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Dec. 16, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
59:22
When Is OK Just Not Okay? | Ep. 917
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The military investigates cadets for flashing an OK symbol on national television, a Democrat switches parties over impeachment, and President Trump goes after Nancy Pelosi's teeth.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
In just a minute, we're going to get to all of the impeachment-related stuff.
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So over the weekend, I was reading this great book by Amity Shlaes called Great Society, all about the growth of government under Lyndon Baines Johnson.
And one of the fascinating aspects of this particular book is the manipulation of the currency, the incredible amount of manipulation of the currency that went on Under LBJ, it had also gone under FDR.
Basically, whenever the government wants to spend oodles of money and doesn't actually want to pay for it, they just inflate the currency and they screw around with the exchange rate on gold.
They'll take gold out of the market.
LBJ actually set it up so that you could only exchange gold at the window, at the so-called federal window, if you were a foreign country.
But at the same time, on the private market, gold was more expensive than if you were a foreign country trying to exchange for gold in the American markets.
Bottom line is this.
When governments want to screw around with the currency, they will screw around with the currency.
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Okay, so we'll get to everything impeachment related.
This week is a big week.
We're gonna get to all of that in just a moment.
But frankly, it's a foregone conclusion.
I don't think anything has changed.
It feels like a put-up job.
Most independents in the country are not fond of this.
Congress suggesting that President Trump is guilty of bribery, even though they're not actually charging him with bribery.
We're going to get to all of that in just a moment.
But frankly, it's a foregone conclusion.
I don't think anything has changed.
It feels like a put up job.
Most independents in the country are not fond of this.
There is a late breaking poll over the weekend showing that while 85 percent of Democrats support impeachment, first of all, it's a low number, right?
You would expect it to be like 98% of Democrats support impeachment.
It's only about 85%.
Only 7% of Republicans support impeachment.
And then in the middle, the independents, only 43% support impeachment.
So this thing is not breaking in favor of the Democrats.
So that means that for me, frankly, this is a sort of secondary issue.
I know, it's weird to say the impeachment of the president in the House of Representatives for the third time in American history would actually represent a nothing burger.
But in fact, it sort of does, because the fact is that the Senate is not going anywhere with all of this.
So believe it or not, the bigger story over the weekend is the continuing degradation of our culture, the continuing stupidity of the media.
I'm speaking, of course, of the attempt to Covington Catholic members of the military cadets at the Army-Navy So, according to the Huffington Post, military officials have launched an investigation after the OK hand symbol that has become known as a symbol for white power was flashed amid a crowd of cadets before the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia on Saturday.
So, there is the Army-Navy game, President Trump shows up to this every year, and a bunch of the cadets are giving the OK symbol.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, What the hell how is this in any way racist like how many times have you said your friend?
Okay, right?
How many times have you done?
There's actually an okay emoji on On text on Twitter is that because it's white power.
So here's what happened 4chan, which is this Message board.
Many of the message boards on 4chan are not racist or white supremacist.
Some of them absolutely are.
And idiots on 4chan decided that what would be a great prank to play on the media, because the media are gullible, is to suggest that every time somebody flashed an OK symbol, what they were actually doing was flashing a white power symbol.
How would this work?
Well, because if you hold up your hands in an OK, then you get a W.
and a P.
Uh-huh.
It's like white power.
You get...
So clever.
Okay, now everybody has flashed the OK symbol at some point.
In fact, in the NBA, many NBA players who are black are flashing the OK, not because they're actually saying OK, but because they give a three-pointer, right?
Yeah, there's lots of graphics of Steph Curry doing the three-pointer sign after he hits a three-pointer.
Okay, one of the other aspects of OK is that people have been using the OK symbol for decades to play something known as the circle game.
The circle game is where you hold up the okay symbol below your waist, and if somebody looks at it, you punch them in the shoulder.
It's the dumbest game ever, okay?
But people have been doing this.
I remember people did this even in my middle school.
This is like an actual thing.
So, cadets at the Army-Navy game were doing this.
It's pretty obvious that that's what they're doing, that they're not giving the white power symbol at the Army-Navy game.
That that's not what's happening here.
Because three separate cadets do it!
You think they're all these white supremacists who just happen to be in camera view?
Or are they playing this back-and-forth circle game where if you see the OK symbol, then you get punched in the shoulder?
And everybody I know who's in the military knows exactly what this is.
I have friends who've served in the military.
David French, who served in the military, served in Iraq.
He immediately was like, uh, guys, what are you, crazy?
And David has no interest, none of us have any interest in protecting white supremacists and their stupid hijacking of a hand symbol.
None of us have any interest in that.
I haven't personally targeted by white supremacists.
David's been targeted more than I have.
He has an adopted black daughter.
Like, this is all insanity.
So, here is the tape.
You can see that behind this particular Sportscaster Rhys Davis.
You can see there's a kid who puts his hands out, he's wearing a glove, and he puts out his hand in the circle game.
And then another kid puts out his hand in the circle game.
So is it just that Rhys Davis happens to be in the center of the KKK?
The KKK contingent of West Point?
This is where he was?
Or is it that everybody is just playing the circle game?
The media decide that it's that everybody, including apparently the kid who's obviously of color standing next to Rhys Davis, and has no prob- I assume he's not like fightin' fist fightin' the kids who are right behind him, that all of these kids who are flashing the circle game, that is why- First of all, it doesn't make any sense.
Okay, if you're gonna do the okay symbol as a quote-unquote white power symbol, you can't hold it down Okay, then it's not a W anymore.
This whole thing is idiotic.
The military is now investigating this.
The military is doing a full-scale investigation into this.
A full-scale investigation.
Because everyone has lost their mind.
Because everyone is stupid.
And everyone has to take offense at everything.
And if you don't take offense, it's because you're insensitive to the needs of people.
Alternatively, these kids are playing the circle game.
And that's it!
So Huffington Post reports, military, this was their headline yesterday, big flashing headline, military investigating after cadets flashed apparent white power signs before Army-Navy game.
This is not a white power sign, guys.
It's not.
There are pictures of Barack Obama doing it.
There are pictures of NBA players doing it.
There's pictures of everybody doing it.
Are you insane?
How have you bought into this?
The Anti-Defamation League even put out a statement about a year and a half ago about the so-called white power sign saying, this is not an actual white power sign, this is just There's just trolls over at 4chan trying to make it appear that white supremacists are hiding under your bed.
Even the ADL was smart enough to recognize this, but not our media.
Mary Papanfus writing for the Huffington Post.
She says military officials have launched an investigation.
Hey, this is not Abu Ghraib.
This is kids playing the circle game, you idiots.
Military officials have launched an investigation after the OK hand symbol that has become known as a symbol for white power hasn't become known as that.
Like, if you weren't on Twitter, let's say you didn't spend your entire life being an idiot on Twitter, and you spent your entire life, I don't know, going to sports games.
Or engaging with your children?
Or going to the mall?
Having a job?
Being a useful human being?
How many people in the United States would be sitting around going, oh my god, I just saw this kid go like that?
For sure that kid is in his off hours, he goes over to Bed Bath & Beyond, picks up a sheet, and flounces around West Point.
The gestures were captured on national TV during a pregame broadcast in a crowd that included black cadets.
Well, obviously the black cadets were very upset by it.
They appear to be flashed by both West Point cadets and Annapolis Midshipmen.
Ooh, it's an interior military KKK branch.
It's just like the new HBO series Watchmen.
They've taken over all of the auspices of law enforcement.
We're looking into it, West Point Representative Lieutenant Colonel Chris O'Part told the Wall Street Journal.
We don't know what their intention is.
Annapolis Spokeswoman Commander Alana Garris told the newspaper, we're aware and we'll be looking into it.
The signs were flashed during a spot by ESPN's Reece Davis before the game.
At one point, one of the cadets in the stands around Davis stood laughing and showed a banner reading, Go Army, Beat Navy.
Then someone behind him, whose face was out of the shot, and wearing a black glove.
Oh!
A black glove!
You mean because it's cold outside?
He's wearing a black glove!
Made the hand sign.
At least two other signs were also flashed!
One next to Davis' head.
Oh!
Obviously, the Groipers have taken over West Point!
The story quickly blew up on social media because social media is a place for idiots.
The Anti-Defamation League this year added the symbol to its list of hate signs.
Yes, but that's only after they recognized it was not actually a hate sign and the whole thing was being promoted by all of these groups in order to make it appear as though there were vast scores of people all across the country who were routinely engaged in secret white supremacist hand symbols.
The symbol began as a trolling hoax by members of the website 4chan saying the hand gesture formed a W and a P for white power, but the gesture is now being used in some circles as a sincere expression of white supremacy according to the ADL.
I mean, they tried this with Stephen Miller very on in the administration when he gave an OK symbol to the camera.
And it was like, oh, well, that's because he's signaling to his white supremacist friends, guys.
And we had a story like this not that long ago.
It was last year, actually.
The U.S.
Coast Guard said it had removed a member from its Hurricane Florence response team on Friday after he made an okay hand gesture on live TV that the service branch deemed offensive.
The unidentified team member was caught looking into the camera and then swiftly making the hand gesture, prompting a backlash on social media.
The hand signal was seen in the background of MSNBC's live interview with Section Charleston Commanding Officer Captain John Reid, this is last year, who was providing an update on actions taken by the Coast Guard.
Many social media users called for the firing of the individual, throw a guy out of the Coast Guard, because he made a so-called white power hate symbol.
Alternatively, he was playing the circle game on national TV, and this has become a thing.
It's not actually a bunch of secret white supremacists hiding in plain sight.
This is so unbelievably stupid.
It's so dumb.
But it doesn't matter, the media's gonna play this thing up anyway.
This became a national scandal.
Malcolm Nance on MSNBC, he said, this is now a national- it's a national scandal, guys, because they've taken over, they've taken over everywhere.
People with their OK hand symbols, everywhere!
And also, their words in my Cheerios!
They all say, oooooh!
Here is Malcolm Nance at MSNBC.
There is a very large hammer coming down from the Commandant's office and the Commander's office at the Naval Academy, because again, this is now a national scandal, even though it might not be a scandal.
But, you know what?
We're going to find out, and all of their senior non-commissioned officers, senior ranking officers, are going to be coming down on top of them like a ton of bricks, because they have disgraced the armed forces, whether they were just As we say, lollygagging and playing around, or whether they actually had the intent to make that symbol in front of a national audience.
You've got to be kidding me.
Lollygagging isn't even the proper word there.
But in any case, well done, Malcolm Nance.
Well done.
Right on top of it.
The media's attempts to Covington Catholic people is just insane.
I know that's become a verb now.
The reason it's become a verb is because the media have an interest in taking situations out of context and then determining that these are secret symbols of white supremacy.
So kids wearing MAGA hats standing there while they're abused by black Hebrew Israelites and a Native American guy who's getting all in their face and they're just standing there.
Those kids are the real problem.
These kids who are playing the circle game and serving in the military, which by the way, nobody in the media, including me, is doing.
Those kids are the problem, according to the media.
Un-be-lievable.
Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to the latest SOP to the social justice warrior left.
This, of course, happening on college campuses.
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Well, speaking of the sort of surrender to social justice warrior mindset.
College campuses are now seeking, apparently, according to the Associated Press, to set up slavery reparations at college campuses.
Now, last I checked, slavery was ended.
Juneteenth happened in 1863, so it's been approximately 156 years since the official end of slavery in the North.
It's been a long time since slavery ended.
That is not to say that there are no Vestiges of slavery, just like there's vestiges of any piece of history in American history.
There are more vestiges of Jim Crow.
Wealth holdovers from generation to generation.
These are things that occur.
But the idea that you are going to pay slavery reparations from a university to people who are now, what, five generations removed from slavery?
At least.
At least.
Maybe six or seven generations removed, depending on how fast people have kids.
The measurement of a generation.
If you say it's 20 years, for example, then you are talking about nearly 10 generations removed.
Well, nearly 15 gen...
About eight, nine generations removed from slavery.
Okay, so the Associated Press says, the promise of reparations to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened up new territory in a reckoning at U.S.
colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes, and public apologies.
Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions.
Again, you're now talking about the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great,
what, 20, 20, you have a bunch of various great, great, great grandparents, right?
Because everybody has to, for every parent you've had, there are two grandparents.
So that means for every two grandparents you've had, there are four grandparents.
So how exactly are you going to figure out who deserves these reparations?
How about people from a mixed race background?
How about people who have 19 out of 20 grandparents who are great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents who are not reparations?
We're not enslaved?
How exactly are you going to measure all of this?
None of this matters.
It's all social justice warrior signaling.
While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions receive from slavery, from the slavery economy, are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream.
University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton says he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery, that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education.
He's a descendant of slaves, is this Jeffrey Clinton kid.
He says, it doesn't have to be trillions of dollars, but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between African-Americans and white Americans and really everybody else, because this is an American-made institution.
We didn't immigrate here.
That's true.
You did not immigrate here.
It is also true that we are now 153 years removed from the end of the Civil War.
So at some point here, we are going to have to recognize that the best thing that we can do is guarantee equal rights, not start signing people checks.
But these universities obviously are enthralled to the same to the same SJW mindset that says that if you sign a check, that suddenly this is going to fix everything, which of course it is not.
It is not.
Reckoning with American history does not mean Idiotic programs that actually do not rectify the wrongs that they seek to rectify.
It turns out it's very difficult to have a time machine where you can go back in time and rectify this stuff.
By the way, if you want to talk about actual reparations, how about the victims of Jim Crow?
Instead of talking about slavery reparations, you actually should be talking about Jim Crow reparations.
They should have institutions that benefited from Jim Crow, if there were any.
And when I say if there were any, there are certainly institutions that benefited from Jim Crow.
What I mean is that Jim Crow in and of itself was not economically beneficial, it was economically backward, which is why after the end of Jim Crow, what you saw is economic Jumps in exactly the areas that ended Jim Crow.
But these policies are not designed to actually help people.
They are designed to virtue signal.
They're not designed to unite the country.
They're designed to divide the country because they're impractical and impracticable.
In just a second, we're going to get to everything impeachment related.
Speaking of impractical, impracticable, and divisive.
We'll get to all that in just one second first.
Let us talk about the fact that the First Amendment is under assault in the United States.
There's a whole group of people on the left who are interested in curbing the First Amendment because they don't want hate speech promulgated.
Now, they won't define hate speech.
They won't tell you what hate speech constitutes, but they would like to rewrite the First Amendment to make everybody feel better.
Well, this is why the Founders instituted the Second Amendment, because they understood that assaults on fundamental rights are only prevented by an armed population.
This is something that the Founders were very much into.
It doesn't mean that we're on the verge of a civil war, God forbid.
It does mean that the Founders understood That deterring the federal government from overstepping its boundaries was a key function of the Second Amendment.
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Alrighty.
So now on to impeachment gate.
So this is supposed to be a very big week.
As I said before, I didn't lead off the show with it because frankly, I don't think it's a very big week.
I think the Democrats impeaching the president has been a foregone conclusion since Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry.
I don't think that anything groundbreaking is going to happen here.
And no matter how many white papers the Democrats put out there, they do not have the goods.
The proof that they do not have the goods is the fact that they did not charge the President with bribery.
There is no criminal charge anywhere in the actual charges.
They charged him with abuse of power, which is not in fact a crime.
It's a political crime.
And they charged him with obstruction of Congress, which isn't only not a crime, It isn't even a thing that is wrong.
Very often that is called checks and balances.
There's never been an obstruction of Congress charge in an impeachment that was not brought alongside an obstruction of justice charge, which would mean defying the judicial branch, not justifying Congress.
The executive defying Congress is called checks and balances.
In some political reports, President Trump committed criminal bribery and wire fraud.
The House Judiciary Committee alleges in a report that will accompany articles of impeachment this week.
Now, you may notice, those are not actually charged in the impeachment articles.
Those are actual crimes.
Wire fraud and bribery are actual crimes.
You could be charged with bribery.
I could be charged with wire fraud.
These are actual criminal offenses.
Neither of them were included in the Articles of Impeachment.
Why?
The answer is because the Democrats do not actually have the supporting evidence that would effectuate those charges.
They do not.
That is why they charge something much broader.
And they acknowledge this in the report.
The report is a 169 page assessment of the case for Trump's removal from office.
And it contends that Trump committed multiple federal crimes, ones that Democrats addressed under the broad umbrella of abuse of power.
The first article of impeachment against the president.
The panel's Democrats say, quote, Which again, begs a question.
Why don't you charge him with these things?
to the level of a criminal violation to justify impeachment, his conduct here was criminal.
They labeled Trump's behavior both constitutional and criminal in character and contended that the president betrayed the people of this nation and should be removed from office.
Which again, begs a question.
Why don't you charge him with these things?
If you are so confident of your ability to charge and impeach a president, convict him in the Senate.
Why not bring forth actual charges?
Why bring forth weak charges, like abuse of power?
And once again, the answer is, you don't have the goods.
And it really is not about the charges.
It really is about getting Trump out of office because Democrats keep saying over and over that if Trump is allowed to stand for re-election, he might win.
And if he wins, they're not going to respect the results of the elections.
They are already setting up a counter-narrative, which is that Trump stole an election that has not yet taken place.
Which is pretty incredible!
The staff report according to Politico, which was filed to the House Rules Committee just after midnight on Monday, argues that President Trump directed a months-long scheme to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election, the allegation that forms the core of the two articles of impeachment, abusive power, and obstruction of Congress approved by the Judiciary Committee last week.
Democrats continued to maintain over and over and over again that they don't actually have to prove a criminal violation, which of course is true, they don't.
But it would help that the report says the framers were not fools, which, by the way, is the first time that the Democrats have ever acknowledged the framers were not fools.
Usually you get that the framers, they were operating in a different time and a different place.
The Second Amendment is a load of bunk.
The First Amendment needs to be curbed.
Campaign finance reform, hate speech laws.
It's Democrats who are usually characterizing the Founders as rich white slave owners, so it's fun to hear them come around to the idea the Framers were not fools.
They say the Framers were not fools.
They authorized impeachment for a reason, and that reason would have been gutted if impeachment were limited to crimes.
Well, again, it's not limited to crimes, but typically, if you want some sort of bipartisan support, you would want to prove a crime.
The Judiciary Committee's report, according to Politico, presents the panel's most thorough analysis yet of why Democrats believe the accusations against Trump are worthy of immediate impeachment.
It comes a day before the Rules Committee formally considers the articles of impeachment ahead of a likely Wednesday vote on the House floor.
It is obvious they are going to vote to impeach him on Wednesday, and all of the rest of this is just window dressing.
Democrats argue that Trump crossed the threshold into criminal behavior with his posture toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, writing in the report that his request for the announcement of politically motivated investigations constituted the solicitation of a bribe under federal law, except for the fact that you have to exchange a thing of value and you have to prove intent for bribery, neither of which the Democrats have actually proved.
A thing of value typically is not information.
And if you're going to say that a thing of value is the announcement of the investigation, the only testimony that suggests that he only wanted the announcement and not the investigation itself is that of Gordon Sondland.
And even that is supposition by Sondland.
The committee also alleges that Trump violated the Honest Services Wire Fraud statute during his July 25th phone call, which is a real stretch.
They can't even show there was a quid pro quo on the call.
The call itself does not demonstrate the quid pro quo.
They're saying that it's a wire fraud request because he said in front of a bevy of witnesses that the United States would like a favor from the Ukrainians, namely investigate everything that went on in 2016, including Hunter and Joe Biden.
In the accompanying 18-page dissent, Judiciary Committee Republicans led by Representative Doug Collins of Georgia assailed Democrats' evidence as paltry and an affront to the constitutional process of impeachment.
Colin said, if President Nixon's impeachment proceedings are the gold standard for presidential impeachment inquiries, these proceedings, in stark contrast, will go down in history as the quintessential example of how such proceedings should not be conducted.
He blasted the articles of impeachment as vague, hyperbolic, and misleading, particularly as they described fear of future presidential misconduct.
And he says, guys, if you keep saying criminality, then why aren't you alleging criminality?
He says no president has been impeached solely on non-criminal allegations.
That, of course, is absolutely true.
And again, the motivating factor here is to delegitimize the 2020 election, to say that if Trump is not impeached in the here and now, that he is going to seal the election with the help of foreign powers.
This, again, underscores the Democrats' claims that Hillary Clinton in 2016 only lost because of the interference of foreign powers, not because she was the world's most garbage candidate.
Which is false.
She lost because she was indeed the world's most garbage candidate.
You know what would have happened if WikiLeaks had never hacked into the DNC emails?
You know what would have happened?
Hillary would have lost.
Really.
Because the reason that those emails even matter is because Hillary Clinton had hid 33,000 emails on her private server.
That's what Trump kept hammering home.
The WikiLeaks stuff didn't really do much except keep things in the news.
Sort of.
There was nothing extraordinarily damning in the WikiLeaks cables.
That were uncovered from the DNC?
Really?
Now, I know there's a lot of dissent on this.
I know there are a lot of people on the left saying, no, if it weren't for WikiLeaks Hillary Clinton would be president right now.
It's such a narrow election.
You can make the case.
It is my contention that Hillary Clinton was such a bad candidate that people's views of her had been formed basically from the beginning.
The national polling since the beginning was pretty good and had her winning.
The national polling was accurate.
She did win nationally in the popular vote.
In the swing states, she lost because people did not show up to vote for her because she was a bad candidate.
So what's the real rationale behind this impeachment?
As I say, it really is not about what Trump did.
It's really about Democrats fearing he's going to win.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, he says he is gravely concerned what Trump might do if not impeached.
It's a preemptive impeachment.
It's like preemptive war in Iraq.
It's a preemptive impeachment.
The only reason that Speaker Pelosi changed her position and supported moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry was because what Donald Trump is alleged to have done, and all evidence points to him having done it, which is to invite foreign interference in our next election.
That undermines the very core of our democracy, which is free and fair elections where foreign parties aren't influencing the outcome.
If he is ultimately exonerated in the Senate, if the Senate Republican majority refuses to discipline him through impeachment, he will be unbounded.
And I am gravely concerned about what else he might do between now and the 2020 election when there are no restrictions on his behavior.
Well, I mean, there are restrictions on his behavior.
The criminal law does not cease to apply between you impeaching him in the House and him being acquitted in the Senate.
If it turns out that tomorrow he goes over to the Ukrainians and says to them, in exchange for this particular military aid, I want you to arrest Joe Biden with no charges whatsoever, You can impeach him again tomorrow.
You can.
There are still checks and balances.
It's just that you guys have not proved your case.
All of this led to the bizarre spectacle over the weekend of the President of the United States insulting Nancy Pelosi's teeth.
Now, let me just say, I'm always up for a good Nancy Pelosi teeth joke.
In fact, I'm the originator of many Nancy Pelosi teeth jokes.
Every time I do my Nancy Pelosi impersonation, it's basically about her denture slipping around in that mouth.
Nancy Pelosi, very concerned.
Why are you insulting me as a Catholic?
I'm such a good Catholic.
Okay, so Donald Trump—the difference is that Trump's the president.
I'm just a guy who's doing a podcast.
In any case, here is Donald Trump.
He says, because Nancy's teeth—so Mark Meadows had tweeted out about a Nancy Pelosi statement that it wasn't true, and then Trump said, because Nancy's teeth were falling out of her mouth and she didn't have time to think.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's a look for the president.
Now, are we all going to get hot and bothered about this?
One of the constant sources of amusement to me is when people in the media act outraged at Trump being Trump.
He's Trump.
Get over it.
He's been Trump for a long time.
I remember I had a bit of a tiff online with Bill Kristol, formerly the Weekly Standard, now over at the Bulwark.
I'm going to have a tiff with Bill Kristol over this sort of thing.
Trump did something that was very Trumpy and pretty funny on his Twitter account and Bill Kristol was like, this disgraces the office of the presidency!
And I tweeted back to him like, Bill lighten up.
Are we going to act with fresh outrage every time Trump does what Trump does?
Of all the things to be outraged about, are we really going to be outraged because he insulted Nancy Pelosi's dentures?
Come on!
Come on, that doesn't even rank in his list of top 100 insults.
That's not even close to his most insulting or vulgar statement, probably of the day.
Absurd.
But here's CNN being very, very upset about all this.
And then a House Republican defended Trump's tweet saying that, you know, he's upset about things.
Yeah, he's upset about things.
He's being impeached on the basis of thin evidence.
I'd be upset about that, too.
Does that mean that I would be tweeting from the Oval Office where great presidents, where Ronald Reagan once sat, being like, teeth, man.
Look at that.
Look at that.
She needs a little bit more, a little bit more Pepsodent.
Look at that.
Oh, my gosh.
Look at those teeth.
No, but also the look of high dodging from the people at CNN is getting rather tiresome.
I think most Americans are kind of bored of it, frankly.
The president has a very unorthodox style of messaging.
It's not the way that I talk or that I would tweet.
But look, the president's very frustrated about how he's been treated.
He lashes out sometimes.
And I think a lot of the American people understand that.
It was mentioned just a moment ago in your discussion that he really hadn't gotten due process.
He didn't get a fair trial in the House.
And that's very bothersome to him because there's going to be an asterisk by his presidency in the history books.
That he was the third president to be impeached by the House.
And it's really not fair the way it's been done.
So he's frustrated about that.
So, and CNN's like, how could he say this?
And this was featured all over the media.
House Republican says he's frustrated?
No.
But let's be real about this.
Everybody who believes there is insufficient evidence thinks this whole process is a sham.
Lindsey Graham 2.0 among them.
Senator Graham says, I'm not going to pretend that I'm an unbiased source on this.
I have nothing but disdain for this entire idiotic process.
I have nothing but disdain for this.
I'm trying to make myself clear.
What you're doing in the House is bad for the presidency.
You're impeaching the President of the United States in a matter of weeks, not months.
You had a two-year investigation.
That wasn't enough.
I think this whole thing is a crock.
You're shutting the president out.
The process in the House, any partisan group could do this in the future.
You're weaponizing impeachment.
And I want to end it.
I don't want to legitimize it.
I hate what they're doing.
Well, in a second, I want to get to the Democrats attempting to make it seem bipartisan.
And a pretty good giveaway that Democrats were in purple districts and Trump districts who won in the last election cycle are very nervous about this impeachment process.
Pretty solid piece of evidence on that coming up in one second.
First, it is that time of the season.
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We're gonna get to more on impeachment and a pretty good piece of evidence that Democrats, who actually are not in blue districts, are pretty worried about how this thing is going to go.
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The Democrats are now attempting to pretend that this thing is a little bit bipartisan, So the reason they're doing this, they're going to try.
Apparently, freshman Democrats are trying to push for Justin Amash as the impeachment manager in the House.
Amash has been a rogue congressperson.
He's elected as a Republican.
Now he's registered as an independent.
He's a very small government guy, sort of a Ron Paul Libertarian, in a lot of ways.
A group of 30 freshman Democrats, led by Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, has asked House leaders to consider the Libertarian, who left the Republican Party earlier this year, for the small group tasked with arguing its case for removing Trump in the upper chamber, according to several Democratic officials.
The thinking, is the Washington Post reporting, according to these people, is that Amash would reach conservative voters in a way Democrats can't, potentially bolstering their case to the public, which of course is untrue given the fact that Amash had to leave the Republican Party and may, in fact, lose his seat.
He would also provide Democrats cover from GOP accusations they're pursuing a partisan impeachment.
Amash is one of the most conservative members of the House and a vocal Trump critic.
Phillips said, to the extent that this can be bipartisan, it should.
I think including Representative Amash amongst the impeachment managers is a smart move for both the country, for the substance, and for the optics.
I love the newfound respect that Amash is receiving.
This is what we, in the conservative movement, call the strange new respect.
Every so often, if you criticize the right, if something on the right goes wrong and you point it out, you get strange new respect.
Well, Justin Amash has been receiving that ever since he decided that he'd come out in favor of impeachment.
Is he actually going to be given that?
No.
The Democratic leadership does not trust Amash with that because they never know what he might say.
Amash is enough of a rogue that he might start going off on the Democrats' spending habits and invasions of government.
Meanwhile, Representative Jeff Van Drew, who's an anti-impeachment Democrat, is now going to switch parties.
This demonstrates, again, that these Democrats are not quite as popular on this thing among independents as they say they are.
According to the New York Times, Representative Jeff Vandrew of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who is among the party's staunchest opponents of impeaching Trump, told aides on Saturday, He plans to switch parties and declare himself a Republican as soon as next week, just as the House is casting its historic votes on articles of impeachment.
At a White House meeting on Friday, Van Drew sought Trump's blessing for the move, which could be critical to his ability to avoid a primary challenge next year.
The president urged him to make the jump, according to two Democrats and one Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were intended to be private.
Andrew has spoken with senior advisors to Trump about announcing his switch at an event at the White House either immediately before or just after the House votes on two articles of impeachment, which is expected to happen on Wednesday, according to Republicans and Democrats.
Now, typically, when a member of a big political party has switched, that's been big news.
We can go all the way back to Jim Jeffords switching parties and thus switching control of the Senate of the United States back in the early 2000s.
But this is obviously big news in the middle of an impeachment hearing.
You have a guy who is a blue vote in a in a red district in New Jersey switching parties because he believes that he's not going to be able to win reelection if he supports the impeachment.
The move would provide a silver lining for Trump as he becomes the third president ever to be impeached, according to the New York Times.
The decision by Van Drew reflects the heavy political consequences hanging over next week's impeachment vote, particularly for moderate Democrats in districts that supported Trump in 2016.
There are about 30 Democrats who are sitting in districts that supported Trump.
Republicans are targeting those districts heavily.
The impeachment vote could come back to haunt all of those people.
Jerry Nadler, for his part, leading the House Judiciary Committee, ripped into Van Drew, saying that the real reason he's not doing this, the real reason he's switching, is not out of principle, it's out of political fear.
What he's reacting to is a public polling that shows he can't get re-nominated.
His electorate in his district is 24% to re-nominate him and 60% to nominate somebody else.
But more to the point, this is not political.
We should not be looking at those things.
This is the defense of our democracy.
Do we stay a democratic republic?
Or do we turn into a tyranny?
And what is fascinating here is that members of Van Drew's own constituency, Michael Suleman, the Atlantic County Democratic chairman, actually wrote a letter to Van Drew.
He said, I'm imploring you to vote in favor of impeachment.
A no vote on impeachment will suppress Democratic turnout down ballot, which my organization cannot sustain.
In other words, if they try this impeachment and it turns out to come to nothing, that could actually suppress the Democratic efforts to get out the vote.
Everybody's so depressed.
And it is interesting that Democrats Are this early playing the card that they almost expect Trump to win if he's not impeached?
That's the only reason that you put out there the preventative message that if Trump is elected, it's illegitimate because you actually expect that he's going to win.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Chuck Schumer is attempting to military, but he has no power in the Senate, so it doesn't really matter.
Just as this House thing has been run as a sham, the Senate thing will be run as a sham also.
The Senate Republicans are going to rush this thing through.
Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, he has no interest in dragging this thing out, and he does not think that the Democrats proved their case in the House.
So, Chuck Schumer is now trying to force Mitch McConnell to call a bunch of witnesses from the White House.
Those witnesses from the White House already said they are not testifying in front of Congress.
And the Democrats could have called them in the House.
All they had to do was wait this thing out, but they refused to wait this thing out because they know they're not going to get it.
So instead, Schumer is going to pretend that McConnell is engaging in a cover-up by not calling the same witnesses Democrats refused to wait for over on the House side.
According to Axios.com, Schumer has now sent a letter to McConnell in which he asks the Republican leader to call four witnesses who refused to testify before the House impeachment committees.
The witnesses Schumer has asked for all have direct knowledge of Trump administration decisions, He wants the Senate to call Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff, John Bolton, the former NSA, Michael Duffy, the Associate Director for National Security, Office of Management and Budget, and Robert Blair, Senior Advisor to Mulvaney.
The Senate Democratic leader's request may appeal to some moderate Republicans, but that obviously is going nowhere.
And the reason that it is going nowhere, obviously, is because why exactly would McConnell call people that, again, the Democrats could have called but would not wait for?
Let's not pretend here that Democrats had no authority to call these people.
Some of them, they didn't even issue legal subpoenas to.
Some of them, they were just like, here's a request to show up at the House.
And these people are like, no, don't think so.
And he's like, obstruction of Congress!
That's the way that this thing has gone so far.
So, it's a sham.
The House will vote to impeach.
By mid-January, this thing will be over in the Senate.
It'll all be in the past.
And people have already taken their stances.
There are some varying poll statistics on how popular this is.
There's a Fox News poll that said 54% of Americans support the impeachment at this point.
But there are other polls suggesting that it's well under 50%.
The Fox News poll is actually a little bit of an outlier.
Suffice it to say that after it fails in the Senate, I do not think that it does any damage to President Trump long term.
It didn't do any damage to Bill Clinton long term, obviously.
He was impeached in the House and then acquitted in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the fight over the FBI and the Intelligence Committee continues.
Over the weekend, James Comey found himself on the hot seat, the former head of the FBI, who had declared himself the wisest and fairest person.
The kind of guy who, in his off hours, just goes out into nature, and stares at trees, and takes upward-angled pictures of himself, hero shots, backlit.
That guy who's appearing on national TV with Chris Wallace and he acknowledged, yeah, you know, that whole FISA process that I oversaw going after Carter Page.
Maybe I was like a little overconfident on that whole thing.
Also, he's wearing the world's ugliest jacket.
I know it's beside the point.
I just felt like I needed to point it out.
Here's James Comey.
He's right.
I was wrong.
I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years.
I thought they were robust enough.
It's incredibly hard to get a FISA.
I was overconfident in those because he's right.
There was real sloppiness.
17 things that either should have been in the applications or at least discussed and characterized differently.
It was not acceptable.
And so he's right.
I was wrong.
But you make it sound like you're a bystander, an eyewitness.
You were the director of the FBI.
Well, a lot of this was going on, sir.
Sure.
I'm responsible for that.
That's what I'm telling you.
I was wrong.
I was overconfident as director.
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
I love the comic.
Man, he's become just, wow.
Remember when that guy was the image of the lawman?
Showed up like Gary Cooper in High Noon.
I'm here to do some frontier justice.
And now it's, well, I guess the mistake's made.
And Chris Wallace is like, well, yeah, you were in charge of the agents.
Right, I was overconfident.
The overconfidence wasn't the problem.
Maybe.
Maybe is that there was a system of bias in which the people who are investigating this thing thought that they were going to come down on one side or the other.
And by the way, if you notice the treatment of the Hillary Clinton case next to the treatment of the Donald Trump case, what you see is that top members of the FBI were firmly convinced that Hillary had done nothing wrong.
James Comey rewrote the law in order to make it that Hillary Clinton had done nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, his FBI was pursuing a FISA warrant against Carter Page that, according to the IG, was rife with 17 errors on four separate applications.
There were people working on this thing over and over.
Error after error after error.
The continued involvement of the crap steel dossier in the entire investigation.
Chris Wallace asks the relevant question.
He says, why is it that every single mistake was made in the same direction?
How exactly are you claiming there was no bias here?
Hey, this is exactly right!
This is exactly right!
Horowitz says there was no political bias in opening the investigation.
He talks about problems with the five big problems with the FISA process.
But isn't it harder to argue that there was no political bias overall when you see 17 mistakes made by three teams on four separate FISA applications?
And this is exactly right.
This is exactly right.
If you read the actual IG report, the claim is that he has to overcome a very low standard in order to find that there was no bias.
All he has to do...
is overcome the presumption that there was bias, meaning all he has to do is say, OK, they give a plausible excuse that that bias is not the explanation.
I'll just accept that.
But the fact is that if you looked at this many errors, it's like the arguments about bias in the media.
People on the right, they look at social medias, Twitter, how Twitter runs its business, how Google runs its business.
They say, OK, why is that every single error committed by these businesses cuts against the right?
They look at the media, they look at The New York Times and The Washington Post.
When was the last time that the New York Times or the Washington Post had to correct a story because it was too biased in favor of the right or against somebody on the left?
And the answer is pretty much never.
And so we say, right, when all the errors line up in one direction, this is no longer just people making mistakes.
This is people making mistakes in a particular direction.
And that's exactly what happened over at the FBI.
Meanwhile, Adam Schiff, it turns out, was lying pretty much openly to the American people.
There were these dueling memos that went out.
We reviewed them at the time, one from Devin Nunes and one from Adam Schiff, about the nature of the FISA warrant.
Devin Nunes had suggested that the FISA warrant was completely botched, that it was based on the Steele dossier, that the judge had not been properly informed of the bias inside the Steele dossier.
And Schiff had said, no, no, no, the FISA warrant was perfectly fine.
Here's Chris Wallace pointing out to Adam Schiff, dude, you seem to have lied to the American people.
At that time, in 2018, you said the FBI and Department of Justice did not, quote, omit material information.
Apparently, you did not know at the time that, in fact, Steele's main Russian sources had told the FBI that he had misrepresented what that Russian source had said, and that the FBI knew at the time that Carter Page, in fact, was acting as a contact, as an unofficial source for the CIA.
Given what you know now, we talked earlier to Director Comey and he basically said I was wrong in what I represented back in 2018.
Are you willing to admit that you were wrong in your defense of the FBI's FISA process?
I'm certainly willing to admit that the Inspector General found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of.
Oh, that he was unaware of.
He was unaware of them.
He kept claiming over and over and over that he had insider information that Trump was going to be unmasked as a Russian cat's paw.
And now it's like, oh, well, I just didn't have the information.
Oh, is that what it is?
Or is that you're a congenital liar and that you spend a lot of your time lying, Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment process against Trump?
It is impossible to separate out all these strands.
And for the American people, I think it's very difficult to separate out all these strands.
You got Comey and the FBI committing a series of, at best, errors that harmed the president, leading to a two-year investigation that ends up finding nothing in the way of actual Trump-Russia collusion.
And then that's followed by a Ukraine process that's led by Adam Schiff, the same guy who was leading up the Trump-Mueller investigation in the House and apparently lying repeatedly to the American public.
All that's going to come out from this is that the American people don't have time to watch all this.
They don't.
They don't have time to separate out all the strands.
And the reason they don't have time to separate out all the strands is because everyone here is a politically motivated actor.
There is not even a shred of honesty apparently on any side.
And so most Americans are going to go, either I like Trump or I don't like Trump.
Either the economy is good or the economy isn't.
And that's how I'm going to vote.
That's how this thing comes down in the end.
And that's why you're starting to see the Democrats panic.
And it really is panic.
There are two separate articles in the New York Times today.
Trying to talk down the economy.
When I say talk down the economy, I don't mean like they're saying that the economy is going to downturn.
Everybody always says that.
I remember saying it during the Obama years.
Oh sure, you know, the economy is not as strong as Trump says, as Obama says it is.
There are two separate articles in the New York Times today talking about why GDP numbers are false and also why Trump is not succeeding in the swing states.
Okay, there's only one problem.
He is succeeding in the swing states and the economy is incredibly, incredibly strong right now.
There is an article in the New York Times by Ben Castleman and Carl Russell.
It says there are economic warning signs for Trump in the Midwest.
And then it shows a graphic.
And the graphic shows percentage change in total employment.
Every single state in the United States has seen an increase in change in total employment between December 2016 and October 2019.
Since Trump took office.
Every.
Single.
State.
By the way, the states that are doing the best?
Unsurprisingly happen to be the states that are the least regulated and have the highest access to human capital.
States in the South tend to be doing particularly well.
Nevada has seen a 9.1% increase in employment.
Texas has seen a 6.6% increase in employment.
Colorado has seen a 6.4% increase in employment.
Utah, 9.6%.
I mean, these are big, big numbers.
Florida, 6.9%.
What are the areas that have not been growing as fast?
Naturally, the areas that you would expect, right?
The areas with manufacturing areas that have been downturning for a while because of technological increases.
But still, Minnesota is up 2.2%.
Wisconsin is up 1.6%.
Michigan is up 1.8%.
Ohio is up 1.6%.
Michigan is up 1.8%.
Ohio is up 1.6%.
Pennsylvania is up 2.6%.
It's interesting to note that there are some lefty states, liberal states that have really been lagging as well.
Ohio's up 1.6% as well.
According to the New York Times, though, job growth has been slow in key states.
Yes, but it's called job growth.
Job growth.
Apart from agriculture and manufacturing, everything is going okay, said Ernie Gross, an economist at Creighton University in Omaha, who publishes an economic index that tracks nine states from Minnesota to Arkansas.
In this part of the country, that's not comforting.
Those are two industries we depend on.
Yes, but those industries were never going to be held up absent massive subsidies from the federal government.
But I love that the New York Times is trying to claim that this is a problem for Trump.
Again, economic growth across the board is not a problem for Trump.
It is a very good thing for President Trump.
There's another article in the New York Times today from David Leonhardt called, Why You Shouldn't Believe These GDP Numbers.
Funny, you seem to believe them when Barack Obama was president.
Now, all of a sudden, you don't believe the GDP numbers.
Instead, it's that Americans are dissatisfied.
They're dissatisfied.
Because GDP keeps on rising, but it no longer tracks the well-being of most Americans.
Well, actually, it does track the well-being of most Americans in terms of the products and services available to them.
In terms of living standards in the United States, it does track that fairly well.
The GDP undervalues the growth of the American economy, because the GDP has always been about what is spent on products and services.
So, services that are free, like for example, every time you use Google Maps, you just added value to your life.
That did not add to the GDP in any way.
But, so many of the things that we take advantage of on a daily basis are things that don't add to GDP.
America's growth has been far more explosive than GDP numbers have shown over the past few decades because information technology is particularly hard to value inside GDP.
But according to David Leonhardt, GDP is overestimating the amount of growth happening in the economy and that's why you should vote Trump.
The desperation here, you can feel it, it's getting strong.
Okay, time for some things I like and then things I hate.
So, would you like to watch an incredibly stupid movie that is also fun?
So, I'm into incredibly stupid movies that are fun.
My wife particularly likes them.
I have Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on rental, but I know that I can't watch that with my wife.
She's not a Tarantino person.
I'm not either, but at least I can take the blood and gore.
What she is into is dumb action movies, which is one of the reasons I love my wife.
Dr. Shapiro is very into dumb action movies, and this is a completely stupid action movie that has some great action sequences and is also very dumb, as I say.
Hobbes and Shaw.
So, first of all, let's just say this.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson is a national treasure, and everything that he is in is wonderful, and I don't care how stupid it is.
Rampage is wonderful, no matter how dumb it is.
I will go and I will watch Jumanji 2.
I will do it.
Don't make me turn this bus around.
It will happen.
This movie is a spin-off of the Fast and Furious franchise, and it features Jason Statham, another one of my personal favorites.
If you've never seen him in The Transporter, he's great.
He's great in The Italian Job.
Also, they make a kind of cute reference to it in this movie.
Hobbs & Shaw.
It's at least half an hour too long, but it is dramatically stupid and wonderful at the same time.
Here is a little bit of the preview for Hobbs & Shaw.
- Serious trouble.
- That's an understatement.
- Let's get old school.
- It's so dumb.
- Well, all right.
- Okay, this movie is so publish and so ridiculous.
And yet, it is fun.
Idris Elba plays the villain.
I'm a big Idris Elba fan.
I have said that Idris Elba would make a good James Bond, which he would.
But this movie, I can't say it enough.
Dumb action movies are America.
And if you love America, then this is the kind of movie that you're probably into.
So check it out, Hobbs & Shaw, available on rental for like $4.99 on Amazon.
So that was definitely a good deal.
If you've got a big screen at home, Totally worth it.
Okay.
It's so silly.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So the House Democrats and President Trump have been ushering in an era of goodwill, believe it or not, when it comes to passing legislation.
So over the weekend, the House Democrats passed a National Defense Authorization Act budget by a 377 to 48 vote.
Basically, everybody wants to clear the tables for 2020.
We will be spending $738 billion on a defense bill.
It has some good stuff.
It funds the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The space force and continued U.S.
support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
It hands Trump a big win, according to Business Insider, as Democrats are simultaneously on the brink of impeaching him.
It also does raise spending.
We're blowing out spending at insane, insane rates.
Also, the Democrats are working on passing the USMCA, which is the replacement for NAFTA, which does have some enormous giveaways to the unions.
It basically restricts the amount of a car that has to be manufactured in the United States in order to avoid tariffs.
It restricts The the wages that can be paid in other countries in order to avoid tariffs.
So that's good for American car manufacturing.
It is not good at all for the for the American consumer.
It's good for unions.
But again, as we saw in the 1940s, 50s and 60s in the United States car industry, what is good for American unions?
When it comes to the car industry, it's not particularly good for the car industry in the long run because eventually those tariffs come down and everybody else is more competitive.
Pat Toomey is very critical of the new NAFTA deal.
Here he is explaining.
We've had trade deficits with the rest of the world for over 40 consecutive years.
And what country has the biggest economy, the highest standard of living, the strongest growth, and the best prospects going forward?
We do.
And that's because trade deficits don't matter.
That money gets reinvested back in the United States.
So unfortunately, USMCA is an exercise through all kinds of new provisions to diminish trade and that's why I hope Republicans will reconsider this.
We've historically recognized that we're all better off with more open markets.
Why do you think the administration thought Pelosi had more leverage than they did?
I don't have an explanation for that, Chuck, but in the end there's no question it's a complete capitulation to Pelosi.
Now there's a lot of talk about how this is going to help auto companies in the United States.
It may help domestically based auto companies, but a lot of auto companies that are based in foreign nations have built factories in the United States.
The increase in labor costs in places like Mexico and the United States means that maybe those cars get built overseas instead and then shipped into the United States if they're not going to be able to meet those requirements of being manufactured in the United States anyway.
According to the Wall Street Journal, what is actually in the USMCA is US labor unions and Democrats have tried to unionize Mexican workers to drive up wages in the Mexican auto industry, which of course means that cars are going to cost more for American consumers.
All fun and games for many of the members of the unions, like the UAW.
Not necessarily fun and games for the American consumer, who eventually is going to opt for the cheaper car anyway, because that is what has historically happened.
USMCA, according to the Wall Street Journal, also significantly tightens the rules that the auto industry has to follow in order to trade vehicles duty-free in the United States, in North America.
A certain proportion of a car will have to be produced by workers with higher wages.
A greater proportion of components will have to originate in North America.
Again, that hurts consumers.
A deal to pass USMCA means farmers of major crops don't have to worry about President Trump potentially pulling out of the existing NAFTA.
It leaves them fewer major export markets.
This is the good side of the USMCA.
Big drug makers are likely to be disappointed because the Democrats did push the Trump administration to remove language that would have protected expensive biologic drugs from generic imitators for 10 years.
The existing NAFTA treaty has no such drug protections.
So there are some upsides and some downsides here.
Bottom line is we are blowing out spending.
Nancy Pelosi got a lot of wins for the unions inside the new NAFTA.
And a lot of this is happening in the run-up to the election, specifically because Trump wants the tables cleared.
This is also why he has signed a partial trade deal with the Chinese in order to clear the decks for 2020.
Again, politically smart.
Good for the United States long run?
Probably not.
There should be bipartisan understanding that China is in fact a geopolitical enemy of the United States.
But absent that understanding, Trump signing this thing, it makes political sense.
He doesn't want the Chinese sinking the economy a month before the election.
Meanwhile, Democrats are working on even more legislation.
According to the Washington Examiner, the House will vote on legislation to fund the government for the fiscal year, which will dodge a government shutdown, and lawmakers will also likely vote on a long-awaited major trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada this week.
Pelosi, a California Democrat, has won passage of several major bills in December, including prescription drug legislation, a defense spending authorization measure, and a bill that overhauls the immigrant guest worker program.
In a clear signal that Pelosi wants to shift the focus away from impeachment, she designated Representative Kim Schreier, a Washington Democrat who represents a swing district, to deliver the party's swing address.
Weekly address, rather.
Schreier downplayed the impeachment vote.
vote.
She said, in my district, it's not impeachment.
It's not what is on the front page of the newspapers in Washington, D.C.
It's what are you going to do to bring down the cost of prescription drugs?
Republicans who oppose the impeachment have repeatedly criticized House Democrats for focusing on impeachment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the trade deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
He said it would not get a full vote until after the Senate takes up a trial to consider the articles of impeachment.
So Democrats are trying to force this through, again, demonstrating they don't actually have a lot of faith in the impeachment effort.
They believe that in the end, this is going to harm them, which is why they're trying to ram through a bunch of legislation.
Trump also wants a bunch of legislation rammed through so he can add to his list of accomplishments, even if those accomplishments are not particularly conservative.
And I am starting to hear kickback from certain conservative members of the Senate and the House of Representatives saying that these deals that he's cutting with Pelosi have been like every other deal he's cut with Pelosi, rife with enormous amounts of government spending and giveaways to Nancy Pelosi's key constituencies.
Getting things done at the federal level was never the goal of the Founding Fathers, but since we now live in a world where it's considered a complete catastrophe if any sort of gridlock takes place, of course Trump is going to do this in the lead up to 2020.
That's not a justification for signing bad bills.
It is an explanation of what exactly Trump is doing.
So impeachment means nothing?
It's not going to accomplish anything.
The only thing in the end that is going to continue to result is America blowing out the spending, and that's on Republicans and it's on Democrats.
Okay, we'll be here a little bit later for two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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