republicans are not allowed to make the proper defense.
	They're not allowed to make the proper defense.
	And so they end up in this kind of weird Neverland where they're making half the proper defense and half the not proper defense.
	So here is Senator Ron Johnson with Chuck Todd.
	So this got all sorts of press over the weekend because apparently Johnson was just in over his head and Chuck Todd just destroyed him because this is what journalisming is all about.
	You've got John Brennan on.
	You ought to ask Director Brennan, what did Peter Strzok mean when he texted Lisa Page on December 15, 2016?
	Senator... Can we... Senator... No, no, no.
	Chuck, Chuck, let me finish.
	What does this have to do with Ukraine?
	It has everything to do with Ukraine.
	Now listen, talked about in that text message.
	Senator, I have no idea why... No, that's a setup.
	It is entirely relevant to this point.
	Why a Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here, I have no idea.
	I have no idea why we're going here.
	Senator, I'm asking about... Because this is underlying exactly why President Trump is upset.
	Okay, so what Johnson is trying to say in that whole exchange, if you actually watch the whole exchange, what he's trying to say is President Trump is very upset with members of his own administration who are in the executive branch who keep leaking on him and so he's taking stuff and he is putting stuff Basically in a secret vault so that they cannot leak it.
	And he is also deeply suspicious that there are members of the intelligence committee who are coordinating with whistleblowers.
	And he is deeply suspicious that members of the intelligence community are not working on his behalf with regards to the investigation of interference in the 2016 election in Ukraine, which we do know happened according to Politico in 2017.
	And so that's why he's deploying Rudy Giuliani, right?
	That's what Johnson is trying to say.
	But Chuck Todd has his questions that he wants to ask.
	And so Chuck Todd is going to ask those questions no matter what.
	Now, with all of this said, is Trump in an enviable position anywhere here?
	No, none of this is enviable.
	We already know that President Trump has done things that are not good.
	The question is whether they are in the criminal territory and whether they are in the unprecedented territory.
	And when it comes to unprecedented, that one is actually even easier than criminal.
	Because for a lot of Republicans, the answer is absolutely not.
	For a lot of Republicans, they are looking at the fact that Hillary Clinton worked with the DNC and the Ukrainian embassy to try and dig up dirt on Donald Trump And they funneled a bunch of bad information to the FBI, to Barack Obama's FBI, in the middle of the election cycle.
	They're looking at the fact that there was a two-year investigation of Donald Trump by his own intelligence services.
	They're looking at the fact that the Obama administration did not let up on Paul Manafort when it found out that Paul Manafort was gonna become Trump's campaign manager and didn't warn Trump about it.
	Instead, they broadened the investigation to include Trump.
	Again, all of this is backdrop for, do we think that you're partisan hacks or do we think that you honestly are bothered by Trump?
	Now, motivations normally should not matter, but when it comes to impeachment, they kind of do.
	The reason being, if you're trying to build a bipartisan consensus, then people have to feel that there is a standard, and the standard must be upheld on both sides.
	It can't be a standard that is upheld on one side.
	As I say, if you have a double standard, then you have no standard, because nobody is going to abide by a double standard.
	If you feel that somebody else is not playing by the rules, why would you play by the rules?
	And that is where we end up right now.
	That is a separate question from whether Trump actually did something criminal.
	That question is still outstanding.
	That one is the one that is still outstanding.
	And by the way, it doesn't help when President Trump goes after Mitt Romney.
	The media are trying to conflate, by the way, Republicans who are critical of Trump on the China comments and on the Ukraine comments with saying that they would vote for impeachment.
	Mitt Romney has never said that he would vote for impeachment.
	You know, Trump should just deal with the fact that he said something bad about China.
	It is bad to call on the Chinese communist to investigate an American citizen based on scanty evidence.
	We have a DOJ for that.
	I mean, Lindsey Graham is right about this.
	He says, listen, we have a special counsel.
	We could have a special counsel investigate Biden if we really want to.
	Why the hell are we going to foreign countries?
	This is correct.
	Well, let's look at it this way.
	Everybody said Mueller would be an independent guy, and I think he was.
	And what happened?
	He cleared Trump.
	There was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
	And why do we know that?
	Because Mueller spent two years and $25 million looking at it.
	Has anybody looked at the DNC-Ukraine connection?
	No, they have not.
	And I love Rudy Giuliani.
	He's a good lawyer for the president.
	He's defending the president's interests.
	But the Mueller investigation's over.
	It's not Rudy's job to find out if the Bidens did something wrong.
	I'd like somebody outside of politics to look at the Bidens like Mueller looked at the Trumps.
	Remember the Trump Tower deal with Russia?
	Yeah.
	That was looked at by Mueller.
	Somebody needs to look at the Bidens regarding the Ukraine and China.
	Okay, that is not out of the realm of possibility, nor is that improper.
	One of the big problems here is that the Trump campaign can send Rudy Giuliani wherever they want to dig up oppo, obviously.
	Hillary Clinton did the same thing.
	Did the president, in his capacity as president, basically act as campaign president and dictate that the auspices of the government should be used to do Rudy Giuliani's dirty work?
	And that's really what this is all about.
	That remains the open question.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a thing that I hate.
	Things that I like.
	So, as you may notice, I am not broadcasting from my usual studio.
	I am instead over here in Israel, in an unspecified location.
	So, that means that if I'm looking a little peaked, that is because I was just on a 13-hour flight with a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, which means I got no sleep, and I'm kinda tired.
	So, if I've been bumbling and stumbling over my words a little bit today, that is because I'm half-dead.
	That also means that I watched 1,000 movies on the plane because it's a 13-hour flight.
	One of the movies that I had a chance to watch was a movie that I like to call Liam Neeson Has a Gun, which is like every Liam Neeson movie, basically.
	And I will watch all of them because I don't really care what he's doing as long as Liam Neeson has a gun.
	In this one, Liam Neeson plays a man who has a gun.
	And in this movie, he is a man who has a gun who is the father of a man who does not really have a gun and doesn't know how to use a gun.
	Here is a little bit of the trailer for Run All Night.
	It's got to be 15 years since I've been in here.
	Place looks different.
	All the old places look different now.
	I'm the only one ever cared about you.
	And all of that ended an hour ago when you killed my son.
	Okay, so the movie is actually quite good.
	Joel Kinnaman has become one of my favorite actors.
	I really like Joel Kinnaman a lot.
	They've talked about him a little bit for Bond, possibly.
	He was in Hannah, which is a pretty good series.
	And he was also in The Killing, where he is a completely different character.
	And then in this one, he plays sort of an upright citizen who's the son of a drunk hitman, who is Liam Neeson's character.
	The movie's pretty good.
	I'm not gonna say it's like an incredible movie, but it is a fairly good movie and I think worth the watch.
	Or maybe I was just up all night, man.
	I would watch anything.
	So go check out Run All Night if you are up all night and have nothing else to watch.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So, you know, people are always proclaiming that corporations should involve themselves in politics.
	And corporation... The Democrats, people on the left, they want it both ways.
	On the one hand, corporations should never involve themselves in politics.
	Ever, ever, ever, ever.
	They should stay out.
	Because corporate heads who are involved in politics are bad, bad humans.
	On the other hand...
	Their silence is deafening on LGBT rights.
	Their silence is deafening on the animal rights movement.
	Every time there's some sort of political controversy, we have to hijack major corporations and use them to cram down particular political agendas.
	Here's the fact.
	Major corporations are after the cash, and that means that very often, they have no actual moral interest, and treating them as moral entities is quite silly, in fact.
	And proof of this comes this week from the NBA.
	So apparently the general manager of the Houston Rockets, according to the New York Times, sought to quell an outcry in China on Sunday night after the support he expressed on Twitter for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong upset sponsors, media outlets, and basketball officials in a country that invests billions in the NBA.
	The initial and quickly deleted message by the general manager, Daryl Morey, on Friday night to stand with Hong Kong put the NBA at odds with its largest and highest priority international market.
	But he tried to mitigate the damage with two clarifying tweets from Tokyo, where the Rockets are scheduled to play two exhibition games against the Toronto Raptors.
	I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rocket fans and friends of mine in China, Mori wrote.
	I was merely voicing one thought based on one interpretation of one complicated event.
	I've had the opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.
	In other words, the NBA called him and got very angry at him because they thought that he was threatening their Chinese market by talking about the fact that the Chinese Communist regime is evil and terrible.
	How dare he?
	How dare he?
	I've seen other corporations, like for example, Google, go out of their way to try and work with the Chinese government, even if it means doing their dirty work for them.
	Now, this is why when people say, big business is Republican, big business is for free markets.
	No, big business is for profits.
	Profits very often can be had with the cooperation of big government.
	In fact, big government and big business are not actually at odds.
	In many cases, it is big business that is propping up big government and vice versa.
	So, just gonna point out here that Daryl Morey said the right thing.
	He got blasted by the supposedly all moral NBA.
	And nobody seems to care all that much about it.
	Like, where is Adam Silver now?
	Like, why isn't Adam Silver being called on the carpet by the American people for not standing with Hong Kong, by the way, just because he wants to sell a few more sneakers and basketball jerseys in China?
	Alrighty, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.
	I'm sure there will be a lot there.
	Hopefully I'll have had some sleep and won't slur my words quite as much.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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	Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	One of about a million ways politics makes us stupid is by attacking people's personal piccadillos as a way of supporting massively destructive ideas.
	Donald Trump is a loudmouth, so let's get rid of him and give the country to baby-killing socialists who hate both the First and Second Amendment.
	Luckily, I'm here to laugh uproariously at that idea.
	Plus, Norris and I will discuss Joker.
	Be there on The Andrew Klavan Show.

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