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Jan. 27, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

54:38

The Worst Of Times | Ep. 940

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	Bernie Sanders takes the upper hand in the Democratic 2020 contest, the Senate impeachment trial kicks into high gear with John Bolton's revelations, and Kobe Bryant and his daughter tragically die in a helicopter accident.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.
	It's how my listeners secure their internet.
	Join them at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	We'll get to the Kobe Bryant stuff a little bit later on in the show.
	If you grew up in Los Angeles, it's a devastating day for you because the fact is that Kobe Bryant was such a part of everybody's life.
	Yeah, I'm from Los Angeles.
	It's obviously a tragic, tragic incident.
	The fact that his daughter was on the helicopter is just unthinkable.
	We'll get to that a little bit later on in the show.
	We'll pay tribute to Kobe.
	We'll talk about what he meant to the city of Los Angeles, to basketball in general.
	Really bad stuff happening over the weekend.
	We begin, however, with the update on your polls going into Iowa.
	So we are now, what, 10 days out of Iowa?
	We are very, very close to the Iowa caucuses, and right now, It appears that Bernie Sanders has grabbed the upper hand in those Iowa caucuses.
	The current polling has Bernie up a substantial percentage in Iowa.
	There are three polls out.
	They are sort of all over the place.
	Emerson has Sanders up nine in Iowa.
	Suffolk has Joe Biden up six in Iowa.
	New York Times has Bernie Sanders up seven in Iowa.
	So one of those polls is going to have to be wrong.
	At least one of them.
	All of those polls, by the way, came out inside the last two days, but There's a pretty good indicator that Sanders is coming out on top.
	Sanders does have the youth vote.
	Sanders does have the momentum.
	He has tremendous momentum in New Hampshire, where the latest polls have him up double digits in New Hampshire.
	In Nevada, the latest poll actually has Joe Biden up by like one point, which means that right now, the betting markets have Bernie Sanders as the favorites to win the Democratic nomination, which is almost unthinkable.
	I mean, the fact that you have a man Who is a communist for nearly his entire, not nearly, his entire career.
	You have a guy who is now pretending to be a democratic socialist who likes Norway, but he started off loving Venezuela and Cuba and the USSR and even now can't really get himself up for condemning communism anywhere on planet Earth.
	Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic nominee and in fact has a solid shot at being the Democratic nominee.
	It's pretty insane.
	Again, Bernie has spiked dramatically in Iowa.
	And it's important to remember who Bernie Sanders is and how a wing of the Democratic Party could theoretically take control of the entire Democratic Party.
	I've said for a long time, the best thing for Donald Trump here is for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination because Bernie Sanders, the election will become a referendum on Bernie Sanders.
	If Sanders is the nominee, it won't be a referendum on Trump anymore.
	Trump is baked in.
	And people basically get Trump is out of the box.
	Trump says dumb, weird things.
	Trump doesn't really get the job in some ways, but Trump does a lot of things that we like.
	He gives us a really good economy.
	He's made us safer on the world stage.
	Bernie Sanders is an out-and-out communist who roots for the worst people on planet Earth to win all over the world, wants to destroy the American economy, has never met a government program he doesn't think should be expanded, and has never met a private industry he doesn't think should be nationalized.
	It is going to be so easy for Donald Trump to turn the election into a referendum on Sanders.
	The best thing for Trump is for Sanders to win.
	The worst thing for the United States is for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination.
	The reason being, one, that then he will have, minimum, a 40% shot at being president, an actual Honestly, got a communist as president of the United States, a lifelong socialist as president of the United States.
	And also, even if the Democratic Party doesn't love everything that Bernie is saying, they are now going to centralize around his point of view in the same way that in 1972, George McGovern ran for the Democrats and dragged that party dramatically to the left.
	And eventually, that resulted in the complete takeover of the Democratic Party by the hard left.
	Bernie Sanders could do the same thing, turning what was a not supremely anti-capitalist party into a supremely anti-capitalist party, turning the party of Barack Obama into the party of AOC, which seems like a distinction without a difference, but it is a distinction with a difference.
	And the fact is that Barack Obama was not in his guts A complete opponent of capitalism.
	He didn't like it very much, but he wasn't like Bernie, a complete hater of capitalism.
	Obama understands that capitalism actually generates prosperity, whereas Bernie Sanders believes that capitalism is ruinous no matter where it's tried.
	You can tell where Bernie Sanders is on all of these issues simply by listening to Bernie Sanders and listening to his surrogates.
	So Bernie Sanders over the weekend has been asked the unfortunate question of how he plans to pay for all of the things that he wants to pay for.
	And the man simply doesn't have any answers along these lines.
	He was on CBS Evening News with Norah O'Donnell, and he was asked how he was going to sell his healthcare plan.
	And he basically just said, the rainbows will pay for it.
	Democratic.
	Democratic, put in there, please.
	Thank you.
	Your agenda has promised free health care for everybody, free college tuition, and to pay off people's college loans.
	The price tag for that is estimated to be $60 trillion over 10 years, correct?
	Well, look, we have political opponents.
	You don't know how much your plan costs?
	You don't know.
	Nobody knows.
	This is impossible.
	You're going to propose a plan to the American people and you're not going to tell them how much it costs?
	Of course I will.
	Of course I will.
	He won't.
	He won't.
	He literally said, nobody knows.
	And then in the same sentence, he said, of course I'm going to tell them how much it costs.
	These two things cannot live in the same universe.
	If you don't know the answer to a question, you don't also know the answer to a question.
	These are mutually exclusive statements.
	But that is Bernie Sanders' agenda.
	Free everything, paid for presumably by the rich.
	But the rich don't have the kind of money to pay for $60 trillion worth of spending on what he is talking about.
	And you can tell What is really animating the Sanders campaign has nothing to do with his plans, has nothing to do with his spending, has nothing to do with where he wants the country to go.
	What really is animating Bernie Sanders' campaign is hatred for all that is.
	It's hatred for the quote-unquote status quo.
	And his surrogates say this.
	So Michael Moore is a big Bernie Sanders fan.
	And he's out there saying that we are like the French Resistance.
	See, it's not what Bernie is for that matters, it's what Bernie is against.
	Bernie is against capitalism, Bernie is against the American system, Bernie is against American history, Bernie is for a complete overthrow of the American system wholesale, and Michael Moore is totally into it.
	Here is Michael Moore characterizing Bernie Sanders' opposition as basically Nazi-esque and suggesting that Bernie Sanders is the French resistance, which is an amazing statement given the fact that Bernie Sanders During World War II, if he had been a politically active man at that time, he would have been on the side of the USSR, which at the beginning was at least on the side of the Nazis.
	In any case, that's not to say Bernie Sanders is a Nazi.
	The point is that to characterize Bernie Sanders' opposition as Nazi-esque and Bernie as a French Resistance member is ridiculous on his face.
	Here is Michael Moore explaining that he is like the French Resistance.
	You know we're in the French Resistance now, right?
	Right?
	Right?
	You got nine.
	Remember the French Resistance, right?
	Nobody in the French Resistance ever said, Jesus, yes, I'd like to help you stop those Nazis coming down the road there, but we've got couples therapy at four today.
	No!
	No!
	You have to get along with your spouse for the next week or two!
	There's no couples therapy!
	Just get along!
	Get along for the greater good of this country!
	So get out there, because it's like the French Resistance, guys, and if you don't make Bernie Sanders the nominee coming out of Iowa, it's because you were just a bad person who didn't care about the Nazis.
	Well done.
	Michael Moore also suggested he's tired of hearing that we are the land of the free, which is a weird thing for a... a...
	I am sick and tired of hearing this, that we live in the land of the free.
	That this is a democracy.
	It's an amazing thing for Michael Moore to suggest that he is tired of hearing we're the land of the free while he stands there railing against the land of the free, which is something that typically does not happen in dictatorships.
	More Michael Moore on the campaign trail standing behind a podium labeled with Bernie Sanders insignia.
	Here he is.
	I am sick and tired of hearing this, that we live in the land of the free.
	That this is a democracy.
	First of all, do you have any friends in another country or even Canada where you try to explain to them?
	Where you try to explain to them that the person who gets the most votes in the democracy doesn't necessarily win?
	Nobody understands that.
	No, we need to make so many changes because it's not just enough for it to be a political democracy.
	When we get that part of it fixed, the Electoral College gone.
	The Electoral College makes us not a democracy, apparently, according to Bernie Sanders.
	By the way, he should learn some things about other countries, where very few Prime Ministers of other countries actually win a majority of the actual vote.
	Most of them, many Prime Ministers, Prime Ministers as in, I believe Boris Johnson, in the latest round of elections, I think his party won something like 43% of the total vote.
	In Israel, the Prime Minister typically wins something on the order of maybe 20%, 25% of the total vote for his party.
	So, the idea that it's done specifically along popular vote lines, and the person who wins the absolute majority always wins, like, I don't know what he's talking about, but he doesn't know what he's talking about either.
	The difference is that he's saying it and I'm critiquing it, so that doesn't make a lot of sense from his perspective.
	The reason I'm playing you, Michael Moore, is because Michael Moore says the quiet part out loud, but Bernie Sanders also says the quiet part out loud.
	They all say the quiet part out loud.
	So get ready.
	I mean, again, this is the best thing for Trump running against a Democrat.
	It's the worst thing for the country if people start to resonate to this idiocy.
	We'll get to more of that in just one second.
	First, let us talk about the simple fact that it is difficult to predict the future, unfortunately.
	You never know when something bad is going to happen.
	You never know when, God forbid, something could happen to you.
	You'd leave your family without any source of income.
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	You need to be a responsible human being.
	When I first got married, one of the first things I did was to look around for life insurance.
	You know what?
	It's kind of hard to find good life insurance and you think you'll get some good stuff through your employer.
	The truth is, whatever your employer provides is probably a fraction of what you're going to actually need for life insurance.
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	Again, get life insurance right.
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	Okay, it's not just Michael Moore on the stump for Bernie Sanders, it is also AOC on the stump for Bernie Sanders.
	So AOC, another popular communist who is out there suggesting that there's a big problem in New York City because there are homeless people in New York City and unsold luxury apartments.
	So I guess her proposal is that we should take the luxury apartments and give them to the homeless people, which will obviously create great incentive for developers to create new buildings.
	That will then be seized from them by the government and given to homeless people.
	Clearly, if you want to clear up a shortage of supply, the best thing you can do is forcibly grab the apartments that have been built and then pass them out for free to people who are going to piss on the walls.
	Clearly, that is going to be the best possible solution.
	Here is AOC trying to explain that America is evil because there are luxury apartments in her city of New York City and there are homeless people on the streets of New York City.
	And because she's because she's a fool.
	She believes that the way to solve this problem is by taking the apartments that are unoccupied and giving them to the homeless people, as opposed to, you know, creating an economic structure that incentivizes the creation of new development units so that there's a place for the homeless people to go, also ignoring the fact that many homeless people, probably the plurality or majority of homeless people, Are drug addicts, alcoholics or mentally ill?
	Here's AOC just saying silly things.
	But again, silly things are the order of the day.
	Silly things are the order of the day because we've become so wealthy as a country.
	We have.
	We've become so incredibly free as a country that people sit around and they critique the country that has made them wealthy and free.
	I mean, AOC has led an ideal American life.
	Truly.
	She went to college.
	She got an econ degree without knowing anything, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment.
	She then went and she bartended and then she ran for Congress on the basis of this stellar record.
	And she became a congressperson.
	Who now has a luxury apartment in Washington DC with like a Peloton room.
	That's the American dream right there.
	And here she is bitching about it.
	Talking about how America is terrible.
	And the evidence that America is terrible is that there are luxury apartments in New York City that can't be occupied by homeless people.
	Which is just the dumbest thing in the world.
	It's like something that my three-year-old would propose.
	Truly.
	Like, when you are three, and you see somebody else with a thing that you want, you just say, I want it.
	And then your parents, if they're a good parent, says, yes, but that's not yours.
	Instead, if you're a good boy, and you act well, then maybe you'll be able to get that.
	But that's not the way that AOC or any of these folks operate.
	Instead, it's, look, there's this thing I want.
	And because it's a thing I want, obviously, that is a thing I should have.
	And if somebody else doesn't have something that they want, then we should take it away from some other person and give it to them.
	Here's AOC not understanding basic economics, but wearing her glasses.
	So I guess the glasses make her smart.
	You know, I live in New York City.
	The rates of people that are experiencing homelessness are some of their highest rates since the Great Depression.
	Yet one in every four luxury apartments in New York City goes unsold.
	There are about three empty apartments for every one person experiencing homelessness in New York City.
	And that juxtaposition of some of the largest excess next to some of the worst depravity is not an accident.
	Okay, what's hilarious about this is that New York City is governed by folks on her side of the aisle.
	Democrats have been governing New York City for pretty much forever.
	There have been some Republican mayors.
	They were all not particularly conservative on economics.
	And then you go to LA.
	We have a huge homeless problem here.
	It's been governed by Democrats my entire life.
	Then you go to San Francisco, which has never been dominated by Republicans.
	Huge homeless problem.
	Seattle, never dominated by Republicans.
	Enormous homeless problem.
	Why?
	It's almost as though there is a pattern of bad economic policy leading to homelessness.
	My favorite is where she says, look at all these unoccupied luxury apartments.
	Well, clearly, that's because they're somehow disempowering the homeless.
	Maybe the luxury apartments are not occupied because everyone who could possibly provide a tax base is leaving New York City, you idiot.
	Maybe the reason that people aren't getting a luxury apartment in New York City is because of the exorbitant tax rates that AOC wants to force down and the insane business regulations she would prefer that drove literally thousands of jobs out of her district.
	Maybe it's because of that.
	But this is Bernie Sanders economics, right?
	This is the future of the Democratic Party if people don't wake up in time.
	Now, here's the problem.
	I think that almost any way you slice this, this is the future of the Democratic Party.
	I think the way that you slice it, really, no matter where this goes, the future of the Democratic Party is this nonsense.
	This is where it's going.
	The reason I say that is let's say that Joe Biden wins the nomination, and then let's say that Joe Biden loses the election to Donald Trump.
	The first move will be, you didn't get the passionate people out there, you didn't get the bass out, we didn't provide our strongest horse, instead we just went with the moderate, again, and so what we really need is we need to swing over to the Bernie side.
	And then let's say that Bernie wins the nomination, and he doesn't win the presidency, which is quite likely if he does win the nomination, then it will be, ah yes, but that's just the boomers, it's just the old people.
	Because as the young people age and as they maintain their political point of view, the future is AOC.
	The future is Rashida Tlaib.
	We'll get to Rashida Tlaib in just a second because you're hearing from Camp Bernie and the rest of the Democrats this week.
	It's Holocaust Remembrance Week because this is the week that Auschwitz was liberated.
	You're going to hear from Democrats this week a lot about the Holocaust.
	Meanwhile, they're going to prop up Rashida Tlaib, who is actively participating in a blood libel over the weekend.
	She's also a surrogate for Bernie Sanders.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the safety and security of your neighborhood.
	So my neighborhood has turned to absolute garbage.
	I live in Los Angeles, which means that it used to be a really nice city.
	Now, the city has refused to actually enforce any of the laws and has prohibited the police who are trying to do their best.
	from actually enforcing laws.
	That means that street crime has gone up.
	It means that break-ins have gone up.
	It means that there are people with criminal intent who may be wandering your neighborhood.
	And this is true in large cities across the country.
	And even if you're living in an area that's relatively safe, why would you not protect yourself with Ring security?
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	So again, this is the Bernie Sanders campaign with surrogates like AOC and Rashida Tlaib.
	Over the weekend, Rashida Tlaib pushed an actual blood libel.
	Hanan Ashrawi is a spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is a terrorist organization.
	And Hanan Ashrawi tweeted out a story.
	Supposedly about a Palestinian child who was allegedly kidnapped by, quote, a herd of violent Israeli settlers, assaulted and thrown in a water well, and then drowned in the water well.
	That did not happen.
	Okay, that is not a thing that happened.
	What actually happened is that there was a reservoir in Jerusalem, it rained really heavily, and unfortunately the seven-year-old slipped and fell in the reservoir and drowned.
	Okay, Hanan Ashrawi tweeted out, The heart just shatters.
	The pain is unbearable.
	No words.
	I mean, this is an unverified account that originally tweeted out this person was kidnapped and executed.
	This kid was kidnapped and executed by Israeli settlers.
	Now, there have been violent incidents between Jews against Palestinians before.
	That's a thing that's happened before.
	But when things like this happen, normally what you'd want to do is wait for any evidence to come out.
	Hanan Ashrawi did not because she is, of course, a propagandist on behalf of an anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic terror group.
	Rashida Tlaib, because she is also a propagandist on behalf of anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish terror groups all over the region.
	She also decided to retweet that.
	This is a blood libel.
	She retweeted this to her 900,000 followers.
	And then, when it came out that this was false, she deleted it and she said nothing.
	Even Hanan Ashrawi had the sense to issue a half-baked retraction.
	She said, my apologies for retweeting something that's not fully verified.
	It seems the news of his being kidnapped is not certain.
	Not only was it not certain, it apparently never happened.
	Tlaib just deleted it and never said anything.
	Because she's a wild anti-Semite.
	Because this is the Democratic Party.
	Because the Democratic Party is willing to tolerate all of this nonsense.
	Ambassador Danny Dayan tweeted out, I'm always extremely cautious in criticizing U.S.
	elected officials.
	However, when an American elected official retweets an unfounded blood rival against Jewish Israelis, I cannot remain silent.
	Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib just did.
	That will receive no media attention.
	Meanwhile, you'll hear that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, even as we'll see, as he proposes a peace plan that is the first real peace plan for the region in quite a long time.
	And even though he's been an extraordinarily pro-Israel and pro-Jewish president.
	But this is your Democratic Party.
	It's the party of Rashida Tlaib, the party of AOC, the party of Michael Moore.
	This is the Democratic Party of Bernie Sanders, and Bernie Sanders right now, again, is the odds-on favorite to become the Democratic nominee, according to the betting odds.
	The betting odds have him currently at 38%.
	This is a late surge.
	Joe Biden has run a garbage campaign.
	Joe Biden did not do any on-the-ground organizing until the last three months in Iowa.
	Joe Biden has basically staked his claim to the presidency on being able to win South Carolina and Nevada.
	If he loses the first three, if he loses Nevada, he's in serious, serious trouble.
	Because Bernie is almost assuredly going to win New Hampshire.
	If Bernie wins Iowa, he will win New Hampshire.
	If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, there's an excellent shot that he goes on to win Nevada, at which point it's very difficult to stop the Bernie train.
	So everybody better hope in the Democratic Party that it is Biden coming up from behind in Iowa because otherwise they are in serious...
	And Biden doesn't help himself because Biden is pathologically dishonest about his own record.
	So for example, he was hit by Bernie Sanders over the past few weeks about his views on Now, as I've said, in the past, when Joe Biden wasn't running for president, he used to be a somewhat reasonable human being, right?
	He voted for the crime bill of 1994, which was, contrary to popular opinion, a very good bill that helped lower the crime rates in the United States from historic highs.
	It's one of the great stories in American legal history, is the decline in crime between 1994 and 2015.
	People don't like to talk about that because that happened as a result of greater law enforcement and it's more comfortable to rip on law enforcement.
	In times of great prosperity and great peace, it is easy to rip on the sources of the prosperity and the peace.
	Biden was for that.
	Biden was also in favor, 20 years ago, of freezing Social Security or at least reorganizing Social Security because he wasn't a complete insane person.
	But in the Democratic Party, this is a big no-no.
	So here is Joe Biden finally admitting yesterday, and I guess he was in New Hampshire, that he had talked about a social security freeze 20 years ago, but now he says he doesn't want to talk about that anymore.
	It's unnecessary because here's the thing in the Democratic Party, you never speak truth to progressive power.
	This fight with Bernie Sanders over Social Security.
	You've said that he, quote, doctored video of you from the Senate back in the day talking about Social Security.
	But you did argue that cost-of-living adjustments as part of a general spending freeze were necessary to cut federal spending and reduce the deficit.
	That aside... That was 20 years ago.
	Even if Sanders is playing a little rough here, and your position has changed, what about those Democratic voters who say... It hasn't changed.
	Okay, 20 years ago, right?
	So there he is admitting that that's what he used to hold.
	But the difference is that Joe Biden is not willing to run on the basis of actual reasonable positions.
	By the way, neither was Elizabeth Warren, who just received the Des Moines Register endorsement.
	She throws a little bit of a wrench into things in Iowa for Bernie if she starts getting any support.
	But right now, you gotta consider that Bernie Sanders is the person who is most likely to win at least the first couple of states.
	Pete Buttigieg getting desperate.
	He thought that he had the momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire.
	He was asked, he did a Fox News town hall, and he was asked about abortion by a pro-life Democrat, and he basically said, we have no place in our party for pro-life Democrats anymore, so at least the cat's out of the bag.
	I respect where you're coming from, and I hope to earn your vote, but I'm not going to try to earn your vote by tricking you.
	I am pro-choice, and I believe that a woman ought to be able to make that decision.
	I know that the difference of opinion that you and I have is one that we have come by honestly.
	And the best that I can offer, and it may win your vote, and if not, I understand.
	The best I can offer is that if we can't agree on where to draw the line, the next best thing we can do is agree on who should draw the line.
	And in my view, it's the woman who's faced with that decision.
	The woman asked, will you allow pro-life Democrats in the party?
	And there he is basically saying, no, I will never allow pro-life Democrats in the party.
	This is your democratic party.
	No pro-life Democrats.
	Full-on socialism.
	America is a bad country.
	Open anti-Semites in position of power.
	That is the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party.
	So Democrats, if that is what you want, by all means, go for it.
	Just recognize that number one, you are probably conceding this election to Donald Trump.
	And number two, Democrats who don't believe this stuff, now would be the time for you to get up on your hind legs and say so.
	And meanwhile, President Trump, this is why I say, best thing for Trump is for Sanders to win the nomination.
	Worst thing for the country is for Sanders to win the nomination.
	President Trump is running behind virtually every Democrat in the national polling right now.
	That's not true necessarily in the swing states, but banking on the swing states alone is not a wonderful electoral strategy if you have any sort of possibility of not doing that.
	Right now, according to the new Fox News polling, former VP Joe Biden is leading Trump by nine points.
	Bloomberg also has an eight point margin over the president.
	Sanders has a six point margin on Trump.
	Warren is up by five.
	Buttigieg and Klobuchar also lead Trump in that same survey.
	Now, again, it's early.
	People have sort of a fond opinion of Bernie Sanders because they've never actually dealt with Bernie Sanders' positions.
	With that said, Trump is obviously not in a wonderful position.
	And that position becomes less wonderful if there happens to be anything to this impeachment.
	So the whole purpose for the Democrats here is not actually to get rid of Trump.
	So Democrats have been pushing impeachment because they believe that Trump is going to win if they don't impeach him.
	But they can do him damage anyway.
	They can hurt Trump.
	And that is why Trump's best line of defense, always and forever, Was that Democrats are motivated, Democrats do not like me, Democrats hate me, and that because Democrats are motivated and don't like me and they hate me, they're willing to skew what was an unfortunate phone call into an impeachable offense.
	Trump's line of defense always should have been Yes, I tied the foreign aid, the military aid to Ukraine to them pushing against corruption, including investigating all sorts of 2016 election interference, including corrupt activities with regard to the Obama administration.
	You should have just said that straight up.
	And then you should have said, you know what?
	That's not a crime.
	You may disagree with it.
	You may think it was bad policy.
	You may think that I'm a conspiracist.
	But, it was my opinion that this was in the interest of the United States public, and therefore I went forward with it.
	That would be unimpeachable.
	You could not do anything with it.
	Instead, because President Trump has a strategy that whenever he's accused of anything, he denies it all the way, instead he said, The problem is that is an unsustainable position.
	That is not a sustainable position.
	Now, the first position is a full-on sustainable position, right?
	The first position, which is this... Of course, I held back the ad because I was looking at 2016, right?
	That is a full-on sustainable position.
	I've been saying this literally all along.
	And the fact that Democrats are going after him out of bad faith is obviously true as well.
	I mean, Jerry Nadler said as much over the weekend, right?
	Over the weekend, Jerry Nadler said, if you don't remove Trump, then he will become a dictator.
	President Trump is an outlier.
	He's the first and only president ever to declare himself unaccountable and to ignore subpoenas backed by the Constitution's impeachment power.
	This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all-powerful.
	He does not have to respect the Congress.
	He does not have to respect The representatives of the people, only his will goes.
	He is a dictator.
	He's a dictator.
	Weird enough, because I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama rejected a subpoena of materials from Eric Holder and Fast & Furious and asserted executive privilege over them.
	I'm also old enough to remember when Barack Obama suggested he was going to rule the country with a pen and a phone.
	So yeah, I'm not going to buy all of this.
	By the way, over the weekend, it was reported that back in 2016, Obama called Trump a fascist, which is hilarious considering that it was coming from a man who wanted government control of huge swaths of American life.
	In any case, the best defense for Trump is always the Democrats didn't prove their case.
	That's always the best defense, because that's all he has to do.
	Right?
	In a prosecution, you don't have to prove that you're innocent of all charges, you just have to prove that you're not guilty.
	Right?
	You just have to prove that they have not proved their case.
	And one of President Trump's lawyers basically said as much.
	He has a lawyer named Perpura, and this lawyer, Mike Perpura, he made the case, Deputy Counsel, he made the case that the Democrats had not proved their case because all they have at this point is speculation, which is true.
	All the Democrats have to support the alleged link between security assistance and investigations is Ambassador Sondland's assumptions and presumptions.
	And that part is true.
	When he says that all they've got is someone's presumptions of Trump's intent, that part is true.
	Someone testified that he thought that Trump was doing this with regard to Joe Biden, but he didn't have any real basis for that supposition.
	That part is true.
	The problem is, once the Trump team starts denying that there was any quid pro quo whatsoever, Right?
	Even Mick Mulvaney said no.
	He said, yeah, there was a quid pro quo.
	It just wasn't an illegitimate quid pro quo.
	And that was read by the media to say, oh, well, that means that he was engaged in bribery.
	No, the question is whether that was legitimate or whether it was illegitimate.
	When Joe Biden threatened Ukraine with a billion dollars in military aid.
	Well.
	The Democrats claim that was a perfectly legit quid pro quo.
	So the question is whether that is a legit quid pro quo or a not legit quid pro quo.
	The problem is you get in trouble when you deny stuff that is obviously not deniable.
	So Mike Papura, again, an attorney for the president, here's where he gets into trouble.
	He says people who asked Trump about a link between security assistance and investigations were told there wasn't any.
	So here he's trying to prove a case that he doesn't have to prove.
	Simply because Trump is what Trump is.
	So Trump insists that you go out there and deny full-scale things that he probably did, and that makes you look bad.
	It makes it look suspicious, as I will explain in just one moment.
	So here are Trump's lawyers over the weekend making the case that there was no connection at all between the military aid and investigations of any kind.
	Which then would beg the question, okay, so then why are you withholding the military aid in the first place?
	Like, you literally did not explain why you're withholding the military aid.
	The answer is very simple.
	He was withholding the military aid to look into 2016.
	It had nothing to do with Biden 2020.
	It had to do with all corruption centered around Democratic Party being favored by the Ukrainian government circa 2016.
	Okay, here is Mike Papura, though, trying to make an argument that he doesn't have to make.
	The two people in the House record who asked President Trump about whether there was any linkage between security assistance and investigations were told in no uncertain terms that there's no connection between the two.
	When Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland asked the President in approximately the September 9 timeframe, the President told him, I want nothing, I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo.
	Even earlier, On August 31, Senator Ron Johnson asked the President if there was any connection between security assistance and investigations.
	The President answered, no way.
	I would never do that.
	Who told you that?
	Okay, well, the problem is that then you have to explain why exactly the military aid was being withheld.
	Again, the case that Trump should be making here is, yes, I withheld the military aid.
	Yes, it was for investigations.
	The investigations were, in my opinion, legitimate.
	And no, they were not about 2020.
	They were about 2016.
	Now, the reason this is important is because if he had made that case, the Democrats would have had no place to go.
	Truly, they would have had no place to go.
	Because then he's not actually disputing anything that is factually provable or not provable.
	Instead, he's disputing his own motive.
	The motive is not provable.
	The motive is what's going on inside Trump's head.
	And as everybody knows, it's weird in there.
	So there's no way to prove what's going on inside President Trump's head.
	That would be his strongest line of defense.
	Instead, because he decided to set up his case at the furthest available point, which is perfect phone call, no quid pro quo, everything fine, out to get me.
	Because he did that, now he's opened the door to witnesses, as I'm about to explain.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, if you know anything about me, most likely heard me talk about my ardent support for the pro-life cause.
	You know I am extraordinarily pro-life.
	Remember last year, I streamed my podcast live from the March for Life in DC.
	By the way, thank you to all the people who marched last week.
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	But it's an amazing, amazing event.
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	Our advertisers were actually targeted by left-wing so-called media watchdogs, which is to say attack dogs.
	We lost a fair bit of revenue.
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	Okay, so the reason that it makes a difference where President Trump presents his defense and the direction in which Trump presents his defense is because let's say that Trump said, sure, I was withholding the military aid because I wanted these investigations because what happened in 2016 I was withholding the military aid because I wanted these investigations because what It is important to know, did the Ukrainians interfere?
	It is important to know, were the Ukrainians working with the Obama administration?
	It is important to know all of those things.
	And you may not like how I went about that, but there's nothing illegal about that.
	That is a normal part of American foreign policy.
	Let's say Trump had said that.
	Well then today, when John Bolton comes forward with quote-unquote revelations, everybody would go, okay, that's not a revelation.
	We already knew all of that.
	Instead, because Trump made the claim there was no quid pro quo, that military aid was never attempted to be held back in favor of investigations, now when John Bolton says stuff, it's newsworthy.
	So, John Bolton is coming out with a new book.
	It's coming out in March.
	This whole thing is obviously a publicity setup, which makes it look a little bit scuzzy.
	Apparently the day that the New York Times decided to release its report on John Bolton's new book, the thing went live at Amazon.
	So obviously that looks a lot like a marketing pitch that was given to the New York Times in conjunction with the sales of the book.
	The National Security Council apparently denied that any White House personnel outside of its purview had seen the manuscript of former National Security Advisor John Bolton's book that was submitted to the White House for review.
	White House counsel Pat Cipollone is not part of the NSC, so this is apparently an on-the-record denial that anyone on Trump's impeachment defense team reviewed Bolton's manuscript, which makes sense, because why exactly would they be making a case that is explicitly contradicted by Bolton, which now means that the Democrats have a stronger case for calling Bolton than if the Republicans had said, yeah, everything that Bolton says is true, and also that's not impeachable.
	Then they would say, we don't need to hear from Bolton, we already know what he has to say.
	And by the way, we already admit that what he has to say is basically true.
	We just disagree on the motive, and he doesn't know the motive, and he never makes any allegations as to the motive.
	That would have taken the steam out of the kettle.
	Unfortunately for Republicans and for the Trump team, they went out and they made the case that Trump wanted them to make, which is that everything is hunky-dory and that John Bolton is lying.
	So what exactly is Bolton alleging?
	According to the New York Times, President Trump told his national security advisor in August He wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former advisor John Bolton.
	Okay, number one, right there, that could be the defense for Team Trump.
	Right?
	Because it's not just we want the Bidens investigated, it's we want everything investigated surrounding 2016, including the Bidens.
	So does that sound like the Bidens are the sole target going into 2020?
	Or does it sound like Trump is a vindictive, thin-skinned man who believes conspiracy theories fed to him by Rudy Giuliani and wanted to check out 2016?
	All of which is bad and ugly, but none of which is impeachable.
	That's the case I have been making for months on this program.
	The president's statement, as described by Bolton, could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense, that the holdup in aid was separate from Trump's request that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.
	And by the way, Trump could make the claim if he had made that case that I'm suggesting he made, that of course we should look into Hunter Biden.
	Dude is corrupt as the day is long.
	There's a picture of Hunter Biden today that is emerging in the media of him getting out of a $120,000 sports car with his wife.
	Like three weeks ago, Hunter Biden claimed that number one, he was not the father of a child by a stripper, and number two, that he didn't have the money, that he was bankrupt, didn't have the money to pay for the child support for that kid, allegedly.
	Right?
	That none of that looks great for the Bidens.
	Instead, because Trump insists on micromanaging every element of these defenses, and he insists on not just saying, OK, yeah, I shouldn't have done that, but like, was it really bad and was it really impeachable?
	Instead, it turns into everything's a lie, outright lie, which.
	Means that now it's very difficult not to call Bolton as a witness.
	And I understand there are Republicans out there today saying, well, the Democrats didn't call Bolton as a witness in the House.
	That's true.
	They should have called Bolton as a witness in the House.
	They should have.
	And it goes to the Democrats' credibility, which is nil.
	But if you're a Republican and you are running in a purple state in the Senate, do you want to be the person who said, I'm not going to hear from the key witness whose bombshell revelation directly contradicts statements by Team Trump?
	Do you want to be that person?
	That's what the Democrats are counting on.
	Bolton's explosive account of the matter, according to the New York Times, was included in drafts of a manuscript that has circulated in recent weeks to close associates.
	He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
	Multiple people described Bolton's account of the Ukraine affair, The book presents an outline of what Bolton might testify to if he is called in as a witness.
	The White House could use the pre-publication review process to delay or even kill the book's publication or omit key passages.
	Just after midnight on Monday, Trump denied it, telling Bolton the aid was tied to the investigations.
	And now we have a direct contradiction between Trump and his own former national security advisor, which again is going to almost necessitate that Bolton be called in as a witness.
	And it's not going to look good.
	The problem is that Trump is the worst defense client of all time.
	The first rule of being a defense client is shut your pie hole.
	Seriously, that is the first rule of being a defense client.
	If your lawyer tells you shut up, the answer is shut up.
	Don't go on Twitter and mouth off about things because now you have a direct 180 degree confrontation between John Bolton, who by the way is not a dishonest human being, and Donald Trump, who shall we say has a history of embellishing the truth.
	Okay, and here is what Donald Trump had to tweet.
	tweet.
	He tweeted, I never told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigation into Democrats, including the Bidens.
	In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination.
	If Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.
	With that being said, the transcripts of my call with President Zelensky are all the proof is needed.
	In addition to the fact that President Zelensky and the foreign minister of Ukraine said no pressure and no problems.
	I Additionally, I met with President Zelensky at the UN.
	Democrats said I never met and released the military aid to Ukraine without any conditions or investigations and far ahead of schedule.
	I also allowed Ukraine to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles.
	My administration has done far more than the previous administration.
	Okay, like all the last part of that is true.
	Everything he says in the last part is true.
	There's only one sentence there that's a serious problem for him and it's John Bolton's line.
	Right, that John Bolton is only doing this to sell a book.
	Now, it may very well be true that this is going to help John Bolton's book sales.
	Also, when you accuse your own former National Security Advisor of openly lying, this is going to make it very difficult for Republicans to turn down a vote to call John Bolton as a witness.
	And this is why you are seeing Mitt Romney already saying he is likely to back witnesses.
	Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are likely to back witnesses.
	It is very difficult at this point for the Republican senators to say no witnesses.
	Now, if this is turned into a purity test for Republicans, seriously, it's going to be so irritating.
	If there are people on the right who turn this into you back witnesses, therefore you're a disloyal Republican.
	No, that's not the way any of this works.
	When the president says one thing, and his former national security advisor says the opposite, this is a matter of interest to the American people.
	It is.
	The honesty of the president is a matter of interest to the American people.
	Now, does that mean that anything Bolton says makes Trump impeachable?
	No.
	Does it even mean that Trump lying is impeachable?
	The answer is no.
	He was never under oath, which is why it would be insane to put him under oath.
	And this is why when Trump was saying, I would love to testify, you gotta be crazy.
	You gotta be absolutely nuts.
	So I think it would be a good idea for Donald Trump to testify, which is why even Trump's most ardent defenders are not saying, we'd love to hear directly from Donald Trump, because that would be like the biggest mistake he could possibly make, because then you're in danger of perjury, of course.
	Trump can mouth off however he wants.
	The minute he takes an oath, now he's running the risk of perjury, and now you're in Bill Clinton 1998 territory.
	Which is not where you want to be.
	According to Bolton's allegations, he described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months.
	He described not only the president's private disparagement of Ukraine, but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.
	For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately there was no basis to the claims by the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients.
	Okay, again, all of this is perfectly consonant with stupidity, but not with impeachment.
	So it can be true, right?
	I've been saying all along, I think this is what happened.
	Really, I've been saying like this since... You can go back and listen to the tapes.
	I've been saying this since like the first two weeks of this thing.
	That what happened is that Rudy Giuliani was being misled by a bunch of people with alternative agendas in Ukraine.
	He was feeding Trump a bunch of material that confirmed Trump's pre-existing biases with regard to 2016.
	And then those people were manipulating Rudy, who's then manipulating Trump with regard to doing certain things like firing Marie Yovanovitch and going after the Bidens in Ukraine and all the rest of this.
	Bolton said that after the President's July phone call with the President of Ukraine, he raised with AG William Barr his concerns about Giuliani and told Barr that the President had mentioned him on the call.
	A spokeswoman for Barr denied he learned of the call from Bolton.
	The Justice Department said he learned about it only in mid-August.
	Well, again, maybe he maybe Bolton raised it with with Barr after Barr had learned about it, or maybe he talked with an assistant.
	We don't really know.
	The acting White House chief of staff was present for at least one phone call where the president and Giuliani discussed at the ambassador.
	According to Bolton, Mulvaney has told associates who'd always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney client privilege.
	In any case, Bolton's lawyer blamed the White House for disclosure of the book's content.
	The lawyer, Charles Cooper, said it's clear, regrettably, from the New York Times article published today, the pre-publication review process has been corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript.
	The White House did not provide responses to questions about Bolton's assertions.
	Okay, bottom line is, again, it's going to be difficult now for the Republicans to deny Bolton as a witness if he is called.
	Again, I don't think he's going to say anything that's impeachable.
	But it's not going to be good for Trump.
	And this is the problem.
	This whole thing was never about impeaching Trump.
	It was really about just going after Trump and damaging Trump.
	And now Trump has damaged himself because Trump, again, makes claims that are not defensible on the merits.
	In the same way that, by the way, again, it was not defensible on the merits for President Trump to say he'd never met Lev Parnas.
	He had no idea who Lev Parnas was.
	And Lev Parnas, who's Rudy Giuliani's Skullduggerous associate in Ukraine is going around dropping tapes of Trump saying things directly to him.
	None of that makes Trump look particularly honest in all of this.
	Parnas did drop a tape over the weekend of Donald Trump telling him to take out the Ukrainian ambassador, which is a weird thing to say since, again, Marie Yovanovitch worked for Trump.
	He could fire her anytime he wanted.
	The biggest problem there, I think, where we need to start is we've got to get rid of the ambassador.
	She's still left over from the Clinton administration.
	Who are the ambassador?
	Ukraine?
	Yeah, and she's basically walking around telling everybody, wait, he's going to get impeached.
	Just wait.
	It's incredible.
	She'll be gone tomorrow.
	What's your initiative?
	I don't remember.
	So one of the things that will be, now that we have a Secretary of State that's been sworn in.
	Get rid of her.
	Hooray!
	Get her out tomorrow.
	Take her out.
	Okay?
	Excellent.
	Do it.
	Okay, so I suppose the idea is he's talking to Parnas, but we don't know who else is at the dinner, so maybe he's talking to one of his own officials.
	Okay, the bottom line is that if you tell Trump anything that is bad about Trump in front of Trump, Donald Trump will then say, take the person out, right?
	That's what Donald Trump is.
	That doesn't violate the law.
	She works for him.
	He can say whatever he wants in a private conversation, even with scuzzbags like Lev Parnas.
	It makes it difficult for the Republicans to take the full on Trump has never fibbed about anything.
	Everything is on the up and up.
	Everything here is hunky dory line because Trump refuses to defend his own line.
	He refuses to defend what he actually did.
	This is why when people are all over Mitt Romney about all likely back witnesses, as I've said all along, I don't really care about witnesses.
	I think the American people generally have a right to disclosure, and I'm consistent about this.
	If this were Barack Obama, I'd be saying the same thing.
	I would love to hear from witnesses, and that would include Hunter Biden.
	And yes, it would include John Bolton.
	This notion by Republicans that it's some sort of failure of purity if you don't want to allow, if you are okay with allowing witnesses when the president is directly contradicting his own NSA.
	I don't buy that.
	I also don't buy that anything that Bolton is claiming is actually impeachable.
	Anyway, here's Mitt Romney who is taking, so Mitt Romney came out.
	He said that he would likely back witnesses.
	I say there are other Republicans who have said they will likely back witnesses.
	All of this could have been a lot easier if the defense attorneys for Donald Trump had told their client to stop this and stop it and be quiet and let us handle this.
	Because guess what?
	The Democrats did not prove their case.
	I mean, even Jeffrey Toobin over the weekend, before this Bolton stuff, even Jeffrey Toobin was saying, the Republicans are winning and the President is winning.
	The Republicans are winning here.
	The President is winning here.
	And as long as they don't, you know, completely fall on their faces, which they're all competent lawyers, they're not going to do that.
	I think that's fine for them.
	And that, of course, is right.
	That's right.
	Now, we're going to have witnesses.
	Now, do the witnesses mean that anything fundamentally changes?
	No, it doesn't mean any of that.
	Nothing is going to fundamentally change here.
	With that said...
	Is any of this great for President Trump looking forward to re-election?
	It is not.
	And it is the best thing that could happen to somebody like Bernie Sanders, who again, is making the case that anybody can beat Trump, including an open commie at this point.
	Meanwhile, very quick update on the coronavirus situation.
	So, the coronavirus situation continues to grow.
	According to the Chinese, we now have over 80 deaths from the coronavirus.
	Draconian travel corps have been implemented.
	Some 50 million people in China have been barred from travel.
	There are apparently five cases in the United States of coronavirus.
	Apparently also it is communicable before symptoms show which is scary because you could have somebody who has it doesn't know they have it and they're already passing it on to other people.
	You know as far as how deadly this is and how much of a risk it is to the United States right now they're saying worldwide the number of confirmed cases is nearing 2,000.
	I think that it is important at this point to point out that the seasonal flu in the United States that the the flu was obtained by something like 3.7 million people in the United States in 2019.
	3.7 million cases of the flu, between 23,000 and 41,000 hospitalizations, and somewhere between 1,300 and 3,300 flu-related deaths in the United States, just between October 1st and December 7th, 2019.
	So when we talk about the coronavirus and the threat of the coronavirus, just recognize that there's flu epidemics every year, and a lot of people die from those flu epidemics.
	Is this a situation for panic?
	No.
	Is it a situation where crackdowns on travel are necessary?
	You bet.
	You bet.
	And we ought to keep an eye on it, obviously.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So President Trump this week is going to propose his peace plan in the Middle East.
	It's going to recognize some very simple on-the-ground realities.
	Realities like The Jewish quote-unquote settlements in Judea and Samaria which are not illegal under international law.
	There's nothing that says the Jews are forbidden from settling in areas of Judea and Samaria that are not only historic Jewish territory but are disputed territory under international law thanks to conflict.
	The peace plans of the past had always assumed those would remain Israeli territory.
	President Trump is going to maintain That those areas remain Jewish in any sort of deal, which of course is what is going to happen.
	The reason that that is actually smart is because if you wish to put pressure on the Palestinians to come to the table, one of the things you say is, listen, all the territory that the Jews are going and grabbing by settling there, all that territory, that's not coming back off the table.
	So the faster you make peace and you grab a territorial And you grab a territorial final settlement here, the better off you are going to be.
	The Palestinians, of course, have never intended on making peace under any circumstances.
	The great lie of the media and of the left is that the Palestinians have been desperate for peace.
	That is, of course, untrue on every level.
	They've been militating in favor of the destruction of the state of Israel consistently and without break.
	Since the creation of the State of Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization, lest we forget, was founded in 1964, before the 1967 Six-Day War, which means that what they were attempting to liberate, quote-unquote, was Haifa and Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
	Right?
	Not the West Bank, which was, at that point, covered by Jordan.
	So all of this is a recognition of reality.
	The Trump administration does recognize the reality on the ground with regard to the state of Israel.
	The White House is hoping that it can get the support of both Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, and Benny Gantz, who is his lead rival for the prime ministership, and that would provide some momentum.
	Gantz would be a fool to turn it down.
	Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Libran, who's sort of the swing vote over there, he made comments about both Netanyahu and Gantz's goals.
	Now, one of the great lies here is that the Trump administration is trying to prop up Netanyahu, as opposed to simply providing a real plan.
	I know a lot of the players on both sides with regard to this.
	Suffice it to say that Benny Gantz does not have significant disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu on foreign policy, which I know comes as a great surprise to the idiots at the editorial board of the New York Times.
	Suffice it also to say that the Trump administration, they like Bibi, but if Gantz is the prime minister, they'll deal with him too.
	They don't really care.
	They've been having ongoing talks with Gantz.
	So the silliness that this is all a method of propping up Bibi is obviously untrue.
	Meanwhile, Palestinians are responding to any peace plan with another day of rage, which is called Tuesday.
	In the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
	When you provide your people with no jobs, steal all the money and use it to build terror cells, it turns out that people get pissed off pretty easily.
	Okay, we'll bring you more details on that plan when it is finally released and when the media rip it up and down because the media are corrupt and don't understand the first thing about Middle Eastern politics.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so obviously the thing that I hate today is this awful, awful news out of Los Angeles.
	Kobe Bryant and his daughter, among nine others, were killed in this awful helicopter crash that happened over here just off of Las Virginas.
	Apparently, the sort of best available information at this point suggests it was likely pilot error and not mechanical failure, although I'm sure we'll get more information.
	About that, as time goes on, it was very foggy yesterday, apparently, particularly in the area where the plane crashed.
	It's very hilly, so that means that if the helicopter pilot could not see the landscape, because I guess the helicopter pilot was flying beneath the cloud cover, and so if it got real foggy, he couldn't see, all of a sudden he'd get disoriented.
	Just an awful, awful story.
	Also, I'm a Celtics fan, so that meant that I spent most of my childhood hating Kobe, because he was a Celtics killer, right?
	I mean, there was at least one championship that Kobe was responsible for stealing from Boston.
	He was a player where if he wasn't on your team, you loved to hate him.
	And if he was on your team, you loved to love him.
	There's nobody more beloved in the city of Los Angeles than Kobe Bryant.
	He's also somebody who seems to have grown over time.
	Obviously, he had a bunch of personal issues very early on in his career.
	By the time of his death, his daughter being on the helicopter is just devastating.
	I mean, just the worst thing in the world.
	13 years old, just horrific in every way.
	There is this tape that was going around yesterday of Kobe talking with his daughter, Gianna.
	She was the one who was on the helicopter with him.
	Do you think your daughter might want to play in the WNBA?
	She does, for sure.
	She does?
	I mean, this kid, man.
	Wouldn't that be great?
	on Jimmy Kimmel talking about his daughter Gianna carrying on his basketball legacy.
	She's aboard the helicopter as well.
	Do you think your daughter might want to play in the WNBA?
	She does for sure.
	She does?
	I mean, this kid, man.
	Wouldn't that be great?
	Dude, man, I'm telling you.
	The best thing that happens is when we go out and fans will come up to me and she'll be standing next to me and they'll be like, hey, you got to have a boy.
	You and V gotta have a boy, man.
	You have somebody carry on the tradition, the legacy.
	She's like, oh yeah.
	I got this.
	But that's right.
	Yes you do.
	You got this.
	There's a tape of them a couple of weeks ago sitting at a Lakers game and they're going over strategy and you can see it's really quite charming.
	He's talking with her.
	She's finishing his sentences.
	You can see he's proud of her for how she's analyzing the game.
	you know, he, He obviously was a good father, a caring father.
	There's tons of tape of him online talking about his kids and playing with his kids.
	They had four kids, he and his wife.
	It's just, just on a human level, it's truly awful.
	And whenever, obviously, somebody who touches this many people, you know, people always, it's easy to say, oh, a celebrity died, who cares?
	The same thing as anybody else dying.
	The reality is that celebrities do touch people's lives because you make them a part of your life.
	It's just awful.
	It's just so terrible.
	When somebody who's a celebrity dies, you shouldn't feel bad about feeling terrible about it.
	They're a part of your life.
	They're somebody you spent time with.
	They're somebody you welcomed into your home.
	And the fact is that even if you love to hate Kobe as a player, the man was an unbelievable basketball player.
	And it seems like a pretty terrific father.
	You know, in the last couple of years, he retired.
	He'll be, I'm sure, inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame for what's that worth, you know, posthumously.
	Here's a little bit of tape from Kobe's last game.
	He retired.
	His final game, of course, was a very Kobe game, right?
	He scored 60 points in his final game.
	He was leading a very bad Lakers team to a victory in that final year.
	He was badly injured a couple of years before he retired.
	Here's a little bit of footage from Kobe's last game, if we've got that.
	A basket equals a 50-point game.
	Kobe underneath.
	He's got 51!
	A two-possession game.
	Here's his 19th field goal, Steve.
	56 points!
	Are you kidding me?
	The amazing Kobe Bryant!
	You've got to be kidding me.
	So last night in the NBA, there were a bunch of teams, because he was number 24, there were a bunch of teams that traded 24-second violations for folks who don't watch basketball.
	You have 24 seconds to bring the ball down court and take a shot and hit the rim.
	And so there were a bunch of teams all around the NBA where they opened the game by dribbling out the clock, the 24 seconds, and then the other team would take the ball and dribble out the clock.
	Obviously, it was a terrible story when he found out that Kobe was on the helicopter.
	The story got an enormous amount worse when he found out that his daughter was on the helicopter as well.
	You just gotta feel, for the family today, you gotta feel... I mean, really, stuff like this is so far apart from politics that it's not even worth discussing politics.
	There are people today who are very upset with Trump for having tweeted about it.
	That's very silly.
	Again, obviously when somebody who is a major figure dies, and whether you like Kobe or whether you didn't like Kobe, that was a major figure, when that happens, it's worth taking time to actually pause and appraise, especially because it is true that we spend an awful lot of our lives sort of denying the reality of what's coming for all of us, and when something like this happens really suddenly, it's really quite Quite awful.
	And really, we should all be praying for the Bryant family tonight, particularly his wife, who lost not only a husband, but also lost a child, which is just the most unthinkable thing that can happen.
	I'm a parent as well.
	If you're a parent, you know that even the thought of that is like the worst thing that could possibly happen.
	And because I'm from Los Angeles, this is a big thing in LA.
	I remember yesterday, I happened to be at a kid's birthday party, and the news started to go around at the kid's birthday party, and it was It's pretty awful.
	I mean, the whole thing is really, really awful.
	So again, prayers for the Bryant family and, you know, prayers for all of us.
	Really, really bad stuff.
	Alrighty.
	Well, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show. - this is The Ben Shapiro Show. -
	On the Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.
	We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.

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