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Oct. 30, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:01:49

Democrats' Magical Impeachment Misdirection | Ep. 886

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	Democrats call Republicans' bluff on impeachment procedures, an American military member blasts Trump over Ukraine, and an Obama official calls for rewriting the First Amendment.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN professionals.
	Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Okay, so we begin today with Impeachment Day 2019 because there are some new developments.
	These developments are really two in nature.
	One is the House Democrats Changing their rules and procedures for the impeachment inquiry.
	And this has got a lot of Republicans out there saying things like, well, if they're changing the rules, this shows that their rules were insufficient the first time.
	Like, they could have just been transparent from the beginning.
	Obviously, they now acknowledge they did something wrong.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	There's only one problem, which is that nobody cares.
	The reason nobody cares is now the Democrats will simply claim, well, you know, at the very beginning, it was important that we have behind closed doors meetings and that we restrict public views so we could get the early information.
	But now we're going to get that out there in public.
	Trying to hang your hat in defense of President Trump on all this impeachment stuff on the basis of procedural Inequities is just a fail.
	It's not going to work.
	And the reason it's not going to work particularly is because what you are now seeing is Democrats saying that we're going to broaden the procedures.
	So we don't actually know how the Democrats are going to broaden those procedures yet.
	We're going to find out on Thursday.
	But for Republicans to sort of jump both feet in and suggest that this move by the Democrats somehow undermines the entire investigation.
	Again, it's true that it shows the Democrats know they were doing something wrong from the very beginning.
	But it is also true that that's not going to matter because now Democrats have opened the doors wide and said, OK, here we are.
	Let's do this thing.
	That is Democrats calling Republicans bluff and no amount of sort of puffed up outrage over Democrats now doing the right thing.
	is going to detract from where we go from here in impeachment 2019.
	So that is development number one.
	Development number two, as we're about to discuss, is the testimony of a lieutenant colonel who is a member of the National Security Council, who was probably the source for the whistleblower.
	We'll talk about that in just one second.
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	So as I say, House Democrats said on Monday the House will vote Thursday to formalize procedures for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump's decision.
	Democrats say the move will ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward.
	This has prompted the White House to point out that if the Democrats are so interested in transparency moving forward, why weren't they interested in transparency?
	To begin with, that is a fine critique.
	It cuts no weight moving forward.
	It cuts no weight moving forward.
	And meanwhile, Democrats are focused in, not on the procedural question, they're focused in on the testimony of one Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who is a Ukraine expert assigned to the National Security Council.
	He testified in the House impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, and he offered new details on the push for investigations of President Trump's political rivals and corroborating other witnesses with his firsthand account of the alleged attempt at a quid pro quo, according to the Washington Post.
	Vindman is the first person to have listened in personally on the July 25th phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump said he wanted a favor after Zelensky broached defense cooperation between the United States and Ukraine.
	So apparently, Vindman was listening from the White House Situation Room along with other NSC officials and members of Vice President Pence's staff.
	He said this in prepared remarks, and he said he was so concerned by the call, he said that it could be seen as a partisan play that could undermine American national security.
	He reported it to the NSC's lead counsel.
	Behind closed doors, according to people familiar with what transpired—again, this is why all of this should be out in the open, it should be televised, because we get these selective leaks—Vindman also testified on Tuesday that the contents of the July 25th call differed slightly from what is stated in the official transcript that the White House released late last month.
	So now he's making the claim that the actual transcript that was released by the White House, which was actually a call memo, the way that that is put together is a bunch of witnesses to the call come together and try to reconstruct from notes and from memory exactly what was said on the call.
	It's not like they take a recording, play it back, and then put together a transcript.
	And there are some accusations that the Trump administration had messed around with the transcript.
	And I had said that seemed far-fetched because there were a lot of people who were Listening to the call, and presumably they all took part in putting together the transcript, Vindman says that the contents of the July 25th call were in fact slightly different from the official quote-unquote memo that the White House released late last month.
	Vindman says that Zelensky did reference Burisma and not just some nameless company, and when Trump pressed him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter, Zelensky responded positively.
	Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, for some five years.
	He said that he remembered Trump going on about how Joe Biden was on tape boasting about Ukrainian funds, which is probably just a reference to the fact that Joe Biden is on tape boasting about how he withheld $1 billion in American loan guarantees to Ukraine.
	So that's nothing really new.
	Now, here is the problem for Republicans.
	It's not Vindman.
	I mean, this is what's so astonishing.
	Everybody is treating the Vindman testimony as though this is something new and shocking.
	Well, again, we've all seen the transcript.
	What he is alleging was different in the transcript is not all that different from what we saw in the transcript, so that does not amount to a Nixonian Watergate cover-up of the actual contents of the call.
	The contents of the call were problematic enough, right?
	I mean, it wasn't a perfect call.
	It was an impeachable call, but it wasn't a perfect call by any stretch of the imagination.
	Trump is doing some pretty blatant and ugly things in that phone call, in my opinion, and we all know about that.
	Now, that's not impeachable.
	That's not impeachable.
	Now, What Democrats are doing is they're trotting out witnesses to the phone call to suggest that somehow they have some additional information to add.
	I don't see the additional information that Vindman is adding.
	The only thing that becomes pretty clear from Vindman's testimony is that Vindman was probably the person who was talking to the whistleblower.
	Remember, the whistleblower was not on the call.
	He says he spoke to people who were on the call, who were supremely concerned about the call, and then he reported it up the chain of command.
	anonymously in another part of the government.
	So this really isn't about the whistleblower anymore.
	Probably Vindman was talking to the whistleblower in the first place.
	He says he wasn't the whistleblower, but again, multiple officials apparently were troubled by the call.
	So is he really adding anything new to the debate here?
	The answer is really not so much.
	I mean, he's sort of doing the same thing that Bill Taylor was doing from afar or that Gordon Sondland was doing.
	He is adding his gloss to what happened.
	Well, now we have the transcript, so we sort of know what happened.
	And we have the text messages between Bill Taylor and Gordon Sondland, so we know what happened.
	And we have testimony coming out from people who were first-hand involved in these conversations, not just people who heard the conversations.
	So, we know what happened.
	So why is Vindman being trotted forward?
	Well, the reason that Democrats are putting Vindman out there is because he's a really good-looking witness for them.
	The reason he's a good-looking witness is because he's an Iraq War veteran with a purple heart.
	Because he has a long career in the military, and because he's very much pro-aid, American aid, to Ukraine.
	So it was almost as though the Democrats were bringing out Vindman, believing, hoping, that Democrats would attack Vindman, so then they could suggest that Republicans were willing to attack an Iraq War veteran with a sterling career.
	In order to protect President Trump, right?
	It's almost a catfishing ploy.
	Now, that's not about Vindman.
	Vindman seems like an honorable dude.
	I mean, Vindman served.
	I didn't serve.
	Vindman was in Iraq.
	I wasn't in Iraq.
	Vindman performed heroically in the field.
	I didn't.
	And I have very few questions about Vindman as a human being.
	Like, I don't see why you would attack Vindman as a witness.
	In fact, I think it's incredibly stupid to do so.
	I mean, the main point to make about Vindman is this dude has no more information than you or I do.
	He listened to the phone call.
	We have now seen the transcript of the phone call and all of these sort of color commentary that he's adding about, well, you know, the transcript left out this little piece or this little piece.
	From what we are being told by Vindman, nothing fundamentally changes in the text or tenor of the phone call based on what happened during a few of the ellipses.
	And President Trump immediately fell into this trap because, of course, President Trump is a man who hates exquisitely.
	And when somebody crosses him, he really attacks them.
	So President Trump went after this Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.
	He wrote on Twitter, Now, the media are playing that as though Trump is going after Vindman in a serious way.
	He called him a never-Trumper.
	Now, the media are playing that as though Trump is going after Vindman in a serious way.
	He called him a never-Trumper.
	Okay, that's just that in the lexicon of President Trump insults, that one really does not rank.
	He just means somebody who doesn't like him.
	Anytime somebody doesn't like President Trump or doesn't like something he does, President Trump calls him an ever-Trumper.
	So does that rise to the level of him challenging Vindman's patriotism or suggesting that Vindman is a bad guy or something like that?
	Well, in order to make that claim, You really have to connect the NeverTrumper tweet with the NeverTrumpersAreHumanScum tweet from a couple of weeks ago.
	But when President Trump goes after Vindman this way, is he really attacking Vindman's patriotism?
	I'm not seeing that explicitly, at least.
	Trump's tweet followed assertions on Fox News by a former Justice Department official named John Yoo.
	John Yoo was on it with Laura Ingraham, and he talked about Vindman.
	And I think that he claims that his comments are being misinterpreted.
	I think that that is probably correct.
	But here is what John Yoo had to say about Vindman and about the allegations that the Ukrainian government was talking to people like Vindman and saying, like, what do we do to get our aid here?
	By the way, the Ukrainian government is sort of allowed to do that.
	Any claims that the Ukrainian government is doing something wrong by going to U.S.
	officials and saying, listen, we don't know what Trump wants.
	Clarify what he wants.
	Is this really what he wants?
	That's not... John Yoo's about to say that that's sort of an espionage operation by the Ukrainians, not by Vindman.
	But, is that espionage?
	No, that's not.
	That's called normal foreign policy practice, meaning the back and forth that happens between governments and low-level officials.
	Most negotiations don't happen at the top level.
	Anyway, here is John Yoo going after the Ukrainians for the conversations.
	Here we have a U.S.
	national security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House, apparently against the president's interest, and usually they spoke in English.
	Isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story?
	I find that astounding, and some people might call that espionage.
	Okay, well, when he talks about espionage, he says he's talking about the Ukrainians reaching out, not about Vindman engaging in espionage or being a traitor or something.
	Is it astonishing that the Ukrainians reached out to somebody on the National Security Council to find out what was going on?
	No, that's not astonishing.
	It's not.
	I'm sorry, that's the way... I know this is not the typical line that you're hearing in a lot of conservative media.
	That is not astonishing in any way.
	It isn't.
	Okay?
	There are plenty of people who are calling routinely, members of the American foreign policy community, trying to gather information about what they can do in order to obtain what they want from the United States.
	As long as the American officials aren't spilling confidential information, nothing wrong is going on there.
	Really.
	I mean, by the way, Bill Taylor suggested that he'd had those sorts of conversations.
	Sundlund had suggested he had those sorts of conversations in the text messages.
	So, I fail to see that Vindman did anything wrong here.
	I also, like, again, this is so stupid because the best Republican defense on this, Trump's best defense is, Vindman perceived the phone call differently than I did.
	That's his prerogative.
	End of story.
	That's the whole thing, right?
	And until you get, for the 1000th time, Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani to testify about what exactly this whole thing was about, was it about investigating President Trump's suspicions about Ukrainian corruption going back to 2016, which obviously exercised him, or was this about him hating Joe Biden and wanting to get Joe Biden and mobilize a foreign country to prosecute Joe Biden?
	What was this about?
	Perceptions by third-party players really make no difference here.
	So the testimony doesn't actually add anything, but Republicans fell into the trap of attacking the witness, which is exactly what Democrats wanted here.
	We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so the Democrats are very high on this Vindman testimony Apparently, Vindman went to the NSC's lead council with concerns about a July 10th meeting between Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, who was then Special Envoy to Ukraine Energy Secretary Rick Perry, then National Security Advisor John Bolton, and senior Ukrainian officials.
	During the meeting, according to Vindman's prepared statement, Sondland demanded that Ukrainian leaders deliver specific investigations to secure a meeting between Zelensky and Trump.
	Vindman says he was told about the meeting by Sondland.
	And he says that Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens and Burisma, which is basically just a complete copy of what Bill Taylor said, right?
	Bill Taylor, the highest ranking official in Ukraine from America, the charged affairs in Ukraine, he said exactly the same thing.
	Vindman says, I stated to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push.
	Is he saying the same thing that Bill Taylor was saying?
	So what exactly is special about his testimony?
	The answer is not a whole hell of a lot.
	Not a whole hell of a lot, but because there have been some Republicans who have made disparaging remarks about Vindman, suggesting that because he is of Ukrainian-American origin, that he has some sort of dual loyalty to Ukraine, that really he cares about Ukraine and them getting their money.
	He doesn't care about America's foreign policy, which is silly.
	I back aid to Ukraine.
	I'm not from Ukraine.
	Most Republicans back aid to Ukraine.
	They're not from Ukraine.
	By the way, until the last five minutes, Donald Trump backed aid to Ukraine and provided lethal aid to Ukrainians in their fight against the Russians.
	President Trump, last I checked, is not from Ukraine.
	It's a bad mistake to do all of this.
	And of course, Democrats are jumping all over it.
	Joe Biden suggesting that Vindman is a hell of a patriot and turning this into a fight over Vindman's patriotism.
	Republicans didn't have to go here.
	It was a bad political move.
	That's the way the President acted.
	He did the same thing with John McCain in 2015.
	He did it with the Gold Star family member.
	He did it with Taylor.
	This guy won the Purple Heart.
	This guy is a hero.
	This guy is a patriot.
	But this is just Trump's style.
	It's the same reason why he has a bunch of his thugs out there and, you know, engaging in this kind of activity of intimidation.
	The Giulianis and the cronies that got arrested.
	I mean, this is despicable to do this to.
	This guy is a patriot.
	I've never met him, but he is a hell of a patriot.
	Okay, well, he seems like a patriot, and I'm not really challenging his patriotic status.
	I will say that the celebration of Vindman is very different from the Democrats' treatment of military members and other walks of life, suffice it to say.
	With all of this said, the question becomes, okay, is any of this impeachable?
	And we're basically going around in circles here.
	We're going around in circles, because the bottom line is, until we hear from Giuliani or Trump and the math changes in some way, it's gonna be very difficult to get Republican senators on board for impeachment.
	But that's not really what this is about.
	In the end, what this is about is democratic misdirection from the fact that they're going to be unbelievably bad at governing the country.
	Because the fact is this.
	Whether or not you believe that President Trump committed impeachable offense, if you're a Democrat, what you really don't want to talk about is your own agenda.
	Because your own agenda is wildly unpopular with the American people.
	If you're running an anti-Trump campaign, which is smart, then you make impeachment the focal point.
	If you're trying to push your own ideas, you're going to be in a lot more trouble if you are a Democrat.
	And you can see that this is actually impacting the polls going forward to 2020.
	According to Axios, Republicans are worried about a quote-unquote total wipeout in 2020.
	The House, the Senate, and the White House.
	House Republicans in swing districts are retiring at a very fast pace, especially in the suburbs of Texas and elsewhere.
	There are 19 GOP House members who are not seeking re-election this time around, which is a very high number.
	The Republican Senate majority suddenly looks like it's in serious jeopardy because a lot of the Republicans in swing states are lagging behind.
	Democrats are raising a lot of money and polling better than Republican incumbents in a lot of the battleground states.
	President Trump right now in the polls is trailing every major Democratic candidate nationally and in the swing states.
	The real Senate question is a problem.
	National Journal's Josh Crashour points out that if Trump doesn't win a second term, Democrats only need to net three seats to win back the majority.
	Scott Reid of the U.S.
	Chamber of Commerce, he says that third quarter fundraising reports show three Republican senators being outraged by Democratic challengers in Arizona, Iowa, and Maine.
	That'd be Susan Collins and Joni Ernst and Martha McSally in Arizona.
	He said, we're all very worried.
	So, all of this is scary stuff for President Trump and for the Republican Party, obviously.
	And Democrats are excited about all of this, because in the end, the more impeachment is in the headlines, the less they are in the headlines.
	The more you're reading about Vindman, and attacks on Vindman, and President Trump railing about all this on Twitter, the less you are thinking about the fact that Beto O'Rourke called for the revocation of every non-profit status for every religious charity in America.
	The more that you are thinking about Donald Trump and Ukraine, the more headlines there are about Donald Trump and Ukraine, the less you are thinking about the fact that Elizabeth Warren wants to completely decimate the American economy, and that she is a hypocrite and a liar.
	The more you are thinking about Ukraine and President Trump, the less you are thinking about Medicare for all and the complete takeover of your healthcare.
	This is what Democrats want.
	Because the more you focus in on the Democrats, the less you want to vote for them.
	The more you focus in on President Trump, Democrats assume, and the polls tend to show, the less you want to vote for him.
	So, what should Republicans be doing at this point?
	They should be spending a lot of their time, of course, defending Trump if they believe that he shouldn't be impeached, right?
	They should, of course, be defending Trump from the overwrought accusations of Democrats at this point, but they should really be spending the bulk of their time pointing out that there's an entire Democratic race going on on this side of the aisle where Democrats are doing extremely radical things.
	And we're in the end, let's be practical about this, Republicans in the Senate are not going to vote to impeach President Trump in all likelihood.
	It would take a cataclysmic occurrence.
	It would take Rudy Giuliani going on the Hill and saying, of course we're about to get Joe Biden, right?
	It would take him literally saying that in order for the impeachment to take place, which means this thing peters out at the beginning of next year, and then you are left with the Democrats running on Trump is corrupt and Republicans are corrupt, so Republicans had better get their act together and start campaigning on, guys, you know what Democrats want to do if they actually are in charge of the country?
	Because it's really, really scary.
	We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
	I'm going to explain a few of the more radical democratic proposals being put out there that are moving into the mainstream pretty quickly.
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	Okay, so as I say, Democrats are focused on impeachment because it's hurting a lot of the Republicans.
	According to The Hill, impeachment is raising the likelihood the Senate will be a real battleground next year and that Democrats could regain the majority.
	Democrats are going to lose Doug Jones's seat in Alabama, so that means they're going to have to make up four seats.
	But there are a bunch of vulnerable incumbents.
	Susan Collins in Maine, Cory Gardner in Colorado, McSally in Arizona, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
	Four of those people were outraised by their Democratic opponents in the third quarter of 2019.
	All five have higher disapproval than approval in their home states.
	Collins is particularly vulnerable.
	She has a 49% disapproval rating compared to 43% approval rating.
	If Trump's numbers go down, then the Republicans could lose the presidency, and they could continue to lose the House, and they could lose the Senate.
	Things could get really ugly really, really quickly.
	So impeachment is playing for Democrats?
	Republicans had better shift the conversation pretty quickly.
	There was this assumption made by Republicans that the more impeachment was talked about, the better it was for Trump.
	And Trump made those sorts of noises early on.
	That is true when the president has an inherently high level of popularity going into the impeachment.
	If you're Bill Clinton and you're walking into impeachment with over a 50% approval rating, and then people are like, we got to impeach him.
	Your numbers are going to go up, not down.
	If you are the most polarizing president in modern American history, and you are already riding at like 41% in the polls, and then people start talking impeachment over you being you on a phone call with Ukraine, the numbers are going to go down.
	It's not going to work the same way.
	I'm not going to lie to people.
	About what the polls show when it comes to approval for impeachment.
	Approval for impeachment shows right now a majority of Americans, okay, a majority of Americans now say, according to most polls, that they are willing to see Trump impeached.
	Now, does that actually mean that this is true in each state?
	Not really, but it's damaging Trump even in the states where they don't approve impeachment.
	So, for example, there is a poll that was just done in Arizona, and the poll shows that the people of Arizona are giving Trump very low marks, but by the same token, they don't want to see him impeached.
	But that really doesn't matter because he's not getting impeached.
	Okay?
	Impeachment is a proxy for do you like the president or not at the highest available level.
	Over at FiveThirtyEight, the columnist Amelia Thompson at DeVoe, she has a piece called Why Democrats Are Moving Quickly With Impeachment, and she says because they're attempting to get this done before primary season really opens up, because they understand that Republicans are going to vote this thing down, and so they may as well simply Get this thing over with so that they can run on the basis of it.
	So how should Republicans respond to all of this?
	Well, they should respond in a few ways.
	One, they should respond by defending Trump on the merits.
	They should, as I say, make the case that I have made, which is the only plausible case, which is that when it comes to Trump's activities in Ukraine, he basically has what you might call the UFO theory of Ukraine.
	If the president of the United States urged a foreign country to investigate UFOs because the United States was very interested in the presence of UFOs, Would that be, like, a waste of time and money?
	Probably.
	Would that be impeachable?
	Not really.
	The president would claim it's a legit interest of the United States to find out about UFOs.
	Well, the same thing is sort of happening in Ukraine, right?
	There are legit inquiries to be made about Ukraine and Ukrainian corruption.
	Joe Biden, Burisma, CrowdStrike.
	Are those among them?
	CrowdStrike, almost certainly not.
	Joe Biden and Burisma, eh.
	But overall, Ukraine and corruption, yes, right?
	So that was always Trump's defense, that in my mind, I have this whole ball of corruption that is in my head.
	We should go after all of it.
	That's always Trump's best defense.
	That's what he should be saying.
	And then he should be moving on to the generalized fact that Democrats are talking impeachment not because they're good at their jobs, but because they're very, very bad at their jobs.
	That is the real problem here.
	Okay, so now let's talk about that Democratic agenda.
	First of all, let's talk about the sudden concern that Democrats have over foreign interference with America's electoral system and foreign interference with regard to America's politics.
	Hey, remember all the way back to the 1990s when Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were involved, allegedly, in a scheme to funnel Chinese money into the U.S.
	election in 1996?
	That did not result in Clinton's impeachment.
	Well, now we're finding out that when Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, a Saudi tycoon and his business associate sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United States to help pay for the inaugural celebration and get a picture with the president, according to court documents and an analysis of campaign finance records by the Associated Press.
	U.S.
	election law prohibits foreign nationals from making those sorts of political contributions, but the donations Sheikh Mohammed al-Rabbani tried to send to Obama's inaugural committee were funneled through a seasoned straw donor instead.
	The intermediary, Imad Zubari, agreed this month to plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to several American political candidates on behalf of foreign nationals.
	He is also set to plead guilty to concealing his work as a foreign agent as he lobbied high-level U.S.
	government officials.
	He served—Zuberi, by the way—served as a top fundraiser for both Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential runs, including stints on both of their campaign finance committees.
	And then he switched his support to Trump immediately after the 2016 victory.
	So, what does this mean?
	It means that corruption, unfortunately, is sort of rife in American politics, and as Americans feel that way, they are less likely to believe that Trump has done something utterly, utterly without precedent.
	Okay, with all of that said, where should Republicans be focusing right now?
	As I say, Half on impeachment and half on the Democrats' agenda, because the Democrats' agenda right now is so terrible and so awful and so bad, and now they're coming out of the woodwork.
	They're getting confident now.
	Democrats are getting confident.
	They're saying the quiet part out loud, whether it's Beto saying that he wants to remove nonprofit status from every religious charity in America, or whether it's Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine, And State Department Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under Obama from 2013 to 2016.
	So that you would imagine, as the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, he'd be very much in favor of free speech.
	Wouldn't you?
	Wrong.
	He has a piece today in the Washington Post titled, Why America Needs a Hate Speech Law.
	He says, as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.
	Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Quran.
	Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?
	It's a fair question.
	No, it's not actually a fair question.
	Your right to free speech pre-exists government.
	See, this is the problem.
	When you're a Democrat, when you're on the far left, you believe that your rights come from government.
	So why should government allow you to do things?
	That's not the question.
	The question is, what gives government the right to invade your rights?
	That's the question.
	You're getting it asked backwards, Richard Engel.
	He says, Yes, the First Amendment protects the thought that we hate, but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.
	So now he's not even claiming that incitement to violence is the standard.
	He's saying that if I burn a Quran, which I wouldn't do, by the way, because why would I burn a Quran?
	Like, perfectly decent book not to burn.
	Like, I'm not a book burner.
	But, if I were to burn a Quran, And then a Muslim were to kill somebody over it.
	That would not be my fault.
	That would not be my fault.
	That's an absurdity.
	But that's what Richard Engel is suggesting.
	This is basically the heckler's veto.
	If you say something and people go fight about it, then we should outlaw that speech.
	He says, in an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.
	He says, it's important to remember our First Amendment doesn't just protect the good guys.
	Our foremost liberty also protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society.
	In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Russia's internet research agency planted false stories, hoping they would go viral.
	They did.
	Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives, and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.
	The Russians understood that our free press and its reflex toward balance and fairness would enable Moscow to slip its destructive ideas into our media ecosystem.
	When Putin said back in 2014 there were no Russian troops in Crimea, an outright lie, he knew our media would report it.
	And we did.
	So, let me get this straight.
	Because some people uncritically repeated Vladimir Putin's lies in 2014, that means that we have to outlaw American speech?
	So basically, any information that Richard Engel doesn't like should be considered hate speech and then banned in the United States.
	I've been saying for a while, the First Amendment is under severe attack by the hard left in this country, and it's not going to remain on the hard left very long.
	It is going to skew over into the mainstream left incredibly quickly.
	It's already done this in the UK, as well as Canada, where there are serious questions about whether you can raise your child as a boy, if your boy is a biological boy and claims he is a girl, and then you say, well, no, I have a right to raise my child the way that I want.
	In Ontario, theoretically, that kid could be taken away from you.
	Now, in the United States, we have a First Amendment that protects freedom of religion and freedom of speech, but you can see that the left doesn't like those amendments very much, which is why the New York City Human Rights Commission keeps passing all of these regulations suggesting that they will fine you a quarter of a million dollars if you intentionally misgender somebody or something.
	Or if you use the term illegal alien.
	Anyway, Richard Engel continues that all of this is because the First Amendment was engineered for a simpler era.
	This is what you constantly hear from the left, by the way.
	Things are too complex to rely on the Constitution.
	No, they're not.
	The Constitution was written with a baseline understanding of human nature.
	The left believes that the Constitution is wrong.
	That's all that's happening here.
	But their understanding of human nature and the Constitution is wrong.
	But according to Richard Engel, we should just get rid of the First Amendment.
	He says the amendment rests on the notion that truth will win out in what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called the marketplace of ideas.
	The marketplace model has a long history going back to the 17th century English intellectual John Milton.
	But in all that time, no one ever quite explained how good ideas drive out bad ones, how truth triumphs over falsehood.
	Milton and early opponents of censorship said truth would prevail in a free and open encounter.
	A century later, the framers believed that this marketplace was necessary for people to make informed choices in a democracy.
	Somehow, magically, truth would emerge.
	The presumption has always been made that the marketplace would offer a level playing field, but in the age of social media, that landscape is neither fair nor level.
	So in other words, he doesn't trust people to make good decisions, so he's going to control what you ought to see.
	He's gonna control how you access information.
	He says, since World War II, many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred.
	These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust.
	We call them hate speech laws, but there's no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is.
	In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation.
	I think it's time to consider these statutes.
	He says the modern standard of dangerous speech comes from Brandenburg versus Ohio and holds that speech that directly incites imminent lawless action or is likely to do so can be restricted.
	He says that domestic terrorists like Dylann Roof and Omar Mateen and the El Paso shooter were consumers of hate speech.
	Speech doesn't pull the trigger.
	But does anyone seriously doubt that hateful speech creates a climate where such acts are more likely?
	Let the debate begin.
	Hate speech has a less violent but nearly as damaging impact in another way.
	It diminishes tolerance.
	It enables discrimination.
	Why shouldn't the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation?
	All speech is not equal.
	And where the truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.
	I'm all for protecting thought we hate, but not speech that incites hate.
	So, in other words, he's not for protecting thought we hate.
	Right?
	He's not.
	Because his standard of incitement is extraordinarily broad.
	This is the world Democrats want.
	This is what Republicans should be pointing out.
	This is where their chief focus should be.
	Not on Impeachment Gate 2019.
	All the information is in doubt.
	Once all the information is out, then put your focus there.
	But, right now, where should Republicans be putting their focus?
	In the fact that this is the America that Democrats want.
	is Richard Engel's America, and that scares the living hell out of me, as it should you.
	I don't want those people in charge of the federal government, or any government, for that matter.
	We'll get to more of this in one second.
	First, let's talk about that great day back when you were 13 years old and you got those braces off, and you were like, oh man, I'm never gonna wear those ugly, terrible braces.
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	And your orthodontist is like, and also remember where are these retainers?
	And then a week later, you're brushing your teeth and you accidentally knock the retainers in the toilet and rather than reaching into the toilet, you're like, eh, well, I guess that's that.
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	Okay.
	We're going to get into other Democratic plans for the future that should scare the living hell out of you.
	This is why they're focusing on impeachment and not on their own policy preferences.
	We'll get to that in just a minute.
	First, go over to DailyWire.com and subscribe.
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	So again, as I mentioned, Democratic Agenda.
	Focus on the Democratic agenda.
	How has President Trump not tweeted out yet about Richard Engel, an Obama official, overtly saying he wants to overthrow the First Amendment in favor of a cadre of brilliant leftists figuring out what you can and cannot say.
	And then, there are their economic takes.
	There's an article by a guy named Steven Mim over at Bloomberg today, Bloomberg Economics, called, A Wealth Tax Could Deliver a Happiness Dividend.
	You getting this?
	So, the question is not whether the wealth tax is a good economic idea, whether it's constitutional, feasible, or anything.
	It's that it will make people happy when you see that rich people are being punished.
	I mean, for that matter, we could just put out some stocks in public, drag Bill Gates to them, and just sit him down in those things.
	We can all throw rotten tomatoes at him.
	It'd be super fun.
	Basically, we could take the aristos, and we could put them in this thing called the guillotine, and we could just behead them to the cheers of the rabble.
	That seems like that would also create a happiness dividend for the non-bourgeois.
	For non-bourgeoisie.
	According to Stephen Mim, tax-the-rich plans faced doubt about the amount of money they could raise.
	But researchers say they dependably produce an emotional lift for society as a whole.
	Oh, well, you know, so long as we pursue policies that are completely ineffective, and also punish wealth creation, but make people who were not involved in that wealth creation feel really good, we should totally do it.
	In fact, we should hold public spankings.
	And we need to bring Jeff Bezos out, and we need to get the paddle from fifth grade in 1972, and we need to whack Jeff Bezos around a few times.
	Like, wouldn't that be fun?
	Like, we could all have some fun with that, says Steven Mim.
	When a study released earlier this month showed the wealthiest Americans paying a lower tax rate than any other group, Democratic presidential candidates embraced it as proof they were on the right track.
	While their tax-the-rich proposals vowed to create a better economic balance, the candidates often pivot to what they would do with the proceeds—Medicare for All, student loan relief, infrastructure repair, other expensive programs.
	Those equations have raised serious doubts, for good reason.
	Turning tax revenue into a massive health care system or measurable economic growth is incredibly complicated, but Raising taxes on the wealthy could deliver something meaningful that millions of Americans would rather feel quickly.
	Happiness.
	Recent research found that progressive taxes may make the average citizen happier and more content.
	In the course of their study, psychologists Shigeru Oishi and Kostatin Kuchlev of the University of Virginia and Ulrich Schimmack of the University of Toronto eschewed the usual debate over tax increases.
	Are they bad for economic growth?
	Instead, they focus on a more emotional one.
	Do Americans feel happier and experience a greater sense of fairness under more progressive taxation?
	And what they found is a very strong correlation between progressive tax policies and how happy respondents rated themselves.
	This effect was most pronounced and statistically significant among taxpayers in the lowest 40% of incomes.
	No!
	You're kidding me!
	You mean people who earn the least are really happy to see people who earn a lot of money punished publicly?
	No, you mean the worst in human instinct is given free reign when you punish people for success?
	The correlation steadily diminished among higher income groups, disappearing altogether for the top 40%.
	By the way, this does reveal a certain truth, but it's not the truth that people on the left think it reveals.
	So people on the left are like, well, that's because we have an innate sense of fairness.
	When we see somebody who's rich and somebody who's poor, we immediately think that they should share the wealth, right?
	I mean, it's like when you were a kid and there were two cookies and there were two of you and you need to share the cookies.
	But what this actually reveals is that people who tend to get ahead in American society are people who are not spending their time focusing in on how much wealth other people are making.
	They're spending their time building up businesses and trying to forge careers.
	If you spend your time being jealous of people who have more wealth than you, believe me, there's an endless supply of people who have more wealth than you.
	There are a lot of people who are richer than I am.
	And five years ago, there were a lot more people than that who were richer than I was.
	And you can either spend your time bitching about it, or you could spend your time going out and making the wealth.
	And it's funny, this actually, look, it violates one of the 10 Commandments.
	The 9th Commandment, which is, the 10th Commandment, you shall not covet thy neighbor's property.
	Okay, the 10th Commandment is pretty specific about this.
	In Jewish law, this doesn't mean that you're not allowed to covet the kind of thing your neighbor has.
	If my neighbor has a Ferrari, and I'm like, God, that's an amazing car, I wish I had that car.
	That is not a violation of the 10th Commandment.
	It is a violation of the 10th Commandment if I say, I really want that car.
	That's my car.
	Right?
	That sort of covetousness was always considered to be a vice under most classical traditions of virtue.
	But we've put that aside.
	Now it's, well, if you covet your neighbor's car, well then you should probably just go ahead and take it.
	Or you should authorize the government to go ahead and take it.
	And then you'll feel better.
	Then you'll feel like...
	There's the old Solomonic tale.
	I'm only going back to the Bible here because the Judeo-Christian roots of our morality are pretty deeply embedded.
	There's this old Solomonic tale that I'm sure you've all heard in which King Solomon is confronted with this bizarre case.
	There are two women and they live in sort of an apartment complex and they both have babies at the same time and one of the women's babies dies and the other woman claims that and the other woman's baby lives and both women claim that the live baby is theirs and the dead baby is the baby of the other person.
	And so Solomon calls forth one of his guards and he says, I want you to take this living baby and I want you to cut it in half.
	And one of the mothers says, absolutely do it.
	And the other mother says, no, give the baby to the other mom.
	Better that the baby should live than that I should have the baby.
	And Solomon says, obviously that one's the mother.
	And when it comes to wealth, the same principle holds.
	If you are into the division and destruction of wealth, simply because you are jealous that somebody else has some, you are doing decency, virtue, and economics wrong.
	But apparently, what the left would like is a world where you feel better about yourself because somebody else has their wealth taken away.
	So, they're not a fan of the First Amendment, they're not a fan of economic freedom.
	How the right isn't honing in on this is simply beyond me, especially because again, these Democratic candidates are incredibly vulnerable on a variety of scores.
	Democratic governance just, it just does not work.
	Even the cases where Democrats suggest that the solution is bigger government, that's just not true.
	Like right now, Democrats are busily suggesting that the situation in California, where PG&E, which is Pacific Gas and Electric, A semi-private company.
	I'll explain why it's semi-private in just a second.
	That PG&E is under severe flack because they've been shutting down their power grids because they haven't updated the power grids in like a hundred years.
	This is leading Democrats to be like, we should nationalize the utilities.
	This shows that profit-seeking companies are really, really bad.
	But as the Wall Street Journal points out, in an article written by Alicia Finley, she says, PG&E exemplifies the left's stakeholder model, according to which businesses are accountable not only to shareholders, but also to workers, the environment, and local communities and society at large.
	In California, utilities are the most heavily regulated businesses.
	Their rates and return on equity are set by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
	Every three years, PG&E must submit funding plans to the CPUC, which holds public hearings with quote-unquote stakeholders, including customers and activist groups.
	The Commission and state legislature dictate energy investments.
	State law requires utilities to obtain 60% of their power from renewable sources by 2030.
	Plus, the Commission has ordered utilities to buy energy from homeowners with solar panels, meaning that they are paying a higher rate than wholesale power providers get.
	Last year, the commission instructed PG&E to install 7,500 electric car charging stations at apartment buildings and workplaces.
	So if shareholders want to earn a profit, they have to indulge their political masters' fashionable views on matters like climate, identity politics, and corporate governance.
	The utility proclaims diversity and inclusion are integral to how we do business.
	They talk about environmental justice, focusing in on low-income communities and communities of color.
	Well, it turns out that when you heavily Regulate and subsidize businesses.
	You basically made them into arms of the state.
	The utility mainly donates to Democrats.
	The Human Rights Campaign gave the utility a 100% rating on its Corporate Equality Index from 2003 to 2018.
	Democrats have blasted PG&E for spending millions on political lobbying, but much of the advocacy has been in support of the state's climate goals, including consumer electric car-driven subsidies and fuel economy mandates.
	So again, Democrats are ripping on the profit centers, supposedly, at these utilities, but this is just another case of bad Democratic governance.
	So, here's the deal.
	If you'd like a First Amendment governed by Richard Engel, if you'd like an economy governed by people who are mostly happy just to take down wealth, And if you are really into the kind of governance that led to PG&E shutting off the power on millions of customers in the last couple weeks in California, by all means elect a Democrat.
	By all means, do this thing.
	Because this is the world the Democrats want.
	And after all the impeachment stuff is over, and again, the chances of Trump actually being removed from office are incredibly low, after all the impeachment stuff is over, the only thing that is going to matter is whether Is whether Americans prefer the governance of Democrats to the governance of President Trump.
	So Republicans need to refocus and this is what they should be focusing on.
	And they have a lot to focus on.
	A lot to focus on.
	Even Democrats are aware how weak their own candidates are at this point.
	Like the New York Times has a full piece today lamenting the fact that no top tier Democrats In the 2020 race are minorities.
	They're blaming implicit bias among Democrats.
	Apparently Democrats are secret racists for not liking Kamala Harris or Cory Booker.
	But their front-running candidates are in a world of hurt.
	They're just not good candidates.
	So let's take an example.
	Elizabeth Warren right now is widely perceived to be the front-runner for the nomination.
	Well, Elizabeth Warren is being now called out for her corporate cronyism for years.
	She was taking something like half a million dollars from major corporations, particularly one company named LTV Steel, which we talked about yesterday on the podcast, in which the New York Times dived into Warren's previous work for LTV.
	They said, to settle a coal miner strike, the federal government forged an agreement that miners would have health care coverage when they retired, provided by their last employer.
	And then, LTV went bankrupt and they stopped paying.
	LTV objected.
	So, called in to defend all of this was Elizabeth Warren.
	She joined the company's legal team in 1995.
	And then she proceeded to rip on LTV.
	In 2006, here's Elizabeth Warren, 11 years later, ripping on the very company that she actually represented in the bankruptcy hearings, deriding LTV's bankruptcy as the epitome of broken promises to workers, according to Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite.
	Because what's happened...
	Is now it's time to pay the piper.
	LTV is just the first of many that we're going to see along these lines.
	Where the question is what happens to all those promises you made to the employees when this steel business simply will not support that kind of payment.
	LTV showed how you could lock up all the assets so that essentially the company could say We're broke.
	The cupboard's bare.
	There's nothing here.
	And use those assets, put them back into operation to create a newer, more profitable company.
	Weird, that's a company she repped in 1995.
	Very odd, it's almost as though she's wildly dishonest.
	Which leaves it to people like John Legend to talk about the reason why people are not getting behind Elizabeth Warren is because men feel threatened by women.
	John Legend, political commentator.
	So just, what a delight.
	What a delight.
	He says, why do men feel threatened by women?
	She's the best candidate running today, is Elizabeth Warren.
	Sure, I'm sure this is all about men feeling threatened by women.
	And Legend said, And Chrissy Teigen, his wife, said, Yeah, I'm sure that's it.
	It can't be that Elizabeth Warren is wildly dishonest.
	You see someone as transparently competent and eloquent and on fire as Elizabeth Warren.
	And then you hear some guys just are not into voting for a woman.
	Why do guys feel so threatened by the idea of a woman president?
	And Chrissy Teigen, his wife said, our men sees because there's 10 days a month where we're just going to war.
	Yeah, I'm sure that's it.
	It can't be that Elizabeth Warren is wildly dishonest.
	It can't be that at all.
	What a bunch of nonsense.
	By the way, if you thought Bernie Sanders is honest, he's not honest either.
	So I've said he's the most honest of the Democratic candidates.
	That doesn't mean he's actually honest.
	Bernie Sanders yesterday was asked about his plan to pay for Medicare for all.
	He's like, I'm not going to show you that plan.
	Why would I show you the plan to pay for this thing?
	We all know we're going to kill the rich people and eat them.
	That's where this money is coming from.
	The fight right now is to get the American people To understand that we're spending twice as much per capita, that of course we can pay for it.
	We're paying it now in a very reactionary, regressive way.
	I want to pay for it in a progressive way.
	Now you're asking me to come up with an exact, detailed plan of how, you know, every American, how much you're going to pay more in taxes, how much I'm going to pay.
	I don't think I have to do that right now.
	Okay, so yeah, he doesn't have to do it.
	He's just not going to explain the plan.
	There's so much rich material for Republicans.
	What they have to do is get past this impeachment thing.
	What that means is what they should be doing right now is just shutting up.
	Seriously, I understand that Trump is clamoring for them to be shouting from the rooftops about impeachment is a hoax and it's a witch hunt and all of this stuff.
	What Republicans should do is basically the same thing they did during the Mueller investigation.
	This is what they did.
	They just said, okay, we'll wait for all of it to come out, and then we'll make a judgment.
	Because the Democrats are gonna do it anyway.
	And the more focus is brought to the impeachment stuff, the worse it is for Republicans.
	Just on a public relations level, what you actually want is for the Republicans to say, okay, bring all this stuff forth, we'll hear it all, and then we'll make a decision.
	In all likelihood, it's...
	Like it would be very difficult to imagine a situation in which you get a majority Republican Senate to vote for Trump's impeachment.
	And meanwhile, focus in on the fact that these 2020 Democrats are insane.
	They spent the last 48 hours appealing to J Street, which is a front group for anti-Israel sources.
	I mean, it's just, it's, it's astonishing to me that the, the personality whims of the president, right?
	He wants everybody out there.
	On the front lines, cheering and pouring hot oil and all of this about impeachment, when the information isn't out there yet, it's not going to be to his benefit.
	Someone has to say no.
	Here's what we should be talking about, because there's plenty to talk about on the other side of the aisle.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate, and then a quick thing that I like, and we will get out of here.
	In fact, let's do things I like first.
	So, a couple of things that I like.
	First of all, the NCAA has made a good decision that I've been calling for for a long time, that is to allow The student-athletes to capitalize on their own image.
	Frankly, it was an absurdity that student-athletes were not allowed to do this.
	That it was treated as though when Zion Williamson was a Duke, that Zion Williamson was getting the benefit of a Duke education, and that is why he shouldn't be able to capitalize on his image, but the NCAA should.
	That was just, it was ridiculous.
	Okay, Zion Williamson wasn't there to get his degree in business management.
	Zion Williamson was there to play basketball and then move on to the NBA.
	Which is why there are so many people in college basketball who are doing this one-and-done routine.
	And they're going in for a year, or they go in for two years, and then they go directly to the NBA.
	By the way, they should totally do that.
	If you have a skill set, I'm not a believer that you have to stay in college just to stay in college.
	If it worked for Bill Gates, why shouldn't it work for Zion Williamson?
	I've always thought it's bizarre that people are so concerned.
	And when people talk about implicit bias, I've always thought it's very bizarre.
	People are very concerned about how many basketball players go to college, as opposed to, for example, how many baseball players go to college.
	And the answer is a lot of baseball players go direct high school to the minor leagues.
	Now, if you want to go into a college basketball If you want to go into the NCAA to get prepped for a year or two for your own benefit, that seems reasonable to me.
	But it also seems more than reasonable that you should be able to own your own image.
	You shouldn't forfeit that right simply because you play college basketball.
	It's really silly.
	The whole division between amateur and professional is really quite ridiculous in this context.
	Let's be real about this.
	Duke uses people like Zion Williamson as an actual professional athlete.
	They make money off Zion Williamson.
	There is money from Zion Williamson.
	There's no reason why Zion Williamson shouldn't make money off his own image while he's in college.
	So I'm glad the NCAA has changed that rule.
	Other things that I like.
	So this is just hilarious.
	President Trump...
	Was greeted by a kid dressed as one of the minions from Despicable Me.
	So was Melania.
	And he obviously didn't know what to do.
	And so he was handing the kid candy, and he and Melania take candy and put it on the head of the minion.
	This little kid who's walking around in a minion costume.
	It's pretty funny.
	Here's what it looked like.
	Okay, so there is President Trump, Melania, here comes one of these kids dressed as a minion, and Trump takes a candy bar and puts it on the head of the minion, and then Melania does the same thing and promptly slides off while the kid reaches for it.
	You could've just put it in the bag.
	Like, you could've just... Solid stuff.
	Solid stuff right there.
	Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
	Okay, so, I need to read you these new lyrics.
	So now, we've been told that Baby, It's Cold Outside is quite, quite bad.
	Very bad.
	Very not-me-too.
	Very awful.
	So now, Kelly Clarkson and John Legend have redone Baby, It's Cold Outside.
	Because It was a rapey song, right?
	It was rapey because he was trying to get this woman into bed, and she kept talking about how she wanted to go, but she was worn by the fire.
	And except for, you know, every human relationship which has vagaries of wooing, We're all supposed to believe that he's trying to date rape her, right?
	The whole argument is about a man trying to wheedle a woman into bed, which has never happened in the history of man, by the way.
	No man has ever wheedled a woman into bed.
	Normally, when you have sex with a girl, the way that it works is that you actually get out a contract, notarized by your attorney, and then you have her check particular boxes as to which activities she would seek to participate in.
	That's not sufficient.
	You then have to stop before each step and make sure that she is still okay with it, right?
	You need affirmative consent.
	In California, they've been trying to pass this yes-means-yes law for years, in which you actually have to get, quote-unquote, affirmative consent.
	It's not enough for a woman to enthusiastically participate in the event.
	You have to get affirmative verbal consent for each step, which is just hot, man.
	I mean, there is nothing quite as hot as, do you mind if I do exactly this?
	And then you're like, I consent.
	I mean, that is some sexy stuff.
	So, maybe it's cold outside.
	is just a clever song about a man and a woman and the man wooing the woman.
	And it is like, this is, here's the part where people get really uptight.
	The woman sings, I ought to say no, no, no, sir.
	Because women have never said that before, ever.
	Women have never said that they ought to say no, but their heart says yes.
	That's never happened in the history of mankind.
	It's not how 75% of pregnancies in the history of mankind have ever happened.
	And then the man says, she says, my sister will be suspicious, and he sings, gosh, your lips look delicious.
	And then she says, say, what's in this drink?
	Now, people read that as like he's drugging her, or alternatively, she is trying to make excuses for the fact that she actually wants to stay, and that she's lightheaded and woozy, and that really she's in love with the guy, right?
	Maybe that's what the song is about.
	In any case, they've now redone the lyrics and made them significantly worse.
	Okay, so Kelly Clarkson and John Legend have made this, because We have to take everything incredibly seriously, and we have to assume.
	I do love that we're supposed to believe the baby, it's cold outside, leads to a vast women-hating culture of rape.
	But rap lyrics do not.
	Right, we're not gonna rewrite any of the bitch and ho lyrics from rap.
	Not gonna rewrite any of that stuff, because that's, I mean, come on.
	Why would we do that?
	That's just, that's just a part of America's rich musical lexicon.
	But baby, it's cold outside.
	I can't tell you how many times serial rapists like Harvey Weinstein hit the button, baby, it's cold outside comes on, and he immediately just goes out and does his thing.
	Like, what?
	Okay, so here is the new lyric.
	In the reimagined version, Clarkson sings, quote, I've got to go away.
	And Legend responds, I can call you a ride.
	Hot, sexy, sexy.
	And then Clarkson sings, what will my friends think?
	And Legend says, I think they should rejoice.
	And she says, if I have one more drink.
	And he says, it's your body, your choice.
	Oh, just that sizzles, doesn't it?
	It's your body, your choice.
	Abortion slogans in the middle of a wooing session.
	Hot.
	The new lyrics were written by Legend and the comedian Natasha Rothwell of Insecure.
	It's just ridiculous.
	It's just ridiculous.
	A San Francisco station that dropped the song last year reversed course after most listeners said they wanted the song in rotation.
	Susan Lesser, who is the daughter of Frank Lesser, one of the great songwriters in American history, he's responsible for all the songs in Guys and Dolls, he's responsible for The Most Happy Fellow, a lot of great American musicals written by Frank Lesser, one of the great songwriters in American history.
	Susan Lesser said, way before Me Too, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song.
	I would get annoyed because it's a song my dad wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties.
	She says, people used to say, what's in this drink, as a joke.
	She went on.
	You know, this drink is going straight to my head, so what's in this drink?
	Back then, it didn't mean you drugged me.
	Correct.
	Correct.
	Nobody was taught, that's not a roofie song.
	It's so absurd.
	Like, really, John Legend and Kelly Clarkson, It's Your Body, You're Trying, those lyrics.
	I can call you a ride.
	Your Uber's outside.
	Like, what?
	Okay, you guys, you're taking things too seriously.
	You're taking things much, much, much too seriously.
	But the good news is Richard Engel wants to outlaw the song, presumably, as a form of hate speech.
	So I think these are the people who we should have in charge of our fundamental debates about the nature of speech, or people who think that, baby, it's cold outside is a real problem, but the lyrics of Jay-Z are not only acceptable, but absolutely praiseworthy.
	Great American figures include Snoop Dogg and his lyrics, but Frank Lesser, rapey, super rapey.
	Yeah, or everybody's just full of crap.
	One of those two things.
	Okay, one final thing that I hate.
	So, the far-left is insane on the topic of Israel, and they are fully willing to go anti-Semitic on it.
	A Students for Justice in Palestine member.
	This is a far-left, anti-Israel, Israel-hating, terror-supporting group, the SJP.
	They are not students, they are not for justice, and they're not for peace.
	The only part of that The only part of their title that means anything is the Palestine part.
	An activist confronted a holocaust survivor.
	So the holocaust survivor was a defender of Israel.
	You know why?
	Because a lot of Jews in the aftermath of that, like particularly holocaust survivors, tend to be supporters of Israel.
	Can you think of a reason why maybe holocaust survivors tend to be supporters of Israel?
	Like maybe the fact that during the holocaust every country closed its doors to Jews attempting to escape Nazi Germany, including British Mandate Palestine, and that the establishment of a Jewish state means that will never happen again.
	Maybe that's the reason why Holocaust survivors are sort of supporters of Israel in heavy measure.
	Well, an SJP activist, whose greatest hardship has been that one time their iPhone broke, confronts a Holocaust survivor about Palestinian ethnic cleansing by the Jewish state.
	Now, let me just be clear.
	I'm in Israel right now.
	I cannot think of a larger lie than the idea that Israel is performing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.
	You have to be out of your mind to believe this.
	There's some, what, four to five million Palestinians living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza?
	Okay, so that's a horrible job of ethnic cleansing, Israel.
	Terrible, terrible job.
	It turns out that Palestinians are reproducing at a much faster rate than Jews and have been for decades at this point.
	Their cities are growing.
	By the way, the cities are kind of nice.
	I mean, I've driven past a bunch of them.
	They look a lot better than they did.
	I was last here in 2001.
	The cities at that point did not look very good.
	A lot of these cities are brand new.
	A lot of them look quite beautiful.
	The city of Hebron, which is a major Palestinian center, 215,000 Palestinians, has like a mall with a KFC.
	A lot of the stuff that you're told about the inherent poverty that's happening here is just not true.
	There is no ethnic cleansing going on, but here is a Students in Justice in Palestine activist confronting a Holocaust survivor, virtue signaling all over somebody who survived Hitler.
	Because the establishment of the Israeli state and the idea of Zionism ties back to the right of the Israeli state at any cost.
	And that cost is the Palestinian people.
	I am a result of experiences that you've been through.
	I am a survivor of the Intifada, and that is way after 1948 when the Palestinian land was occupied.
	I went through minimal amounts of things that the Palestinian people historically went through, and I'm asking you, and it's disappointing to know that a Holocaust survivor would remain neutral in a situation of injustice.
	It's not a matter of neutral, it's a matter of, I think the two sides have to really, who are much more experienced than I, it's not Total guilt and innocence on either side.
	Is that my feeling?
	And also that there are people who are much more expert in this and I always feel that I shouldn't...
	Okay, so she's accusing him of backing ethnic cleansing, and it's, it's fully insane.
	Okay, the claims that she is making there, by the way, that she's a survivor of the Intifada, you know who the Intifada was declared by?
	Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians.
	It wasn't Israel that declared the Intifada.
	If you're a survivor of the Intifada, you might want to blame the Palestinian leadership, which turned down the best peace deal they will ever receive from Ehud Barak, including the division of Jerusalem, and then instead opted for a massive outbreak of violence ending in the death of thousands of Palestinians and thousands of Jews as well.
	So, yeah, this sort of nonsense, the fact that the left gives credence to it demonstrates how many lives they're willing to buy into in the name of social justice warrior wokeness.
	Okay, we'll be back here later to deal with two additional hours of content.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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