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Oct. 8, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:23
Turkish Non-Delight | Ep. 875
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President Trump maybe abandoned Syria to the Turks, but not without a few parting Twitter shots.
Courts debate whether to force the release of President Trump's tax returns, and Elizabeth Warren takes command of the 2020 Democratic race.
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Oh man, there's a lot to get to today.
So let's just jump right in.
First, this situation in northern Syria is at the very least deeply puzzling.
It is morally troubling.
It's pretty awful all the way through.
Here is CNN reporting.
In a remarkable announcement late on Sunday night, the White House said that the United States forces in northern Syria would move aside in advance of a planned Turkish military offensive.
The move marks a major shift in U.S.
foreign policy, effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which would make, in just the latest time that we have betrayed the Kurds, obviously the United States has repeatedly told the Kurds that they were our allies and that we were working with them, only to put them in a situation where they were basically screwed.
That happened during the Gulf War in 1991, when George H.W.
Bush called for the Iraqi military and Iraqi people to throw out Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq then actually stood up and tried to do that.
At which point, Saddam Hussein basically gassed them and mowed them down, and the United States did nearly nothing about any of that.
During the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration basically armed the Turks so that they could go ahead and kill a bunch of the Kurds on the Turkish border.
During the Iraq war in 2003, There were moves to help the Kurds and then the Kurds were basically left to their own devices.
The Kurds also were targeted by ISIS.
So this is just the latest iteration of a common pattern which is that we all sound off when it's time to help the Kurds and then the minute that it becomes not time to help the Kurds everybody runs screaming for the exits and that's just horrible every way you slice it.
There is no rationale not only for not actually allowing the Kurds to defend themselves here and providing them the resources to do so considering they have been Our most consistent ally in that region of the world fighting against ISIS, fighting against Saddam Hussein, fighting against the Iranian Shia militias.
Not only that, but helping out the Turks is a horrible idea because the Turkish government right now is run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who happens to be a dictator, and an incredibly repressive dictator at that, who has jailed hundreds of thousands of political opponents, who has made clear his desire to act brutally and violently toward the Kurds.
But President Trump has been taken in by Erdogan before.
He's had these sort of warm relations with Erdogan in terms of phone calls at the very least.
According to CNN, following a phone call between U.S.
President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House said that Turkey would soon begin a military offensive and U.S.
forces would not be involved in the operation.
Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into northern Syria, a statement said.
The U.S.
armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and U.S.
forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial caliphate, will no longer be in the immediate area.
Now, this is exactly the sort of foreign policy that there are some on the right who definitely want to see pursued.
And there are some people who are on the right who tend to be in the more sort of Pat Buchanan, isolationist camp, who basically suggest the U.S.
has no business in that part Well, that's all fun and games until it turns out that you're allowing the Turks and the Turkish government to slaughter the Kurds who have allied with the United States to take on a common foe in ISIS.
The White House added that Turkey would now be responsible for all captured ISIS fighters who are currently being held by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
In other words, they're fine with the Turks going in.
Presumably wiping out the Kurds, or at least attacking the Kurds, and then taking control of ISIS prisoners.
But, as we've been saying for years on this program, there are very few forces in the region that actually had an interest in seeing ISIS completely wiped out.
The Turks wanted ISIS there so that they could use it as an excuse to cross over into Syria.
The Syrian government wanted ISIS there so they could use it as an excuse as to why they should remain in power.
The Iranians wanted ISIS there for the same reason as the Syrians.
Only the Kurds, really, and freedom-fighting Syrians were anti-ISIS, and yet now we, I guess, are handing leadership role over to Erdogan as though he's a good faith actor in all of this, and is not simply seeking to wipe out the Kurds and create a quote-unquote buffer zone for Turkey?
The White House added that as of last month, 1,000 U.S.
troops were operating in northeastern Syria, so there was just this small trigger force, and that was preventing all of this from happening.
Presumably, that is no longer going to be the case.
Sunday's statement did not specify if this constituted a full withdrawal of personnel from the country.
Erdogan confirmed on Monday, according to CNN, that U.S.
troops had begun withdrawing from northeastern Syria.
He announced on Saturday that Turkey had, quote, completed our preparations and action plan and was ready to launch a ground and air operation east of the Euphrates River with the goal of establishing, quote unquote, peace by clearing the region of terrorists.
Turkey's operation is aimed at clearing the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Unit, away from Turkey's border, because presumably an attempt to broaden Kurdistan would include some sort of incursions into Turkish territory that would be a part of the region.
There have been long-standing territorial and border disputes between the Kurds and the Turks.
Ankara, which is the capital of Turkey, regards the YPG as a terrorist group affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought the Turkish state for more than three decades, but the U.S.
backs the YPG and credits the Kurds for helping to defeat ISIS in Syria.
So this one is, thanks for all the help with ISIS, guys.
Also, we're gonna let the Kurds come in and wipe you out now.
Turkey has been working with the U.S.
to establish safe zones that run along the Turkey-Syria border, but Anadolu reports that while Turkey welcomes the joint patrols, it has also said the U.S.
is not doing enough to set up the safe zone properly.
Presumably, the safe zones will be for Syrian refugees who have been swamping Turkey.
More than a million Syrian refugees during the Syrian Civil War have moved into Turkey.
Erdogan expressed frustration with President Trump and the U.S.
military's failure to implement an agreement between the two nations, according to a readout of a call released by the Turkish presidency, and the two leaders agreed to meet in Washington next month at Trump's invitation.
Now, you remember last time Erdogan showed up, his thugs ended up beating up a bunch of anti-regime protesters in Washington, D.C., and it created an actual international incident.
The buffer zone, the U.S.
calls it a security mechanism, would be part of a bid to prevent a military incursion into the area that would target Syrian Kurdish groups.
So presumably the United States is saying, okay, we'll set up these safe zones, but we don't have enough troops to prevent the Turks from actually going in and doing what it is they see fit to do.
According to CNN, Trump's decision to allow Erdogan to move forward with the operation and to move U.S.
forces out of the area goes against U.S.
officials.
Their efforts to dissuade Turkey from carrying out a military intervention.
A Pentagon spokesman named Sean Robertson said, quote, any uncoordinated military operation by Turkey would be of grave concern.
It would undermine our shared interest of a secure northeast Syria and the enduring defeat of ISIS.
On Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson said the Department of Defense actually did not even endorse the planned operations.
So Trump is overruling his own defense department here.
The Department of Defense made clear to Turkey, as did the president, we do not endorse a Turkish operation in northern Syria.
So apparently Trump has said he doesn't want it.
But what's actually going to stop the Turks, really?
Does anybody actually think the United States is going to do anything to prevent all of this?
On Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, quote, we've made clear this conflict should not be militarized.
But a U.S. official familiar with operations in Syria told CNN it is, quote unquote, very likely that Turkey will try something soon.
They said that Ankara, the capital of Turkey, will start with a limited incursion to establish Turkish patrol bases on the Syrian side of the border.
And then eventually, when the world's attention turns away from this issue, then they will launch into trying to clean up, meaning clean out and kill members of the PKK.
In a second, we'll get to the fact that this has actually created some blowback on the right side of the aisle, as well it should, because frankly, it's terrible, terrible, horrible, not moral policy.
We'll get to that in just a second.
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Okay, so Senator Lindsey Graham has tweeted, The decision to abandon our Kurdish allies and turn Syria over to Russia, Iran, and Turkey It's a shot in the arm to the bad guys.
devastating for the good guys.
Brett McGurk is the former U.S. envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition.
He ripped into Trump.
He said he was, quote, not a commander-in-chief and, quote, makes impulsive decisions with no knowledge or deliberation.
He says he blusters and leaves our allies exposed when adversaries call his bluff or he confronts a hard phone call.
Nikki Haley, the former U.S.
ambassador to the U.N.
under Trump, reiterated on Twitter that Kurdish fighters were, quote, instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria and added that the U.S.
must always have the back of our allies if we expect them to have our back.
And obviously the Kurds are not exactly sanguine about all of this.
They are very upset because they are seeing the possibility of actual violence done to them by the Turks with the United States backing off of all of this.
The Kurds, of course, are telling the Pentagon that this is insanity.
That this is just... that there's no rationale for it.
Because, frankly, there is no rationale for it other than the general isolationist rationale of the United States should not be involved anywhere around the world even to help people who helped us wipe out people who are trying to murder Americans and Westerners around the world.
Well, this has prompted Mitch McConnell to sound off.
Again, you know things are bad when the Republican Party starts to tell President Trump that he needs to cut this nonsense out.
Mitch McConnell sounded off.
He released a statement.
He said, In January, a supermajority of the U.S.
Senate voted for an amendment that expressed bipartisan concern about the continuing threat posed by ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria, appreciation of the long-term American security interests in Syria and the region, and support for a continued military presence in northeastern Syria.
The conditions that produced this bipartisan vote still exist today.
While the physical caliphate has been removed, ISIS and Al Qaeda remain dangerous forces in Syria and the ongoing Syrian civil war...
Now I will note that all the members of the media who are ripping on Trump over this, they seemed a lot more sanguine when Barack Obama was creating fake red lines about gassing Syrians and then he proceeded to pull out from Syria and hand the whole thing over to the Russians.
With that said, is it any better if Trump is doing something similar?
Of course not.
It would increase the risk that ISIS and other terrorist groups regroup.
According to McConnell, I urge the president to exercise American leadership, to keep together our multinational coalition to defeat ISIS, and prevent significant conflict between our NATO ally Turkey and our local Syrian counterterrorism partners.
Major new conflict between Turkey and our partners in Syria would seriously risk damaging Turkey's ties to the U.S., and causing greater isolation for Turkey on the world stage.
Turkey is an Islamist force.
They have been, unfortunately, for the last 15 to 20 years under Erdogan.
Erdogan turned what was a secular state into an Islamist state, or at least a state moving in an Islamist direction.
They have backed Hamas.
They have backed terrorist groups.
They have attempted to wipe out allies of the United States.
The fact that President Trump is Apparently, caving before Erdogan is frankly pathetic.
McConnell says, Apparently, the concerns about an ISIS comeback are quite serious, especially because one of the things that would happen if the Kurds were to withdraw is who exactly is going to be running the prisons that are holding tens of thousands of ISIS fighters?
The Turks?
How's that gonna go well?
The answer is, it probably will not.
Mitt Romney has sounded off on this as well.
He said, quote, the president's decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal.
It says that America is an unreliable ally.
It facilitates ISIS resurgence.
It presages another humanitarian disaster.
So when you've got McConnell and Romney on the same page, it is fair to say that there is pretty solid opposition to President Trump's move right here.
At the State Department, a senior official authorized to brief reporters on the condition of anonymity denied suggestions that Trump had endorsed a Turkish incursion.
He said, we do not support this operation in any way, shape, or form, but the timing of the Turks basically announcing an incursion and the timing of President Trump announcing we're going to pull out is obviously not a giant coincidence.
There's been a lot of talk about President Trump ramping up trade with Turkey and friendliness between the United States and Turkey.
According to a State Department official, the original call between Trump and Erdogan originated as a conversation about the air defense issue and economic cooperation, and then Erdogan raised going into northeastern Syria, claiming that the safe zone mechanism that was set up and was being executed was not meeting his needs and that he wanted to do a unilateral operation. claiming that the safe zone mechanism that was set up Thank you.
But apparently, according to the State Department official, there was no specific indication that he would push the button.
We still don't know in the end what he's going to do.
Okay, but if you don't know what he's going to do, and then you signal that we're going to pull out, obviously that signal is going to be taken as a sign of weakness by Erdogan.
So, that's obviously some...
Bad, bad policy.
Now, President Trump seems to be backing off of the policy.
So this is the thing that I don't really understand about the perspective on President Trump that suggests that criticizing President Trump weakens President Trump.
I don't think that that is correct.
If you are criticizing him not to undermine his presidency, but to point out when he is making a mistake.
Because President Trump Does have the capacity to shift policy.
We have seen him do it before.
When he steps over a line, if the right is willing to call him out, then he steps back over the line on the right side of the line.
We'll get to that in one second.
President Trump seeming to walk all of this back.
Get into that in just one second.
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Okay, so.
Many people on the right are very upset about this.
Obviously, you're starting to see some on the right defend President Trump.
President Trump then sent out a bizarre series of tweets walking this thing back.
And again, this is just proof, positive, that when Trump does something wrong and you call him out on it, he is capable of hearing it and changing in the most bizarre possible way, apparently.
So President Trump tweeted this one out, and this is This is a classic Trump tweet.
I mean, this is the full Trump, man.
Here he is.
Here he is.
has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS caliphate.
It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory.
Okay, well that last part right there about how he expects Turkey to maintain the ISIS fighters in custody.
He's not saying a lot about the protection of the Kurds who helped us defeat ISIS right there.
Is he?
President Trump then said this is all part of America first foreign policy says we'll fight where it is to our benefit and only fight to win.
Okay, but there's also a point of American foreign policy and that's called deterrence.
And one of the reasons that we keep, for example, a trigger force in South Korea is to deter the North Koreans from invading South Korea.
Why?
Well, some people would say, well, we should get out of there.
What interest do we have in Korea?
We have an interest in there not being a hot war between North Korea and South Korea that draws in China and then forces the intervention of other powers, including the United States.
See, sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of brutality on the other end.
And pulling out and signaling to the Turks that you're going to do so It's obviously not good policy.
You do have to love the snidely whiplash sort of language right there from President Trump in his great and unmatched wisdom.
It's like Jafar in Aladdin.
His great and unmatched wisdom.
Like, what is that?
You will not bow before a salt and you will cower before a sorcerer.
Like, what is that?
Sorry.
My great and unmatched wisdom?
I would totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey.
I've done it before.
I mean, it is true that he has obviously had significant impact on the economy of Iran, so presumably he's threatening sanctions on Turkey five minutes after telling Turkey that he would like for them to enter that buffer zone and then...
We'll pull out or something.
It's all confused.
It is all confusing.
Consistency-informed policy actually matters.
Now look, when it comes to President Trump and his sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants policy, I've generally not been supremely critical.
The reason being, I don't think that you necessarily have to have a plan.
I think that the constitutional checks and boundaries prevent an impulsive president from doing too much damage.
That is not nearly as true when it comes to foreign policy.
The reason it's not as true when it comes to foreign policy is because an impulse can sometimes create a similarly countervailing impulse on the other side.
A weakness can sometimes be taken as a measure that somebody should do something to you.
I take it as an example of the first Gulf War.
There were high-ranking negotiating officials inside the H.W.
Bush administration who allegedly signaled to the Saddam Hussein regime that if Hussein were to walk into Kuwait, the United States would basically do nothing, at which point Hussein said, okay, fine, so I'll walk into Kuwait, and then the United States was at war.
I'm glad that President Trump walked it back within 24 hours, and this is why people should criticize him when he deserves the critique.
There's, again, this bizarre belief that you can never criticize President Trump, that he can't take it.
The man's fairly tough.
You may have noticed he's taken an awful amount of abuse and crap over the last several years.
I think he can handle some people saying that his Turkish policy is a bad idea, especially when he is kowtowing to one of the worst dictators I mean, Erdogan really is terrible.
He really has taken Turkey from what was a burgeoning Western country back into an Islamist country run by a regime that does not care about human rights or freedom and threatens its neighbors.
It's...
It's really bad.
It's really bad.
So I'm glad that President Trump seems to be walking this thing back, at least.
But that sort of temporary boo-boo has raised hackles everywhere.
And I will point out that when it comes to people on the left who are suddenly finding their spine when it comes to criticizing American foreign policy in Syria, welcome to the club.
It's wonderful to see you here.
I'm so glad that you could finally make it after years of you pretending that Barack Obama's foreign policy in Syria was a symptom of great genius, that his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants foreign policy, handing over power in Syria to Vladimir Putin and the Iranians, that that was actually a measure of his broad-heartedness and genius.
Glad to welcome you to the club where it turns out that a predictable American foreign policy is useful in this arena of the world.
I welcome people like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman tweeted out, there are only a few reasons why Trump would do this.
One would be he's trying to kowtow to Russia.
One is that he's impulsive.
Okay, yeah, it's funny how Paul Krugman didn't have all that much to say when Barack Obama was drawing fake red lines about the use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens and then immediately went silent when that red line disappeared and Barack Obama was like, hey, what if we just give this thing over to my good friend Vlad?
Give him some flexibility and now he'll help me in Syria.
And shortly thereafter, the rise of ISIS began.
That's not a defense of Trumpian policy.
It is to point out the hypocrisy of the left that apparently does not care about this stuff unless there's an R next to the name of the person who is running the executive branch of the United States government.
Okay, meanwhile...
The impeachment stuff continues to burgeon.
The Democrats have a new angle because every 30 seconds or so they have to come up with a new angle because it seems like the angles they've taken so far are insufficient.
So now they're going after President Trump's taxes.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, meanwhile, in other news, President Trump's taxes are apparently now the subject of a massive legal dispute.
According to the New York Times yesterday, a federal judge on Monday rejected President Trump's efforts to shield his tax returns from Manhattan state prosecutors, calling the president's argument that he was immune from criminal investigation, quote, repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values.
I mean, I thought that we had already litigated whether the president is immune from criminal proceedings.
President Clinton was brought up, well he wasn't brought up criminally, he was brought up civilly I suppose.
He's not immune to civil suit.
It is a matter of controversy over whether the president is able to be prosecuted in state or federal court while he's the president.
There was that famous DOJ
office of legal counsel opinion that sort of suggested that you can't prosecute the president federally while he is sitting and it would be kind of bizarre if state governments could prosecute the president of the united states because then presumably they could they'd always have this sort of check on the presidential power but if the president were to hit somebody with his car could he be prosecuted in the state of new york if he actually shot somebody on fifth avenue could he be prosecuted in the state of new york it'd be sort of weird to argue that he couldn't be prosecuted in the state of new york if he just shot somebody on the street
The decision from Judge Victor Morero of Federal District Court in Manhattan was the first significant ruling in a case that could require Trump to hand over his tax returns and ultimately test the limits of presidential power.
The judge dismissed a lawsuit that had been filed by Trump.
He was seeking to block a subpoena for eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.
Now, listen, is this a fishing expedition?
Yes, it is a fishing expedition.
There's no question it is a fishing expedition.
The Attorney General of the State of New York openly made clear the day that she was elected that she had the Trump Organization and President Trump in her sights, which is horrible prosecutorial behavior.
You are supposed to prosecute crime.
You are not supposed to prosecute people.
You identify the crime, you investigate the crime, and then you prosecute the crime.
You don't say, you know who I don't like?
That Trumpian fellow.
It's so funny, all the same people who are saying that it is selective and malicious for President Trump to ask the Ukrainians to look into Joe Biden, despite widespread allegations, at least allegations, whether they're verified or not, of corruption by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, his son, in Ukraine.
The same people are saying, well, that's a targeted prosecution.
They are totally fine with a targeted prosecution when the target of the prosecution happens to have a name rhyming with Donald Trump.
The judge dismissed that lawsuit.
The Manhattan District Attorney demanded the records in late August as part of an investigation into hush money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections.
Now that, of course, has been the culmination of a years-long effort to get President Trump's tax returns.
For the moment, his tax returns remain protected.
His lawyers quickly appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
They agreed to temporarily delay enforcement of the subpoena while considering arguments in the case.
Judge Marrero systematically dismantled the president's arguments.
that investigating a sitting president was unconstitutional, according to the New York Times.
The judge said Mr. Trump's lawyers were, in essence, arguing that the president, along with his family, associates, and companies, were above the law.
He says this court finds aspects of such a doctrine repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values.
This, of course, would be a Bill Clinton-appointed judge.
The dispute pits the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, against the president and his DOJ, and has raised a host of issues that have not been tested in the courts.
The Constitution does not actually say whether presidents can be charged with a crime while in office.
The Supreme Court has not, in fact, ruled on the issue.
So, this is certainly not going to be the last word in the case.
Look, I think President Trump should have revealed his tax returns way back during the 2016 campaign.
I have no real rationale as to why he didn't do that.
With that said, is the insane focus on Trump's tax returns something that behooves prosecutorial authorities?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Meanwhile, in other impeachment news, I just have to point out the irony of Hillary Clinton.
So Hillary Clinton, who is still wandering the woods of Upstate New York, sadly, pretending that she is the president of the United States, like Miss Haversham, walking around in her old wedding dress.
Hillary Clinton, she was on the TVs yesterday, and she suggested that calling on foreign adversaries for assistance in campaigns goes to the heart of our sovereignty.
It threatens our sovereignty.
Here is the illustrious non-president Hillary Clinton.
When you have a president calling on foreign adversaries for assistance in his political campaigns, which he did in 2016, and which he is doing again, that goes right to the heart of our sovereignty as a nation, to our national security, in a way that is almost unimaginable.
I cannot imagine any other president ever even thinking about this.
Could you imagine a president, say, appealing to Chinese donors in the 1996 election and declassifying a bunch of nuclear secrets at the same time?
Because you were married to that one.
Could you imagine a presidential candidate maybe coordinating with the Ukrainian embassy to dig up dirt on the opponent?
Could you maybe imagine like a presidential candidate coordinating with foreign resources, including a former British spy who is apparently being fed intel from Russian governmental sources about their political opponents and then, you know, funneling that to your old administration and your buddies in the DOJ and the FBI?
Could you imagine anything like that?
I seem to be able to imagine something like that because it happened.
The gaslighting of this is what makes it so difficult.
As I said yesterday, as I talked about yesterday, when it comes to impeachment, one of the standards for impeachment is that it has to be clearly above and beyond other things that were not impeached before.
And the fact that Democrats seem to want to set a new standard that only applies to people who are not Democrats is pretty astonishing.
By the way, when it comes to impeachment, just to point out some of the media coverage, Brian Stalter over at CNN, he has a Reliable Sources newsletter, and he points out the country's leading news outlets are laying the groundwork for long-term coverage of the impeachment inquiry and all the potential fallout.
It is amazing how the media have resonated to any anti-Trump narrative they can find, whether you are talking about Dean Beckett of the New York Times openly acknowledging that the Trump-Russia thing was the focus of their last couple of years, And then stating that they were going to move into covering Trump racism, and now they're just moving straight on to impeachment.
Now you have Brian Stelter pointing out that all of these newspapers and all these organizations are hiring up and staffing up on the impeachment stuff.
So basically, as soon as the Democrats throw out a narrative, it is time to staff up on the reporting side to do all of their oppo research for them.
One of the convenient things about being a Democratic opposition researcher is you never actually have to work.
You can just read the front page of the New York Times, which will dig up whether Mitt Romney cut a gay kid's hair back in 1952.
It's really, really exciting stuff.
And we'll get to more of the new CNN hires.
CNN has hired some new people.
And it goes to show you exactly where CNN, the most trusted name in news, is coming from.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
First, let's talk about gun ownership.
So as you know, I'm a big fan of gun ownership.
This is not only because I've had personal safety issues.
It is also because you should exercise your Second Amendment rights.
Your Second Amendment rights are what protect your First Amendment rights and all of your other rights that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Every year in America, guns are used, apparently, over 2 million times in self-defense, according to certain studies.
The average self-defense legal case costs between $50,000 and $70,000 for the victim.
Which can be shocking, especially when you consider that these Americans were just defending themselves and their loved ones like you or I would.
Now, you think, okay, somebody comes in my house and I shoot them, that's the end of the story?
In many cases, not.
That's why I'm excited to introduce our new partnership with the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
The USCCA was founded in 2003 in response to the growing threats to Americans' rights, freedom, and ability to defend themselves.
They provide industry-leading self-defense education, training, and legal protection to over 300,000 members, and they are the fastest growing community of responsibly armed Americans in the country.
Plus, they have fantastic giveaways, like, for example, this month, They're giving away $1,000 to 19 lucky winners for free.
You can buy a SIG, a Glock, an AR.
Just text WIN to 87222 and claim your free entries.
There's no catch.
The USCCA just believes in helping protect responsible Americans.
Again, gun ownership.
If you are a responsible American, you should learn to use a gun, you should know how to use a gun, and you should get a gun.
And now you have the opportunity to win one by texting WIN to 87222 to find out more and claim your entries.
That is WIN, W-I-N, to 87222.
Okay, we're gonna get to More on Impeachment Gate 2019 in just one second.
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Why?
Well, because the fact is that We've been on break for a little while over the weekend.
I've been flying and all of that.
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We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
All righty.
So, CNN has hired four new contributors, according to Brian Stelter, VB.
Very exciting stuff.
Who?
Well, Jeffrey Engel, a CNN presidential historian and the co-author of Impeachment in American History.
I can't imagine why they hired him.
Michael Gerhart, a CNN legal analyst and the author of several books, including The Federal Impeachment Process, A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, and a regular on CNN during the Clinton impeachment.
Ross Garber, a CNN legal analyst who represents four governors facing impeachment proceedings.
Everybody else is staffing up on the impeachment stuff as well.
Security analyst who's been part of the Post team breaking big stories about the whistleblower complained.
Everybody else is staffing up on the impeachment stuff as well.
So just very, very exciting stuff.
Now, the media are pointing out that very few Republicans are appearing on television to mount a defense of President Trump.
Part of that is because why would you?
So you can get beat up like Ron Johnson was by Chuck Todd?
Like, why exactly would you sign up for that?
It's amazing to me to watch how members of the media are like, We can't book a Republican to talk about this stuff.
Also, Republicans are the worst, and they're terrible, horrible people.
Yes, maybe it's because you believe the latter that you can't get the former.
That would be it.
But in other breaking impeachment-related news, the House has now allegedly subpoenaed White House budget office and Pentagon documents.
Now, whether those are formal subpoenas is unclear.
So as Andy McCarthy has pointed out in the last couple of weeks, the fact is that Democrats have been basically issuing requests to executive branch agencies for documents and then not issuing formal subpoenas.
A formal subpoena actually carries with it the threat of contempt.
A non-formal subpoena does not carry that.
It's basically just them pretending that they've subpoenaed something and then they can complain that it's being obstructed, even though usually you subpoena a document.
And then there's a negotiation that takes place over what exactly the documents are that are to be turned over.
So the House has now expanded its sprawling impeachment inquiry They've issued subpoenas to the Defense Department and OMB for documents that could solve lingering mysteries about whether Trump's decision to withhold security aid for Ukraine was tied to his efforts to pressure the government there to investigate his political rivals.
Now, in all likelihood, by the way, those documents are likely to show that the military aid was in fact tied to corruption concerns.
You really think?
I mean, by the way, if they come with a smoking gun here, They come with a smoking gun.
I just have my serious doubt that the Trump administration was sending notes to the Defense Department saying, go get Joe Biden or cut the aid.
I really don't think that, sign Donald J. Trump, I don't think that's where this is going.
Two senior American diplomats caught up in the scandal are scheduled to speak to investigators before the week is through.
A third, who is scheduled to be deposed on Monday, didn't show up.
But we'll show up later.
Lawmakers appeared to be in the final stages of arranging a highly secure interview with the anonymous CIA whistleblower.
Now again, I don't know why we're going to pretend that this CIA whistleblower has any new information.
What was in the complaint is now public.
And we know all of it.
And we have the transcript of the phone call.
So what is this person going to add?
The answer is presumably nothing, but this person will also probably demonstrate that they are a partisan Democrat, because in fact, it appears they're probably a partisan Democrat.
Now, does that actually undermine the validity of the complaint?
Not really.
I mean, we'll have to find out what the facts actually have to say about all of this.
this.
President Trump said, people understand it's a fraud, it's a scam, it's a witch hunt.
All we do is keep fighting for the American people because that's all I do.
And then he calls his own actions very terrific.
President Trump, I wish he'd been sometimes a Broadway producer because his raves for his own shows would have just been spectacular.
Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, chastised President Trump.
Trump, he said the president should not have raised the Biden issue on that call, period.
It's not appropriate for a president to engage a foreign government in an investigation of a political opponent.
Now, I tend to agree with that, although Rudy Giuliani's general point, which is, okay, well, what if that general political opponent happens to have committed a crime, right, that That's a real question.
The problem is that there may in fact be a disconnect between what Giuliani thought was happening in Ukraine and what Trump thought was happening in Ukraine and what was actually happening in Ukraine.
So Trump very well could have thought that there was corruption.
It's almost a mirror image of the Mueller report.
So, on the one hand, what you see in Mueller report land is a dual narrative.
The narrative of the left is that there is a good reason for opening the Mueller report, that there are serious suspicions about Trump and Russia, and just because the goods were not fully delivered does not mean that there is not accuracy to the suspicions in the first place.
On the right, people say, no, no, no, this thing was launched in bad faith.
It was obviously meant to go after Trump.
It was broadened out from Manafort to include President Trump.
The whole thing was a gotcha from the beginning.
Well, now we are seeing the exact same logic applied in reverse with regards to Ukraine and Biden.
Some people on the right, including the president, are saying, listen, I was interested in Ukrainian corruption and Joe Biden's name was obviously part of the story here.
Glenn Beck actually did an entire show about the timeline in Ukraine, and it is kind of suspicious.
I mean, when Biden got involved versus when his son was made the A member of the board of Burisma?
I mean, that timeline does look suspicious.
So Republicans are like, well, this thing was launched in good faith, and even if it comes up with nothing, that doesn't mean it was launched in bad faith.
Democrats are saying, no, no, no, it was totally launched in bad faith because Joe Biden is President Trump's political rival.
And the answer is, we'll have to wait and see in both cases.
We're still awaiting the Inspector General report on the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.
And we're going to have to see whether the Biden thing was caught up in a generalized corruption investigation by the administration, or whether it was just a political attempt to target Biden that was sort of papered over with the facade of concern about corruption.
The new subpoenas were issued by the Democrat-controlled House Intelligence Committee, and they follow similar demands for documents from the State Department and the White House made in recent days.
But those were not actually subpoenas, as I was pointing out.
Subpoenas come with legal consequences.
These do not.
They gave the agencies until October 15th to hand over notes, memos, and communications and communications related to the aid deliberation over its delivery within the government and possible conversations with Ukrainian officials about it.
Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry suspect that obviously military aid was withheld in order to pressure Joe Biden.
The Defense Department had been anticipating the subpoena last week.
The Pentagon's General Counsel directed all department heads to collect and turn in all documents and material related to military aid to Ukraine.
So once again, this doesn't look like an act of obstruction.
One of the funny things about this particular impeachment inquiry is that it's actually a lot easier to prove a cover-up than it is to prove a crime.
Take Watergate for example.
There still is not solid evidence that President Nixon explicitly ordered anyone to go break into the Watergate Hotel.
There is explicit evidence that he ordered the cover-up.
It's easier to prove the cover-up because there are a lot more people involved in the cover-up than the crime.
Usually gonna use a go-between for the crime anyway.
Okay, well in this particular case if there's no cover-up, how do you prove the crime?
Particularly because you have to show intent.
It's not just enough to show that President Trump set up a quid pro quo with regard to corruption because Joe Biden did that.
You actually have to show that his intent was to get Biden and not to target corruption at all.
Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, says that he is thinking of suing Adam Schiff.
He said he's working with outside lawyers to prepare lawsuits against Schiff as well as Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
He said that those legal plans were made over the weekend in a series of calls with Yahoo News amid cable news appearances in which he aggressively defended President Trump.
Apparently Giuliani has dismissed at least one critic of such a lawsuit as a nitwit, arguing there are no constitutional constraints on bringing such litigation against sitting members of Congress.
He says that Schiff is seeking to inhibit me in my ability to defend Trump by criticizing him.
He says that they are attempting to deprive him of civil rights and engaging in a conspiracy to remove the president at all costs.
I'm not sure that's suable, even if it is troubling.
And even if you agree with the characterization, not everything that is troubling is suable.
Okay, meanwhile, in the 2020 race, Joe Biden is all but dead.
Elizabeth Warren has now taken a narrow lead over Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a new October IBD Investor Business Daily TIPP poll.
Both candidates continue to lead in head-to-head matchups against Trump.
Although Biden has a more comfortable lead, Warren is only leading very narrowly, according to this polling data.
The poll shows Warren at 27 and Biden at 26, but he has been sliding quickly.
He is now second in the vast majority of the new polls.
Bernie Sanders has completely fallen out of the race.
He is all the way down at 10%.
The heart attack, obviously, is not going to help.
His support will probably kick over to Elizabeth Warren.
Joe Biden is lagging in fundraising as well.
In the third quarter, Biden raised only $15.2 million, while Warren raised $25, as did Bernie Sanders.
The October IBD-TIPP poll found Warren edging Trump by just two points, 48 to 46.
That was even slimmer than her lead in September.
So, while Elizabeth Warren will be a competitive nominee, it is certainly no foregone conclusion that she will beat President Trump.
The fact is, President Trump is an expert at dragging people through the mud.
It is his thing.
He is great at it.
And Elizabeth Warren is ripe for the picking, not only on the Pocahontas kind of stuff, but also because she's kind of dishonest about her own policies.
I mean, I've talked about this on the show.
Elizabeth Warren used to be an interesting human, and now she's a full-scale Bernie-ite progressive who refuses to answer straight questions about whether she's going to raise your taxes.
Trump should have a lot of material to work with.
He really should.
A lot of politics is about expectation versus reality.
The expectation for President Trump and the reality of President Trump are identical.
Nobody has expectations that have not been met.
If you believe that President Trump is a godsend, then your expectations meet your reality.
And if you believe that President Trump is the worst president ever, your expectations meet your reality.
And if you're somewhere in the middle, your expectations meet your reality.
Because Trump can fulfill all those conditions for you.
There is nothing hidden about the man.
Everything is out on the surface.
However, If Elizabeth Warren is perceived as an anti-corruption fighter, if she is pure as the driven snow, if the hem of her skirt has never been muddied, President Trump is a mud monster.
He embraces other candidates and they walk away covered in mud.
That is what President Trump does best.
So, if Elizabeth Warren is riding at 48% right now, and Trump is riding at 46% in that poll, Elizabeth Warren might actually be in some trouble.
Because again, she has not had one iota of negative press attention since that ridiculous DNA test that she took at the beginning of this year.
Since then, it has been nothing but glowing reports written by her sycophants in the media who are carrying around drool cups for her.
I mean, they are literally drooling into cups over Elizabeth Warren.
It's insane.
And so Joe Biden, he's been trashed.
This lends credence to all the folks who have been claiming that President Trump and the Ukraine stuff, it's all about taking down Joe Biden so that he can run against Elizabeth Warren again.
I think that accident and stupidity is much more a motivating force in human affairs than is detailed planning.
But I guess if you want to make the case, like some folks do, that Trump 40 chested this thing out and that he was talking with Ukraine because he knew that Ukraine was eventually going to spill its beans and that eventually all this was going to come out and it would sink Joe Biden, I guess you can make that case.
Although the reality is, of course, that Joe Biden was sliding in the polls at least a month and a half, two months ago.
So the Ukraine thing is just the final nail in his political coffin.
This new poll, by the way, shows that Warren has now displaced Sanders as the candidate of the far left.
She now has the support of 38% of self-described liberals.
Among Democrats, Biden is at 14%.
Among white voters, Warren is ahead of Biden 33 to 20.
Biden is still ahead 44 to 16 among black and Hispanic voters.
But that could obviously change over time.
Among Democratic investors, 31% backed Elizabeth Warren versus 23% for Joe Biden, which just goes to show you that a lot of Democrats who invest their money apparently care about their money a lot less than they care about politics.
So I guess good for them.
I guess they're putting their money where their mouth is.
They're also putting your money where their mouth is, which is far less exciting.
Now, one wrinkle that may throw a serious wrinkle into the next election cycle is this new story that Justice Clarence Thomas is absent due to illness from the Supreme Court.
Obviously, the justices of the Supreme Court are getting up there in terms of age.
There are some of them that are really getting up there.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course, is 86 years old.
If, God forbid, something were to happen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Then, presumably, I mean, it would just throw a wrench, like a massive wrench, into the 2020 election campaign.
If Justice Scalia had not died in 2016, there's a good shot Trump doesn't win that election.
Clarence Thomas is only 71 years old, but he is sick to start the term.
Stephen Breyer is 81 years old, which everybody is ignoring.
He's been on the court since 1994.
Everybody else is a lot younger, so those would be the three to keep your eye on in terms of health issues, maybe.
Although 71 is still pretty young, right?
It's younger than President Trump.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 86 and Stephen Breyer in 81, both liberal justices.
If something were to happen to either one of them, that would change the dynamics in the race extraordinarily.
Extraordinarily.
Radically.
Because everybody is focused in on the Supreme Court and its future constituency.
So, we'll get to more of that a little bit, probably tomorrow, and maybe a little bit later on today's show, on the radio show.
We'll get into the Supreme Court cases that are coming up.
Okay, time for a thing I like and then time for some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
So, today is Yom Kippur.
Tonight marks Yom Kippur.
It's actually my first time doing Yom Kippur in Israel.
I've heard that it's amazing.
The entire country shuts down to Colton's great horror and shock because Colton will not be able... It's like Christmas Day in the United States where you can't actually go out to a Rite Aid and just buy anything.
Everything's shut down.
Except that no cars run.
Everybody is in synagogue.
So congratulations, Colton.
You came on your day, my friend.
Yom Kippur is an amazing holiday.
It's a wonderful opportunity to really sort of reconsider.
Yom Kippur is a day where everything basically shuts down throughout Israel.
There are no cars.
There's no electronics, effectively speaking.
It is the day of atonement.
It is the day when everybody is supposed to pour out their sins before God, and they're supposed to engage in teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.
That would be repentance, and prayer, and charity giving, and it's Frankly, it's a pretty amazing thing.
Spiritually speaking, it's a pretty amazing thing.
The opportunity, the kindness of, if you're a believer in God, the kindness of a God who will forgive your sins is an incredible thing.
I think people get the wrong impression of Judaism and forgiveness.
Like, we were big on this for a long time before the other major world religions were out there on it.
So, Yom Kippur, it's a pretty special day.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, so stupid piece of the day.
David Leonhardt said, the rich really do pay lower taxes than you.
Yeah, dude.
No.
No, they do not.
That is called stupid.
So he says that this is because they are paying lower effective tax rates than other groups because they're paying lower rates in terms of because they have capital gains and many other groups do not have capital gains.
Okay, yes.
And then in terms of the income tax, they're paying exorbitantly more than anybody else.
I love that David Leonhardy says the overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was only 23%.
Yes, because the richest 400 households are basically sitting on earned interest.
And they're sitting on investment.
Then there are a lot of people inside the 1%, which is a lot bigger than 400 households, who are paying insane, insane income tax.
Effective income tax rates in some states like California, if you combine the federal income tax rate and the effective income tax rate in the state of California, and then you include things like sales tax and property tax, people are paying over 50% of what they make to the federal and state government.
That's not happening at the lower end of the tax bracket.
But David Leonhardt, I mean, talk about lying with statistics.
The overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was only 23%, meaning that their combined tax payments equaled less than one quarter of their total income.
This overall rate was 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980.
Yes, and people paid the same effective tax rate because they engaged in what we call tax avoidance.
For middle class and poor families, the picture is different.
Federal income taxes have declined modestly for these families over the years, but they haven't benefited much, if at all, from the decline in corporate tax or estate tax.
Yes, because if you're poor, you don't have that much to hand on in estate tax.
And you also don't own a corporation, so you also don't make money in corporate tax.
Like, yes, that's true, but you are probably engaged by a corporation, and probably the people who hired you, who already paid tax, by the way, on the money that they want to hand on to their kids, They're the ones who are paying you.
The estate tax, by the way, is utterly immoral.
It's immoral on every level.
I earn money over the course of my life and I pay taxes all the way along.
Every dollar I own, I have paid taxes on.
One of the goals of me earning money is to pass it on to my kids.
The government grave-robbing me by coming in and grabbing my money after I am dead because they believe that they have a right to my money a second time over is complete abject moral crap.
But this kind of stuff is absolute nonsense.
Here's the actual statistic.
The top 20% of Americans, as of 2018, pay 87% of all income tax in the country.
Households with $150,000 or more in income make up about 52% of total income nationally, but pay 87% of the total income tax.
So stop lying about the progressiveness of the American income tax.
It's just a lie.
It's just a bunch of nonsense.
Okay.
We'll be back here later today with a couple of additional hours.
Otherwise, we'll see you after Yom Kippur, after the atonement is done.
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.
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Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.
Edited by Adam Sievent.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
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