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Nov. 14, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

54:42

The Schiff Hits The Fan | Ep. 897

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	Public hearings begin and we review the supposedly bombshell testimony of the Democratic witnesses.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Why have you not gotten a VPN yet?
	Visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
	Okay, we got a ton to get to today.
	I'll tell you a little bit later on in the show about how things went at Boston University last night.
	It was pretty interesting and I think a lot of fun.
	But of course, we begin with the news of the day, which is all the fallout from yesterday's bombshell testimony.
	Oh, much bombshell.
	Okay, so here is the way that the New York Times is covering this thing.
	Their headline says, behind a star witness, Democrats take their impeachment case to the public.
	Ooh, ah, a star witness.
	They say their goal is to transform what might seem like an abstract debate over foreign policy into high crimes and misdemeanors in the public mind.
	As Republicans argue, there is no case for impeachment.
	Peter Baker is the writer.
	He says, William Taylor was the witness that Democrats had hoped Robert Mueller would be, but was not.
	The image, at least, of a wise, fatherly figure with Kevlar credibility Expressing restrained but unmistakable disapproval of what he found when he turned over the rock.
	Objective media coverage right here.
	So much journalism.
	House Democrats let off their highly anticipated impeachment hearings on Wednesday.
	with a figure projecting probity, a combat veteran turned career diplomat who narrated with a deep baritone voice reminiscent of Walter Cronkite's what he saw as the corruption of American foreign policy to advance President Trump's personal political interests.
	It was not clear that minds were changed.
	Shouldn't you lead with that, right?
	Isn't that the question?
	Is whether any minds were changed or whether the testimony itself changed anything or offered anything that was bombshell anew as opposed to, he appeared to be a gray fox, this William Taylor fellow.
	Patriotic, stolid man.
	This was a Hero of the Republic.
	And because we've heard the Hero of the Republic routine before from the media, it didn't change anything.
	James Comey, Hero of the Republic.
	Andrew McCabe, Hero of the Republic.
	Vindman, hero of the Republic, and now it's William Taylor, hero of the Republic.
	Now, listen, you look at his public service, the guy is, in fact, a hero of the Republic for his public service.
	But that does not mean that he testified as to anything impeachable yesterday.
	And yet the media are making this out to be really about the optics.
	And that, in the end, really is sort of, it betrays the agenda.
	The agenda here is that this is all about the optics and not about anything new.
	Nothing new has actually happened here.
	That's the dirty little secret, because we're going to go through the testimony yesterday, and nothing new, no new ground was broken.
	Instead, it was all the same ground that we've heard before, sort of trod over repeatedly.
	And so in terms of substance, I don't think the American people are going to hear anything new that changes their mind.
	But in terms of optics, the Democrats are hoping that if they bring out a bunch of gravely voiced, very somber speakers who have long histories in American foreign policy, then this will somehow turn the American public against Trump.
	Well, if people cared about that, Trump wouldn't be president.
	Let's face this thing, okay?
	Donald Trump was not elected because people had a ton of respect for America's institutions.
	He was elected specifically because people did not have a ton of respect in America's institutions, and putting out somebody with Walter Cronkite's voice isn't going to change any of that, just on a purely political level.
	But the New York Times says it was not clear that minds were changed.
	Certainly, they were not inside the room and most likely not elsewhere on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats were locked into their positions long ago.
	Nor were there any immediate signs that the hearing penetrated the general public.
	While major television networks broke into regular programming to carry it live, there was little sense of a riveted country putting everything aside to watch, a la Watergate.
	Okay, so then what are we talking about?
	I love this line.
	This is my favorite line from the New York Times.
	It's just spectacular.
	But whether or not voters were watching, history certainly was.
	What the F is that supposed to mean?
	History was watching.
	What is that?
	Like seriously, what does that mean?
	History was watching.
	History's watching everything.
	History's watching you on the toilet.
	If by history is watching, you mean that history is something that happens and then people later read about it.
	That could be anything, right?
	It could be anything.
	History was, well, I mean, if history was watching, that changes everything, New York Times.
	You've changed everything, New York Times.
	Amazing.
	Over the course of five hours of relatively sober testimony, interrupted by fewer partisan histrionics than might've been expected, Mr. Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, according to the New York Times, laid out what they saw of the president's efforts to pressure a foreign power to provide damaging information about his Democratic rivals.
	Mr. Taylor was the star witness Democrats have sought.
	For a long time.
	As opposed to Mueller, who sort of bumbled and bumbled and looked old.
	Like Mr. Mueller.
	Mr. Taylor, 72, is a septuagenarian Vietnam veteran with a chiseled face and reassuring gray hair.
	I didn't realize that gray hair was reassuring.
	I'll have to tell my wife about that as I age here.
	My hair is reassuring.
	That's some solid writing right there.
	Reassuring gray hair.
	When was the last time you were like, ah, you know, I'm feeling a little bit nervous.
	Oh, thank God, a man with gray hair.
	Ah, I'm so reassured now.
	A chiseled face and reassuring gray hair after a lifetime of service to his country.
	But where Mr. Mueller seemed unsteady and uncertain last summer, when he testified about his special counsel investigation into Russian interference, Mr. Taylor came across as calm, confident, and in command.
	Ooh, alliteration.
	Calm, confident, cool.
	Collected.
	In command.
	Of the facts as he knew them.
	With a more in sadness than anger tone, he told lawmakers that in decades of public service under administrations of both parties, he had never seen any president warp foreign policy for his own personal advantage, the way Mr. Trump tried to do.
	But, Mr. Taylor was careful to retain an official neutrality on what Congress should do with his testimony, and when lawmakers tried to goad him into taking a more political stance, he smiled serenely and declined to take the bait.
	Okay, so this was the take from the New York Times, and the take from the Washington Post was quite similar.
	The take from the Washington Post says new testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign.
	Elise Wiebeck reporting.
	After weeks in which President Trump's top aides have figured as the major players in the Ukraine narrative testimony in the first few hours of the public impeachment hearings Wednesday thrust Trump himself back to center stage.
	Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told lawmakers about a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents.
	A phone conversation he said Trump had with the top U.S.
	diplomat Asking about the status of the investigations.
	The phone conversations described by Taylor gave Democrats a chance to renew questions about Trump's personal involvement in the effort to push Ukraine to investigate his political opponents while the United States withheld security assistance and a sought-after White House meeting.
	We'll hear about exactly what Taylor had to say on this in just one second.
	Okay, but the media are trying to claim basically that the testimony, even though it didn't change things, it probably should change things.
	Even though it didn't make things any different, even though there wasn't anything new, there was something brand new.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	The truth or falsity of those statements.
	Because here's the reality.
	I'm trying to be as objective as I can.
	And you'll know.
	If I say that a hearing is bad for Trump, I'll say that a hearing is bad for Trump.
	If I think that a phone call was bad for Trump, I'll say it's bad for Trump.
	I at least try to analyze these things as objectively as I can, even though I think that the Democrats have not proven their case.
	I don't think that yesterday was particularly bad for Trump.
	I really don't think it hurt him in any serious way.
	The media are trying to spin it that way.
	I do not think that that is accurate.
	That's why they're sort of falling back on the line of the New York Times.
	History was watching.
	Yeah, well, history can watch all it wants, but it hadn't happened yet.
	You know, come back to me in 20 years and we'll talk about how history watched.
	You don't even know who's gonna win the next election.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay.
	The Democrats thought they were going to have a big day yesterday and it turned out not to be a big day for them yesterday.
	It started off with Adam Schiff at the very opening saying this this process was meant to be a punishment for criminal activity not a punishment for political activity but a lot of the testimony was based around the opposite idea that a bunch of people who are in the foreign policy establishment didn't like Trump's foreign policy and they were angry at Trump's foreign policy and that's the real reason why they were going after Trump, right?
	The real reason they're going after Trump is because they disagreed with him withholding aid from Ukraine and they couldn't see why he was doing it.
	And so they were mad about that.
	Now, does that mean that Trump was doing something that was corrupt or does it mean they just disagreed with him about the foreign policy?
	Here is Adam Schiff at the opening suggesting that impeachment was originally meant to be a punishment for criminal activity, which sort of cuts.
	Again, he hasn't proved any criminal activity here.
	Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their commander in chief.
	Thank you.
	There are few actions as consequential as the impeachment of a president.
	While the founders did not intend that impeachment be employed for mere differences over policy, they also made impeachment a constitutional process Okay, so again, he's saying this is not a political thing, it's a criminal thing, and yet they have yet to bring forth the elements necessary to prove any sort of criminal abuse of power.
	Schiff, I do love that Schiff is doing this routine where he pretends that he's reserving judgment.
	He simultaneously said that he's reserving judgment and also that Trump's abuse of power is terrible, which means he's not reserving judgment, obviously.
	Here's Adam Schiff suggesting that he is reserving judgment in all of this.
	That's right, he's opening an impeachment inquiry where he's reserving ju- Like, really, if you believe this, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn.
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	Here's Adam Schiff talking about reserving judgment.
	I'm reserving judgment on the ultimate questions once the testimony is complete about what should follow from this.
	What are the consequences?
	It is certainly the case that The founders were deeply concerned that a president of the United States one day may be elected to office that would put his or her interests above the country, that would sacrifice our national security either to get a political or personal favor or owing to some foreign influence.
	Oh, he's holding off on judgment.
	That's the sound of a man holding off on judgment, flanked by a bunch of other people holding off on judgment, namely Democrats who are going to vote for impeachment, right?
	So listen, this thing's already been preset.
	We already know that.
	That's why when Devin Nunes, who is the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is the Republican leader in the House Intelligence Committee, when he says that this is just a low-rent sequel to the Russia hoax, that has some credibility, given the fact that it does feel like a partisan hit by Democrats.
	Now that doesn't mean that there aren't questions to be asked about Trump's behavior, I've said this all along, but does this feel like a partisan exercise?
	You bet your ass it feels like a partisan exercise.
	Here's Devin Nunes pointing this out.
	Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Kent, I'd like to welcome you here.
	I'd like to congratulate you for passing the Democrat Star Chamber auditions held for the last weeks in the basement of the Capitol.
	It seems you agreed, witting or unwittingly, to participate in a drama.
	But the main performance, the Russia hoax, has ended.
	And you've been cast in the low-rent Ukrainian sequel.
	Okay, so that's an overstatement because, again, we don't know exactly what all the evidence is, but there is a widespread perception in the United States, and I think that it's a well-based perception, that this is more of a partisan effort than it is really an effort to curb the misuse of the power of the presidency.
	Okay, so then we get to the actual testimony, and here is the problem for the Democrats.
	The actual testimony didn't really change anything.
	It didn't really change anything.
	So, the only real bombshell yesterday is that Bill Taylor suggested that he heard somebody from his staff tell him about a conversation that he overheard with President Trump in which Trump was talking about investigations.
	And he didn't hear Trump's side of the conversation, apparently he only heard the person on the other side of the conversation.
	And this is Bill Taylor's account of this magical, magical conversation.
	So Taylor had suggested That there was a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents, a phone conversation he said Trump had with a top U.S.
	diplomat asking about the status of the investigations.
	But the diplomat was not Bill Taylor.
	And herein lies the problem.
	Bill Taylor, their star witness, a man with reassuring gray hair.
	I mean, that hair, so reassuring.
	Yesterday, he says, listen, I can't tell you what was in Trump's head.
	I can tell you what I heard from people.
	What the hell does that, like, really?
	You can tell us what you heard from people?
	This would not make for good evidence in any criminal trial.
	I can tell you what I heard from people.
	I can tell you what I heard from people.
	You can tell me what you heard from people.
	We can all talk about what we heard from people.
	And then we can all be reporters for TMZ.
	Like, what does this mean?
	Here's Bill Taylor.
	I can tell you what I heard from people.
	Very important stuff, what he heard from people.
	Mr. Goldman, what I can do here for you today is tell you what I heard from people.
	And in this case, it was what I heard from Ambassador Sondland.
	He described conditions And you heard that from Ambassador Sondland himself, correct?
	Correct.
	Okay, so he can tell you what he heard from people, which is very exciting what he heard from people.
	Now, does that matter?
	It matters when they bring Sondland in, right?
	Because now they're going to say, well, either Taylor is lying or Sondland is lying or somebody's making mistakes somewhere in here.
	So it matters for Sondland.
	But does that go to Trump's state of mind?
	Not particularly, because again, Taylor has never had a conversation with Trump.
	And yet, you had Taylor drawing these fantastical conclusions about Trump.
	I mean, these very strong conclusions about his perception of what Trump was doing.
	Listen, he can speculate as much as he wants, and he can draw any conclusion he wants.
	It's a free country.
	And I'm not saying that his conclusion is implausible.
	All I'm saying is that his conclusion is based purely on conversations that he had with people who were not Donald Trump.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so, here is Bill Taylor drawing a very strong conclusion from the fact that he talked to people, to people.
	Here's Taylor saying, well, you know, Trump cares more about investigating Biden than Ukraine.
	How does he draw that conclusion?
	Well, he's talked to people, and those people have talked to people, and those people in turn have talked to other people who once talked to somebody who knew Trump.
	So your staff member over here is the president asking about the investigations, meaning Burisma and the Bidens in 2016.
	And Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward?
	He did.
	And I think you said that after the call, when your staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought of Ukraine, his response was that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden?
	Is that right?
	And Burisma, yes sir.
	Okay, so here's Taylor talking about what Sunland allegedly said to him.
	As I've said all along, Sunland's testimony is gonna matter.
	I'm not sure that Bill Taylor's testimony matters a whole hell of a lot.
	The person in the crosshairs now is Sunland.
	And then Taylor said, well, I came to believe that because Sunland told me that.
	Okay, fine.
	Well, again, you're a third party.
	And then Taylor says that Giuliani wanted to get Biden.
	That it was his perception that Giuliani was after Biden.
	He wasn't after investigating supposed corruption in 2016 or CrowdStrike.
	He wasn't after looking into the situation in Ukraine during 2016 and whether they were interfering in the election.
	No, Bill Taylor says no, it was Giuliani, who's Trump's personal lawyer, who wanted to get Biden.
	Are you, Giuliani, promoting U.S.
	national interests or policy in Ukraine, Ambassador?
	I don't think so, ma'am.
	Mr. Kent?
	No, he was not.
	What interest do you believe he was promoting, Mr. Kent?
	I believe he was looking to dig up political dirt against a potential rival in the next election cycle.
	Ambassador Taylor?
	What interest do you believe he was promoting?
	I agree with Mr. Kent.
	Okay, so again, that is their perception, and that does not really make much of a difference.
	I'm sure the Democrats believe the same thing.
	I'm sure there are some people who, again, it's plausible, who believe that Giuliani's sole task in Ukraine was to dig up dirt on Biden, but that would not really explain why he was so concerned with, for example, the CrowdStrike server, which was an evidence-less conspiracy theory, nor does it really explain why he was concerned about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, because that has nothing to do with Biden.
	So here's the question.
	Why was Giuliani spending time investigating those other things if it was all really about the Bidens?
	Okay, then there was George Kent.
	So George Kent is this undersecretary of state.
	He's the man who you will see if you subscribe to the show, who you will see sitting next to Bill Taylor.
	He doesn't get the same sort of enormous media plaudits that Taylor does, right?
	Because he wears a bowtie, which means that he doesn't have as much gravitas, because bowties don't have as much gravitas as reassuring gray hair, obviously.
	Well, Kent He basically suggested many of the same things that Taylor did, but he made some claims that were also a little bit outlandish.
	I mean, his testimony was a little bit more colorful, actually, which is, I think, why the media is not covering it so much.
	He said a couple of things that cut in favor of President Trump, and he said a couple of things that cut against President Trump.
	The first thing that he said is he was asked about conditions being placed on Ukrainian aid, and he said, yeah, conditions have always been placed on Ukrainian aid.
	Which again is true and cuts in favor of the idea that the president has plenary power over placing conditions on Ukrainian aid so long as it is not a specific design to go after a domestic political opponent.
	Here's George Kent.
	There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine.
	Conditions include anti-corruption reforms as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets.
	The International Monetary Fund does the same thing.
	Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
	Okay, and that's true, right?
	It is true.
	Joe Biden put obvious conditions on the ability of Ukraine to receive loan guarantees, for example.
	The question here is whether it was legit or not.
	So when people say, well, Trump was withholding the aid, therefore something bad happened.
	Well, no, it depends on the purpose for which he was withholding the aid.
	Now, I said yesterday and I've been saying for weeks that this requires us to discern President Trump's intent.
	Was this about 2016 Ukrainian corruption?
	Was this about his anger that the media have decided that he won because of Russian interference?
	And so he was concerned about Ukrainian interference in the election.
	Was it him going off on some tangential conspiracy theory about 2016?
	Or was it specifically about Biden?
	If it was specifically about Biden in 2020, that's impeachable.
	If it's any of the others, it is not.
	And I said yesterday, I don't think that Trump had the requisite intent to go after Joe Biden because that does not sound like Trump.
	Now, I exaggerated a little bit.
	I said, well, I don't think Trump has the intent to eat a hamburger.
	Obviously, I am joking when I say that.
	But I think that the problem for Trump is that it is difficult to discern what the man's intent is because he doesn't tend to have large-scale focused intent over long periods of time.
	He doesn't tend to have plans.
	He tends to have, as I said yesterday on the show, a sort of thought vomit when it comes to a lot of these issues.
	And this is the problem that Democrats have.
	You paint him as an idiot for years, right?
	You say that he's a moron for years.
	You say that he doesn't have the capacity to put together plans for years.
	And now you have swiveled, and you are saying that he has this very specific plan to get Joe Biden.
	And not only does he have this plan to get Joe Biden, and he has deployed Giuliani, he has told Giuliani to cover his tracks by asking about crowd strike and Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
	And he has also told Sondland that he wants investigations into ancillary matters not involved with Biden just to cover his tracks.
	Does that sound like Trump?
	Does that sound like Trump?
	Okay, well, even George Kent's testimony seems to suggest more that Rudy Giuliani was mucking things up than that Trump had specific intent to get Joe Biden, even though he believes that Trump had specific intent to get Joe Biden.
	Here is George Kent suggesting that it was really Giuliani's interference that was screwing with the president's head.
	Over the course of 2018 and 2019, I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to run a campaign to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and other officials at the U.S.
	Embassy in Kyiv.
	The chief agitators on the Ukrainian side of this effort were some of those same corrupt former prosecutors I had encountered, particularly Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin.
	They were now peddling false information in order to extract revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct.
	Okay, so, if that is the case, they were peddling false information, and that that was being peddled to Giuliani, who was peddling it to Trump, Is that specific intent to get Joe Biden?
	Really?
	Because again, the whole thing comes down to Trump's intent.
	Did he intend to get Joe Biden or was that part of his bigger ball of random thoughts about Ukraine and his general antipathy toward Ukraine?
	Okay, we're gonna get to more of George Kent's testimony and then we'll get to the other issues plus the performance of the various players in this drama.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	Okay, so.
	Back to George Kent and his testimony.
	So then George Kent gets into the vagaries of the sort of theories Trump and Giuliani were pursuing.
	And he says a couple of things.
	One of them is true and one of them, not so much.
	So here's the one that, the thing that he says that is true.
	He says, there is no factual basis to the CrowdStrike theory.
	Now remember, if you go back to that June 25th phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, what you see is that Trump is demanding a few things or requesting a few things.
	Requesting is probably more accurate from the transcript of the, or the memo That sort of summarizes the transcript of the phone call.
	So he requests a few things.
	One, he wants an investigation into Ukrainian corruption surrounding the 2016 election.
	Two, he wants an investigation into CrowdStrike because he has this weird theory that Hillary Clinton's server was actually not handed over to the FBI because it had been hacked by the Ukrainians, not by the Russians.
	And that CrowdStrike, the firm that did the actual analysis, is owned by a Ukrainian.
	And therefore, Hillary Clinton's actual server is buried somewhere in a forest outside of Kiev.
	Okay?
	There's not a lot of evidence to that particular theory.
	And then, there was his talk about Burisma and Biden.
	So there were a few issues that got mentioned with regard to corruption in Ukraine and Trump's request for investigations.
	So here's George Kent correctly pointing out there is no factual basis to the CrowdStrike theory.
	This, of course, is true, but it does not go to whether Trump believes that it was true.
	Remember, let's say for sake of argument that the CrowdStrike theory were true.
	Would it be in America's interest to know whether, in fact, the Ukrainians hacked Hillary Clinton's hard drive and the DNC hard drive?
	Would that be in America's interest to know?
	Yes, it certainly would.
	Well, just because Trump believed that bleep loony theory does not mean that he was out to get Joe Biden.
	In fact, it tends to support the idea that he was out to protect America's interests as he wrongly perceived them with regard to CrowdStrike.
	So here's George Kent knocking down the CrowdStrike theory.
	When he talks about this CrowdStrike and the server, what do you understand this to be a reference to?
	To be honest, I had not heard of CrowdStrike until I read this transcript on September 25th.
	Do you now understand what it relates to?
	I understand it has to do with the story that there's a server with missing emails.
	I also understand that one of the owners of CrowdStrike is a Russian-American.
	I'm not aware of any Ukrainian connection to the company.
	Okay, and then Kent says something, so all of that is true.
	And then Kent is asked about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
	Now here he's got a problem, because the fact is that Politico reported, as did other outlets, that there was a nexus between the Ukrainian embassy and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that a woman named Alexandra Chalupa had been visiting the Ukrainian embassy trying to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort.
	Okay, those are public reports from Politico.
	Here's George Kent saying there's no factual basis to claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
	That may be true with regard to Ukraine and hacking into servers, but it is certainly not true with regard to their coordination with the DNC and Hillary Clinton.
	Now are you aware that this is all part of a larger allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?
	Yes, that is my understanding.
	And to your knowledge, is there any factual basis to support the allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?
	To my knowledge, there is no factual basis.
	No.
	Okay.
	Well, okay.
	How about some Politico's knowledge?
	How about some mainstream media reports?
	Because there are those reports out there.
	So unless he is firmly rebutting the Politico report, I'm not sure what he is talking about.
	Okay.
	So there you have the testimony.
	That is the summary of the testimony.
	Taylor and Kent basically saying that they, they think very strongly.
	They have opinions and those opinions are very strong opinions.
	And those very strong opinions mean that Trump did a very, very bad thing.
	The only thing that we got new from either of the testimonies here is Bill Taylor suggesting that he had an aide who overheard Gordon Sondland talking to Trump and talking about investigations and how the Ukrainians were going to accede to Trump's request so he should release the aide, right?
	That is the only thing that is new.
	That puts pressure on Gordon Sondland, but again, I'm wondering why it is that Bill Taylor is testifying as to what his aide heard from Sondland as opposed to, you know, the aide coming forward and testifying as to what he heard from Sondland, because now we are not talking about Even a secondhand report of what Trump said.
	We don't even know what Trump said on the other end of the line.
	All we know is that, apparently, according to Bill Taylor, Trump talked to Sunland, Sunland was at some sort of public restaurant, one of Taylor's aides was at the same restaurant and overheard Sunland's side of the conversation, and then the aide went and talked to Bill Taylor.
	So, Bill Taylor is now three degrees removed from President Trump.
	I am more closely related to Kevin Bacon than that.
	Again, that doesn't mean that the account of the conversation is false.
	It just means that it doesn't say anything about what Trump was even saying on the other side of the conversation.
	And this is a point you're going to hear Republicans hammer home in just one moment.
	Because this really was the Republican counterattack was, you're bringing forth these star witnesses and none of them have ever had a conversation with Trump.
	They're removed from the actual Policymaking apparatus.
	And that, by the way, is their complaint, right?
	Their complaint is, we were removed from the policymaking apparatus.
	We were not part of these conversations.
	So, you can't have it both ways.
	Either you're mad that you were not part of the conversations, and therefore you are not privy to the information that people who were part of the conversations are privy to.
	Or, you were part of the conversation, but you don't have enough evidence to get Trump.
	So one of those two things is true.
	And both of them establish that you are not, in fact, star witnesses, that you are, in fact, just the best the Democrats can offer right now, because the fact is that if you actually wanted to break down what was going on in Trump's mind, you need to talk to one of three or four people.
	Rudy Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, who will be called, you need to talk to Mick Mulvaney, maybe John Bolton.
	That's about it.
	I'm not aware that anybody else was privy to the mind of President Trump.
	And yet Democrats and the media are trotting up Bill Taylor, who, again, has never spoken to Trump, and George Kent, who has never spoken to Trump.
	You're going to hear Republicans hammer home this point, and it is a very telling point.
	We're going to get to that in just one second.
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	Alrighty.
	We're going to get to more of this because there's plenty more to get to.
	More analysis.
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	The Democrats kind of blowing it.
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	All righty, so here's the problem, right?
	All of these witnesses, as I say, Taylor, Kent, these are people who are not first-hand witnesses to events that actually matter.
	They are second-hand witnesses to all of the actual information that is flowing.
	They are third-hand, fourth-hand witnesses in some cases.
	And this is how you end up with the bizarre spectacle of one of the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
	His name is Quigley, suggesting that hearsay can be better evidence than direct evidence, which is just no, no, that's incorrect, sir.
	Here is Representative Quigley.
	I think the American public needs to be reminded that countless people have been convicted on hearsay because the courts have routinely allowed and created, needed, No, that's Mike Quigley from Illinois being a horrible lawyer, apparently.
	No, that is not right.
	Hearsay is generally not better than direct evidence.
	in this sense.
	Nope.
	No, that's Mike Quigley from Illinois being a horrible lawyer, apparently.
	No, that is not right.
	Hearsay is generally not better than direct evidence.
	And when he talks about the exceptions to hearsay, exceptions to the hearsay rule generally include things like party admissions and statements against interest, but it actually has to include, you know, like the party themselves, not like a third party saying something or a dying declaration, which again comes directly from the party or past recollection record, right?
	These are some of the exceptions.
	None of those apply here.
	When we're talking here, say we're not just talking about like somebody said that Trump said.
	They're talking about somebody said that an aide said that Sondland said that Trump said.
	No, that is not better than direct evidence.
	It certainly, certainly is not.
	Republicans hone in on this point.
	So Republicans are going to hammer down on all of this at least Stefanik.
	Well, actually, let's start with Mike Turner.
	Representative Mike Turner from, I believe, Ohio.
	He says, listen, you keep talking about Trump's thought processes.
	You've never actually met the president or had contact with the president, have you?
	Ambassador Taylor, is that you testified in your prior testimony that you have not had any contact with the president of the United States, is that correct?
	That's correct, sir.
	Mr. Taylor, Mr. Kent, have you had any contact with the president of the United States?
	I have not.
	So, not only no conversations with the President of the United States about Ukraine, you've not had any contact with the President of the United States, correct?
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	So, you both know that this impeachment inquiry is about the President of the United States, don't you?
	I mean, the man that neither one of you have had any contact with, you're the first up witnesses.
	I just find that a little amazing that the first up would be two people who've never had any contact with the President himself.
	Yes, this would be the operative point, right?
	And this is the reason why I've been saying all along that if the Democrats actually wish to get Trump, they need to bring in people who spoke directly to Trump or Trump himself, right?
	Those are the only options here.
	Instead, they're bringing in Bill Taylor and George Kent, who've never met the president and never spoken to the president.
	Jim Jordan, the representative from Ohio, he made the exact same point.
	He said, you guys are the star witnesses, right?
	The Democrats are highlighting you as the star witnesses.
	You don't even know the person that you're testifying about.
	Here's Jim Jordan going after the same point.
	Ambassador, you weren't on the call, were you?
	You didn't listen on President Trump's call and President Zelensky's call?
	I did not.
	You've never talked with Chief of Staff Mulvaney?
	I never did.
	You never met the President?
	That's correct.
	You had three meetings again with Zelensky and it didn't come up.
	And two of those they had never heard about as far as I know.
	There was no reason for it to come up.
	And President Zelensky never made an announcement.
	This is what I can't believe.
	And you're their star witness.
	You're their first witness.
	You're the guy based on this, based on... I mean, I've seen...
	I've seen church prayer chains that are easier to understand than this.
	And that is absolutely true.
	I mean, you can even see even Bill Taylor looks a little bit like flustered by this because, of course, it's true.
	I mean, listen, I know that his gray hair is reassuring, but it is also true that the guy has no actual inside information.
	He's not privy to the thought process that would make this bribery as opposed to just a normal exercise of foreign policy power in a way that the foreign policy establishment doesn't like.
	Or even if it's an abnormal exercise of foreign policy power, that doesn't make it illegitimate as an impeachable form of foreign policy power exercise.
	Even if you think that it's bad, that doesn't make it impeachable.
	I tend to think that this is bad policy based on bad information, funneled by Rudy Giuliani.
	It doesn't make it impeachable.
	And trying to bring out witnesses who have no actual window into Trump's state of mind is definitely a bizarre move.
	Jordan really hammers this point home even more.
	He says, you know, let me just read you sort of the chain of events here, and you try to explain it to me.
	Let me read it one more time.
	Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr. Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr. Morrison that I conveyed this message to Mr. Yarmouk on September 1st, 2019 in connection with Vice President Pence's visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President Zelensky.
	We got six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding.
	Again, I think this is what the American people are going to take away.
	Jordan doing an excellent job of pointing this out, or as Democrats would claim, obfuscating the issue.
	But I think that that's actually a fair point, which is that these people are in a chain of communication that isn't the actual chain of communication that matters, and they acknowledge as such.
	Here's the thing.
	And Kent basically acknowledged they were outside the actual chain, the unofficial chain of information upon which Trump was making his decisions.
	Now, where Republicans are on a little bit weaker ground is when they try to argue that if the Democrats proved their case, it still would not be impeachable.
	So you have Elise Stefanik, who is an excellent young Congresswoman from New York, and she says, you know, there are a couple of key facts Democrats are ignoring here, and those key facts make it so that this is utterly unimpeachable conduct.
	I think this is an overstatement by Elise Stefanik.
	For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following.
	Number one, Ukraine received the aid.
	Number two, there was, in fact, no investigation into Biden.
	Okay, well, that is not enough, right?
	Obviously, the accusation is that Trump was withholding the aid in order to achieve a particular foreign policy purpose.
	When that came to light, then he tried to backfill the problem, right?
	That's not enough.
	And you're hearing Republicans repeat that point.
	So Republicans are deploying a few defenses.
	One is an obvious lawyer defense, which makes a lot of sense.
	You don't know Trump's intent.
	You don't know his state of mind.
	You don't know his motives.
	And trying to establish those motives through the testimony of somebody who once heard of Trump, who once ate at the same restaurant of Trump, is not going to do it.
	And then you have the Republican stronger defense.
	This is the one Trump wants them to push, which is, he never did anything wrong.
	And that one, I think, is a lot harder to push.
	In this impeachment hearing today, where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where is the impeachable offense in that call?
	We're going to need to hear the impeachable offense here.
	In this impeachment hearing today where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where is the impeachable offense in that call?
	Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call?
	Shout it out.
	Anyone?
	Okay, but it's not just in that call, right?
	I mean, that is also a bit of a misnomer.
	They're just trying to analyze this fairly.
	Nobody is claiming that the call itself is the impeachable offense.
	They are claiming that the policy linked to the call for several months here was the impeachable claim.
	Again, all that Trump has to do, like any good defense case, he doesn't have to prove that he is, quote-unquote, innocent of any bad activity.
	He just has to show that he didn't do anything criminal.
	And the criminal activity at issue here is bribery, which includes an intent.
	It includes an intent.
	It is amazing.
	The Democrats will read intent out of the law when it is convenient to them, and they will read intent into the law when it is convenient to them.
	So Hillary Clinton takes classified information, puts it on her own personal homebrew server in her bathroom, And Jim Comey will say, no, no, no, that's not prosecutable because she didn't have intent to expose that information to prying eyes.
	Sure, she had intent to misuse classified information, but she didn't have intent to expose that information to the Russians or to anybody else, to prying eyes.
	And he read an intent element that is not in the law into the law.
	And he said that based on precedent.
	Yeah, I think that that is a bad practice.
	I think it's arguable at best.
	Okay, and then Democrats will say, okay, well, yes, bribery requires intent, but we don't have to prove intent.
	We can just assume intent.
	Well, no, you can't.
	If you actually want to prove intent, you have to prove intent.
	Well, President Trump reacted to all of the hearings yesterday.
	He got a bit personal with Adam Schiff, of course.
	He said that Adam Schiff had to bring in a ringer because he's not capable of doing his own questioning, which, of course, is sort of true.
	Republicans, by the way, also brought in a ringer, so it's not a perfectly fair statement, but here is Trump going after Schiff.
	I did not watch it.
	I'm too busy to watch it.
	It's a witch hunt.
	It's a hoax.
	I'm too busy to watch it, so I'm sure I'll get a report.
	There's nothing.
	I have not been briefed, no.
	There's nothing there.
	I see they're using lawyers that are television lawyers.
	They took some guys off television, you know.
	I'm not surprised to see it because Schiff can't do his own questions.
	Okay, there's Trump just taking a shift on Schiff.
	It's pretty solid stuff right there from President Trump, what you would come to expect.
	Now, the only headline that may come out of this is that, remember, the only thing that's new in any of this testimony is Taylor testifying again.
	And one of his aides overheard Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU, talking to Trump about investigations.
	Trump is asked about this and he says he doesn't remember any of the, he doesn't remember any phone call referenced by Taylor here.
	I know nothing about that.
	First time I've heard it.
	The one thing I've seen that Sondland said was that he did speak to me for a brief moment and I said, no quid pro quo under any circumstances.
	And that's true.
	The other, I've never heard this.
	In any event, it's more secondhand information, but I've never heard it.
	Do you recall having a conversation with Sondland?
	I don't recall.
	No, not at all.
	Not even a little bit.
	The only thing, and I guess Sondland has stayed with his testimony, that there was no quid pro quo.
	Okay, so Trump is saying the only conversation I had with Sondland is one in which I explicitly told him that there was not a quid pro quo.
	Sondland of course says he believes that there was in fact a quid pro quo.
	This could get Trump in trouble if Sondland were to get up and say, no, no, no, I actually There was a phone call, and Taylor was right, and we did talk about it in the investigation.
	Presumably, Trump could just say, I didn't remember that conversation.
	Trump could also theoretically say, it was the same conversation as the one where I said no quid pro quo, because you didn't hear my side of the conversation.
	But that is the only new news from this entire day, is that Taylor claimed there was another call, Trump says he doesn't remember another call.
	So we'll find out the truth about that because someone's going to testify.
	Okay, so is any of this devastating or bombshell?
	Is anything that we've said so far a devastating bombshell tossed into the middle of impeachment or is it basically just Democrats putting on a TV show for people?
	And it's obvious which this is because you can see how the media are analyzing it.
	The New York Times, for example, called in their television critic to actually do an analysis.
	of how this thing looked on TV.
	So we all know what this is.
	It's made for TV drama.
	James Ponowizek, who is their TV critic, wrote a piece for the New York Times called, A Tale of an Irregular Channel, Playing on Many Channels.
	In the middle of the testimony of William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine that opened the House impeachment hearings Wednesday, a guessing game broke out on social media.
	He sounded like someone, didn't he?
	His deep, assuring, steady voice reminded some people of Tom Brokaw.
	No, maybe it was Walter Cronkite?
	N-word, R-Murrow.
	It's telling that all these comparisons were to old-school news anchors because I think what people were hearing in Mr. Taylor's gravelly composure was the voice.
	Not so much of another person, but another time.
	A time of authoritative voices that a wide audience found credible.
	It was like a science fiction story in which someone turns on an old radio and hears a staticky broadcast from the past.
	Even the text of Mr. Taylor's introduction had a Cronkitean ring.
	I am not here to take one side or the other, he said.
	My sole purpose is to provide facts as I know them.
	And that's the way it is.
	That this was in fact 2019, where there is no unified audience willing to accept a single way that anything is.
	And then he just goes on to talk about the optics of this whole thing.
	Because he's just like Walter Cronkite.
	So again, the media are reviewing this thing from a television perspective.
	There's a whole column in the Washington Post by Robin Gibbon, their fashion critic, suggesting that Jim Jordan needs to put on a jacket.
	Obviously, the most important element of our times is whether Jim Jordan is wearing a jacket or not.
	By the way, Jim Jordan never wears a jacket.
	I mean, if you've ever been in any of the hearings... I mean, I've testified in front of Jim Jordan in Congress.
	He does not wear a jacket.
	This is not, like, something new.
	But she says, of course, Representative Jim Jordan took his seat Wednesday morning at the opening of the public impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill, wearing nothing but his shirt sleeves.
	No suit jacket.
	That's how Jordan dresses.
	It's his power move.
	His sartorial chest thump.
	All the other members of the House Intelligence Committee turned up in suits and ties or other business attire, but not Jordan.
	Everyone else was willing to offer at least a symbolic nod to decorous formality, to that old-fashioned notion of civility.
	Jordan announced himself as the man who was itching to rumble.
	He was the guy who came not to do as the Constitution demands, with measured deliberation, but to brawl.
	She could tell all this by the fact he wasn't wearing a suit jacket, which he never wears.
	I've met Jim Jordan several times.
	He has never worn a suit jacket.
	As far as I'm aware, I don't even know that he owns a suit jacket.
	The man probably buys his suit jacket and his pants separately at Macy's.
	Like, I don't know.
	He doesn't do that.
	But apparently, according to the Washington Post, that's the big takeaway.
	The big takeaway from all of this?
	Bombshell.
	Jim Jordan doesn't wear jackets.
	Jordan has a reputation for rarely wearing a suit jacket, the Washington Post acknowledges.
	A Twitter account is dedicated to his jacketlessness.
	He's the man on the dais who refuses to show witnesses the same respect they inevitably show to him and to the circumstances.
	Typically, men who are called to testify before Congress wear a suit.
	They recognize the seriousness of the situation and they dignify it.
	Even Mark Zuckerberg, who almost single-handedly made hoodies and t-shirts the uniform of the modern mogul, wears a suit.
	When comedian Hassan Minhaj went to Capitol Hill to discuss student loan debt, he also wore a suit.
	The extras in the audience, as the impeachment drama unfolded, were wearing suit jackets.
	The witnesses were in suit jackets.
	But Jordan, in his role as representative of the American people, couldn't be bothered to suit up.
	When Jordan was interviewed recently by a Wall Street Journal reporter about why he doesn't wear a jacket, he said, quote, I'm not even sure.
	I don't know why.
	But of course, that was disingenuous.
	After a pause, he admitted he does wear a jacket when the rules require him to do so, as when he's on the House floor.
	And he wears a jacket when he aims to be respectful, such as when he's in the company of the president or on a visit to the White House.
	Presumably he doesn't consider sitting alongside his colleagues during a matter of national importance to be a situation that deserves his high regard.
	I remember that time when Barack Obama didn't wear a jacket in the Oval Office and some people were like, oh, that's terrible that he didn't do that.
	Ronald Reagan always used to put on a jacket and we were like, how dare you say that about Barack Obama?
	How dare you?
	Now it's Jim Jordan doesn't wear a jacket and it's the end of the world.
	By the way, I just should point out that despite the fact there was no devastating bombshell testimony yesterday, listen to CBS talk about the devastating bombshell testimony yesterday.
	And there we have it.
	Day one of the first public hearings in terms of impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump are now in the history books.
	Some devastating testimony today from two of America's most respected diplomats who have served both Republican and Democratic presidents.
	So bombshell, so testimony.
	Yeah, except that nothing new happened.
	And that's the real story of yesterday.
	Okay, time for a thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, I was watching old movies while I was on my trip to Boston.
	And I watched, it was streaming on Prime, Saturday Night Fever, which I'd never seen.
	Sort of a classic movie from the 1970s with a very, very young John Travolta.
	The movie's actually quite good.
	It's been parodied so much in movies like Airplane.
	You forget that the movie is actually pretty good.
	It also is a relic of a time, and when you watch it, you realize that that time, the 1970s, as scuzzy and terrible as it was in a wide variety of ways, that our sensitivities now would not allow a movie like this to be made.
	It wouldn't.
	I mean, John Travolta, his character, spoiler alert from a movie that is nearly 50 years old at this point, but spoiler alert, John Travolta at one point attempts to nearly rape a female character in the movie and she ends up being friends with him at the end of the movie.
	That would certainly not be allowed in a movie today.
	It's a very gritty movie and people forget how gritty the movie is because it's about disco.
	But here is a little bit of the preview for Saturday Night Fever.
	Very iconic stuff.
	John Travolta walking down the street and the playing of the Bee Gees and all of this sort of stuff.
	But the movie is a pretty good examination of Brooklyn life circa 1977.
	And it's a good reminder that cultural breakdown can happen in virtually any community.
	This is really a movie about cultural breakdown, about the evils of the sexual revolution.
	It's actually quite a conservative film when you come right down to it.
	So if you don't remember that, it's worth checking out again, the movie Saturday Night Fever.
	Plus the dancing is actually pretty good.
	John Travolta actually could dance back in the day.
	Alright, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so quick things that I hate.
	Well, first of all, it's sort of a thing that I like, because I showed up at Boston University last night.
	It was great.
	1,500 students came out, packed house.
	It was in the Boston athletic arena, which was pretty cool.
	It was kind of a neat setting.
	And it was a lot of fun.
	A lot of protesters showed up outside, which is, I mean, more power to them.
	I said last night, like, if you show up in 20 degree weather to actually protest, more power to you, because I've been to so many schools where it is cold, and protesters say they're going to show up, and then they chicken out.
	So at least in Boston, they have the power of their convictions.
	They were protesting me, suggesting that I was a racist, because the name of the speech was, America wasn't built on slavery, it was built on freedom.
	They were suggesting I was going to make light of slavery.
	I then spent 45 minutes explaining the role of slavery in America's history, it's great evil, and the transition away from slavery, and America's defeat of slavery, and defeat of Jim Crow segregation.
	And so it didn't go quite how the left thought it was going to go because the left has this weird picture of conservatives as people who deny American history, which of course is not true.
	It is the left that frequently denies American history in favor of a darker version of American history that simply isn't true.
	There are a bunch of protesters of all sides.
	There are some people who showed up from sort of the nationalist conservative side of the aisle.
	There were a few alt-righters who showed up as well.
	There were some people who, there's a transgender protester.
	It was a bit of fun.
	But, this is sort of, this is how things should go on campus, right?
	It was an open conversation, everybody had a good time, but that is not what is happening on our college campuses.
	Now, it is very, very, very bad, obviously, if you allow this sort of thing to go on.
	The University of Florida has a student body president, and this student body president is now, apparently, facing impeachment for allowing Donald Trump Jr.
	to speak on campus.
	His book is number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
	He's obviously a public figure.
	All sorts of public figures get to speak on college campuses, particularly public college campuses like the University of Florida.
	Now the student body president is facing impeachment.
	According to the New York Times, a sitting president is facing impeachment, accused of collusion and abusing his power.
	Support falls along political lines.
	The opposition party is determined to remove him.
	His allies maintain he did nothing wrong, but this impeachment inquiry is taking place far from Washington.
	Even though the football stadium known as The Swamp looms nearby, student representatives at the University of Florida introduced a bill on Tuesday.
	To impeach Michael Murphy, the student body president, accusing him of improperly using student fees to pay one of President Trump's sons to speak on campus.
	It all began when Mr. Murphy, a senior, invited Donald Trump Jr.
	and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host and advisor to the president's campaign, to speak on campus and paid them $50,000 with university funds.
	Some students say the payment was a violation of the student senate code and possibly the law.
	Okay, does any of that mean it's illegitimate to invite a public figure like Donald Trump Jr.
	to your campus?
	Not that I am aware of.
	By the way, how many payments have been made to left-wing speakers at University of Florida?
	election campaign to set up the visit and that Mr. Murphy had attended Trump's inauguration.
	Okay, does any of that mean it's illegitimate to invite a public figure like Donald Trump Jr. to your campus?
	Not that I am aware of.
	By the way, how many payments have been made to left-wing speakers at University of Florida?
	I would suggest more than a few.
	Students who drafted the impeachment bill personally handed Murphy a copy of it on Tuesday night.
	They argue in the bill that Murphy's use of student funds violates the Student Senate Code, which forbids spending student fees to support a political party.
	Yeah, except that Donald Trump Jr.
	isn't running for office.
	So this has led to this sour split on campus.
	Jared Rodriguez is a junior and treasurer for the University of Florida College Republicans.
	He said that this move is, quote, a mirror image of the partisan politics at the national level.
	He said he attended the talk and never viewed it as a campaign event.
	The drive to oust Mr. Murphy, he said, showed that the opposition party would look for anything to remove the elected president.
	He said, I think they have no cigar in both cases.
	But again, the idea here is that the real problem, of course, is that they don't want Trump Jr.
	speaking on campus, right?
	I mean, that's really what this is about.
	Just like all these Boston University students didn't want me speaking on campus, they don't want conservatives speaking on campus.
	Doesn't matter if it's Trump, doesn't matter if it's me.
	Nobody.
	They don't want anybody there.
	And it doesn't matter what the people say, by the way.
	Like, at all.
	Again, I spoke at Stanford last week, and protesters shouted for me to leave while I was ripping into Nazis.
	I mean, it's unbelievable.
	So this is just the latest iteration of campus radicalism.
	It is stupid, it is ridiculous, and it is contrary to the goal of the university in the first place.
	Thank you, by the way, to Boston University for making sure that the event could happen in safety and security.
	The administration did a fine job over there.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	Plus, check us out tonight over at dailywire.com.
	The reason you should?
	Well, if you subscribe, then you get full access to our Daily Wire backstage, which we'll be discussing impeachment and many other issues of the day.
	It should be a lot of fun.
	And if you are a subscriber, then you get to ask the questions and you get all the goodies behind the paywall.
	So go do that right now.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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