All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 20, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
59:02
The Impeachment Trial Of The New Century | Ep. 935
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The impeachment trial is almost ready to begin in the Senate.
The Democratic race remains wide open and the Women's March falls apart.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
Well, I hope you got your rest this weekend because there is a lot of stuff that is happening this week.
A little bit later on in the show, we'll get to these gun rights protests in Virginia being maligned by the media.
We'll get to the women's march, but we begin with your impeachment update.
So the New York Times basically admitting at this point that the Democrats do not have enough material to impeach.
Report from the New York Times today, Democrats seek more testimony and evidence for impeachment trial.
Which sort of requires us to ask the question, why would they need more testimony and evidence, given the fact that I was informed they had great testimony and great evidence.
I was informed of this.
I was informed that they had an open and shut case.
So why do they need more testimony and evidence?
I mean, they gravely and soberly and seriously and somberly announced the impeachment, and then they soberly, seriously, sadly walked over the impeachment charges.
From the House to the Senate, and I was informed that this thing was a done deal, that basically they had all the evidence they needed.
Well, now the New York Times is reporting, with President Trump's impeachment trial getting underway, Democrats are intensifying their demands for more testimony and documents that could add to the already voluminous evidence against him and bolster their case by shedding new light on several key questions.
Now, as I mentioned last week, this would be about the time where you should have a complete case.
You can call additional witnesses, of course.
The Senate can do its own investigation.
All of that is true.
But the fact that Democrats are now relying on the Senate Republicans to do so demonstrates a giant failure on their own part to actually do their research, to wait for the proper witnesses.
Does it not?
The New York Times says, despite the White House strategy of blocking testimony from top officials and rejecting demands for documents, the Senate will have in front of it various accounts of how Mr. Trump eagerly sought to persuade Ukraine's new president You want to know what the Democrats thought they had?
matters that could benefit him in his reelection campaign.
Those matters are dealings in Ukraine involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and purported Ukrainian meddling in the American 2016 presidential election.
Now, notice how The New York Times is already morphing the charge.
Originally, you want to know what the Democrats thought they had?
Go back to Adam Schiff's silly fake reading of President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
If you actually go back and you listen to what Schiff said, what Schiff said is that Trump had called up Zelensky and then he had said, I want you to make up information about Joe Biden.
And in return, we want our military aid, right?
We'll give you the military aid as long as you give us some fake information about Joe Biden, right?
Make up an investigation.
Just make it up.
That would be impeachable.
That would be a crime.
That would actually be bribery.
But they've not proved any of the elements of that, and so instead they have now broadened this out.
So the way the New York Times is describing the charges now is that Trump pursued investigations into two matters that could benefit him in his reelection campaign.
Okay, well again, that standard is too vague, as I have been saying since the very beginning.
If the standard for mis...
For some sort of bad action in a foreign country is doing something that theoretically could benefit you in a re-election campaign.
Welcome to foreign policy, where nearly every president does something that could benefit them in their re-election campaign.
The question is whether you violated the law or whether you engaged in some sort of high-level corruption.
According to the New York Times, in part because of the White House's decision not to cooperate, the record of actions by Mr. Trump and his underlings is riddled with gaps.
That's the admission right there.
That is the New York Times description phrase, riddled with gaps.
And new evidence has been surfacing at the 11th hour.
No, there's not been any new evidence surfacing.
You have the testimony of Some kook named Lev Parnas, who was, according to the U.S.
DOJ, working for Ukrainian oligarch and trying to manipulate events so that the U.S.
ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, would be fired, and then he's been going around on national TV basically lying about it to the cheers of the media.
According to the New York Times, testimony from Mr. Trump's senior advisors could illuminate how overt the president's efforts were, though it is unclear if that would persuade any Republican senators to abandon their defense of the president.
The bias in the media is it's all fake guys.
Guys, it's all fake.
On Sunday, Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead House impeachment manager, said he was concerned that the CIA and National Security Agency were withholding information about Ukraine out of fear of angering the president.
Well, the president is the head of the executive branch.
The CIA and the National Security Agency do not actually work for Adam Schiff.
Schiff said, the NSA in particular is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial.
Okay, well, you could subpoena the documents and then you could wait for it to be adjudicated by a court and then they have to turn it over.
But they didn't do that.
Instead, they decided to rush forward with all of this.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas said, This to me seems to undermine or indicate that they are getting cold feet or have a lack of confidence in what they've done so far.
And that, of course, is exactly correct.
Now, President Trump, for his part, has had a couple of his lawyers in this matter, Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone.
He counseled to the president, one to the White House, one to the president personally.
Sekulow is for the president personally.
Cipollone is for the White House.
They have issued only a seven page response to the articles of impeachment.
So the articles of impeachment are like a hundred pages.
Most of it is filled with stuff that we already know.
We've gone through most of it here on the show.
Trump is like, this thing does not even meet basic standards of evidentiary scrutiny.
And so they issued what effectively is a seven page rebuttal.
And it's just a harsh letter, effectively.
The letter says, the articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.
This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away.
The highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president began the day he was inaugurated and continues to this day.
The articles of impeachment are constitutionally invalid on their face.
They failed to allege any crime or violation of law whatsoever, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors as required by the Constitution.
They are the result of a lawless process that violated basic due process and fundamental fairness.
Nothing in these articles could permit even beginning to consider removing a duly elected president or warrant nullifying an election and subverting the will of the American people.
And then the letter goes on this way that the process violates all precedent and that the articles of impeachment are in front of the Constitution.
All of that is simply editorializing.
It's not unconstitutional.
Unconstitutional would be if the Senate with 51 votes decided to oust the president, right?
That would be unconstitutional.
But they can impeach for any reason.
I mean, impeachment is, in fact, a political process.
And the process in the House was run like other processes in the House have been run.
It was run stupidly.
It was run in biased fashion.
Partisans were running the thing, but that is not any surprise.
At this point, Cipollone and Sekulow go through the charges.
They say the first article, the article with regard to abuse of power, fails on its face to state an impeachable offense.
It alleges no crime at all, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors.
In fact, it alleges no violation of law.
House Democrats' abuse of power claim would do lasting damage to the separation of powers under the Constitution.
And they say that Trump has never in any way abused the powers of the presidency.
And they say that it was a perfect phone call and all the rest of President Trump's defense.
And then they say the second article of impeachment also fails to state an impeachable offense.
This would be the one about obstruction of Congress.
They say, to the contrary, the president's assertion of legitimate executive branch confidentiality interests grounded in separation of powers cannot constitute obstruction of Congress.
Now, they are correct that the articles of impeachment do not allege a crime.
Now, is that the end of the story?
Of course not.
I mean, the House, the Senate, they can impeach and convict for any reason whatsoever.
You don't have to have a criminal offense, but Speaking of precedent, has there ever been an impeachment effort that was not based on some violation of law?
Not really.
Not really.
So that is unique.
And Trump's attorneys are right to point that out.
Okay, we'll get to more of this in just one second.
Trump has now formed his legal team.
It includes a couple of sort of big names.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, Let us talk about how you can save money quickly and easily, and you can do it for free.
Okay, I use this service, it's called Honey.
You install Honey on your computer, it runs in the background of your computer, and then it just saves you money, like literally every time you shop.
It goes online for you, and then it finds all of the applicable codes, and then it applies them to what you are buying.
I probably saved thousands of dollars at this point using Honey, and I did the other day.
I went to the MLB store and I bought myself a Chicago White Sox jersey and Honey went looking for a code and saved me a little bit of money.
And a little bit of money adds up the more you purchase.
I purchase like everything online.
It works on Amazon.
It works on eBay.
It works on pretty much everything that you can buy online.
Honey has found it's over 18 million members, over $2 billion in savings.
Honey supports over 30,000 stores online.
Including Macy's, Target, Sephora, Best Buy, and more.
And they're adding more every day.
And users love honey.
And there's a reason for that, because why the hell wouldn't you?
I mean, it's saving you money right now.
Using honey feels pretty great.
Think of it as a little daily victory and making your wallet a little bit heavier as opposed to making it a little bit lighter.
Plus, it's free to use.
It installs in just a few seconds.
Get honey for free at joinhoney.com, slash Ben.
That is J-O-I-N, honey.com, slash Ben.
Joinhoney.com, slash Ben.
Go check them out right now.
Okay, President Trump has formed His legal team includes a couple of heavy hitters in terms of big names.
Alan Dershowitz, who's a guest on the show last week, and of course, longtime famous lawyer who has been involved in trials ranging from the OJ trial to the trial Of a man who is accused of killing his wife, and it wasn't true, or at least it didn't seem to be true.
Dershowitz has been involved in a lot of very famous cases, and so bringing him aboard sort of gives this whole thing the Hollywood appeal.
Kenneth Starr has also joined on, and people are going nuts over this.
How could Kenneth Starr, the man who went after Bill Clinton, now be defending Donald Trump?
Well, because in the Bill Clinton trial, he actually committed perjury.
Yes, Kenneth Starr did a full investigation on uncovered crimes.
Here, no crimes have actually been uncovered, which is why the articles of impeachment don't include any crimes.
Nonetheless, George Conway, who has become famous simply by virtue of the fact that his last name is Conway and his wife is famous, and now we are supposed to take his legal analysis even more seriously than we would if you were just some rando lawyer in the Washington D.C.
area, he has a piece in the Washington Post today that says, This is what happens when you don't pay your legal bills.
President Trump, whose businesses, and now campaign, Have left a long trail of unpaid bills behind them, has never discriminated when it comes to stiffing people who work for him.
That includes lawyers, which is part of the reason he found the need to make some curious last-minute tweaks to his team, announcing the addition of the legal odd couple Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr.
The president has consistently encountered difficulty in hiring good lawyers to defend him.
In 2017, after Robert Mueller became special counsel, Trump couldn't find a high-end law firm that would take him as a client.
His reputation for non-payment preceded him.
Now he's trying to make up an excuse, Conway, for why a big firm wouldn't take on Trump.
The answer is a big firm wouldn't take on Trump because there are too many lawyers who don't like Trump and they're afraid of the blowback they'd get from their other clients.
Right, if Davis Polk Wright Tremaine had picked up Trump as a client, they would get enormous blowback from the partners, from the other associates.
They don't care about the associates, but certainly from their clientele.
This is... Okay, here's the real reason, and Conway buries it.
Of course, being cheap wasn't the only reason Trump struck out among the nation's legal elite.
There was the fact that he would be an erratic client who'd never take reasonable direction.
Firms also understood that taking on Trump would kill their recruiting efforts.
That would be the actual issue.
That left Trump to be personally defended in the Mueller investigation by a random patchwork of counsel, including Jay Sekulow, a lawyer specializing in religious liberty cases, and John Dowd, a Washington solo practitioner who, according to Bob Woodward, viewed Trump as an effing liar.
Dowd denies that.
And then Trump had the assistance of Rudy Giuliani.
Wow, so that means that Clinton was innocent because he could get big-name lawyers to defend him from well-established firms.
with heavy hitter Bob Bennett's handle, the Paula Jones case, and the elite Washington defense from Williams and Connolly, led by the brilliant David...
Wow, so that means that Clinton was innocent because he could get big-name lawyers to defend him from well-established firms.
Either that or it meant he was a Democrat.
But according to George Conway, it's very bad that Dershowitz and Starr are now defending the president.
He says, Dershowitz may be a genius in some ways, but he's not necessarily the advocate you want on your side.
Judges have told me they find him condescending in manner and tone.
Wow.
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
Judges told George Conway a thing?
That's crazy.
And then I love this.
As his former Harvard colleague, Professor Lawrence Tribe has put it, Dershowitz revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial, but pretty close to indefensible.
This would be the same Lawrence Tribe who spent the last several years absolutely losing his mind and just tweeting garbage that makes no sense because he has Trump derangement syndrome like terminal Trump derangement syndrome.
George Conway is also very upset with Kenneth Starr.
He says, I know and like Starr, but I can't comprehend what he's doing here.
He's best known as the independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of Clinton.
That's hardly helpful for Trump because Clinton was a piker compared with Trump.
Or alternatively, it's actually good for Trump because Ken Starr, who knows what an impeachable offense looks like, is saying this is not an impeachable offense.
Okay, so that is the setup.
Alan Dershowitz was on the Sunday shows making the rounds.
He made the case that abusive power is not impeachable.
Now, here is the reality.
Anything is impeachable.
And the media are, of course, jumping on this.
to suggest that that Dershowitz doesn't understand what impeachment is.
That, of course, is incredibly silly.
Dershowitz fully understands that you can impeach for any reason.
He is just saying that in his opinion and in the opinion of most senators, if you are going to impeach somebody, you need to allege a crime.
Here's Alan Dershowitz explaining that just saying abuse of power does not make does not make activity impeachable.
In order for a president to be impeached, and Johnson was impeached on charges that didn't include criminal conduct, he argued successfully to the Senate that criminal-like conduct is required.
That argument prevailed.
I will be making that argument as a lawyer on behalf of the president's defense team against impeachment.
Now, the media went nuts over all of this, suggesting that Dershowitz is saying something crazy.
No, he is not.
He's pointing out a very obvious truth, which is, if you're going to try to impeach a president, typically you should actually register some sort of criminal activity, like an actual crime.
Now, last week, they tried to suggest that Trump had violated the law because the Government Accountability Office suggested that his administration had not given a special message to Congress about why they had delayed aid to Ukraine.
But as I mentioned last week, that same statute has a remedy in the statute for what is supposed to happen, and none of it actually involves the impeachment of the President of the United States.
Normally impeachment is reserved for situations in which the President commits an actual crime that would send him to jail, like perjury.
And then, because you cannot actually charge a President, With a criminal offense, then you have to impeach him in order so that you can free up that actual prosecution because then you have basically a constitutional impasse.
The same is not true when the president just violates the law and there's an actual remedy in the law for when the president or the executive branch violate the law, which is exactly what happened in this government accountability office report.
In just a second, we'll get to more of Alan Dershowitz.
Then we'll get to the Democrats who are being very sober and serious and somber and fist bumping each other on Friday nights.
Seriously, on national TV, fist bumping each other.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about how easy it is to rack up big credit card charges.
It's very easy, unfortunately, to rack up these big credit card charges and you figure I'll pay for it now and then I will just repay it later.
The problem is that if you wait like a day extra, suddenly you're paying these exorbitant fees.
You can bankrupt yourself this way really, really easily.
I have friends and family who have done this sort of thing.
This is why you should be looking to pay off your credit card balances and save with a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream.
You can roll multiple credit card payments into just one payment at a lower fixed rate.
Lightstream's credit card consolidation loans have rates as low as 5.95% APR with AutoPay, which is a lot lower than the national average interest rate for this sort of thing, which is over 20% APR.
Plus, there are absolutely no fees, no application fees, no origination fees, no transaction fees, no prepayment penalties.
The application is quick.
And it's easy and you can apply right from your phone.
Lightstream believes that people with good credits deserve a better loan experience.
That's exactly what they deliver.
So this is not for somebody who's like blown out your credit and you have zero credit score and you've really like, it's over for you.
This is for somebody who has pretty good credit and you've just fallen behind on your credit card payments and now you need to get out without spending a fortune.
Just for my listeners, apply now and you get a special interest rate discount.
The only way to get this discount is to go to lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
Again, that's L-I-G-H-T.
S-T-R-E-A-M.com.
Lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
Subject to credit approval rate includes 0.50% auto pay discount.
Terms and conditions apply.
Offers our subject to change without notice.
Visit Lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
Get all the information and go check them out.
If you've fallen behind and you have good credit, go check them out right now at Lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
That's Lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
Okay, so Alan Dershowitz is doing the right thing as a lawyer.
He was asked on national TV.
Are you saying that Trump's phone call was perfect?
That Trump never did anything wrong?
Dershowitz is like, no, I'm not going to say that.
I'm just going to say this is not impeachable because the standard of law is not the president did nothing wrong.
The standard of law is impeachable.
The president's brief filed last night says very clearly the president did nothing wrong and you're saying you're not willing to endorse that statement.
I did not read that brief or sign that brief.
That's not part of my mandate.
My mandate is to present the constitutional argument.
And if the constitutional argument succeeds, we don't reach that issue because you can't charge a president with impeachable conduct if it doesn't fit within the criteria for the constitution.
So he is right about all of this, but the Democrats are already ecstatic because they got what they wanted, right?
Nancy Pelosi got up last week and she said, he's always impeached for all time.
She was very solemn and sober and sad.
It was a very moving moment.
When a bunch of House Democrats who hate Trump and wanted him impeached on day one were impeaching the president and we were told that it was very solemn and sad and sober.
So Nancy Pelosi shows up on Bill Maher to be solemn and sad and sober wearing her gold lamé outfit left over from the Oscars and here is Nancy Pelosi sitting with Bill Maher and fist bumping him, physically fist bumping him over impeaching the president because obviously this is a sober, sad, solemn occasion.
Thank you so much for waiting till we got back on the air before you started the impeachment.
Yeah, and she's happy and he's happy and everybody's happy because the president's impeached and it's so solemn and so... Remember that time when she said it was super sober and she was saving the Constitution?
And look at her, she is so...
How do you take these folks seriously?
It's nearly impossible to take these folks seriously.
Then you have Adam Schiff, who's trotting out there, suggesting that he's out there to protect the Constitution after several years of lying about having secret information that would tie Trump to Russia in such a way that Trump would be impeached over the Mueller report.
That ended up being a complete dud.
And so Adam Schiff just moved right on to Ukraine.
And then he goes on national TV and he suggests that when Dershowitz says abuse of power is not impeachable, no, abuse of power would have appalled the founders.
Tell me more about appalling the founders, dude who literally spends his days camped out outside the CNN tent.
Abuse of power is at the center of what the framers intended an impeachable offense to be.
The logic of that absurdist position that's being now adopted by the president is he could give away the state of Alaska.
He could withhold execution of sanctions on Russia for interfering in the last election.
to induce or coerce Russia to interfere in the next one.
That would have appalled, the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit. - There's nothing I like more than a man who lied about Trump and Russia going on TV and maintaining that he didn't lie about Trump and Russia and that Trump and Russia were actually the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit. - There's Very, very trustworthy, folks.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to figure out exactly how they're going to thread this whole witness needle in the impeachment, because here's the problem.
If they call somebody like Lev Parnas, if they try to bring in a witness like Lev Parnas, who, as we discussed last week, is this Ukrainian Operator, or this American operator in Ukraine who is dealing on behalf of the Ukrainian oligarch and violating law in the process, and then under indictment for falsifying documents and lying to the federal government, he's going around on the media and blaming Trump for all of his mis-action, for all of his malfeasance.
If Democrats call that guy, it's pretty obvious that Hunter Biden is also going to be called, and that ain't going to go well for Hunter Biden, because it turns out that Hunter Biden is utterly unqualified for anything except being the neighborhood janitor, and he's been using his daddy's last name to fly around the world picking up bags of cash.
Okay, so Sherrod Brown, the senator from Ohio, he was on CNN over the weekend suggesting that Parnas should testify, but Hunter Biden is not relevant.
So somehow, Lev Parnas is deeply relevant, but Hunter Biden, whose activity in Ukraine lies at the very center of President Trump asking the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter Biden.
That would be irrelevant, according to Sherrod Brown.
I assume we want him to testify.
I know we want Bolton.
I know we want people who are in the room.
I don't have strong feelings yet until I hear from the House managers and what they want to see.
But I assume, why not have witnesses that have a lot of information about this?
So I think Parnas makes sense.
Okay, and then he says he wants Lev Parnas to testify.
But Hunter Biden, I guess we'll call him.
I mean, if we have to.
But why would we even want to talk to Hunter Biden?
The person whose activity led off this entire debacle.
Here is Sherrod Brown again saying yes on Lev Parnas.
But Hunter Biden, I guess we'll do it if we have to.
But like, is he really relevant, guys?
We take the position that we want to hear from witnesses.
I don't know what Hunter Biden has to do with the phone call.
But you're fine hearing from him?
I'm fine with hearing.
I mean, I understand.
I'm not a lawyer.
I understand both sides get to call witnesses.
I'm not sure that a lot of Republicans think.
I mean, I think many Republicans think that's a distraction.
By the way, Bernie Sanders is putting out notices today in advance of Iowa.
He literally just put out, his campaign put out what they call the burn notice.
It says that Joe Biden has a big corruption problem.
So the real reason Democrats don't want Hunter Biden testifying is because it might actually show that President Trump, his suspicions were not completely unfounded, that Hunter Biden was simply serving as a bag man for himself.
And using Joe Biden's last name in order to do so.
Meanwhile, the same Democrats who are suggesting that we must, must, must have witnesses back in 1999 were suggesting that we should have no witnesses.
Now, I think we should have as many witnesses we want.
I don't really care.
I think we should have as many witnesses.
Well, I'm not going to stand here and pretend that I think that it's.
That it is a good policy to prevent witnesses from testifying in the Senate impeachment trial.
I think the American people deserve to know what happens in nearly every aspect.
I think transparency is good.
I do.
But the Democrats don't think so.
Back in 1999, one day before President Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial before the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who's now the Senate Minority Leader, penned a passionate letter outlining why the process had taken unfair toll on the nation, according to the New York Post.
He noted that the president believed he had not crossed the line, he praised the large threshold needed to get a conviction in the Senate, and then he went on record suggesting that the whole thing had been a giant waste of time.
He said it has shaken me that we stand at the brink of removing a president not because of a popular groundswell to remove him and not because of the magnitude of the wrongs he's committed, but because conditions in the late 20th century America have made it possible for a small group of people who hate Bill Clinton and hate his policies to very cleverly and very doggedly exploit the institutions of freedom that we hold dear and almost succeed in undoing him.
He says, if you had asked me one year ago if people like this with such obvious political motives could use our court to play the media and tantalize the legislative branch to achieve their ends of bringing down the president, I would have said, not a chance.
That doesn't happen in America, but it almost happened.
And then he says, what Bill Clinton did was wrong and arrogant.
We all agree.
We are all angered, but let's express some sympathy.
And now you've got Chuck Schumer leading up the mob against Trump on this without actually advocating a crime that was actually committed.
Pretty amazing stuff from Chuck Schumer, going all the way back to 1999.
Meanwhile, Jerry Nadler is really objecting to Hunter Biden being called.
He, of course, is the head of the House Judiciary Committee.
So, Jerry Nadler, head of the House Judiciary Committee, very much in favor of calling people like Lev Parnas, who he suggests he would like to see called.
Now he says that we should not even request Hunter Biden testify because that is doing Trump's dirty work.
This whole controversy about whether there should be witnesses is really a question of, does the Senate want to have a fair trial, or are they part of the cover-up of the President?
Any Republican senator who says there should be no witnesses, or even that witnesses should be negotiated, is part of the cover-up.
Did the president, as the evidence shows that he did, betray his country by conspiring with a foreign country to try to rig the election?
Hunter Biden has nothing to say about that.
Their asking for Hunter Biden is just more of a smear of Hunter Biden that the president is trying to get the Ukraine to do.
So yes, witnesses, but not those witnesses, guys.
We can't have those witnesses.
Those would be bad witnesses.
Meanwhile, Adam Schiff.
He was asked about Lev Parnas' credibility, and he won't even answer whether he thinks that Lev Parnas is credible.
But we should call him anyway.
So no on Hunter Biden, but yes on Lev Parnas, who is currently under indictment for lying to the federal government and falsifying documents.
It is the fact with many of the people surrounding the president that they end up indicted.
These are the people that the president has chosen to work with.
People like Michael Cohen, like Lev Parnas, like so many others, Paul Manafort, and these are people that do have information about the president's misconduct.
But right now, George, we don't know what witnesses will be allowed, and even if we'll be allowed witnesses, we can't really make a determination on which witnesses we'll call in the absence of knowing whether the Senate will allow any at all.
So again, Lev Parnas maybe, but Hunter Biden really not.
Chris Wallace went after Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat congressperson from New York over the weekend on Fox News.
He said, listen, you guys keep talking about how you want more witnesses and more witnesses and more witnesses, and then you say you have an open and shut case.
So which is it?
You got to pick one.
Well, we proceeded expeditiously because, you know, Trump's abuse of power, his pressuring of a foreign government, in this instance, for his own personal political gain, related to an urgent matter of national security.
You know, the notion of withholding $391 million that was allocated on a bipartisan basis... But again, you can't have it both ways, Congressman.
You say it was an urgent matter, it was a threat, and then Nancy Pelosi waited a month to even hand over the articles of impeachment.
Yeah, I'm glad you raised that, because there's two parts to this process.
I'm glad you raised that, but I'm not really that glad you raised that, Chris Wallace, because this whole thing is awkward.
So how long is this whole thing going to take?
According to Ted Cruz, it could take six to eight weeks.
In reality, it's only going to take a couple of weeks.
I do not think this is going to drag out for more than a month.
I think by the time we are midway into the Democratic primaries, this thing will be over.
Speaking of which, the 2020 Democratic presidential race continues apace.
President Trump has a very simple case to make.
He continues to make it strongly.
Which is that the Democrats are too far left to be trusted with power, especially given a strong economy.
The Democrats have pledged to take economic measures that will absolutely stop the longest, now longest recovery in the history of the United States, and a recovery that has picked up pace under President Trump.
It was very slow under Barack Obama, and it picked up pace under President Trump, including increases in wages at the low end of the income spectrum.
Here's President Trump going after the Democrats.
The far left, they want to massively raise your taxes, crush your Your businesses with regulations take away your health care and send bureaucrats to interfere with your property and second-guess every decision that you make.
The radical left in Washington wants to demolish these gains and they frankly want to destroy your way of life.
They are not for the farmer.
They are not for our military.
Okay, what he is saying here is going to be his campaign, and it's the right campaign.
And the fact is the Democrats are split.
They're not sure which way to go.
Do they move into the sort of more mainstream direction?
Do they try and grab that middle voter?
Or do they skew to the left?
That split was reflected by the editorial page of the New York Times, which hilariously today issued their endorsement in the Democratic primaries.
And they chose two people.
Two people, which is super exciting stuff!
They chose two people, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
Truly.
So if you're wondering how to spend both your votes, now you know.
You can vote once for Elizabeth Warren and once for Amy Klobuchar.
What actually happened here?
What actually happened here is they desperately wanted to endorse Elizabeth Warren, but they also recognized that they would have been viewed as hacks on behalf of Elizabeth Warren, which they are, and so they decided to also endorse a person who has no shot at winning the primaries, Amy Klobuchar, so they could cover their ass.
That's really what happened here.
In the editorial board room, it was...
We could endorse Elizabeth Warren, but we've been busy kissing her ass for the last year, and it's going to look kind of ridiculous if we now endorse her.
So let's endorse somebody who's not like an actual mainstream competitor.
We'll endorse somebody who looks a little bit more moderate, and we can say that it's all about female power, and then we'll endorse Amy Klobuchar.
Now all I can envision is the editors of the New York Times breaking a pool cue, tossing it between Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, saying, we're having tryouts.
But with that said, it's pretty hysterical.
And the editorial itself is really, really funny.
It's funny because what they think of as qualities of these candidates are just bizarre.
They're just bizarre.
By the way, the New York Breaking News, the New York Times has now suggested that both the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs will win the next Super Bowl.
According to the New York Times, American voters must choose between three sharply divergent visions of the future.
The incumbent President Donald Trump is clear about where he is guiding the Republican.
White nativism at home.
Is that really what, really?
That's what he's been clear about?
That if you vote for Trump, you're a white nativist now?
That's the way this is working?
How about all the minority people who are voting for Trump?
There are many of them.
Is it possible that maybe the New York Times is sort of pigeonholing what they think Trump voters are into a box?
And they say, in America, first unilateralism abroad, brazen corruption, escalating culture wars, a judiciary stacked with ideologues, and the veneration of a mythological past where the hierarchy in American society was defined and unchallenged.
By the way, when we speak about mythological histories, the New York Times' mythological history in the 1619 Project is utterly astonishingly bad.
So much so, that it was ripped by professional historians ranging from James McPherson to Gordon Wood.
It takes a lot of gall to suggest that the traditional history of the United States is somehow a myth.
Well, their version of the United States was that the United States was rooted in racism, white supremacy, slavery, sexism, and bigotry, and that everything in U.S.
history has been an outgrowth of that, except for the times when we overthrew the principles for just one second, and then went right back to our racism and bigotry.
It takes a lot of gall for people who push that agenda to suggest that history is being rewritten by Trump.
They say on the Democratic side, an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation.
Some in the party view President Trump as an aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible.
Then there are those who believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten they must be replaced.
The Democratic primary contest is often portrayed as a tussle between moderates and progressives.
To some extent, that's true.
But when we spent significant time with the leading candidates, the similarity of their platforms on fundamental issues became striking.
Okay, that part is true, that a lot of these so-called moderates in the Democratic Party are actually the same as the progressives when it comes to policy.
We'll get to the rest of this idiotic New York Times editorial endorsing both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, which is super unhelpful.
Wait till you get their description of Elizabeth Warren is wonderful.
We'll get to that in one second.
First, I need to talk to you about an issue that's been incredibly important to me for a very long time.
If you're a regular listener, you most likely heard me talk about my ardent support for the pro-life cause.
I've not been shy about this.
You may also remember that last year, I streamed this podcast live from the March for Life in Washington, D.C., which is the biggest pro-life rally in the country, where I also gave a speech to the crowds marching for the cause.
What you may not be aware of is how much grief this caused us from our political adversaries.
Our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media watchdogs Several of them actually pulled their ads from our show under pressure, even though I said absolutely nothing objectionable.
This wasn't the first time, nor will it likely be the last time, that we are attacked in an attempt by the left to shut down pro-life voices.
We're also not the only targets.
Live action is one of the biggest voices in the pro-life movement.
I personally give money to live action.
I think they're wonderful.
They continue to do some of the most important work in this space.
From raising awareness and education on the abortion issue to undercover videos that expose Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics for horrific human rights abuses.
Live action has been targeted a lot on social media.
They've been banned from advertising on Twitter for their calls to defund Planned Parenthood.
They've been banned from Pinterest altogether for quote spreading medical misinformation.
They've seen their advertising efforts and their online distribution restricted depending on the platform.
This cause is supremely important since the passing of Roe v. Wade, the creation of Roe v. Wade.
Over 60 million pre-born children have been killed in the womb, 60 million kids who never had a chance to give the world their love, and countless young women harmed physically and emotionally last year.
The left went even more insane.
They passed the New York law allowing abortion up to birth, the Illinois law allowing partial birth abortion.
This year, virtually every Democratic candidate, basically everyone except for Tulsi Gabbard, supports no restrictions on abortion, which is the most radical position threatening the right to life.
That is why our DailyWire.com members are really important.
Why?
Well, your membership keeps our cameras on, our microphones turned up.
Also, your direct support helps us say no to advertisers who cave to left-wing ideologies.
You keep us and our message from being canceled, and you help the conservative pro-life movement get louder, which is why from now until January 31st only, just for the next couple of weeks, a portion of any DailyWire.com membership purchase will be donated to live action with promo code LIVEACTION.
So when you use that promo code LIVEACTION, you get our membership.
We're going to donate part of that to live action.
The portion will go to support awareness and education around the world on the pro-life issue.
So join us here at DailyWire.com.
Make your pro-life voice even louder and protect the causes that you care about from the viciousness of a left wing that seeks to silence.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So to continue with this New York Times editorial, they endorse both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
They say many Democratic voters are concerned first and foremost about who can beat Mr. Trump.
But with a crowded field and with traditional polling in tatters, that calculation calls for a hefty dose of humility about anyone's ability to foretell what voters want.
So that is the New York Times throwing its hands in the air and saying, yeah, we know Elizabeth Warren isn't super electable, but we like her.
We like her!
Choosing who should face off against Mr. Trump also means acknowledging that Americans are being confronted with three models for how to govern the country, not two.
Democrats must decide which of their two models would be most compelling for the American people and best suited for repairing the republic.
The party's large and raucous field has made having that clean debate more difficult.
With all the focus on personal characteristics, age, race, experience, and a handful of the most contentious issues, voters have not benefited from a clarifying choice about the party's message in the election and the approach to governing beyond it.
It was a privilege for us on the editorial board to spend more than a dozen hours talking to candidates, asking them any question that came to mind.
Yet, that exercise is impossible for most Americans.
Now is the time to narrow the race.
That's why we're endorsing the most effective advocates for each approach.
They're not gonna make up their minds on which approach is better.
The sort of return to normalcy approach?
Or the let's rip everything down approach?
They're Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
Wow, amazing.
They say, and then they explain why they will not endorse Sanders.
They say, Senator Sanders has spent nearly four decades advocating revolutionary change for a nation whose politics often move with glacial slowness.
Mr. Sanders would be 79 when he assumed office.
And after an October heart attack, his health is a serious concern.
Then there's how Mr. Sanders approaches politics.
He boasts that compromise is anathema to him.
Only his prescriptions can be the right ones, even though most are overly rigid, untested and divisive.
He promises that once in office, a groundswell of support will emerge to push through his agenda.
Three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage in exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.
By the way, if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, I'm going to throw that line back in their face the moment they endorse Bernie Sanders.
It's good news then that Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a standard bearer for the Democratic left.
Their description of Warren is just phenomenal.
Here it is.
Senator Warren is a gifted storyteller.
That is one way of saying a congenital liar.
A gifted storyteller.
You know, telling stories about her time wandering the plains with the Cherokee people.
Stories about how she was fired for the sin of being pregnant when all documentary evidence shows that she was actually unanimously requested to retain her job.
All of her stories about her difficulties in life.
What a difficult life she's led.
I mean, how many stories have we debunked about Elizabeth Warren on this show?
Five?
Ten?
And she just says things that are not true on a routine basis.
But she's a gifted storyteller, guys!
A gifted storyteller.
Wouldn't you want Elizabeth Warren telling you a story?
No?
You wouldn't?
Because you're a sentient human?
Well, I guess you're not on the New York Times editorial board.
She speaks elegantly of how the economic system is rigged against all but the wealthiest Americans, and of our chance to rewrite the rules of power in our country, as she put it in a speech last month.
In her hands, that story has the passion of a convert, a longtime Republican from Oklahoma, and a middle-class family whose work studying economic realities left her increasingly worried about the future of the country.
By the way, Her work on bankruptcy is largely bullcrap.
David French has debunked it.
The idea that people are on mass suffering from medical bankruptcy, it's just not true.
The way that she actually classified those studies, she said, if you went bankrupt and you had a medical bill, she called that a medical bankruptcy.
The word rigged, according to the New York Times, feels less bombastic than rooted in an informed assessment of what the nation needs to do to reassort its historic ideals, like fairness, generosity, and equality.
And then they go on to talk about how she has so many plans.
Ms.
Warren accurately describes a lack of housing construction as the primary driver of the nation's housing crisis.
And she has proposed both increases in government funding for housing construction and changes in regulatory policy.
Yes, because government housing has always been a boon to the American people.
Building projects has always worked out just phenomenally.
And they talk about how she's just going to spend enormous amounts of money.
They never talk about how she's going to pay for any of this.
They never talk about how she's going to do any of this.
But she is the best, they say.
And then they say, but we have a problem.
American capitalism is responsible for its share of sins, but Ms.
Warren often cast the net far too wide, placing the blame for a host of maladies from climate change to gun violence at the feet of the business community when the onus is on society as a whole.
This country needs a more unifying path.
Okay, and that is why we have also decided to talk about Amy Klobuchar.
Ooh, Amy Klobuchar.
First, they dismiss Pete Buttigieg.
They say that we look forward to him working his way up, which is the worst tut-tutting ever.
Oh, Pete, you're so cute.
Next time around, Pete Buttigieg.
Andrew Yang.
They say he has virtually no experience in government.
We hope he decides to get involved in New York politics.
And then they say that Michael Bloomberg is very bad.
Why?
Because he's a multi-billionaire.
He's very bad.
And they say that his current campaign approach reveals more about America's broken system than his likelihood of fixing it.
And then they say that Joe Biden is prone to verbal stumbles, but it is time for him to pass the torch to a new generation of political leaders.
Nothing says passing the torch to a new generation of political leaders like being 77 and passing the torch to somebody who's 70.
Elizabeth Warren is 70 years old.
So there's that.
And then they talk about Amy Klobuchar.
Good news that Amy Klobuchar has emerged as a standard bearer for the Democratic Center.
Her vision goes beyond the incremental.
Given the polarization in Washington and beyond, the best chance to enact many progressive plans could be under a Klobuchar administration.
The senator from Minnesota is the very definition of Midwestern charisma, grit, and stick-to-itiveness.
Her lengthy tenure in the Senate and bipartisan credentials would make her a dealmaker, a real one, and unite her for the wings of the party and perhaps the nation.
So why didn't they just endorse her outright?
Well, apparently they didn't endorse her outright because she treated her staff badly.
They're gonna go with the, she eats salad with a comb story to not endorse her over Elizabeth Warren.
That's literally the only, and then they say, she doesn't have the polished veneer and smooth delivery that comes from a lifetime spent in the national spotlight.
She has struggled to gain traction on the campaign trail, but she's really popular in Minnesota.
And they basically say, well, no matter who we endorse, it's better than Trump.
Ms.
Klobuchar and Ms.
Warren right now are the Democrats best equipped to lead that debate.
May the best woman win.
And then they toss that Joker pool cue right between them and say, go for it.
So, who you got?
Amy Klobuchar with the comb?
Or Elizabeth Warren with the knife she just removed from Bernie Sanders' back?
Meanwhile, the race moves forward apace.
Bernie Sanders, who a new poll shows actually in second place in Iowa.
There are three new polls in Iowa, all of them showing Bernie Sanders dropping behind Joe Biden.
If Joe Biden, by the way, wins Iowa, this thing is basically over before it begins.
And that New York Times endorsement doesn't mean jack.
And now Bernie Sanders is out there on the apology tour trying to explain to women that gender remains an obstacle for women in politics.
He has to pay homage to the intersectional notion that women are greatly victimized in American politics despite the fact that Hillary Clinton was propped up as a political figure despite having no political experience running for the Senate, and then she was a horrible Secretary of State, and then she was a horrible presidential candidate twice, and we're still being told the only reason she lost is because of the Russians.
Here's Bernie Sanders explaining it's rough to be a lady.
Do you think that gender is still an obstacle for female politicians?
Look, the answer is yes, but I think everybody has their own sets of problems.
I'm 78 years of age.
That's a problem.
There are a lot of people who say, well, I like Bernie.
He's a nice guy, but he's 78 years of age.
So we have to argue, please look at the totality of who I am.
If you're looking at Buttigieg, he's a young guy.
And people will say, well, he's too young to be president.
You look at this one, she's a woman.
So everybody brings some negatives, if you like.
Bernie has to say that part about how you're really disadvantaged if you're a layman.
My favorite is the lady asking him the question, who says, is it hard to be a woman?
And she's trying to telegraph him the answer.
She's actually nodding as she utters the question.
Look, the reason that Bernie Sanders, by the way, if he doesn't win the nomination and if he doesn't win the presidency, the reason he doesn't is because he's a crazy communist.
That's why.
He had John Cusack out on the road stumping for him because nothing says connection with the American people like John Cusack.
Explaining this very wealthy actor.
We have 10 years to save the planet from capitalism.
10 years to save the planet from the greatest force for human prosperity in the history of the world.
I was looking up these statistics.
I'm writing a book that's due out late July, I believe.
And I was looking up the statistics on the growth of global GDP.
The growth of global GDP.
So the growth of global GDP from like 1800 to 2015.
It increased global GDP, not American GDP, global GDP increased by 15,700% in the previous millennia, okay, in like the last two millennia before that, increased by like 100%.
And then the Enlightenment and free markets happened and boom, prosperity.
But according to John Cusack, I'm going to take his word over the experience of the last couple of centuries, he explains we have 10 years to save the planet from capitalism or we're all going to die or something.
We know this form of capitalism takes and takes.
It takes whatever, whenever, however it wants.
It'll take our lives.
It'll take our labor, our spirit, our air and water, even our earth.
And Bernie respects us enough to tell the truth, the hard truth.
We have a 10 to 12 year window to radically transform our energy systems or climate change, predatory capitalism and the endless war economies will rob us of the right to any future at all.
So, no.
That is why Bernie Sanders has trouble, because in the end, Bernie Sanders is a radical.
Meanwhile, you get Elizabeth Warren, who's just as radical, but the Democrats are going to pretend that she's a moderate, explaining that Trump has nominated racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-trans judges.
I think what's at the heart of it is who you ask to be a judge, who you want on your list to be a judge.
And I'll tell you what the answer has been for Donald Trump, because I've seen this, guys.
Homophobic, that's in.
Racist, that's in.
Sexist, oh yeah, most definitely.
And anti-voter.
That's been a big qualification.
He has named one person after another.
So they're all vicious brutes.
Vicious, brutal racists.
If these are the Democrats for you, good luck with that.
This is why Joe Biden, in two recent polls, the last two polls in Iowa, is now up by six in that average.
Okay, I want to talk for a second about the media's contrasting coverage.
You wonder whether the media are biased?
Just take a look at the Virginia gun rights rally that is happening today.
Now, there's a lot of talk about the Virginia gun rights rally being infiltrated by kooks and white supremacists.
Hey, this is a real concern.
Whenever you have a very, very big rally, you have to worry that there are gonna be some fringe people who try to glom onto the sides of the rally, and then the media will cover those people and pretend that the rest of the rally doesn't exist.
Okay, this is not like the Unite the Right rally, which is openly, openly marketed in Charlottesville as a white supremacist rally.
This is not that.
Okay, this thing is marketed as a pro-gun rally, and by all available evidence, it is a pro-gun rally.
Thousands, tens of thousands of people apparently showing up at the Virginia Capitol to protest the removal of gun rights in the state of Virginia, and doing so peacefully.
They're there, like, chanting the Pledge of Allegiance, and members of the media are just lying about them.
Openly lying, suggesting it's a white supremacist rally.
It is not a white supremacist rally.
And just because you can find a couple of white supremacists who try to infiltrate the rally because they know they'll get media coverage that way, that does not make the entire rally white supremacist any more than a couple of Antifa members infiltrating the Women's March makes it a terrorist rally.
That's not the way this works.
Rallies should try to do a good job of policing who shows up at the rallies, but you can't slander the entire rally because five guys in Nazi hats show up.
In this case, there's not even been any evidence of that thus far, and yet the media are portraying this as a terror rally.
Seriously.
Like Gabe Gutierrez over at NBC News tweeted out a video of people literally chanting the Pledge of Allegiance, and he tweeted, chants of, we will not comply from gun rights protesters in Richmond.
They're literally chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.
You can hear it.
And he just lies about it.
And that's not the only lie being told.
He had a couple of other reporters suggesting that it was a terrorist rally.
Saying that carrying guns openly in Virginia, which is legal, that this is somehow a violation of the Second Amendment, is not what the founders intended when it was literally what the founders intended.
The coverage of the Virginia gun rights rally is astonishingly bad.
Awful.
So far, I know the media would love, they would love nothing better.
Many of the media would love nothing better than a Charlottesville-like scenario, where a bunch of white supremacists show up and start killing people.
That would be their favorite thing ever, because then it could claim that all gun rights advocates in the United States are actually vicious, violent, racist brutes.
That would be their favorite thing in the world.
It hasn't happened.
Benny Johnson, over at TPUSA, who's there covering this thing, says, no riots, no violence, no targeting of citizens, no attacking cops, just thousands upon thousands of peaceful, law-abiding citizens gathering in Virginia's capital to protest an unconstitutional assault on their rights.
And that, of course, is exactly, that's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
It's amazing.
I mean, they're really spending, they're really spending their day trying to suggest that this thing is terrorism.
It's... But they did the same thing with the Tea Party.
The Tea Party was apparently terrorist and racist, despite no evidence that it was terrorist or racist.
Meanwhile, the Women's March, which was run for years by open anti-Semites, here's how that was covered over the weekend.
So nobody showed up.
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reported from NPR, quote, The fourth annual Women's March descended on the streets of Washington on Saturday.
Unlike the first demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands to the Capitol the day after President Trump's inauguration, the march drew just a fraction of the original turnout, as the movement has struggled with changes in leadership and questions about inclusivity.
But they were passionate.
They were so passionate.
And that's what really mattered.
The permit only allowed up to about 10,000 people, by the way.
The permit filed with the National Park Service.
But it was passionate, guys.
So the media say that the Women's March, passionate, passionate but small.
The Gun Rights Rally March, large and terrorist and white supremacist, no evidence of terrorism or white supremacism.
Well done, media.
This is what you guys do.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
And we will get out of here because we have two more hours of stuff to do later.
Okay, things I like.
Over the weekend I was reading some of my, one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury.
So Bradbury, of course, is known for Fahrenheit 451, one of the great American novels.
He's also a terrific little horror writer.
When I say little, I just mean in terms of short stories.
He wrote like 300 stories, but His sci-fi is great.
Martian Chronicles is great.
I'm a big Bradbury fan.
I was looking for something to read over at the weekend.
No, over the weekend.
And so I picked up The October Country, which is a book of his horror stories.
Some of them are great.
Some of them are not as great.
But that's the great thing about short stories.
You're spending like 15, 20 minutes on them.
I love short stories.
It's sad to me that short stories seem to have fallen out of fashion.
And maybe somebody will bring them back at some point.
I know that the magazine that Bradbury wrote for, which was called Weird Tales, I know that it's still around, although I have no idea whether it's any good or not.
I'd love to see the short story brought back.
Ray Bradbury's The October Country, but he has a bunch.
Sound of Thunder is another short story collection.
If you liked Fahrenheit 451, his short stories are of equal quality.
You can go check that out.
Okay, other things that I like today.
So this is hilarious.
A court A court in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal has now ruled that a federal prisoner who calls himself a her and wants to be transferred to a women's facility, this person appealed to the court and said, I want to be called her in all the court filings.
And the court said, no, that's giving away the argument.
No, we're not doing that.
And this apparently is very bad.
Because now, the left would like for the court to engage in the logical inconsistency of going along with the lie that this person is a woman, but then ruling objectively on whether a woman should be placed with other women.
The entire controversy in this case is over whether this person is a woman or a man.
You can't just grant the premise of the lawsuit in the lawsuit itself out of sensitivity.
That's absurdity.
I've said this a thousand times.
It's amazing.
People always get my position on transgender pronouns wrong because they wish to.
I've said one million times that if you're at dinner with somebody and that person wishes to be called as a member of the opposite sex, Then I'm not going to go out of my way just to call the person a member of their biological sex, because why ruin dinner?
But when we are talking about public policy, when we're talking about whether that person actually is a member of the opposite gender, no, I'm not going to go along with that.
If I'm in public debate with a person who's transgender, I'm not going to grant them the premise that they are a member of the opposite sex.
That's the subject of the entire debate.
There's a difference between a public issue and what you say to somebody in private at dinner.
Right, if my son wishes for me to call him Luke Skywalker today, which he probably does, at home, I'll probably do it.
If I'm on national TV and he says, call me Luke Skywalker, I'm gonna say, no son, that's not your name, right?
I mean, that's not the way any of this works.
But according to the Washington Post, supposedly, the court was supposed to go along with the request to call a him or her, and then to rule objectively on the question of whether this him should be placed with women.
By the way, in this particular case, What the media would like is for this biological male who is engaged in pedophilia.
That's why the person's in prison.
The person was engaged in trafficking and child pornography.
They want, the Washington Post columnist today, wants this person to be labeled a woman.
Okay, ladies, if you want that person labeled a woman, have at it.
Have at it.
It seems to me that the vast majority of child pornography charges accrue to men.
Biology may have something to do with crime rates.
When it comes to male versus female, which is why 98% of people in prison are male.
Come on.
It's just absurd.
Everyone knows that male aggression and male sex drive is very different from female, which is why crime rates are different between male and female.
Duh.
But we're going to pretend not for purposes of what?
Transgender sensitivity?
Absolute silly towns.
Okay.
Good for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal for rejecting that and saying, no, we're not going to forego the argument out of sensitivity.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So my home state of California is just turning into a garbage heap.
I've lived here literally my entire life.
I think every day now about how long we can stay here.
The state of California has been transformed into homeless central.
We have, at this point, literally hundreds of thousands of homeless people living in the state of California.
You cannot drive a freeway in Los Angeles without seeing literal tent cities.
I mean, I'm talking about full-on tent cities.
It looks like Hoovervilles.
And Governor Gavin Newsom, who is A Ken doll in every way.
He is stupid and he is vacuous and has that plastered back hair.
He was opening a new homeless facility and he explained that California has been nowhere to be found on homelessness.
Weird, because it seems like Jerry Brown was the governor for a thousand years and then you've been the governor for a while.
It seems like every major city in Los Angeles has been governed by a Democrat for a very long time and yet somehow you've gotten no handle on homelessness.
Not only that, it's gotten massively worse underneath the Democratic purview.
Here is Gavin Newsom admitting, Let's just be candid.
The state of California has been nowhere to be found on the damn issue of homelessness.
We haven't been focused on this issue.
There's a reason.
Things the way they are.
It's because we haven't addressed them.
It's happened on our watch over the last decade.
In particular, it's really gotten bad in the last decade.
And we were just slow to respond.
Look, we had a crisis.
Governor Brown did an amazing job balancing the budget.
We were triaging that.
We had a lot of other things that were prioritized, but it got in the way of our focus on this.
Did an amazing job balancing the budget.
The way that California balanced the budget is by lying about the accrual of interest in CalPERS.
They just went to their pension funds, and then they suggested that those pension funds were going to outperform the market by large percentages, and then we wouldn't have to worry about investing on behalf of those pension funds, so we would sign all these bad pension contracts.
Jerry Brown did a wonderful job balancing the budget.
He's raised the top income tax rate to 13.3%, driving business out of the state at record rates.
We actually had a net loss of population in the state of California, I believe, last year.
Gavin Newsom, sorry, we couldn't handle the homelessness crisis where you have 65,000 people in Los Angeles County alone who are homeless in the city.
And that is very partially as a result of high housing prices.
But the regulations in the city of Los Angeles make it nearly impossible to build new housing.
And in large part, that is because the cops have been not allowed to arrest people for trespass.
And also, there's been tremendous underfunding of the one thing that the government ought to fund in the state of California, namely mental health facilities and drug dryout facilities.
And mandatory drug dryout for people who are on the streets shooting heroin into their feet in front of businesses.
I mean, you can find open needles half a block from my house, and I live in a fairly nice area.
So hearing Gavin Newsom complain that he's done a bad job on what is his watch?
Look, the state of California can either wake up or it can die, and right now it is choosing to die, because better to sleep and pretend that everything is fine and the weather here is really nice and we got beaches.
But the fact is, this state continues to be a garbage heap, Gavin Newsom continues to make it a garbage heap, and we continue to vote Democrat to make ourselves feel better, even though no Democrat has solved any of these problems in the last decade or more.
It's insane.
I mean, the city of Los Angeles, which I can speak to very personally because I live here, Eric Garcetti, who thought about running for president, has been awful.
Every so often, right before there's a photo shoot, basically, they'll clean up the streets a little bit, they'll move some of the homeless people out from underneath the embankments, and then...
As soon as the media stopped covering it, those people are right back there.
I will say, some of the permanency of these residencies is pretty astonishing to me.
The other day, right here in Los Angeles, I saw a person who had wired into, you wonder how folks are living on the streets, this person had actually wired into a streetlamp, which is pretty dangerous, you shouldn't do this, had wired into a streetlamp for electricity.
It actually pulled off the plate at the base of a streetlamp and had wired into the streetlamp.
And not only have they wired into the streetlamp, I saw that they actually had an old-fashioned turntable.
They had like an old record player.
So we now have hipster homeless people in the city of Los Angeles.
We actually have people who are not satisfied with the quality of digital music.
Right?
They need the original vinyl.
Now listen, this is not to say that these people are not suffering.
I think they are suffering.
I think it is absolutely unjust and unfair and not right and disgusting that the solution of this state and of this city is to leave them living in their own filth on street corners and then pretend that that is what is called freedom.
It is not.
A huge percentage of these folks are people suffering from mental illness.
A huge percentage of these folks are people who are suffering from severe drug addiction.
Leaving them on the streets to get disease and die.
is a horrible commentary on what our government thinks freedom is.
So according to the government of the state of California, if you work a job and you earn, then freedom is the government takes a huge chunk of your salary.
And also, if you're living on the street in your own filth because you're mentally ill or because you have a drug addiction, then freedom is you get to live on your own and police can't even move you.
And I know a lot of the members of the LAPD.
First of all, it is disgusting that they've turned the LAPD into their solution for failures to deal with drug addiction and failures to deal with severe mental illness.
The police were not supposed to be first line of response for people who are mentally ill or drug addicted.
That's absurd.
They're already stretched too thin and it is not their job.
And you wonder how they get into confrontations with the homeless and then you end up with bad tape on the news.
That is exactly how.
And it gets a lot worse when you suggest the police cannot even move bags of garbage on the street.
Thanks to ACLU action in the city of Los Angeles, The police could actually be sued if they move a shopping cart full of garbage.
Seriously.
Because this has been declared the personal property of people living on the streets.
Even though they are living on the streets that you and I pay for as taxpayers.
And provide a disease threat.
And provide a violence threat.
How many situations have we had in the nicer part of the cities?
I'm talking about like Hollywood Boulevard, like Hollywood and Vine, areas of the city that are tourist centers.
We've had people who have been attacked and buckets of hot feces dumped on their head in the middle of the city.
Seriously.
We've had people stabbed to death in the middle of the city by homeless folks who are suffering from severe schizophrenia, deep forms of mental illness, drug addiction.
And the city's solution is to have Gavin Newsom get up there and say, well, you know, we've been ignoring the problem.
Here's the bottom line is, here's the bottom line.
The voters of the state have not forced Democrats to deal with the problem because there's no incentive to deal with the problem.
All that the Democrats are elected to do is continue signing lucrative government contracts with massive unions who then spend that money to re-elect the government employees and grow the bureaucracy and grow the state, a state that does not protect its own citizens and just drains them dry.
And it's going to get worse.
It's not going to get better.
The tax rates will continue to go up.
The law enforcement will continue to drop.
The people stuck in the middle are the cops and the taxpaying citizens.
Gavin Newsom's a disgrace.
He'll run for president anyway in a couple of years, if the Democrats don't win.
It's just, it's ridiculous.
This state, this state is on its last legs and Gavin Newsom proves it.
We'll see you here later today for two additional hours of content, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
Directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.
Technical producer Austin Stevens.
Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.
Edited by Adam Siovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
▲
Export Selection