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Oct. 25, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:56

Choose Your Own Ukraine Adventure | Ep. 883

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	President Trump's DOJ opens a criminal probe into the Trump-Russia investigation.
	We lay out the two theories of Trump's Ukraine activities.
	And there are new developments in the case of a seven-year-old boy being treated as a girl by his mom in Texas.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.
	Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
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	Okay, so the big news of the day is that the Justice Department is apparently going to open now a criminal inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigation.
	And the media are already playing defense on this thing.
	The media are already suggesting that this thing is wildly out of bounds.
	Just to get this straight, it was totally inbounds when we spent two and a half years spending Millions of dollars investigating the Trump-Russia collusion non-entity.
	It ended up being a big nothing burger, at least the collusion part of it.
	The obstruction part of it ended up piggybacking off of that and really was only generated by the presence of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation in the first place.
	That was totally fine.
	That was above board?
	That was good.
	It was good to have the DOJ investigating the President of the United States, which effectively is what the Trump-Russia Mueller investigation became.
	That was all good, wonderful, according to the press.
	But when the Trump administration looks into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which may or may not have been badly founded, well, then it's a terrible thing.
	A very, very bad thing.
	It's something that William Barr clearly should not do.
	It's just William Barr, the Attorney General, being a political hack.
	There are no legitimate questions to be asked.
	So we'll get to what exactly William Barr is investigating here and whether it is illegitimate.
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	Okay, so, the New York Times is obviously very hot and bothered about the prospect of William Barr looking into the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
	My friend Andrew McCarthy over at National Review, the legal analyst, he's been suggesting from the very beginning that this thing was basically a put-up job.
	That effectively speaking, the Obama administration was eager, very eager, to look into the Trump campaign.
	And as soon as they started receiving notes on the Steele dossier from the Hillary campaign, they were ready to go.
	They're ready and they're raring to go.
	And it turns out that they couldn't dig up anything before the election that was truly damning of President Trump.
	But there were leaks, slow leaks along the way, and McCarthy's theory, and the theory of a lot of other people, is that basically a lot of members of the so-called deep state, members of the intelligence community who didn't like Trump, who feared Trump, who thought that Trump would be a terrible president, they were digging up all this material in case Trump should be elected so that they could then break glass in case of emergency and basically sideline his presidency by Pushing into investigative territory, right?
	That is the going theory.
	So, according to the New York Times today, for more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal, even months after the special counsel closed it.
	Now Trump's own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.
	Now, there was already an investigator, an inspector general, Michael Hoare was.
	who is going to release a report, a public report.
	He said today it'll be a public report.
	There will be no private version or classified version and public version.
	There will just be one version.
	And it will be a report into how all of this started.
	Now, my theory has been that this thing was started not under false pretenses, but under authentic concern over the activities of people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
	And that it quickly morphed into something that went beyond its original mandate.
	It quickly morphed thanks to people who are all fired gung-ho to go get Trump into, Let's look into every one of Trump's associates and all of his business connections, Let's suggest that President Trump is in fact a plant of Vladimir Putin and all the rest of this.
	But what does it mean that this has now shifted into a criminal investigation?
	Well, it means that the Justice Department now has additional legal tools at its disposal.
	According to the New York Times, Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by William Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter.
	The move gives the prosecutor running at John Durham the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.
	Now, here's where the New York Times starts playing defense for the Democrats.
	Normally, that would be the story, right?
	They've opened the criminal investigation.
	The New York Times, however, does what they are so fond of doing.
	People say.
	This isn't serious journalism.
	No.
	They're not going to say, we, the editorial board at the New York Times, really object to this.
	Instead, what they do is they sort of, they kind of slide into the DMs.
	They just slide into the reporting other people's opinions.
	The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.
	Okay, that's called editorializing right there.
	Likely to raise alarm is likely.
	Whenever they use passive voice like that, they're not saying who is going to raise the alarms.
	Democrats.
	They're not saying who is going to be seriously concerned that Trump is militarizing the Justice Department.
	The New York Times.
	They just say it's likely to be perceived that way by, you know, people.
	Who?
	People.
	Just people.
	See, Mr. Trump fired James Comey, the FBI director, under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.
	Mr. Trump has made clear he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies.
	This is in a news article, guys.
	This is in a news article.
	Trump has made clear he sees the DOJ as his personal tool.
	Okay, yeah, and Eric Holder called himself Barack Obama's wingman.
	So, you know, it turns out that presidents have long sort of seen the DOJ as a way of pursuing their own agendas.
	That doesn't mean it's good when Trump does it.
	It just means that to pretend that this is unique to Trump is to ignore American history.
	According to the New York Times, that view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry.
	House Democrats are examining, in part, whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.
	The move also creates an unusual situation in which the DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.
	And then they say, well, you know, the real reason that Barr is doing this is so that he can use Durham as a front.
	The entire article is just speculation about how corrupt Barr is.
	They're not waiting for the report to come out.
	And at no point did they ever suggest that the emptiness of the final Trump-Russia collusion report from Robert Mueller invalidated the investigation to begin with.
	The investigation was valid, according to the New York Times.
	It was just that it didn't come up with the answer that they wanted.
	But here, they're trying to invalidate the entire investigation before they even know what the results are, which is Frankly, kind of Trumpian in its approach to the investigation.
	And this is the New York Times.
	They say Mr. Barr's reliance on Mr. Durham, a widely respected and veteran prosecutor who has investigated CIA torture and broken up mafia rings, could help insulate the Attorney General from accusations he is doing the President's bidding and putting politics above justice.
	It was not clear what potential crime Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted.
	Okay, so you don't know anything about the investigation.
	You just know there is one.
	So the New York Times immediately calls it corrupt.
	And then they get into more of likelies, right?
	Their perspective.
	People who are likely to see things a certain way.
	They say, Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation.
	In May, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the FBI officials who opened the case had committed treason.
	When Barr appointed Durham to lead the review, he had only the power to voluntarily question people and examine government files.
	But now the criminal investigation is open, that means that there are new tools at their disposal.
	So the New York Times obviously is very upset about all of this.
	Revelations so far about Durham's investigation have shown he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Trump's conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry and their efforts to undermine it.
	Durham's efforts have prompted criticism that he and Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory.
	The investigators would typically run down all aspects of the case to complete a review of it.
	So now, they're already forecasting the results of this thing before it comes out, which reads like preemptive spinning, does it not?
	It reads like they are very much afraid of what's going to be in Durham's final report here.
	They're afraid of what's going to be in the Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, and so they're already trying to spin it away as, well, it was a selective investigation done at the behest of the President of the United States.
	In interviewing more than two dozen former and current FBI and intelligence officials, Mr. Durham's investigators have asked about any anti-Trump bias among officials who worked on the Russia investigation and about one aspect of the investigation that was at the heart of highly contentious allegations that they abused their powers, the secret application seeking a court order for a wiretap on Carter Page.
	Law enforcement officials suspected that Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which is tonight.
	Carter Page, by the way, was never prosecuted at any level for this sort of activity in which he was involved and for which he was investigated.
	Some CIA officials are already retaining criminal lawyers.
	It's not clear whether Durham is scrutinizing other former top intelligence officials as well.
	Durham has indicated he wants to talk to the people who ran the CIA in 2016 to find out how this whole thing started.
	He has not yet questioned either John Brennan or James Clapper.
	As Durham's investigation moves forward, according to the New York Times, the Justice Department Inspector General is wrapping up his own inquiry into aspects of the FBI's conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation.
	Among other things, Michael Horowitz is scrutinizing the application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page.
	So, this whole article is basically speculation that some sort of corruption is going on in investigating the investigators.
	As opposed to, you know, you could just wait until you find out whether the investigation of the investigators comes up with something damning.
	I encouraged people to wait on the Mueller report.
	I did.
	Go back and listen to it for years.
	I'm now encouraging people to wait on the IG report and on the Durham report.
	You don't have enough information.
	But the New York Times isn't waiting.
	They've already declared this thing a corrupt attempt by Trump to swivel the DOJ to punch his political opponents.
	And that seems like fairly bad journalism-ing from where I sit.
	Okay, in just a second, I want to get into a recap of the Trump-Ukraine allegations, because it's all confusing, I understand.
	I mean, there's a lot going on there, a lot of moving pieces, and I want to, for just a few minutes, Go through and explain piece by piece how this whole thing fits together, how there are two plausible theories of Trump's activities in Ukraine, how the media are only treating that as one plausible theory, but there really are two plausible theories.
	We're gonna get to that, and I'm gonna give you all the details on how all that fits together in just one second.
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	Okay, so...
	I want to take a minute now and explain the Trump-Russia allegations, where we currently stand, because there is so much floating around, and it's very difficult to break down.
	And you're hearing wild allegations from all sides.
	On the part of Republicans, you're hearing this is all closed-door stuff.
	Behind closed doors, Democrats are simply prying information out of people, and then they're twisting that information in public.
	And from Democrats, you're hearing, we have the damning information that is going to condemn President Trump to removal by the Senate.
	Where are we?
	The answer is, we're kind of where we've been for the past few weeks.
	There's more information that is now...
	sort of filling out the gaps that we had at the very beginning of this entire debacle.
	But the fact is that until, in the end, we hear from either Trump or Giuliani, nothing is gonna change here.
	Why?
	Because there are right now two plausible theories of what Trump was doing in Ukraine and what Trump was withholding military aid in order to do in Ukraine.
	And those two plausible theories, it's basically choose-your-own-adventure time when it comes to Ukraine.
	It's choose-your-own-adventure time.
	And you get to pick which of these two theories you think is more plausible.
	So let's spell this out.
	So according to the media, Bill Taylor, right?
	This was the big thing this week.
	It was Bill Taylor, the acting charged affairs of the U.S.
	Embassy in Ukraine, the highest ranking foreign official in Ukraine, delivered the coup de grace to the Trump presidency, right?
	This is according to the media.
	This was the end of the Trump presidency.
	He has no defense.
	And you're seeing this repeated in the New York Times.
	You're seeing this repeated in Politico.
	Why?
	Well, because Taylor testified before members of the House committees, leading the Democrats impeachment inquiry behind closed doors.
	But his opening statement was revealed to the public.
	Well, that in and of itself has driven Republicans up a wall.
	They're like, okay, well, he gave his opening statement, but then he didn't reveal anything he actually testified.
	So these sorts of selective leaks, this is why we are complaining about the behind-closed-doors stuff.
	And as we'll see, the media are very angry at Republicans for complaining about this.
	It's, how could they possibly complain?
	We'll get to that in a bit.
	So Taylor's theory of Trump's behavior was pretty simple.
	Trump withheld hundreds of millions in congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine in order to benefit himself politically going into 2020.
	In particular, by leveraging the aid to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden and Biden's son, Hunter.
	All the other corruption stuff, that was kind of a smokescreen for him trying to impact the 2020 election by doing something politically beneficial for himself.
	That's what we'll call the Get Biden Theory.
	That is Bill Taylor's theory.
	It's the theory of the media that Trump was trying to shape the 2020 election by having Ukraine go and do his dirty work for him and withholding military aid to make Ukraine go do his dirty work.
	That was the Bill Taylor theory.
	And it's not implausible, right?
	The timeline fits.
	Trump keeps saying dumb stuff publicly that sort of undermines his own position on this.
	He has said he's not averse to asking foreign powers to target his political opponents.
	He openly called in 2016 for Vladimir Putin to release Hillary Clinton's emails.
	He asked the Chinese to investigate Joe Biden.
	Trump says this kind of stuff all the time.
	So it's not implausible.
	And to be perfectly fair about where we are, we have to recognize that that theory to independent ears is not implausible.
	Right?
	That's why the polls are not in President Trump's favor on the impeachment stuff.
	And I'm not going to lie to you and pretend that the American people are wildly angry about impeachment.
	No.
	A particular segment of the American people are wildly angry about impeachment.
	A particular segment of the American people are extraordinarily excited about impeachment.
	And then there are the people in the middle who are trying to figure out what actually happened here and are sort of wavering on the fence.
	Okay, so that's theory number one is the Get Biden Theory.
	Then there is another plausible theory.
	This one we'll call the Miasma of Corruption Theory.
	Okay, it's still not great for Trump.
	But it's not great for Trump in a non-impeachable way.
	So the Get Biden Theory's story is a story of a scheming president who is seeking re-election by twisting American foreign policy to his political benefit, right?
	That's the story.
	Trump is the guy who's sitting there and he's trying to skew foreign policy so that he'll get re-elected, and he's trying to withhold American military aid so that he'll get re-elected.
	The Miasma of Corruption Theory?
	characterizes Trump differently.
	It's the story of a president who's being petty and vindictive and obsessive about the 2016 election, not about 2020, about 2016, and following breadcrumbs left for him by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
	It's the story of a president who doesn't actually trust his foreign policy establishment because he believes that they are there to undermine him, and a president who believes conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go even when the evidence doesn't really match up.
	So which of those two sounds more like Trump?
	The guy who is like a laser, focused on 2020 and ready to skew things so that he can win 2020?
	Or the guy who is obsessed about 2016, talking about his crowd sizes, doesn't trust his own people, and so he brings in Rudy Giuliani and creates irregular channels and then buys whatever information confirms whatever pre-existing bias he already had?
	So in this story, this is a story of a quid pro quo, not to help Trump in 2020, but a quid pro quo to target This miasma of Trump-perceived corruption that the president believes led to the Russian collusion narrative that damaged his legitimacy.
	So he has been obsessed since 2016 with the idea that Democrats are undermining his victory by saying that Russia interfered in the election.
	He's saying, no, Ukraine interfered in the election.
	The American people have a right to know just the way you say they have a right to know if Russia interfered.
	We have a right to know if Ukraine interfered.
	And as part of all of that, if Ukraine interfered, maybe one of the ways that they interfered is by not going forward with an investigation of Democrats in the middle of the 2016 election, including Joe Biden.
	Right, so if the second theory is true, then Trump was acting wrongly and stubbornly and foolishly and on bad information, but he didn't commit an impeachable offense because the stuff he was trying to target in his own mind was in America's interest.
	It was not just in Trump's interest.
	So, in story number one, again, this comes down to your judgment of Trump's character, which is why it's a Rorschach test.
	In story number one, Trump is this strategic thinker who initiated the Ukraine scandal, deployed Rudy Giuliani to go after Joe Biden, militarized our aid to Ukraine to help Giuliani left the Ukrainians high and dry in the face of Russian aggression because he likes Putin.
	In story number two, Trump was led astray by Giuliani and his own rich sense of grievance, but it was much more about 2016 than it was about looking forward to 2020.
	So, Which of these theories is more plausible?
	Well, let's go to the evidence.
	Let's start with Rudy Giuliani.
	We'll look at the timeline a little bit here.
	So, this all begins with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney.
	This whole story begins with Giuliani.
	So in June 2017, well it really starts with Biden and Biden's whole...
	Deal with his son and his son working for Burisma and then Biden withholding Ukrainian loan guarantees until they fired a prosecutor who allegedly was going to look into Hunter Biden.
	That allegation was floating out there and it was floating out there thanks to the New York Times, by the way, which reported on it.
	And then there were allegations in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was coordinating with the Ukrainian embassy in order to find dirt on Donald Trump.
	That was reported by Politico, that the DNC actually had sent an operative to the Ukrainian embassy to gather all this data.
	That's the backdrop.
	Then we get to Giuliani.
	So in June 2017, Rudy Giuliani visits Ukraine, and he meets with the president at the time, a guy named Petro Poroshenko, and a prosecutor named Yuri Lutsenko.
	In August 2018, Giuliani is hired by a company run by Lev Parnas, who's a Ukrainian businessman, and Giuliani clearly begins to funnel information provided by Parnas, as well as Parnas' partner, Igor Fruman, to Trump.
	In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman fix up Giuliani with a former Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, as well as Lutsenko.
	According to Lutsenko, Giuliani pushed him to open investigations into the Bidens and Burisma.
	According to the New York Times, Giuliani met with Lutsenko multiple times in January 2019, allegedly asking Lutsenko about Burisma, the Bidens, and Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador to Ukraine.
	And Giuliani told Trump about these conversations.
	In March 2019, Lutsenko opens two investigations, one into Burisma and one into the Bidens.
	And according to The Times, Lutsenko accuses Yovanovitch of corruption as well.
	And Trump starts tweeting about all of this stuff.
	So at this point, certainly it is plausible that Rudy Giuliani is out there to quote unquote, get Joe Biden to get Burisma.
	It's also plausible that as Rudy Giuliani himself later says, he's actually out there to defend his guy from the Trump-Russia stuff by targeting Ukraine, right?
	Which ties back into 2016, not forward into 2020.
	By April, Trump is telling Sean Hannity that Attorney General William Barr might consider allegations about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, which, by the way, he actually is doing, right?
	I mean, that stuff is being investigated right now.
	By April 29th, Yovanovitch was being recalled.
	The Wall Street Journal later says that Giuliani was actually telling Yovanovitch, telling Trump that Yovanovitch, the ambassador, was, quote, obstructing efforts to persuade Kiev to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
	Okay, fast forward to May of this year.
	The New York Times reports that Giuliani was set to visit Ukraine.
	They said Mr. Giuliani's planned trip, which has not been previously reported, is part of a months-long effort by the former New York mayor and a small group of Trump allies working to build interest in the Ukrainian inquiries.
	Their motivation is to try to discredit the special counsel's investigation, undermine the case against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's imprisoned former campaign chairman, and to potentially damage Mr. Biden, the early frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
	So Giuliani then does an interview with Fox News in which he talks about his theory that Ukraine worked with the Clinton campaign in 2016 and discussed the Bidens.
	Days later, Trump says to Politico it would be appropriate to ask Attorney General William Barr to open an investigation into the Bidens.
	Trump says, I've not spoken to him about it.
	When I speak to him about it, I haven't thought of that.
	All of this is the backdrop to Trump's decision to pressure Ukraine.
	So, was Giuliani telling Trump he had a way of quote-unquote getting Biden?
	Or is he telling Trump that bad actors in Ukraine had covered up Ukrainian election interference in 2016 and Biden-related corruption?
	So Giuliani had sort of tweeted out about this in June of 2019.
	Giuliani is, again, the key figure when it comes down to it.
	So Giuliani had tweeted out about all of this in 2019, in May of 2019, in June, rather, of 2019.
	He tweeted out that the president was going to, that there had to be some sort of investigation into Ukraine in 2016 and the Biden's, right?
	It's all one big ball of corruption.
	It's one big ball of corruption.
	That language was then parroted by Trump.
	So again, was Giuliani coordinating with Trump to get Biden, or was Biden merely part of this broader ball of corruption that Giuliani was supposedly attempting to fight, including fighting the Trump-Russia collusion narrative by looking into a Ukraine Hillary collusion narrative.
	We're not going to know this until Giuliani testifies.
	Either way, Trump decides to withdraw the military aid from Ukraine contingent on Ukrainian public commitments to fight corruption, which now in Trump's mind include both 2016 election interference as well as the Bidens.
	Even today, Giuliani continually insists that his Ukrainian efforts were not an attempt to go after the Bidens, really.
	They were aimed at defending his client Trump, presumably from charges of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016, and not aimed at targeting Biden.
	Specifically, he tweeted out yesterday that his job is to defend Trump from all charges.
	That that was his goal here.
	Which is, again, retrospective about 2016, not really looking prospectively toward 2020.
	But both theories are plausible.
	We're going to get into more of the evidence in just one second.
	So you can see how an honest person can see the interpretation, the Bill Taylor interpretation, and how an honest person can also see the President Trump.
	Okay, we'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so back to the two theories of this Trump-Ukraine stuff.
	Okay, so the next piece of the puzzle.
	So we have Giuliani's activities, right?
	We now know that Rudy Giuliani was wandering around Ukraine, funneling information to Trump via corrupt Ukrainian business people and prosecutors who were saying that Ukrainian corruption involved willful overlooking of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Burisma.
	Okay, now we get to the phone call, right?
	This is the famous transcript of the phone call.
	So according to that transcript, to that July 25th phone call that initiated this whole mess, Between Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky for a favor because, quote, our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
	I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.
	They say CrowdStrike.
	I guess you have one of your wealthy people.
	The server.
	They say Ukraine has it.
	They say a lot of it started with Ukraine.
	Whatever you can do, it's very important you do it if that's possible.
	So here, what the hell is Trump talking about?
	Well, he is referring to the baseless conspiracy theory that Russia was framed by Ukraine for the 2016 hack and supposed and subsequent release of a damaging tranche of DNC emails, which involved a supposedly secret DNC server being spirited away to and hidden in Ukraine.
	This theory has no evidence to back it.
	And Trump seems to be asking Zelensky to investigate the conspiracy theory, presumably in the hopes that this will then remove the taint of Russian interference from the 2016 victory.
	So Lensky then responds by mentioning Giuliani because this is the source of the information.
	And Trump jumps on the mention saying, quote, Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy.
	If you could speak to him, that would be great.
	And then he adds, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution.
	And a lot of people want to find out about that.
	So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.
	So is this call evidence of Trump seeking a quid pro quo to quote unquote get Biden or a pressure campaign to fight Trump's Giuliani fueled idea of corruption, including but not exclusively focused on Biden in Ukraine?
	Okay, now fast forward to the text messages.
	We're going through each piece of evidence here, and you can see how it all fits within each one of the two theories.
	There are a series of text messages that have been revealed between the Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, Special Envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and Taylor.
	In those texts, Volker says that after explaining that he's fixed up a meeting between Giuliani and a Ukrainian representative, quote, most important is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation and address any specific personnel issues if there are any.
	And then Volker later reiterates, quote, heard from White House, assuming President Xi convinces Trump he will investigate, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016.
	We'll nail down date for visit to Washington.
	Good luck.
	So it appears that American diplomats have basically accepted that Trump is just listening to Giuliani now, and that pleasing Giuliani, and then therefore pleasing Trump, is the key to restoring aid.
	Taylor is incredulous about all of this, right?
	He reads the investigations as a pretext for getting Biden from the start.
	He says, are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?
	He texts again, as I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.
	And Gordon Sondland responds, quote, Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions.
	The president has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind.
	The president is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.
	I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.
	Okay, so that brings us forward to the actual perceptions of the people involved in the text.
	That'd be Gordon Sondland specifically.
	As well as Bill Taylor, the charged affairs in Ukraine.
	So Sondland submits written testimony.
	Again, we haven't seen the full testimony, which is part of the problem here.
	Republicans want the public to see the full testimony.
	Democrats want to hold it back, at least for now.
	So Sondland's written testimony suggests his own confusion about Trump's agenda.
	He acknowledges that, quote, corruption poses challenges to the legitimacy and stability of government.
	Corruption is also an economic issue.
	He also says, quote, President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns.
	It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the president's mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani.
	And then Sondland says, based on the president's direction, we were faced with a choice.
	We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S.
	foreign policy goals in the region, Or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President's concern.
	Someone says he didn't understand until much later Giuliani's agenda might also have included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate VP Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians directly or indirectly in the President's 2020 re-election campaign.
	He also says he spoke to Giuliani in short conversations in which Giuliani quote-unquote emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues.
	Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election including the DNC server and Burisma as two anti-corruption investigatory topics of importance for the president.
	He denies that Biden was ever specifically mentioned in these conversations.
	Someone does.
	And he also says that his statement that no quid pro quos had taken place came directly from conversations with Trump.
	Here's what he said in his testimony.
	This is a very short call.
	president, what do you want from Ukraine?
	The president responded, nothing.
	There is no quid pro quo.
	The president repeated, no quid pro quo, multiple times.
	This is a very short call.
	I recall the president was in a very bad mood, which is not.
	Either rare or surprising.
	Okay, that brings you forward to Taylor's testimony.
	And this, of course, is the big testimony, right?
	This is the testimony that's going to end Trump's presidency, according to the media.
	So in contrast with Sunlin's lack of clarity on Trump's agenda, because Sunlin is clearly in the ball of corruption category, the miasma of corruption theory.
	Taylor seems pretty clear on this thing, right?
	Taylor seems convinced the entire Giuliani hunt was about Biden specifically and that Trump withheld the aid in order to target Biden, right?
	And that all of this really, in the end, was about affecting 2020.
	His written testimony repeatedly suggests as much.
	Like Sondland, he says he found that Giuliani was actually running the Ukraine show.
	He testified, quote, by mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.
	It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Giuliani, right?
	That's exactly what Sunlin says.
	Later, he says he realized security assistance was also conditioned on those terms.
	But again, it's not clear whether all of this is conditioned on generalized investigation of corruption regarding 2016 or whether, again, this is about affecting 2020 for the president's political benefit.
	Taylor obviously believes the former.
	He says that the term investigations, quote, was used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections and to the investigations of Burisma and the Bidens.
	But were there open questions to ask about the Bidens?
	In other words, would Trump have to be motivated by a simple desire to quote-unquote get the Bidens rather than to wrap up the Burisma Biden investigation in the broader rubric of fighting corruption in Ukraine, an issue that Trump cared about because he was personally invested in the 2016 election and feels that his legacy has been tarnished by all the Trump-Russia stuff?
	Trump found all of this urgent because he'd read the media coverage about Ukraine's cooperation with Hillary's campaign in 2016, believed conspiracy theories about CrowdStrike, believed that maybe Ukraine is where all the answers were hidden about 2016.
	Okay, that brings you forward to Mick Mulvaney's statement.
	So Mulvaney is Trump's chief of staff, right, and he's been roped into this debacle because Trump ordered him to effectuate the withholding of the military aid.
	He gave a pretty disastrous press conference in which he talked about Trump engaging in a quid pro quo.
	But his comments didn't clear up the nature of the quid pro quo itself.
	Was it about Biden?
	Was it about 2020?
	Or was it about Trump's perception of Ukrainian corruption?
	Mulvaney suggested the latter, right?
	He said, Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?
	Absolutely.
	No question about that.
	But that's it.
	And 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.
	So how about Trump's statements?
	As always, Trump never helps himself, right?
	He continually breathes life into the worst theory of events.
	He says he'd like to see China investigate Joe and Hunter.
	He says he'd accept information about political rivals from foreign sources.
	He continually cites Giuliani, mouths silliness about obvious conspiracy theories, but that doesn't change the basic question.
	Was this an attempt to get Biden or a petty, foolish, misinformed attempt to fight the corruption that he thinks targeted him in 2016?
	And more to the point, did Trump commit an impeachable offense?
	In one second, we're going to discuss whether Trump, in all of this, committed the impeachable offense and why these two theories end up mattering, why this is the crux of the whole impeachment argument.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that there are a lot of cars on the road, a lot of different types of car on the road.
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	Okay, so in just a second we're going to get to the bottom line question.
	Is this stuff impeachable?
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	All righty, so now we get to the crux of the matter.
	Is this impeachable?
	So the answer to that depends on whether you believe the Get Biden Theory or the Miasma of Corruption Theory.
	Now, are these mutually exclusive?
	Can you believe that what Trump was actually trying to do was look into 2016, but also affect 2020 by going after Joe Biden?
	Could it be both?
	Well, here is the problem.
	The theories are only mutually exclusive because the Get Biden Theory forecloses the possibility that Biden could have ever been investigated as part of a generalized, non-2020-oriented push to investigate Ukrainian corruption.
	In other words, if there was a dual intent, then the dual intent makes it impossible to discern whether this was in fact a corrupt quid pro quo.
	Right?
	If Trump had in his mind, yeah, Biden was part of this whole 2016 corruption, Ukrainian corruption fiasco, and if that affects 2020, then sure, I guess it affects 2020.
	Or, great, it affects 2020.
	If it affects 2020, good, I'm glad.
	Right?
	That is not something that is discernible, right?
	There's no way for you to actually discern whether that's criminal or not, because it's just too vague.
	What this would have to be is a concerted attempt to effectuate an American policy to Help Trump in 2020 by targeting an American citizen.
	And it's not even enough to say that it's an attempt to affect 2020 generally.
	Because guess what?
	Virtually everything a president does is attempted to affect his re-election possibilities, right?
	Virtually everything on economics, on foreign policy, all of it has to do with the president's re-elect possibilities.
	So it's simply too broad an argument to say foreign policy is being directed toward helping a president.
	Yeah, I mean, again, every president does that.
	The question is whether Trump did something criminal in withholding military aid By going after Joe Biden specifically, in order to go after Joe Biden specifically, an American citizen, initiate a corrupt investigation into Biden, from a foreign government, in order to affect 2020.
	So dual use is not a possibility, under the Get Biden theory.
	The answer as to whether the Bidens could ever be legitimately investigated by Ukraine, thanks to pressure from you Trump, is the distinguishing point in the two theories.
	So under the Get Biden theory, the answer is no.
	Even as part of a broader Ukrainian anti-corruption push, any mention of Biden turns that push into a corrupt effort to use American taxpayer dollars to attack a political rival and skew 2020.
	Under the miasma of corruption theory, investigating the Bidens doesn't automatically mean that Trump was aiming at 2020 electioneering purely.
	Rather, he was obsessed about 2016 and wanted everything he'd ever heard from Rudy Giuliani investigated on that score.
	So, your theory of Trump's impeachment comes down to which of these two theories you find more plausible, as I've been saying all along.
	Now, here's the big problem.
	There are only two people, really, who are gonna be able to answer this question, right?
	Trump himself could answer the question, but is unlikely to.
	Rudy Giuliani could answer the question, and this is the thing that should scare Trump.
	If, in fact, Rudy Giuliani was delegated by Trump to Ukraine to go get Joe Biden, it's gonna be a problem.
	Rudy Giuliani's got a big mouth, and he goes on TV, and he says dumb crap all the time.
	Which is why Trump's closest allies are telling him, tell Rudy to shut his head, like to stop, the face needs to stop moving, like enough.
	Okay, so it's really down to Trump and Giuliani, which I've been saying for weeks, right?
	For weeks, I've been saying until Rudy Giuliani testifies, all this other stuff is just third party perception of firsthand knowledge, right?
	Bill Taylor's perception of events is not the same thing as Rudy Giuliani being ordered by Trump to do X. Because Bill Taylor's perception is closer to the events than mine, but in effect, he's still hearing stuff secondhand.
	And the same thing is true with Gordon Sumlin, right?
	Because Gordon Sumlin and apparently Taylor totally construe this differently.
	In one way, we're going to know the truth one way or the other, but now at least you understand the theories.
	Now at least you see how all of this plays out.
	Okay, now I want to get to the latest on this Texas case.
	So, as you know, there's been this case, we've all been following it, in which there's a seven-year-old named James Younger, and there's a ruling that came down from a court that originally was going to grant sole custody to this kid's mother, Dr. Ann Georgalis.
	Georgalis, according to the father, has been, since the age of three, indoctrinating this kid to believe that he's a girl.
	Has been telling him that he is a girl.
	In fact, there is tape of this kid being asked, when he's three years old, why he thinks he is a girl.
	It's disturbing.
	Here's what it sounds like.
	You're a boy, right?
	No.
	I'm a girl.
	Who told you you were a girl?
	Mommy.
	When did she tell you you were a girl?
	Because I love girls.
	Oh, I see.
	So Mommy told you you were a girl?
	Uh-huh.
	So Mommy puts you in a dress and puts nail polish on you?
	Uh-huh.
	And what does Mommy tell you?
	She tells me I'm a girl.
	Oh, okay.
	Do you think you're a girl?
	Uh-huh.
	You do?
	Is that why you wear this?
	So that you can have long hair?
	Okay, so mommy tells me I'm a girl.
	Okay, that's pretty disturbing stuff.
	Mommy should not be telling a boy that he is a girl.
	That is child abuse.
	It is.
	I'm sorry.
	It is the telling a three-year-old boy that he is a girl.
	Not even humoring him, telling him that, yes, indeed, you are correct, you are a girl.
	That's child abuse.
	It's your job as a parent to parent your child, not to humor his fantasies about life.
	Yeah, well, here's the latest development in this case.
	According to the Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo reporting, on Thursday, Judge Kim Cook's ruled Texas father Jeffrey Younger has a say in his seven-year-old son's gender transition, which is being facilitated by the boy's mother and Younger's ex-wife, Dr. Angie Orgelas.
	Younger's attempting to halt the boy's transition.
	Cooks of the 255th district ruled that the parents will have joint conservatorship over James, which includes making joint medical decisions for the child.
	However, Cook's also placed a gag order on Younger so that he can't speak to the press about the case and decided the father is not required to pay attorney's fees, which means that Younger's Save James website, which has circulated videos of James' testimonials and vital court documents, will have to be shut down pursuant to the order.
	So now that means that if Mommy continues to manipulate the case and then the judge rules for sole conservatorship, he won't have been able to say anything or he'll be in danger of violating a gag order.
	So it sounds more like the judge is just saying, listen, we don't like all this public scrutiny.
	We don't like that Greg Abbott stepped in.
	The Texas governor said he would investigate and send Child Family Services to investigate.
	He doesn't like that Ted Cruz mouthed off about it and Dan Crenshaw.
	He doesn't like that people like me mouth off about it.
	Right, so the judge is just saying, well, you know what?
	Let's just keep going with what we've got going here, and you don't say anything.
	You shut up.
	There's no gag order on Georgulas, by the way.
	Right, as far as we know, there's no gag order on Georgulas.
	So she can continue to put up pictures on her website of her son in a dress and talk about her modern parenting methods, which is apparently something that she does.
	Right, she's a doctor, and her medical practice website, until recently, according to Matt Walsh, had a picture of her and her son up there, him wearing a dress.
	Which is incredibly, incredibly invasive for a seven-year-old child.
	And what you're seeing is that the media are being denied access.
	Before the judge handed down her verdict, she kicked out all media sources, including the Texan Daily Mail and LifeSite News, as well as ABC, CBS 11.
	Well, ABC, CBS 11, and NBC were reportedly allowed access, but all family and friends were kicked out, and anybody who covered this thing skeptically.
	That's according to LifeSite News.
	Reporting from the Texan says that Giorgoulis' lawyers, Jessica Janicek and Laura Hayes, claimed during the trial the mother does not plan on giving James hormone blockers at this time, but no one has stated that Giorgoulis would not be open to using them when James begins puberty, which is when he is like 11 and a half.
	So, you know, people who are reporting that she's about to start using hormones is not true, but she says nothing would stop her, presumably.
	She could start using hormones on him at 11 and a half and the father couldn't do anything about that.
	Plus, She obviously gets to continue to indoctrinate her child in the belief that he is, in fact, a little girl when, by all biological metrics, he is not a little girl.
	He is a little boy.
	And confusing children about this stuff is nasty.
	It does not protect their innocence.
	It does not help them.
	The vast majority of children who say that they are members of the opposite sex end up abandoning that belief as they get older.
	Okay, the whole thing, George Liss's July 2018 testimony apparently reveals that if James persists, is set to be evaluated for hormone suppressants as young as age 8.
	This is just incredibly disturbing stuff.
	Now, it was funny.
	A couple of weeks ago, you may remember that people got very uptight with me when I said that I do not like the idea of the state being able to tell me how to parent my child.
	I don't want the state should be able to shut down my religious school on the basis of my religious school being offensive to their ears, and I wouldn't like it if the state decided that they were going to shut down my ability to homeschool my child, and that if I moved states and this became federal policy, That there would be no place for me to go and if it came to the police showing up at my door calling me a truant parent and threatening to remove my child from my home because I can't parent my child the way that I see fit.
	Then I would meet those people at the door with a gun if I had no other choice, right?
	If I had no choice, it was not... Voting is no longer an issue, right?
	I mean, somebody shows up at your door to take your child away.
	Voting is not really the issue, right?
	You remember I got myself in all sorts of angry waters on Twitter.
	Ooh, Twitter got so mad about us.
	By the way, that's called the Constitution of the United States, when fundamental rights are absolutely breached and are unchanging, and now you are faced with a violation of those fundamental constitutional rights.
	The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are pretty clear on this.
	Okay, so, that's what I said.
	We are now living in an era where it is considered a fulsome good for the state.
	I mean, the state was this close to telling this father he could not, that he had to treat his son as a girl, according to media reports, that he would be forced by the state of Texas to treat his boy as a girl.
	And if he did not, he would be removed from custody of his own son.
	Don't tell me that the sort of debates that we have on politics in this country don't have very personal ramifications for parents and how they treat their children.
	Don't tell me that this is all about non-interventionism and kindness and protection.
	It is not.
	It is about invalidating particular points of view.
	It is about invalidating what I believe to be decent and good parenting.
	Namely, it is your job to guide your child, not to humor their delusions when they are three years old or five years old or seven years old.
	Hey, this is what I'm talking about.
	When the state becomes a weapon of the social left to the point where parents are having their children removed from them.
	And then the state has become too much of a danger.
	So I'm glad the court backed off of this.
	I'm glad that the Texas government stepped in and decided to investigate all of this.
	That is the right thing to do.
	But don't tell me it's fantasy land when I say that there are folks on the left who absolutely would like to invade your home and not only tell you how to raise your child, but mandate via the state how to raise your kids or threaten to remove them.
	Because that's basically what happened in this case, at least originally, as reported.
	By the way, Matt Walsh makes a great point on this.
	Walsh was all over this.
	He writes for us over at Daily Wire and he was really terrific on this issue.
	It was his attention to this issue that probably created a lot of the firestorm that led to the governor of Texas stepping in.
	He points out something that is quite important.
	He says that if you read all of the reports of this, this kid, when he was three, was saying that he was a girl.
	But he wasn't just saying he was a girl.
	He was saying, actually, that his first name was Starfire.
	Interestingly, The amicus attorney Dunlop revealed that Georglas told him that Luna was not the first female name that James picked out.
	The first was Starfire, a female character from the superhero cartoon Teen Titans Go!
	Georglas, however, encouraged him to pick a different name.
	Walsh says, while this shows what realm James was living in when he allegedly claimed he was a girl, he was in the same realm of every normal child inhabiting from infancy until adolescence, the realm of fantasy.
	He wasn't identifying as a girl.
	He was identifying as a cartoon girl.
	There's no substantive difference between this self-identity and the self-identity of my own three-year-old boy, who regularly claims to be a dinosaur, a bear, a bear hunter, a shark, or sometimes all four.
	He said, kids at that age have no understanding of reality in theory or practice.
	This is me now.
	That's why they have parents.
	To guide them through that stage of development.
	Not to humor their fantasies.
	Walsh says...
	The fact that James identified not just as a girl, but as a cartoon girl should make it pretty clear that this is magical thinking and psychological immaturity.
	He also says, reflect on the fact that James' mom didn't let him go by Starfire.
	This is an amazing point, right?
	The fact is that James' mom was like, you know what?
	Starfire's too much.
	We can't do Starfire.
	Instead, we're going to call you Luna.
	So just to be straight about this, a three-year-old kid can decide that he is a girl, but can't decide his name is Starfire.
	I mean, it would be crazy to let him go through life thinking that he's a person named Starfire.
	That would be totally wild.
	But letting him go through life and encouraging him to go through life, believing that he's a member of the opposite sex, not only is that legitimate, that's solid parenting, according to the members of the social left.
	Walsh says indeed it is striking that these painfully progressive parents who want their children to have the freedom to choose their own gender still won't let them choose their own names.
	There's a reason why trans kids always have names like Luna or Jazz or Sky or Parker or something similarly ambiguous and trendy.
	Do we think three and four year olds are hopping onto Google to find out which unisex monikers are in fashion at the moment?
	No, if you left it to a young child to decide for himself, he'll inevitably gravitate towards something like Starfire, or Ninja, or Pirate Poopbutt.
	All of these options would be better than Luda, but they still wouldn't look great on a resume.
	But you never end up with a trans daughter named Pirate Poopbutt or Starfire, because even Ange- Georgalus knows her son is too young to be entrusted with choosing his own name, and that eventually he'll grow up and won't be as fond of the name he liked when he was a child.
	What sort of idiot parent would allow her young son to make that kind of decision, knowing how immature he is, and how certain it is that he will grow out of this phase?
	We don't let our kids choose their names for the same reason we don't let them get tattoos.
	Correct.
	Correct.
	Okay, but this is... It's not alarmism to say that the social left would love to parent children, parent your children, and take your children away from you and tell you that you're not allowed to determine how you want to parent your child and they will militarize the power of the state if they can in order to accomplish this.
	That is not alarmism.
	That is a thing that is happening on rare occasions in the United States.
	But over time, this will become increasingly volatile.
	It'll be increasingly bad.
	This is gonna become mainstream policy within 10 years in the Democratic Party.
	This is not, it's fringe right now.
	It ain't gonna be fringe for long.
	Not the way the media are treating this issue, not the way Hollywood treats this issue, and certainly not the way that Democrats are treating this issue.
	Already going along with every, I mean, basically, Democrats are five seconds away from declaring it child abuse for you to say to a three-year-old child who says that he is a girl and he's a boy, that he is a boy.
	That's already happening up in Canada.
	So to pretend that this is not, A coming issue is to ignore the reality on the ground.
	But this is what you see so often from the left.
	Why are you guys being so alarmist?
	We would never do anything like that!
	And then five seconds later, they're doing exactly that.
	Really, five seconds later.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I like.
	And then maybe a thing that I hate.
	Maybe.
	Okay, so, quick thing that I like today.
	So, I have decided that a couple of years ago, I was going through the Bible week by week, and I feel like now's a good time to sort of get back into that.
	Now, you don't have to be a believer in the Bible to sort of find inspiration in the Bible or to Think about some of the deep messages of the founding document of Western civilization and the most read book of all time, right?
	It still seems relevant.
	Even if you are not a believer in the veracity of biblical stories, even if you're not a believer in God, per se, it is important to understand where your civilization came from and some of the thoughts that are embedded at the deepest levels of what you would consider myth, but what people who are in religious circles would consider to be God's God's story about the world, the story that God tells us.
	So this week restarts the Jewish canonical cycle.
	So we've reached the end of reading the Torah every year.
	The Jews read through all five books of Moses.
	We read portion by portion, one every week.
	And this week we finally finished the final portion of the Torah, Bezos HaBracha.
	These are the five books of Moses.
	And we'll restart from the beginning of Genesis.
	So for a second, I just want to talk about one of the more bizarre stories in Genesis.
	Of course, the very famous story, probably the most famous story in the Bible.
	And that would be the story of Adam and Eve.
	That's a very weird story, right?
	I mean, just on the face of it, it's a very weird story.
	You've got God going around telling people they can eat from certain trees and not eat from other trees.
	And then you've got a snake who shows up and says, a talking snake, and he shows up and he says to a lady, well, you know, if you eat from that tree, everything is, you're going to be like God.
	You're going to know the difference between good and evil.
	And then she eats from the tree.
	And sure enough, her eyes are open.
	And suddenly she knows things she didn't before.
	And God gets pissed and he throws everybody out of the garden, right?
	I mean, that's sort of the short version of the story.
	But what is this thing actually about?
	Like, why does this actually have serious meaning?
	So there are all sorts of interpretations.
	Now I want to present one interpretation that I think fits really well with the Hebrew text of this section of Genesis.
	So, there is a, the biggest question about this story is, what is actually wrong with knowing good and evil?
	Remember, the entire story is predicated on God saying you can eat from every tree in this garden.
	In fact, you should eat from every tree in this garden.
	But, there's one tree you can't eat from, and that is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
	You can't eat from that one.
	Do not, don't do it.
	I'm telling you, just don't.
	It ain't gonna end well.
	And Eve is seduced by the snake into eating from that tree.
	So the question is, why is it bad to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
	You know more stuff now, right?
	Now can't you make more moral judgments?
	You know good, you know evil, you got knowledge of good and evil.
	What's the big problem?
	And all of this seems pretty harsh, because as soon as this happens, God is like, okay, well now you're gonna die, you're gonna live by the sweat of your brow, you're gonna suffer in childbirth.
	I mean, the snake actually sort of gets it right when you read the biblical account, right?
	Because God says to Adam, really says to Adam, if you eat from that tree, on that day you will surely die.
	And the snake says, well, well, the snake says, quote, you will not surely die, for God knows that on the day you eat thereof, your eyes will be open.
	You'll be like angels, knowing good and evil.
	And sure enough, the snake seems to be correct, right?
	God's first words after the sin to the angels is, Behold, man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil.
	And then God gets ticked off.
	So what exactly did they do wrong?
	Well, so to understand the problem, first we have to define our terms good and evil.
	So the only reference terms that we have for good occur before this in Genesis, right?
	At the very beginning of Genesis, when God is creating the universe.
	So in the very first chapter of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, and then he labels things good.
	Right?
	Vayar Hashem Kitov, right?
	That would be the Hebrew, right?
	He saw that it was good, and then there was evening, then there was morning, the first day, right?
	That is constantly repeated.
	God creates something, He sees that it's good, and it's evening, and it's morning a day.
	So, what does that mean, that it's good?
	Right?
	Does it mean that His creations are morally good?
	That light is morally good?
	That the creation of animals, that that's morally good?
	No, the Bible is using good in the same sense that Aristotle used the word good.
	Creations that serve their purpose.
	So when you say that you have a really good car, you don't mean the car is morally good, that the car really gives charity to children.
	You mean the car works.
	You mean that the car does what it is supposed to do.
	God's creations also serve their various purposes.
	So, in Aristotelian language, human beings are created with the same thing, right?
	We are created with a telos.
	We are created with a purpose in mind.
	Objects are created with a purpose.
	A good hammer hammers things.
	Good human reasons, according to Aristotle.
	What makes human beings good is whether they serve their purpose.
	In the Bible, that would be worship of God, mastery of his world, cultivation of the garden, right?
	Because people are actually given tasks in the garden.
	God tells them to cultivate the garden.
	God tells them to be fertile and multiply, right?
	There are certain things they're supposed to do that fulfills their good.
	So the Bible itself establishes man purpose to quote-unquote work and guard the garden.
	That's what it says.
	So good is not actually contrasted with evil in this definition.
	Good is just what a thing is supposed to do.
	So things that are good fulfill their purpose.
	Things that are bad, they're not really bad per se, they're just unfit for use.
	The contrast isn't between good and bad, it's between good and unfit for use.
	So the moral world, from God's perspective, is constructed in that fashion.
	That which is moral is that which we do that fulfills God's purpose.
	It's only when we begin to contrast good and evil, and we eat from the tree of that knowledge, that things start to get confused.
	Because only God can know his own purposes.
	Basic tenet of religion.
	Only God really knows what's going on.
	Only God can define that which is good.
	In the God sense, right?
	In the Aristotelian sense, too.
	That which is useful to God.
	But human beings, we have an unfortunate tendency to craft our own moral systems.
	Subjectively.
	And then we contrast that which is good with that which is evil.
	And we do so from the perspective of stuff that we think affects us well versus stuff that we think affects us poorly.
	But that's our view.
	Not God, right?
	We think that pain is evil.
	Unfairness is evil.
	Well...
	Not necessarily, right?
	Those are things that occur in life according to God.
	Maybe those are evil, maybe they're unfit, and maybe they're not unfit, but they're not evil, right?
	They're good or they're bad, but they're not evil.
	Human beings see these things as evil, and that's why the natural consequence of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge is that suddenly action that was good in the Aristotelian sense becomes evil in our own eyes.
	So to take an example, I don't actually think that childbirth was easy and painless before Adam and Eve sinned.
	I don't think, like, that's not human biology.
	It was probably pretty painful before Adam and Eve sinned.
	But only now does Eve actually perceive childbirth as sorrow and pain, because now she sees stuff that's bad happening to her as a moral problem, right, as the theodicy problem.
	It's a problem of God's justice, it's a problem of the moral system of the world.
	And that's a problem, because she's no longer trying to reflect the mind of God, now she's trying to project her own moral system onto the world.
	Whereas before, Adam was already told to work, and presumably he had to sweat when he worked.
	But now the ground is quote-unquote cursed for your sake, with the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for you were taken there from, for dust you are, and to dust you will return.
	So Adam now enters this world of existential angst.
	Before, work was the goal of life, now it's an obstacle to pleasure.
	So work is evil, pleasure is good.
	So things radically change, and human beings become human beings because they struggle with the failure of human-created moral systems to match God's moral system, and because human beings have a tendency to sort of supplant one for the other and to ignore even the idea of an Aristotelian good.
	By constructing our own moral frameworks, subjective moral frameworks, rather than attempting to reflect a more objective moral framework, we actually exile ourselves from reality and rebel against us, and then we're barred from the Garden of Eden by flaming swords of our own creation.
	There's no way to get back in, because there's no way for human beings to actually perceive what God wants, and so we instead supplant our own idea of what is evil for God's idea of what is good or not good.
	Alright, so what does it mean that we're going to die upon eating the tree of knowledge?
	Because we didn't die, right?
	Human beings didn't die even in the story itself.
	He lives, right?
	He lives for another several hundred years according to the Bible.
	So, what exactly does die?
	Well, the part of us that actually gives us eternal life, that immediate communion with God.
	So, the Bible has this beautiful language when it talks about the creation of man, that we're formed from the clay of the earth and then God breathes life into us, right?
	It's this beautiful, beautiful image.
	When we die, according to religion and according to a lot of philosophers, the soul doesn't disappear so long as we use our earthbound bodies to work in God's service.
	We're not even separated from him while we're alive.
	But, our bodies, once they become obstacles to our perception of God, well then, a part of us has died.
	We're now more animal than man, right?
	We are trapped in the same world as the animals, experiencing pleasure and pain, driven by the same instincts that Thomas Hobbes and David Hume talked about, as opposed to that attempt to reason, that attempt to rise above, that attempt to commune with a higher level of morality.
	Okay, so there's your read on the beginning.
	of Genesis, and I hope that you enjoyed that.
	And I, frankly, it's my show, so I get to say what I want.
	So we'll do some more of that next week.
	Otherwise, you know, if you don't like it, you can always tune out early from the show.
	But I think that it's important to understand the Bible.
	I think that it's important to understand what religious people think of the Bible, and that we are not all simpletons who simply go around thinking that snakes talk to people and say weird stuff, and then there are flaming swords and all that.
	Like, there's actual meaning to these stories, which is why they're so deeply embedded in Western consciousness.
	Okay, unfortunately we are out of time, but there are two additional hours of The Ben Shapiro Show coming up later.
	This is why you should subscribe.
	I'll do mailbagging it up then, so we'll see you then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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