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Oct. 18, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

50:05

Quid Pro Quo? | Ep. 880

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	Mick Mulvaney spends the day on the hot seat.
	President Trump sends the G7 to his own resort.
	And our journalism-ing betters set their sights on Facebook.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Wow, endless numbers of things to get to today.
	We're gonna jump in in just one second.
	First, The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Okay, so, the big news of the day all surrounds Mick Mulvaney.
	Before we get into it, first, we have to note the passing of Elijah Cummings, longtime congressperson from Washington, D.C.
	slash Baltimore, obviously.
	According to the Associated Press, Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, a sharecropper's son who rose to become a civil rights champion and the chairman of one of the U.S.
	House committees leading an impeachment inquiry of President Trump, died Thursday of complications from long-standing health problems.
	He was 68 years old.
	He was a formidable orator who advocated for the poor in his black majority district according to the Associated Press.
	You don't have to like Elijah Cummings' politics to understand that he was good at the game and not only that, that he was actually, according to virtually every Republican who worked with him, somebody who operated With a high level of honor inside his own chamber.
	There's a lot of bipartisan respect for Elijah Cummings.
	So all the best to his wife and family.
	Obviously, condolences to everybody who knew Elijah Cummings.
	Trey Gowdy made a really nice statement on Twitter about Elijah Cummings.
	He said, was one of the most powerful, beautiful, and compelling voices in American politics.
	The power and the beauty came from his authenticity, his conviction, the sincerity with which he held his beliefs.
	We rarely agreed on political matters.
	We never had a crossword outside of a committee room.
	He had a unique ability to separate the personal from the work.
	The story of Elijah's life would benefit everyone regardless of political ideation, the obstacles, barriers, and roadblocks he overcame, and the external and sometimes internal doubt that whispered in the ear of a young Elijah Cummings.
	He beat it all.
	He beat the odds.
	He beat the low expectations of that former school employee who told Elijah to abandon the dream of being a lawyer, that he would never become a lawyer, to settle for a job with his hands and not his mind.
	Elijah loved telling that story because that school employee wound up being Elijah's first client as a lawyer.
	We live in an age where we see people on TV a couple of times and we think we know them and what they are about.
	It is true Elijah was a proud progressive with a booming melodious voice who found himself in the middle of the most major political stories over the past decade.
	It is inescapable that be part of his legacy, but his legacy also includes the path he took to become one of the most powerful political figures of his time.
	It is a path filled with pain, prejudice, obstacles, and doubt that he refused to let stop him.
	His legacy is perseverance.
	His legacy is fighting through the pain.
	His legacy is making sure there were fewer obstacles for the next Elijah Cummings.
	His legacy to me above all else was his faith.
	A faith in God that is being rewarded today with no more fights, no more battles, And no more pain.
	So, good for a nice statement by Trey Gowdy.
	And regardless of your political affiliation, when people in public service pass away and they are well respected across the political aisle, it's worthy of taking a moment.
	Okay, so the big news of the day.
	obviously surrounds the statement of President Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who also is the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has an enormous amount of power and influence inside the Trump administration, and is seen by many as the guy who's kind of Trump's hatchet man on the inside.
	We'll get to what Mick Mulvaney said in just one second.
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	So the big story over the course of yesterday was Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's acting chief of staff, coming out and saying a bevy of things about Ukraine.
	So let's go through the things that Mick Mulvaney actually said about Ukraine because I think some of them are Some of them are true, and some of them are badly stated, and some of them are being misconstrued, and some of them make real trouble for President Trump.
	So here's what Mick Mulvaney had to say about Ukraine aid.
	He was specifically asked whether aid to Ukraine was tied to Ukraine investigating the 2016 election, and here's what Mick Mulvaney had to say.
	Did he also mention to me in the past that the corruption related to the DNC server?
	Absolutely.
	No question about that.
	But that's it.
	That's why we held up the money.
	The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation.
	And that is absolutely appropriate.
	Yeah, which ultimately then flowed.
	So Mulvaney's saying, yes, there was a quid pro quo, we did hold off the military aid in order to pressure the Ukrainians to look into the 2016 election, but we didn't do the quid pro quo about investigation of the Bidens.
	That's a significant walk back.
	What you just described is a quid pro quo.
	It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server Okay, now, people are construing this as he said there was a quid pro quo that is impeachable.
	Now, as I've said all along, the problem here is quid pro quo.
	What I've also said all along is that it depends what the quid pro quo is for.
	So, for example, we know that three Democratic senators actually wrote the administration in Ukraine just last year and said to them, we want to withhold your aid unless you are willing to fully cooperate with the Mueller investigation.
	So that would be a quid pro quo, would it not?
	I mean, that is a quid pro quo.
	In other words, there are strings attached to American aid.
	The question is whether the strings attached are overtly about getting a political opponent.
	Remember where this story started, so you can see how the story is now morphing, right?
	So the story started with the accusation that Donald Trump specifically said to Ukraine, you will not get your aid unless you investigate Joe Biden.
	Now the media are shifting this into, well it's just as bad if Trump said you won't get your aid unless you investigate Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
	No, that's not the same thing.
	The United States and the people of the United States do have a legitimate interest in finding out about foreign interference in the 2016 election.
	And I'm having a hard time, frankly, understanding how folks on the left don't get this, considering that they just spent two years investigating, with taxpayer dollars, Russian interference in an American election.
	And that members of the U.S.
	Congress who are Democrats were threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine if they didn't help with that specific investigation about the 2016 election.
	So in other words, if you withhold aid to Ukraine because they won't help Democrats investigate Mueller, that's okay.
	If you won't hand over aid to Ukraine unless they investigate Ukraine's meddling that helped Hillary Clinton, then it's very bad in a quid pro quo.
	I don't understand how these both can be simultaneously true.
	That does not make any moral sense at all.
	Now, that's not really where Mulvaney slipped up.
	So everybody is jumping on the fact that he was asked specifically about quid pro quo, and then he sort of said, yeah, we do that all the time, to mean that he is saying that there's a quid pro quo American taxpayer money to help President Trump politically.
	And that's not what he said.
	And when you're talking about a quid pro quo that matters, you have to be talking about something that you cannot use American taxpayer money to do.
	The accusation about Joe Biden, for example, is an accusation that Joe Biden used American taxpayer dollars, right?
	A billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine.
	in order to benefit himself and his son Hunter Biden personally.
	That's the accusation President Trump is making.
	Biden's defense is, no, when I said that there is a quid pro quo, what I meant is that I'm withholding $1 billion in loan guarantees, specifically until Ukraine cleans up its act with regard to corruption.
	And the Obama administration was pressuring in early 2016 and throughout 2016, in fact, pressuring the Ukrainian government to clean up on corruption.
	And that involved investigating people like Paul Manafort, who ended up as Trump's campaign chief of staff.
	So, was that wrong of the Obama administration?
	Did they violate the law there?
	Was that a quid pro quo in the sense that everybody is talking about an impeachable offense?
	The answer is no.
	And now Mulvaney phrased all of this in like the stupidest possible way.
	And in just one second, I'm going to read you the full context of his comments and explain what I think He was trying to say, but let's be real about this.
	He was very awkward in how he said it and he created more nightmares and more headaches for President Trump.
	The president's legal team today is walking away from Mulvaney saying, listen, we didn't vet that press conference.
	We have no idea what that guy was saying.
	Sean Hannity, who of course is a big defender of the president on virtually every topic, he came out and he was ripping into Mulvaney.
	So.
	Even Trump's biggest defenders are unhappy with what Mulvaney said.
	But I'm pretty sure that the headlines are not matching what Mulvaney actually said.
	The headlines today are all about how Mick Mulvaney basically said, sure, we do quid pro quos all the time.
	What he was saying is that there are strings attached to American foreign policy aid.
	That, of course, has always been true.
	And he's correct about that.
	It's just he phrased it in the worst possible way because Maybe he's just not that good at this.
	Again, the stupidity more than malice explanation tends to hold true for virtually everything.
	People make mistakes, people say dumb things, particularly in the political realm, but we'll explain word for word what he said and then you can make your own judgment.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so here is what Mick Mulvaney actually had to say word for word.
	So he was asked, quote, the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that Trump ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine.
	And Mulvaney said the look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation.
	And that is absolutely appropriate.
	Okay, again, that's fair.
	The Obama administration withheld aid to Ukraine unless they were willing to root out corruption by looking into people like Paul Manafort, even though Paul Manafort was working with the Trump campaign at the time.
	Hillary Clinton was coordinating with the Ukrainian government to receive dirt on President Trump.
	That was not illegal.
	It was bad, but it was not illegal.
	The Democratic senators in the last year wrote a letter to the government of Ukraine saying, help out with the Mueller investigation or your aid is gonna go bye-bye.
	That's what Mulvaney is saying.
	So the reporter then said, withholding the funding, and Mulvaney said, yeah, which ultimately then flowed.
	By the way, there was a report that we were worried that if we didn't pay out the money, it would be illegal, okay?
	It would be unlawful.
	So that is the part where Mulvaney is starting to look weird, right?
	This is where Mulvaney starts blurring the lines and things get very weird.
	If he were making the claim that we are allowed to withhold funding based on investigation of things that are of importance to the American public, including foreign interference in the 2016 election, Even badly based information about foreign interference in the 2016 election, right?
	This is my theory, and I think it is the most plausible theory by a long shot, and that is that Rudy Giuliani was being fed bad information by Ukrainian actors.
	He was feeding that to President Trump.
	President Trump was putting that into his mind and churning out a one-note card statement on Ukraine, and that's all he really was thinking about in Ukraine.
	That was corruption, DNC, server, 2016, Maria Yovanovitch, like it all comes out as a ball of bleh from President Trump.
	And then Mulvaney interprets that as we're fighting corruption by withholding aid.
	And I think that's really what happened here.
	It may be bad information.
	It may be information that is wrong or incorrect.
	All of that may very well be true.
	That does not mean that it's a quid pro quo for quote unquote political purposes.
	When Mulvaney says, if we didn't pay out the money, it would be illegal.
	It would be unlawful.
	Based on what?
	Like that's undercutting your own argument.
	If his argument is, we could withhold the aid in order to achieve the fighting of corruption, which included investigating, for example, the DNC server.
	Again, based on bad information.
	If that is Mulvaney's argument, then what is he talking about?
	It would be illegal if we didn't allow the money to flow.
	And then he was asked, what you just described is a quid pro quo.
	It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well.
	And Mulvaney said, we do that all the time with foreign policy.
	We were holding up money at the same time for the Northern Triangle countries.
	We were holding up aid at the Northern Triangle countries so they would change their policies on immigration.
	So what he is saying there, right?
	People are taking the, we do quid pro quos all the time with foreign policy to mean we do political quid pro quos that benefit the president all the time with foreign policy.
	That is not what he is saying, right?
	The context is we do stuff That it's quid pro quos with foreign governments based on foreign aid, which of course is exactly true.
	And then, they take out of context this other line that Mulvaney says, where he says, and I have news for everybody, get over it, there's going to be political influence in foreign policy.
	He doesn't mean that, get over it, the Ukrainians are going to influence American foreign policy in the election, or the Russians are going to influence American foreign policy in the election.
	What he means by that is that we are going to attach strings to foreign policy, and he phrases that in the worst possible way, because everyone is a dope.
	Here's the important part, right?
	Remember, this entire debacle began with the accusation that it was about Biden.
	That the quid pro quo was about Biden.
	Don't forget that.
	That's what this whole thing was about.
	This whole thing, the headlines were Trump ordered Ukraine aid withheld unless Ukraine went and got Biden.
	That's what the entire headline was.
	And just like the Mueller investigation morphed from a Trump-Russia 2016 election interference investigation into Trump obstruction of justice.
	He hates Robert Mueller.
	Why did he fire the acting FBI director?
	It morphed really quickly.
	This one is already morphing.
	So just notice the moving of the goalposts.
	It moved from the quid pro quos about Biden to the quid pro quos about corruption in Ukraine.
	Well, if the quid pro quo is about corruption in Ukraine, that is not an illegal quid pro quo.
	That's not even really out of the line of kind of normalcy.
	The only thing that's out of the line of normalcy is that Trump's standard of corruption in Ukraine seems to be based upon bad information fed to him by Rudy Giuliani, who's running around with a bunch of nefarious characters from Ukraine while being paid half a million dollars.
	Hey, here's the key exchange that people are ignoring, of course.
	The question from a reporter was, on the call, the president did ask about investigating the Bidens.
	Are you saying the money that was held up, that had nothing to do with the Bidens?
	Mulvaney said, no, the money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden.
	That was the point I was making to you.
	And then the reporter said, you're drawing the distinction.
	You're saying it would be wrong to hold up money for the Bidens.
	Mulvaney said, there were three factors.
	I was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily, okay?
	Three issues, the corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in support of Ukraine, And whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice.
	That's completely legitimate.
	That is completely legitimate.
	What he is saying there is not wrong.
	Right?
	If there's an ongoing investigation into 2016 election interference by Ukrainian government officials working with Hillary Clinton, for example, that is not wrong to withhold aid until Ukraine helps with that investigation.
	That's not.
	Obama did it.
	These Democratic senators did it.
	It is not inappropriate.
	It is not wrong.
	And then the reporter said, you just said you were involved in the process in which the money was held up temporarily.
	You named three issues.
	And the corruption in the country, whether or not the country would look, they were assisting with an ongoing investigation of corruption.
	How is that not an establishment of an exchange of a quid pro quo?
	And Mulvaney said, those are the terms you used.
	I mean, go look at what Gordon Sondland said today in his testimony.
	It was that, I think in his opening statement, he said something along the lines of they were trying to get the deliverable.
	And the deliverable is a statement by Ukraine about how they were going to deal with corruption, okay?
	Go read his testimony if you haven't already.
	And what he says is, and he's right, this is absolutely ordinary course of business.
	This is what you do when you have someone come to the White House.
	When you either arrange a visit for the president, you have a phone call with the president, a lot of times we use that as an opportunity to get them to make a statement of their policy or announce something they're going to do.
	It's one of the reasons we can't, you know, sort of announce that he's on the phone call or at the meeting.
	This is the ordinary course of foreign policy.
	So people, again, are taking him, Mulvaney, not shying away from the phrase quid pro quo to ignore what kind of quid pro quo he is talking about.
	Hey, if I go down to the local grocery store and I hand a person money in exchange for bread, that is a quid pro quo.
	It's a market transaction.
	If I walk down to the local slum corner and I hand a man money in exchange for cocaine, that is also a free transaction.
	It is not the same kind of transaction, right?
	Both of those are quid pro quos.
	One of them is illegal, and one of them is fully within ordinary course of business.
	Withholding aid in order to achieve certain foreign policy objectives is, in fact, the way that business is done on foreign policy.
	That is 100% right.
	But the question is whether this was done in order to get Biden.
	Again, it's amazing how Biden has sort of slipped away from the conversation.
	Notice how it's slipped away, slipped away.
	Okay, well, the White House is reacting to all of this.
	The DOJ reacting to all, Democrats reacting to all of this.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so the Democrats are reacting to this.
	Adam Schiff, who's already Ready for impeachment.
	I mean, he didn't need this.
	He now says that Mulvaney did something super duper duper wrong.
	wrong.
	He says, I think Mr. Mulvaney's acknowledgement means that things have gone from very, very bad to much, much worse.
	Schiff demurred when asked how Mulvaney's comments would affect the pace of the House's impeachment inquiry.
	So, in other words, Democrats are going to say that things just got worse, even though basically, in reality, what Mulvaney said basically confirmed what the Trump administration was already saying.
	Schiff said, the idea that And Mulvaney never said that the military aid was being withheld in order to help Trump politically.
	reason, for the reason of serving the president's re-election campaign, is a phenomenal breach of the president's duty to defend our national security.
	But Mulvaney never said that.
	And Mulvaney never said that the military aid was being withheld in order to help Trump politically.
	That misread of that one line where he says there is political influence in foreign policy, he didn't mean that this was meant to help Trump and boost Trump for 2020.
	He meant there are strings attached to foreign policy dollars, and it's pretty obvious from the context that that's exactly what he meant.
	And so Mulvaney is already walking this thing back.
	So again, people are picking on this one line where he said, I have news for everybody, get over it.
	There's going to be a political influence in foreign policy that's going to happen.
	Elections have consequences.
	Mulvaney denied any aid, again, was withheld to pressure Ukraine into going after Biden.
	So, Mulvaney is now saying that his remarks were misconstrued, which, by the way, they were.
	He issued his statement after the president's outside legal counsel tried to distance itself from Mulvaney's earlier comments at a press briefing.
	Mulvaney now says there is no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and that country's willingness to investigate the 2016 U.S.
	election.
	Now, this is where you get into the stupidity of politics.
	Mulvaney should say, Well, yeah, of course.
	Yes, we were withholding military aid unless they showed willingness to investigate their own interference in the 2016 election.
	Because if that's not, like really, if what he's saying now is not true, then it's going to look like he was lying.
	They're gonna call him to testify now because he was involved in this process and he's gonna have to testify one way or another.
	And so either he was lying then or he's lying now.
	He's getting himself in trouble.
	The truth is that of course military aid was withheld in order to investigate the 2016 election.
	Trump said so on the call.
	That stuff was basically said on the call.
	Not the military aid part, but that he wanted the 2016 election interference investigated.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	Okay, Mulvaney adds that Trump never told him to withhold money until the Ukrainians took action related to a server Democrats used in the 2016 election.
	In an earlier briefing, Mulvaney had directly cited questions about the DNC server as a reason that money for Ukraine was being held up.
	Okay, well, again, the questions about, Trump's bizarre questions about whether the DNC server is being held in Ukraine, which we've talked about on the show yesterday, that is founded in bad logic and bad evidence and Rudy Giuliani being an idiot.
	But, Withholding aid because you got bad information is not the same thing as withholding aid for political gain.
	It's not quite the same thing.
	Because, let's say, for the sake of argument, that this weren't a crazy theory, and that the DNC server was in fact being held in Ukraine, and demonstrated, as Trump seems to think, bizarrely, that Russia did not hack into the DNC server, Ukraine did.
	Wouldn't that be of relevance to the American people?
	I mean, we just spent two years investigating whether or not the Russians were behind the 2016 election interference.
	So if it was Ukraine instead, that seems like that would be relevant.
	Now, as I say, I think it's an idiotic theory.
	I don't think there's any evidence to back it, but if that's what's going on in Trump's head, then that's not necessarily about Trump's political gain.
	It's much more about who interfered in the 2016 election.
	We just spent two years investigating this and pressuring Ukraine to cooperate.
	A lawyer for Trump is trying to distance the president's legal team from Mulvaney.
	Trump's personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, issued a one-sentence statement that said the president's legal counsel was not involved in acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney's press briefing.
	Now, again, that ain't gonna fly.
	It's not gonna fly.
	I'm sorry.
	Mulvaney has a defense here, and his defense is exactly what I'm saying, because I'm pretty sure that's what he was saying.
	And Trump's legal team running away from him, and now saying, well, you know, he didn't clear his stuff with us.
	It makes it sound like what Mulvaney actually admitted to was the crime.
	Like what Mulvaney admitted to was the impeachable offense, which means they call him on the carpet, they ask him about what he said, and then they impeach on that basis.
	So, the reaction to Mulvaney for Trump is actually as bad or worse than what Mulvaney actually said in terms of the impeachment process.
	And you can listen to the media coverage, which is really not honest.
	Toulouse Olorunnipa of the Washington Post says, Mulvaney's retort to the charges that Trump abused his office for personal political gain came in a three-word mantra that now forms the central theme of the White House impeachment response.
	Get over it.
	Mulvaney had embraced a classic Trumpian tactic, saying the quiet and potentially illegal part out loud.
	That strategy with regard to Ukraine came in for withering criticism after Mulvaney's appearance.
	He later tried to walk back his comments.
	In a statement late Thursday, Mulvaney denied the quid pro quo he had previously defended as appropriate and normal.
	Well, no.
	He said in the press conference the quid pro quo wasn't about Biden.
	The only thing that he reversed himself on was the DNC server part, and I'm not sure why he reversed himself on it, considering that it's obviously true.
	That it's obviously true that Trump said, we want to withhold military aid and or a presidential meeting until the Ukrainians get to the bottom of corruption, which includes an investigation into this DNC server in 2016 election interference question.
	Again, for the thousandth time, based on bad information, but not based on necessarily 2020 election prospects or political malice.
	So, this is how it's being painted now.
	Honestly, that wasn't even the worst part of this press conference.
	The worst part of the press conference, as we will see, is Mulvaney's comments about President Trump directing the G7 to be held at the Trump Doral Resort.
	Like, why is that even happening?
	Like, why?
	Why?
	Why?
	Okay, we'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so the worst moment of this presser was not even the whole quid pro quo thing.
	The worst moment of the presser had to do with the fact that the Trump administration awarded next year's G7, the Summit of World Leaders, to his own resort, to President Trump's resort.
	Now, I am so annoyed by this, I cannot even tell you.
	Annoyed, irritated.
	Even if you think that it's not corrupt, it is the absolute appearance of corruption.
	It's the absolute appearance of corruption.
	Trump's people are claiming that it's not an emoluments violation.
	Emoluments are basically bribery.
	It's not the president enriching himself.
	They say, well, he won't make any profit off of this.
	It's just he really, really, really likes the resort.
	This is where Trump's people do him a deep disservice.
	And Trump does himself a deep disservice.
	His people should be saying to him, Mr. President, you've made a whole thing out of Joe Biden appearing to be corrupt with Hunter, and now you are directing the G7 to be held at your own resort that you own?
	That costs millions and millions of dollars, that event?
	You're directing it to your own resort?
	Don't you think that creates the appearance of impropriety?
	Why do you think this is smart?
	Now, Trump, because he has never met—I mean, Trump is like my three-year-old when it comes to reverse psychology.
	Like, if you want Trump to do something, you tell him you don't want to do it.
	So maybe the best thing that should have happened here is that all of his aides should have said, best idea you ever had, Mr. President.
	You should totally ignore the implications of corruption.
	You should totally hold it at door-all.
	And then Trump would be like, I don't want to do it anymore.
	But the fact is that Everybody around Trump, unfortunately, is afraid of Trump, and nobody apparently had the balls to just say to him straight out, Mr. President, it looks really bad when you're directing giant events to your own resort in the middle of the presidency.
	It looks as though you're exerting the pressure of the presidency in order to raise money for your own businesses.
	I mean, it does.
	It looks bad.
	There's no other way to put it.
	It looks bad.
	It looks corrupt.
	It looks bad.
	Now, is it corrupt or bad?
	Well, you'd have to show that the money flows.
	You'd have to show that Trump made some sort of profit from it.
	But, again, the president's desire to show off his own properties and his desire to talk about how wonderful his own properties are, it is not good for him, it is not good for his administration, it is stupid, and it is wrong.
	So, according to the Washington Post, Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven Summit of World Leaders to his private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump National Doral Miami Golf Resort in Florida, the White House announced on Thursday.
	Trump's doral resort has been in sharp decline in recent years.
	Its net operating income fell 69% from 2015 to 2017.
	A Trump Organization representative testified last year the reason was Trump's damaged brand.
	Now, the G7 summit will draw hundreds of diplomats, journalists, and security personnel to the resort during one of its slowest months of the year when Miami is hot and the hotel is often less than 40% full.
	It will also provide a worldwide spotlight for the club.
	Apparently Trump passed his AIDS earlier this year.
	What about Doral?
	Mulvaney said a nationwide search conducted by Trump's administration led to the conclusion that the president was right.
	Doral was far and away the best physical facility for the meeting.
	Is what Mulvaney said.
	Weird!
	Weird that the best physical facility in the United States, anywhere in the United States for the meeting, happens to be owned by the president of the United States.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	This is absurd.
	It's absurd.
	And it's just, again, it's everybody around Trump trying to stroke his ego because they feel like if they stroke his ego, maybe he'll give them some of their policy priorities.
	And it's a huge mistake.
	Somebody should have just said to him, no.
	Somebody should have said to him, no.
	But nobody will say to him, no.
	And it damages him.
	Like, if you're rooting for Trump to be reelected, this kind of stuff is very, very bad for him.
	And somebody needs to say no to him.
	It's just, it's absurd.
	Mulvaney didn't say what the other sites were, just that they were all worse.
	Just, this was the best.
	It was the most unbelievable.
	Okay, Trump said in 2016, I will be leaving my great business in total, of course, after he was elected.
	And yet, we have seen that it is not true, that he is not directing business to his own businesses.
	Now, maybe he doesn't make money from that, but this is like...
	It's absurd.
	I'm sorry.
	It's just absurd on a political level.
	On a moral level, it's absurd.
	There's just no rationale for it.
	Mulvaney was asked about this.
	Here's what Mulvaney had to say.
	He's not making any money off of this, just like he's not making money from working here.
	And if you think it's going to help his brand, that's great.
	But I would suggest that he probably doesn't need much help promoting his brand.
	So we'll put the profit one aside and deal with a perfect place.
	I mean, who was here for the last time?
	Was it Camp David?
	Was that the perfect place?
	In fact, I understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have the G7.
	It was way too small.
	It was way too remote.
	My understanding is the media didn't like it because you had to drive an hour and a bus to get there either way.
	Okay, so Camp David was bad, but apparently, like, last I checked, it turns out that there are, like, lots of hotels and resorts in the United States.
	Lots of them.
	I've been to summits and meetings with very high-level people at resorts that are not, in fact, a drill and that are quite nice.
	Mulvaney admitted he was skeptical of the plan at first, but he called Doral the perfect physical location.
	The perfect physical location.
	Perfect.
	Miami in the middle of July.
	Perfect.
	And dismissed criticisms by saying Trump is the most recognizable name in the English language and probably around the world right now, so he doesn't need help with marketing.
	He said, there's no profit here.
	Clearly there is profit with the Bidens.
	If you look at the difference between the Trump family and the Biden family, the Trump family made their money before they went into politics.
	Oh my God!
	If you're making the comparison between Trump and Biden, and your entire criticism of Biden is that he appeared to be using the power of his office to benefit his son, and this is an appearances question, So that was really grand for Mick Mulvaney.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	We'll also get to the 2020 Democratic race and What I think was actually a really important speech by Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook yesterday.
	But first, you need to go over to dailywire.com.
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	Okay, so a little bit more on this Ukraine stuff, and then we will move on to what I think was actually a pretty important moment over at Georgetown yesterday, because people—we'll get into that in just one second— But first, there's one final story that we have to take note of with regard to all of the Ukraine Impeachment Day 2019 talk.
	And that is Gordon Sondland, who is the Trump EU ambassador.
	He told House investigators that he opposed the president's request to run Ukraine policy through Rudy Giuliani again for the 1,000th time.
	This is all going to come down to Rudy Giuliani, not Mick Mulvaney.
	It's going to come down to Rudy Giuliani and whether Rudy Giuliani was in fact just giving the president bad information or whether he and Trump were scheming to go get Democrats.
	Whether they were like Elmer Fudd on a wabbit hunt or whether they were just Meanwhile, there was a big speech that was done by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at Georgetown.
	Now, quick preface here.
	2016 election was affected by foreign interference.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, there was a big speech that was done by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at Georgetown.
	Now, quick preface here.
	There's a story that came out a little bit earlier this week in Politico, and the story suggested that I have met with Mark Zuckerberg.
	Now, let me say clearly and for the record, I will never tell the media who I meet with.
	Ever.
	Ever.
	I'm not going to tell them who I meet with.
	I'm not going to tell them what we say.
	The reason is because, you know, in my job, in what I do, I talk with a wide variety of extraordinarily powerful people that the left would not want me talking with.
	The left spends an enormous amount of time trying to shut down precisely those conversations by reporting that the conversations happen and then bringing outside pressure to bear to stop people from having those discussions in the first place.
	I talk with lots of people they don't want me talking with because I think the conversation is important.
	I think that persuasion is important.
	I think it's important to talk with people you disagree with.
	And so my answer to people who are asking me about meeting with Mark Zuckerberg or anybody else for that matter in a position of power is take a hike, son.
	Because guess what?
	I meet with lots of people.
	It's none of your business.
	And it's particularly none of your business because the goal of so many people on the left is to stop exactly the sorts of conversation that make the country better.
	Those conversations make the country better.
	The goal of the left is to prevent those conversations, which in fact is the entire issue that is happening right now with regard to Facebook.
	So listen, I understand conservative skepticism about Facebook.
	I really do.
	Okay, I've criticized Facebook copiously in the past when Facebook has taken action to kick people I don't even like Off of Facebook, but I think that Facebook has been too stringent in their interpretation of their own quote-unquote hate speech policy, which I think, by the way, is a stupid policy.
	I think that the Facebook hate speech policy is idiotic because there is no actual definition of hate speech.
	But let's be clear, the real pressure that is being brought to bear right now on Facebook is being brought by the left.
	And the reason the left is trying to bring pressure on Facebook is because Donald Trump won in 2016.
	It is that simple.
	The left doesn't like that Trump won.
	The left doesn't like that you have an alternative method of getting your news because Facebook allows the free flow of information, more or less.
	Now, the more or less is a serious question.
	And a question we have to deal with.
	But the fact is, I over at Daily Wire can't exactly complain about Facebook's dissemination of news, considering that we get an enormous amount of traffic via Facebook.
	And so do a number of other conservative publishers.
	If it were not for social media sites like Facebook, if it were not for social media sites like Instagram, if it were not for social media sites like YouTube, it would be very difficult for you to get information.
	The social media sites have been very useful in ending around the media, which by the way is why the media are so all fired pissed off at Facebook.
	It's why the Democrats are so all fired pissed off at Facebook.
	It's why you're seeing Elizabeth Warren threatening to break up Facebook and other big tech companies.
	Not because they're worried about monopoly of information, but because they want to restore the monopoly of information.
	Understand that social media platforms, I may disagree with their rules.
	I may disagree about the implementation of the rules.
	I may be quite skeptical of the people who are in charge of actually making those rules apply.
	But, if I have a choice between a world where social media allows me to get information from a variety of sources across the political spectrum, and a world where the only newspapers I can buy at the newsstand are the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, that is not a choice.
	For the journalists, it's not a choice either, which is why they hate the big tech, they hate the social media platforms.
	And you're starting to see all of these journalists, journalism-ing all over the place.
	What they would prefer is an area of limited information.
	They would prefer limited information.
	And that's why you see the New York Times today running a piece from Matt Stoller called Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and Freedom of the Press.
	Destroying it, as opposed to the New York Times, which just spread its own brand of news without any challengers in the space because there was no alternative means of distribution.
	Right, so the New York Times is running full pieces now by these folks.
	You have people like Kara Swisher, who is extremely censorious by nature, who is calling for her to be one of the controllers of Facebook's new sort of judiciary board that would help rule on whether things have violated policy.
	She would like to do that because Swisher happens to be censorious.
	Folks on the left want control of the means of the distribution of information.
	In any case, Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown, and it actually was quite an important speech, because he is actually kicking back against, in my opinion, the left.
	He's actually kicking back against a lot of censorious people on the left.
	Now, Do I trust Zuckerberg and Facebook to make all the right decisions about this stuff?
	No, which is why I think that we ought to cast a very hardened eye at exactly what Facebook and the social media platforms do in the interpretation of their vague and ridiculous hate speech policies.
	But, at least Zuckerberg seems to understand some of the problems.
	So he gives this speech at Georgetown, the media go nuts, it's terrible, we need to break up Facebook.
	Why would you trust anything the New York Times or the Washington Post are telling you?
	If they tell you, When it comes to what's good for freedom of speech, is that Facebook be shut down?
	Why would you trust the people who want a restoration of the monopoly of informational flow?
	Why would you trust them?
	Like, I'm seeing conservatives who are like, yeah, Washington, Fost, and New York Times are right.
	In no other context would you say this.
	None.
	But suddenly you're saying this because there's some people on the right who make a good living ripping on big tech without actually understanding all the issues.
	In any case, Zuckerberg Zuckerberg, honestly, I thought his speech was pretty solid yesterday over at Georgetown.
	Here's what he had to say about the value of free speech.
	Our commitment to each other, that we hold each other's right to express ourselves and be heard above our own desire to always get our way in every debate, that's how we make progress together.
	But this view is increasingly being challenged.
	Now, some people believe that giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing people together.
	More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes that they think matter is more important than every person having a voice and being heard.
	I think that that's dangerous.
	This is 100% right.
	Okay, at least on this point, Zuckerberg seems to get it, right?
	He is saying that there are people on the left who want to shut down — he doesn't say the left, obviously, he's not going to get partisan with this — but, read, it's the left, okay?
	There are people on the left who want to shut down certain voices, and he even gets that they're doing it by broadening the mandate of violence, by suggesting that speech is violence.
	Zuckerberg said in the middle of his speech, he said, people no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.
	I understand the concerns about how tech platforms have centralized power, but I actually believe the much bigger story is how much these platforms have decentralized power by putting it directly into people's hands.
	You can't argue with the reality of that.
	That is 100% true.
	Before, the barrier to entry in the media marketplace was spending $100 million on the New York Times.
	Now, the barrier to entry is setting up a Facebook page.
	That's a pretty major, major difference.
	And he talks about the trend toward pulling back on free expression.
	He says, we want the progress that comes from free expression, but not the tension.
	Okay, that is exactly right.
	He says it's hard to get the area of hate speech right.
	I think it's not as hard to get the area of hate speech right.
	I just think that the general notion of hate speech ought to go away if you are involved in inciting violence.
	If I were controlling policy at Facebook, I would be recommending a fulsome First Amendment standard, which means unless you are actually inciting violence, unless you are actually engaging in violation of law, I would not ban you from Facebook.
	I would not denigrate you on Facebook.
	But he's the one with the private company, and they're not, in fact, a government outlet.
	With that said, He is correct in his basic understanding of the issue.
	So for example, unlike the NBA, unlike a lot of people on the corporate left, he has refused to do business with China.
	He said he wanted to have service with China, but his principles with regard to what Facebook should be did not jibe with what China was doing.
	So that's very different from what Google has been doing.
	Google's just going over there and willy-nilly making deals and changing search results for the Chinese.
	Zuckerberg didn't do that.
	So at least give him credit where credit is due.
	I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world, and I thought, you know, maybe we could help create a more open society.
	And this is something that I worked hard on for a long time, but we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in.
	And now, we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values that we believe in and fight for free expression around the world.
	Okay, he's getting this right.
	If you're on the right and you're ripping into his speech today, it's because you didn't listen to his speech.
	Here's Zuckerberg clip four.
	This clip, he talks about what he thinks his responsibility is.
	Now again, How he actually carries out that responsibility is something that we should all have our eye on.
	We should.
	Like, everyone should be very skeptical of people in positions of power carrying out their responsibilities properly.
	But Zuckerberg at least seems to pay lip service to what he understands the responsibility to be right here.
	I mean, listen, what he's saying here is no different than what I would say.
	It is not.
	Okay, here is, no.
	How he carries it out may be very different.
	And that remains a question that we should all keep our eye on, as I keep saying here.
	Here's Zuckerberg clip four.
	I believe that we have two responsibilities.
	To remove content when it can cause real danger as effectively as we can, and to fight to uphold as wide of a definition of freedom of expression as possible, and to not allow the definition of what is considered dangerous to expand beyond what is absolutely necessary.
	And that's what I'm committed to.
	Okay, good, good.
	I mean, okay, so now, hold him to his word.
	Now hold him to his word.
	The reason the media are so all fired pissed with Mark Zuckerberg and with Facebook is because he is saying stuff like this.
	Because Zuckerberg actually, Zuckerberg, like a lot of these big tech platforms, unlike Google, which apparently just wants to make money in China, Zuckerberg is actually paying lip service, again, we'll see how it carries out in practice, he's paying lip service to First Amendment values right there.
	He is.
	And if the right has any brains at all, they should be cheering what Zuckerberg said yesterday about limiting the left's attempt to conflate speech with violence and broaden the definition of violence to encompass anything they disagree with.
	Because Zuckerberg was pushing back against that yesterday.
	And who do you want?
	Do you really want... Listen, I may not trust Mark Zuckerberg to set the standards, Frankly, I'm not sure that Zuckerberg, from his own speech, trusts Mark Zuckerberg to set the standards.
	I don't think anybody should be trusted to set the standards, per se.
	But, who do you trust more?
	Private industry, which is at least responsive to the public?
	Or the government, which does not give a damn and is controlled by open political partisans?
	Because those are your two choices.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	South Park, they are the most brilliant satirists out there.
	They remain the most brilliant satirists out there.
	And they did a bit mocking LeBron James.
	And it is pretty spectacular.
	Like, by the way, Quick note, the same media that feel uncomfortable, like sort of uncomfortable, criticizing LeBron James over completely kowtowing to China have no problem talking about breaking up big tech and breaking up Zuckerberg's company because Zuckerberg won't do business in China.
	Like, it's kind of crazy.
	Here is South Park going after LeBron.
	We have a right to free speech.
	Yes, we do all have freedom of speech.
	But at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you're not thinking about others and you're only thinking about yourself!
	Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on, kids?
	The protesters are trying to kill Ack again, Mr. Mackey.
	Okay, kids, we don't want another incident here, okay?
	They're trying to change people's lunch.
	They don't realize it harms people financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
	And that is Cartman directly quoting LeBron James.
	Yes, we are still allowed, thank God, at least for the time being, to make fun of people in positions of public power.
	Okay, time for a very quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, this is just spectacular.
	I'm not sure whether I love it or whether I hate it.
	It is spectacular.
	So there's a BuzzFeed reporter, her name is Catherine Miller, and she was tweeting out about the 2020 Democratic presidential debate.
	And she tweeted out, quote, And so that is what Miller tweeted.
	And by the way, she's right.
	It was hilarious.
	Kamala Harris was so desperate for attention.
	I mean, that entire debate was just like, love me!
	Why won't you pay attention to me?
	Twitter!
	I think that she thought that her best hit on Elizabeth Warren was not, you called yourself a Native American for 30 years on official forums.
	Her best attack instead was, why won't you ban Trump from Twitter, man?
	Kamala Harris is very bad.
	So Kamala Harris' campaign spokesperson, Harris aide anyway, Harris aide then sends this insane, insane note to Katharine Miller, quote, Hey, I've talked to her directly a few times when she's tweeted out, she sent this to, apparently, Ben Smith, I guess, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed.
	Hey, I've talked to her directly a few times when she's tweeted out stuff like this.
	And I told her I was glad she deleted this tweet.
	She deleted the tweet.
	There's nothing inappropriate about the tweet.
	But this kind of stuff is just really a horrible look for you guys.
	Frankly, it's whiteness manifest.
	Whiteness manifest.
	What in that tweet has anything to do with race?
	It just says that Harris is a crazy person who stands outside the supermarket with a Greenpeace clipboard.
	That's 100% correct.
	And it has nothing to do with race.
	I know, Greenpeace activists, they come in all races and sizes and sexual orientations.
	At least they appear to.
	So, like, what?
	If Kamala Harris' people are running to, that's racism!
	To call her a Greenpeace activist?
	Pretty weird.
	Because if Kamala shrugged off a Warren critique of how she wasn't with her on Facebook, we'd get raked and she would get lauded as taking on corporate power.
	The blithe mockery here of Kamala while lauding Warren's style is just not up to par.
	I say this to you to be super frank and because I really like your guys' work, the platform, and your reporters.
	We work well together across the board, but this is a bit problematic.
	There's that word again.
	Problematic.
	So problematic.
	Okay, you can't name what's wrong with it, but it's problematic.
	Also, I love the tacit admission right there, that we work well together across the board, guys.
	And if you just have your people delete their tweets, we can continue to work really well together and be bestest of friends.
	That's not corrupt in any way, shape, or form.
	Well done, Kamala Harris's team.
	Trying too hard.
	Trying too hard.
	And by the way, points to Ben Smith.
	He responded, quote, Do you seriously not have real problems?
	This text makes you think you are totally, totally unready for an actual presidential campaign.
	No, it's that rare point.
	It's that rare time of the day when I am praising Ben Smith.
	Ben, right on the money, man.
	Yes, correct.
	More of this, more of this please.
	Love that.
	Just spectacular, spectacular stuff.
	Amazing.
	Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	There was so much we weren't able to get to on the show because it was an action-packed day.
	But if you want more, including the mailbag, head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe and we'll see you there later.
	I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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	Edited by Adam Sajevitz.
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