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Sept. 25, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:10:38

The Plot To Destroy America | Ep. 1103

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	New details emerge in the FBI investigation into Trump campaign members, and they are damning for the FBI.
	Violence continues in Louisville as the media refused to look at the facts surrounding Breonna Taylor's death.
	And Trump reiterates he won't concede the election if he suspects voter fraud.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Now remember, you've got to tune in to a special Presidential Debate Edition of Daily Wire backstage Tuesday, September 29th at 5.45pm Pacific, 8.45pm Eastern.
	We are going to watch the Rock'em Sock'em Robots.
	Will Joe Biden make it out of there without stumbling physically?
	Will President Trump simply start babbling nonsensically?
	Who the hell knows?
	It's going to be wild, but we're going to be there to cover it with you and suffer every painful moment.
	Go check us out.
	Daily Wire, Backstage Tuesday, September 29th, 5 at 45 p.m.
	Pacific, 8 at 45 p.m.
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	The whole Russiagate scandal, the attempt by members of the intelligence community to target people who are members of the Trump campaign, and do so on the basis of extraordinarily thin evidence.
	with CodeBenC, cite for details.
	All righty, so, the whole Russiagate scandal, the attempt by members of the intelligence community to target people who are members of the Trump campaign and do so on the basis of extraordinarily thin evidence, this is particularly true with, for example, Carter Page, who is targeted on the basis of, essentially, no evidence other than weird allegations made in the Steele dossier.
	This has been an ongoing scandal for a while, and I'll be honest with you, it was so complex and so confusing and so speculative at the beginning, I didn't cover it.
	I wasn't the first person to cover it.
	The person who I think covered it the best is probably Dan Bongino.
	By the way, best wishes to Dan.
	He just announced that he has some sort of neck tumor and so we obviously are all praying for him.
	Dan covered this at length in his book Spygate.
	He's been covering it on his show, but It is now perfectly obvious that there were members of the intelligence community who simply wanted to see the Trump campaign targeted.
	That ranged from obviously Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to possibly James Comey, who was basically preventing information from being disseminated through the proper channels.
	He was not informing the incoming Trump administration of suspicions about members of the Trump campaign.
	He was going above and beyond the law in order to target Michael Flynn, so much so that now Attorney General William Barr has decided not to prosecute Michael Flynn.
	Well, now we have more evidence that members of the intelligence community were perverting the system in order to go after members of the Trump campaign.
	Yesterday, Catherine Herridge over at CBS reported.
	That according to the Durham report, John Durham is an attorney paid for by the federal government who is going through all of the sort of roots of the Russiagate investigation, trying to figure out where all this came from.
	Was there malfeasance?
	Who performed the malfeasance?
	Well, according to that Durham report, new information emerging, the primary subsource for the Steele dossier was deemed a possible national security threat and the subject of a 2009 FBI counterintelligence probe.
	Okay, so you have to remember the actual story here.
	The actual story here is that the Steele dossier was used as the predicate.
	It was used as the basis for the FISA warrants against Carter Page.
	It was used as sort of the central piece of evidence in pursuit of members of the Trump campaign because there was this compendium of nonsense and maybe not nonsense that was being disseminated throughout the federal government.
	It was compiled by a firm connected with Hillary Clinton.
	It was then laundered basically to the FBI and the FBI picked it up and started their investigation and used this heavily in their investigation in the FISA warrants for Carter Page, but also in sort of other areas of the investigation. Well, now Catherine Herridge is reporting that by December 2016, everybody knew that the Steele dossier was not only crap, it was probably deliberate disinformation.
	Because the person who is the chief source for the Steele dossier was deemed a possible national security threat and the subject of 2009 FBI counterintelligence probe.
	According to new records, those facts were known to the Crossfire Hurricane team as of December 2016.
	That did not stop the dissemination of the Steele dossier.
	Remember that BuzzFeed reported on the Steele dossier in January of 2017, specifically because they said that the President of the United States had been presented information about the Steele dossier.
	But we now know that the Intel community knew by December 2016 that the entire sort of primary basis for the Steele dossier was nonsense.
	There's always been a suspicion that the way that BuzzFeed and the media were reporting on the Steele dossier, which had been floating around, right?
	It went to John McCain, among other people.
	It had been floating around out there in Washington, D.C.
	That the basic hook upon which the media Decided to rely in order to report all of the garbage in the Steele dossier was this report that Trump had been informed about the Steele dossier.
	Well now it's newsworthy and now we get to report it.
	There's only one problem.
	Why was the Intel community even bringing this thing up to Trump?
	Why were they using it as the basis for the FISA warrant for Carter Page?
	These documents are really, really damning.
	Again, it shows.
	That the primary subsource was possibly a Russian spy.
	According to the document, there's an overview of the counterintelligence investigation of Christopher Steele's primary subsource.
	Between May 2009 and March 2011, the FBI maintained an investigation into the individual who later would be identified as Christopher Steele's primary subsource.
	The FBI commenced this investigation based on information by the FBI indicating that the primary subsource may be a threat to national security Specifically, the FBI received reporting indicating a research fellow for an influential foreign policy advisor in the Obama administration was at a work-related event in late 2008 with a co-worker when they were approached by another employee of the think tank.
	The employee reportedly indicated that if the two individuals at the table did get a job in the government and had access to classified information and wanted to make a little extra money, the employee knew some people to whom they could speak.
	The coworker did express suspicion of the employee and had questioned the possibility the employee might actually be a Russian spy.
	In December 2016, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation identified the employee as Christopher Steele's primary subsource.
	So in other words, the intelligence community knew full well that this guy was full of crap, and then they proceeded to use this as the basis for launching the investigation into Carter Page, among others.
	According to this documentation, In September 2006, the primary subsource was in contact with a known Russian intelligence officer.
	In 2005, the subsource was making contact with a Washington, D.C.-based Russian officer.
	One individual indicated the primary subsource was not anti-American, but wanted to return to Russia one day.
	Another described the primary subsource as pro-Russia, indicated that he or she always interjected Russian opinions during foreign policy discussions.
	So the timeline of December 2016 is when they knew that basically the SEAL dossier was nonsense, they promulgated it anyway, they announced it to Trump, and then all of a sudden it finds its way into the press.
	All of which suggests that this was an attempt to subvert the incoming Trump administration at the very, very least.
	And now there are text messages that have been emerging from the FBI detailing the quote-unquote internal furor over the handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as according to The Federalist, Sean Davidson and Molly Hemingway reporting.
	FBI agents tasked by fired former director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency's potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president.
	Previously hidden FBI text messages show the explosive new communications and internal FBI notes were disclosed in federal court filings today from Sidney Powell, the attorney who heads Michael Flynn's legal defense team.
	We all went and purchased professional liability insurance, one agent texted on January 10, 2017, the same day CNN leaked details that then-President-elect Trump had been briefed by Comey about the bogus Christopher Steele dossier.
	That briefing of Trump was used as a pretext to legitimize the debunked dossier, which was funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign and compiled by a foreign intelligence officer who was working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
	Holy crap, an agent responded.
	All the analysts too?
	Yep, the first agent said.
	All the folks at the agency as well?
	Can I ask who are the most likely litigators, an agent responded?
	As far as potentially suing y'all?
	Haha, who knows?
	I think the concern, when we got it, was that there was a big leak at DOJ and the New York Times, among others, was going to do a piece.
	While the names of the agents responsible for the texts are redacted, the legal filing from Powell, quoting communications from the DOJ, states, The latest document production included handwritten notes and texts from Peter Strzok, who led up all of these investigations, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, an FBI analyst who worked on the FBI's investigation of Flynn.
	Agents also said they were worried about how a new attorney general might view the actions taken against Trump during the investigation.
	The new AG might have some questions.
	Then we all get screwed, one agent wrote.
	FBI agents also discussed how the investigation's leadership was consumed with conspiracy theories rather than evidence.
	I'm telling you, man, if this thing ever gets FOIA'd, there are gonna be some tough questions asked, one agent wrote, and a great deal of those will be related to Brian having a scope way outside the boundaries of logic.
	Redacted, so they took out the name, is one of the worst offenders of the rabbit holes in conspiracy theories.
	The guy traveled with that guy, who put down the third guy as his visa sponsor.
	Third guy lives near a Navy base, therefore, Several texts show the order to close the criminal investigation against Michael Flynn came as early as November 8th, 2016, the same day as the 2016 presidential election.
	It was later reopened in early January of 2017 on the thin read that it was a Logan Act violation for Mike Flynn to be talking with the Russians, when in fact it was not.
	We have some loose ends to tie up.
	We all need to meet to discuss what to do with each case.
	One agent texted referring to the operation called Crossfire Razor, which was the FBI's codename for the investigation of Michael Flynn.
	The new disclosures made by the DOJ also show the FBI used so-called national security letters to spy on Michael Flynn's finances.
	Unlike traditional subpoenas, which do require judicial review and approval before authorities can seize an innocent person's property and information, NSLs are never independently reviewed by courts.
	One of the agents noted in a text message that these particular form of surveillance were just being used as a pretext by the FBI leadership to buy time to find dirt on Flynn after the first investigation of him yielded no derogatory information.
	The decision to finalize, the decision to NSL finances for Razor bought him time, one agent said two weeks after the initial order to shut down the anti-Flynn case.
	What do we expect to get from an NSL?
	An agent texted on December 5th, 2016.
	We put out traces, tripwires to community, nothing.
	Bingo, another agent responded.
	So what's an NSL gonna do?
	No content.
	Haha, this is a nightmare, an agent said.
	So a lot of the agents were deeply suspicious that all of this was basically bullcrap.
	And as it turns out, it was in fact bullcrap.
	These agents were deeply upset at the fact that the agency was now being used as a way to launch anti-Trump intel into the public or to target President Trump.
	On January 15th, on January 5th, they could not believe that the Intel report was going to stay open.
	Razor's gonna stay open, an agent wrote on January 5th.
	Yep, another FBI agent responded.
	Crimes report being drafted.
	F, the first agent wrote back.
	What's the word on how the Obama briefing went?
	One agent asked, referring to a January 5th meeting between James Comey and Barack Obama.
	Don't know, but people who are scrambling for information to support certain things, it's a madhouse, an FBI agent responded.
	Jesus, an agent wrote back.
	Trump was right.
	Still not put together.
	Why do we do this to ourselves?
	What is wrong with these people?
	So, all of this is obviously deeply disturbing and undermines fundamental institutions of the American Republic.
	Kimberly Strassel has a good thread on this over at the Wall Street Journal.
	She says, Breaking, per Catherine Herridge, an extraordinary.
	So Christopher Steele's main source for the dossier, he was the subject of nearly two year long FBI counterintel investigation under suspicion of being a Russian spy and a threat to national security.
	Early in the Obama administration, the subsource reportedly attempted to recruit two individuals connected to an influential foreign policy advisor to Obama, said if they got jobs in the administration and access to classified info, he could help them make a little money.
	FBI says he had previous contact with the Russian embassy and Russian intelligence officers.
	Thanks to Paul Sperry, we know the name of this subsource and that he, for a period at this time, was at Brookings, a Democratic think tank.
	Here's the real kicker.
	The FBI knew about this prior CIA investigation into the source in December of 2016.
	It knew it was relying on information from a suspected Russian spy.
	The same FBI said to be concerned about Russian interference in the election was using information from a suspected Russian spy to probe a presidential campaign.
	The same FBI claiming Carter Page was a Russian agent was making that case based on info from a suspected Russian agent.
	Most importantly, it never told the FISA court about this CIA investigation.
	It withheld that information and continued re-upping its applications to surveil Carter Page on the campaign.
	It vouched for information supplied by a suspected Russian agent.
	The name of the subsource?
	The realization of the FBI's prior suspicions should have ended the entire probe.
	Instead, the FBI doubled down, hid things from the court, and kept going.
	This again raises an urgent need to know who knew what and when.
	And people wonder why John Durham is looking into all of this?
	Also, extra credit question, wasn't it Mueller's job to find sources of Russian disinformation?
	How do you miss the guy potentially feeding it directly to the FBI?
	And the fact that this went as far as it did is an astonishing breach of the nation's ability to trust its intelligence community.
	And I've been very skeptical of a lot of the criticisms made of the intelligence community.
	I didn't like it when President Trump talked badly of the intelligence community.
	I thought that he painted with too broad a brush at the very least.
	But it is perfectly obvious there were actors inside the FBI who were engaged in bad activity in order to target President Trump and his campaign.
	It is perfectly obvious at this point that that was what was going on.
	I think we're going to find out some more damning info as the Durham investigation makes its way forward through the DOJ.
	Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the continuation of violence across the country, actually, over the death of Breonna Taylor and the exoneration of the officers in that case, except for one officer who was charged with wanton Discharge of a firearm?
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Alrighty, so.
	The chaos continued across the country.
	Every time there is a controversial race case in which the media completely ignore the underlying facts in order to achieve what they want to achieve, which is further racial conflagration, further racial tension, this stuff breaks out every single time.
	And it's going to continue this way.
	I do not think it's going to end if Joe Biden becomes president, because who exactly is going to be sanguine about the octogenarian, the octogenarian barely awake Longtime senator who did nothing, making sure that all racial tensions in the country are quelled.
	Also, the Democratic Party and the media have set a goal that is unobtainable.
	It is just not there.
	It's not, you can't get to it.
	That goal is the end of all racism whatsoever.
	And not just the goal to end all racism, but the goal to end all situations in which racism could possibly be attributed to the situation, even if there's no racism evident from the situation.
	There's still no evidence that, number one, Breonna Taylor was shot on purpose.
	Number two, that Breonna Taylor was shot because she was black.
	There's no evidence this had anything to do with racism.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's seen as an element of the racist justice system, the racist policing system.
	The predictable result of all of this is the insanity that we have been seeing in our cities.
	And again, I think that you are going to see such flight from urban centers.
	I think it's going to be as bad as it was in the 1970s when the crime rates really, really began to spike.
	And it's because of incidents like this.
	We currently live in Los Angeles, not for long.
	And one of the reasons that we do not want to live in Los Angeles is because of incidents like this.
	So yesterday, down in Hollywood, last night, there were protests over Breonna Taylor.
	About 350 people apparently showed up at these protests.
	And cars were attempting to get through because these are public streets.
	There are no permits taken out for these protests.
	You know, you can see the spray paint on the sidewalks and in the middle of the street and all this.
	You can see a huge crowd of people who are gathered in the middle of the street, again, protesting in the middle of a pandemic without any permit or anything else.
	But, you know, this is all good because we need this moment of racial reckoning, as Joe Biden has suggested.
	And what you'll see is a person in a white Prius simply trying to get through.
	This is obviously not somebody who's attempting to harm members of the crowd.
	This is a person who's probably trying to get home.
	Hey, this is not somebody who's ramming their cars deliberately into protesters or anything like this.
	You can see they're driving very, very slowly, just trying to get through.
	They're driving maybe five miles an hour, really, really slowly.
	And then once they get through, then they take off in the car, right?
	Then they start hitting the gas.
	They haven't hit anybody.
	The crowd starts chasing them.
	And then you will see a helicopter footage.
	You'll see a truck filled with looters who cut the guy off.
	They box him in.
	A Mustang approaches from behind, and he tries to back up.
	The Mustang blocks him, and they start beating the crap out of this person.
	Somebody reaches through the driver's side window, apparently grabbing the steering wheel.
	People start taking flagpoles and bicycles and smashing windows.
	Somebody takes a skateboard and smashes the front windshield of the car.
	And then the Prius takes off down the street.
	Okay, so the Prius didn't injure anybody.
	These people were trying to harm the driver inside.
	They were trying to beat the crap out of the car for the great sin of the person trying to get home.
	So what ends up happening?
	The police pull the driver over and force the driver to get out of his car with his hands raised.
	Like, this is why people are going to leave cities.
	Because it turns out that when you refuse to allow the police to enforce the law... You know how you could have enforced the law here?
	Large gatherings in the middle of a pandemic without a public permit should not be allowed.
	How is it that you can lock, I'm not kidding you, tens of millions of people across the country in their homes during a lockdown, but the minute there's a protest in the street of 350 people in LA, you're not allowed to break up the protest, even as they take over public property and threaten people's lives and property.
	How?
	How?
	And the answer is because you back the movement, because you're kind of okay with what's going on.
	That is the only reason.
	Because if you weren't okay with what was going on, you would stop it.
	Meanwhile, Louisville turned into a hotbed last night again.
	Andy Ngo was on the ground in Louisville and he got some tape of people performing active looting again in Louisville.
	So that was just wonderful.
	There was also my friend Ami Horowitz, friend of the show.
	Ami Horowitz showed up in Louisville and he was shouted at and he was intimidated into putting down his camera.
	These are all folks who care deeply about civil rights to the point where they tell you literally are not allowed to tape them in public place as they commit acts of violence.
	The good news is that our Democratic leadership is really talking these things down.
	I mean, they're really trying to calm the waters here.
	So Kamala Harris, the vice presidential candidate who's gone about as missing as it is possible for a VP candidate to go, she, along with Biden, are just hiding in the bunker.
	So Biden, I believe, called another lid today, I believe, which means that he has now been absent from the campaign trail like 10 of the last 13 days.
	And the media are like, oh, he's probably prepping for debate.
	It doesn't take 13 days to prep for a debate.
	And he's not prepping for a debate.
	He's just hiding in the basement, hoping that Donald Trump's innate unpopularity with the American people lets Joe Biden sort of coast into office without having to get off his gurney.
	In any case, Kamala Harris tweeted out, No, you don't.
	Americans don't need to be reminded that inequity runs deep in our country.
	It's a painful reality every day.
	We will only begin to fully heal when our nation addresses the systemic racism in our laws, policies and institutions.
	Joe Biden and I have a plan to do just that.
	No, you don't.
	No, you don't.
	And she tweet out, keep speaking Breonna Taylor's name.
	Okay, again, Breonna Taylor was the victim of a tragedy.
	Breonna Taylor was not the victim of a crime.
	End of story.
	When you say, keep saying Breonna Taylor's name, what exactly about saying Breonna Taylor's name is going to be effective in effectuating change that will be useful?
	It's one thing if you're talking about revising some of the laws regarding no-knock warrants, although in this particular case, if they'd actually effectuated the no-knock warrant, Breonna Taylor might well be alive.
	The problem was that they knocked, and then they announced themselves, and then that allowed her boyfriend, Walker, to get up out of bed, grab a gun, and then shoot at the door, which is what caused the entire crossfire situation to happen.
	But beyond that, if you're talking about the horrors of the Breonna Taylor situation, the suggestion tacitly and implicitly there is that the police were in the wrong and that the police should have been prosecuted in the killing of Breonna Taylor.
	Which again, there is no legal evidence to back this idea.
	It does not mesh with reality.
	It simply does not.
	It has not for months.
	Everybody who has studied this case and is honest about it knows that.
	There are certain cases where charges are warranted.
	Ahmaud Arbery.
	There are cases where certain charges are not warranted.
	Breonna Taylor is one of those cases.
	Hey, but when she says that we have a plan to end systemic racism, no you don't.
	The entire use of the term systemic racism means that there is no plan.
	There is no way to end systemic racism except to tear down systems.
	That's why the term systemic racism includes the word systemic.
	If your plan to end systemic racism does not include tearing down systems, it in fact is about you being elected in order to run those systems, then you're not ending systemic racism, you are perpetuating systemic racism.
	And herein lies the problem, as I've been pointing out for a long time here.
	The chief proponents of so-called institutional or systemic racism suggest that the way you can tell systemic or institutional racism exists is by disparate impact, is by looking at the outcome of a particular law, and if it does not affect all communities equally, statistically speaking, it is a racist law and must be ended, or it's a racist system and must be torn down.
	Well, once you say systemic racism, and then you say, I have a plan to end it, unless you are tearing down the system, you do not have a plan to end it.
	You want to be part of the system.
	You are part of the problem.
	You're upholding the system.
	You're serving the system.
	This is why it is not a leap from Black Lives Matter movement.
	Systemic racism arguments to defund the police.
	Because reforming the police is not in the cards.
	You're still reforming a system that is fundamentally based on slave catching, according to people like Ta-Nehisi Coates.
	So it does not matter whether you want to correct small ills.
	Small ills aren't the problem.
	The entire system is to blame.
	When Kamala Harris says systemic racism, what she means is, I'm speaking your language, but I'm not going to actually do what I say I'm going to do.
	I'm just going to hold out there the prospect that you're going to be able to tear down the system if you elect people like me.
	It's truly radical and it's truly ugly.
	Then of course you have Kamala Harris saying violence isn't the answer.
	She tweeted that out last night as well.
	She said that violence is an issue.
	This is what she tweeted.
	She said, Joe Biden and I are keeping the police officers who were shot in Louisville in our hearts, wishing them a swift and speedy recovery.
	Violence is not the answer.
	We must find a way to express our grief, anger, and demands in ways that reflect the world we wish to see.
	Okay, two thoughts that are not really Easily held at the same time.
	Thought number one, the entire system is racist.
	Thought number two, attempts to destroy the system through use of violence are bad.
	Okay, especially when your alternative is what?
	You're gonna vote for these longtime politicians, including this former prosecutor, Kamala Harris?
	You can't have it both ways.
	If the system is worthy of being torn down, it's worthy of being torn down.
	And that means the people who serve the system are the bad guys.
	You can't say all cops are good people, or most cops are good people, but really they are brown-shirted servants of a systemically racist system.
	That argument does not wash.
	And I think people inherently know that argument doesn't wash, which is why you are seeing all of this violence in the streets.
	And meanwhile, as we will see, the Trump administration is taking a different tack.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	I'm not talking about Santa Claus.
	I'm not talking about God.
	I'm talking about your ISP.
	Your ISP is keeping track of everything that you do because they want to monetize everything you do online.
	Your internet provider, like AT&T or Comcast, is allowed to store logs of every website you've ever visited.
	They can legally sell the data to anyone.
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	Alrighty, so the Trump administration is taking a bit of a different tack here, and that tack is that we are going to defend law enforcement.
	So Vice President Mike Pence said this yesterday.
	He said, our angle here is that law enforcement is good, which seems like it should be fairly inarguable since there is one tried and true solution to crime, and that is more police officers.
	Here is Vice President Pence.
	In the first three years of this administration, we've been supporting law enforcement at every level.
	4,000 police officers funded through the COPS program.
	We broke records working with state and local law enforcement for prosecutions in violent crime and firearm prosecutions.
	Violent crime was steadily dropping to historic lows from a time in the previous eight years that saw violent crime on the rise.
	Okay, he is right about all of this.
	The Trump administration also sent forth Kayleigh McEnany to point out that the media have been fostering violence.
	Now, this does not mean that if you say things that are bad ideologically, you are responsible for the violence.
	It does mean that if we are going to have this argument, which we repeatedly have, about turning up the climate of hostility in the country and making excuses for people who do bad things, that is a fair conversation to have.
	I've said this 1,000 times.
	I don't blame Barack Obama for six police officers being shot in Dallas in 2016.
	I don't blame Bernie Sanders for James Hodgkinson shooting a bunch of people at a congressional baseball game, right?
	Bernie Sanders didn't call for that.
	Barack Obama didn't call for that.
	I do blame them for raising the temperature by suggesting that their political opponents are the root of all evil and need to be destroyed.
	Kayleigh McEnany makes the same point about Breonna Keillor from CNN, who's been making excuses for the rioters and looters over on CNN, apparently.
	Here's Kayleigh McEnany.
	CNN's Breonna Keillor, who said, I question the judgment of the Kentucky Attorney General saying that mob justice is not justice.
	We know that this is very loaded language.
	That's an appalling statement from Breonna Keillor at CNN.
	And what is outrageous about this take is that mob justice is not justice.
	Hours later, after this comment was made on CNN, two police officers were shot.
	This is not justice.
	This has nothing to do with politics.
	It has everything to do with the value of human life.
	She is right about that, of course, but it doesn't matter.
	People got very, very angry because they're saying that, well, if we keep turning up the rhetoric in the media, how are we to blame for all this?
	These are the same people who have suggested that Trump's rhetoric is to blame for everything bad that has ever happened in the history of mankind.
	Meanwhile, the rhetoric continues to rise over at our networks.
	CNN's Bakari Sellers said yesterday, Black lives obviously don't matter in America.
	Which is a weird take, considering that, again, 15 black Americans were shot unarmed by the police all of last year.
	15.
	There are 42 million black people who live in America.
	Black Americans have been presidents of the United States.
	They've been Attorney General of the United States.
	A black American is running for Vice President of the United States.
	We have black Supreme Court justices.
	The leaders of our entertainment industry, many of them are black.
	The leaders of our sports industry, nearly all of them are black.
	At least in terms of the most public faces.
	But apparently black lives don't matter in a country with the most prominent black people on planet Earth.
	By far.
	Here's Bakari Sellers.
	I think it's pretty clear that black lives do not matter.
	I think it's pretty clear that justice is fleeting, that if you are a person of color, particularly a black woman in this country, you know, the quest for justice and the road to get justice is longer and harder than most.
	You know, being black is a perpetual state of grieving in this country.
	And here we are again.
	I've come on this show and poured my heart out.
	I've, you know, cried.
	I've laughed to prevent myself from crying.
	It just hurts sometimes, and here we are again at another moment.
	Being black in America is not a perpetual state of grieving.
	Grieving in America means that you're grieving.
	Race does not decide whether you grieve in a system that does not discriminate against you.
	The Breonna Taylor case is not a case of discrimination.
	There has yet to be an allegation that these officers are racist.
	I mean, again, it is amazing how we immediately jumped to racism and no supporting evidence needs to be presented at any point along the way.
	We still, by the way, don't have evidence that the George Floyd death was racist, let alone the Breonna Taylor death.
	We have no evidence that virtually any of these cases have anything to do with race.
	The only case I can think of in the past year that there was some evidence presented for the actual thesis that racism was involved is the Ahmaud Arbery case where the guy's getting tried for first degree murder.
	So I'm wondering exactly why it is that we are supposed to believe that Bakari Sellers, who gets paid to be on CNN every day and spout this sort of nonsense, is in a perpetual state of grieving over his race.
	That is not the country that people in America are now occupying.
	We are not living in 1960.
	We are not living in 1860.
	We are living in 2020.
	I mean, this is just... By the way, the attempt now to undermine the justice system completely is pace.
	It's not just mob rule.
	It's not just we demand indictments and charges brought against people without evidence.
	It's also that we want to go after members of grand juries who don't do what we want.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so it is not enough, apparently, to suggest without evidence that this entire Breonna Taylor situation is indicative of deeper American racism.
	We now have calls to release grand jury decision-making.
	Now, typically, to take, for example, federal grand juries, there's a reason that we do not release grand jury decision-making information.
	The reason is, if a grand jury is deciding whether or not to indict somebody, what you don't want is they make a decision not to indict, and then all the information is spilled into the public eye, and the person is basically smeared With that information for the rest of their life.
	This is typically why you don't release grand jury information.
	In the same way that let's say that the police or prosecutors look into you and then they decide not to prosecute.
	We don't just put those files online for anybody to see because you didn't commit a crime and frankly it's nobody's business.
	You do have a right against not only unreasonable search and seizure but against being smeared by the public authorities.
	If you are not going to be tried for a crime.
	Well, in this particular case, these particular officers are not being tried.
	And that means that grand jury proceedings, testimony therein, revealing who was on the grand jury, right?
	All of this is a very, very bad idea.
	Nonetheless, this is exactly what some people are calling for.
	Benjamin Crump, the attorney for the Taylor family.
	He's the attorney for all of these families.
	And by the way, a person who lies a lot.
	Okay, Benjamin Crump is a dishonest human being.
	He lied about the facts of the case in the Michael Brown shooting.
	He lied about the facts of the case with George Floyd.
	He has lied about the facts of the case repeatedly in a variety of these cases.
	Well, now Benjamin Crump is on TV suggesting that they should release all the transcripts of the grand jury investigation, saying, quote, if you did everything you could do on Breonna's behalf, you shouldn't have any problem whatsoever.
	He said that the very fact that the officers were not charged with some degree of murder means there seem to be two justice systems in America, one for black America and one for white America.
	This is such nonsense.
	It's such nonsense.
	And then he implied that the Attorney General of Kentucky, a black man, Daniel Cameron, decided that he was going to exonerate these officers against the evidence.
	He said, did he present any evidence on Breonna Taylor's behalf?
	Or did he make a unilateral decision to put his thumb on the scales of justice?
	Wait a second.
	Any evidence on Breonna Taylor?
	She wasn't on trial.
	He doesn't have to present evidence, quote, on behalf of the victim.
	The question is whether the officers committed a crime.
	That doesn't even make any legal sense.
	Crump, of course, was tweeting out the say-her-name stuff and suggesting that Breonna Taylor's name was not mentioned in the indictment.
	Right, because the crime was not the shooting of Breonna Taylor.
	She was shot by accident.
	That's a tragedy.
	Again, it is not a crime.
	And then, Crump said, So I have a question.
	I have a question for Benjamin Crump.
	Benjamin Crump also happens to be the attorney for the Jacob Blake family.
	Jacob Blake was shot after the police were called to the site of a situation where a woman who had alleged rape, digital rape, against Jacob Blake called the cops because Blake showed up again.
	A few months earlier, she had called the cops because Jacob Blake, according to her, had digitally penetrated her against her will with a child in the room.
	Jacob Blake then showed up at her house.
	The cops showed up.
	He resisted arrest.
	He resisted a tase.
	He apparently got an officer in a headlock.
	He then ignored the officer's orders to stop.
	He walked around to the front side of the car.
	They found a knife on the floorboards of the driver's side of the car.
	Benjamin Crump suggested that Jacob Blake was there to break up a fight between two women.
	There was no evidence of this at all.
	None.
	OK, was that respect for black women?
	That's a serious question for Ben Crump.
	Is that respect for black women?
	Because it seems to me like if you wanted to respect a black woman, one thing you might do is believe her after she repeatedly asserts that a man digitally raped her instead of, you know, defending the guy who digitally raped her and suggesting wrongly that he was there as some sort of as some sort of good Samaritan breaking up a fight.
	But the facts don't matter.
	Again, as always, the facts don't matter.
	This tears apart the country.
	It destroys the country.
	When you are so concerned with the narrative that America is evil that you decide to ignore the underlying facts, it tears apart the country.
	And honestly, it's being done on purpose.
	It's being done on purpose.
	Now, meanwhile, speaking of tearing apart the country, we have seen an incredible news cycle in which the media are now alleging that Donald Trump is going to hole up in the White House like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface and snort coke in giant lines from a table and then fire a submachine gun and say, say hello to my little friend.
	Come on in.
	That's not how it's going to go.
	You're all idiots.
	Everybody knows this is idiotic.
	This is again the media spinning their wheels in an attempt to justify any and all action against the Trump administration or any and all preparations up to and including maybe violent protests and looting since they've been so in favor of it in the past few months in the aftermath of the election.
	If there's any confusion at all, which unfortunately Thanks to everything going on, there's probably bound to be.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about a better way of watching TV.
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	All right.
	We're going to get back into this this latest furor over the supposed willingness of President Trump to engage in a coup.
	OK, honest to God, the president does not have the capacity to plan beyond his next tweet, but he's apparently planning a deep and effective coup.
	Mm hmm.
	Yeah.
	Say the people who have refused to accept the results of the 2016 election so much so that they literally militarized the FBI in order to go after the Trump administration and went after Michael Flynn and then for several years touted the idea that the Russians had stolen the election in cahoots with the Trump administration.
	Yes, these are the people I trust when it comes to being very anti-coup.
	Mm-hmm.
	In just a second, we'll get to more of this.
	First, You don't want to miss another great episode of the Sunday Special coming up this weekend.
	Former Trump administration press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders comes on the show to discuss her time working for the president, her best and worst days as press secretary, which reporters are the worst off-camera.
	I think you probably know the answers.
	And the real question, do we need more teleprompter Trump?
	So go watch over at DailyWire.com or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts.
	Take a look at this amazing trailer.
	We were in Japan walking into a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Abe and the president, who has every reason to be focused on the meeting in front of him and not concerned about, you know, my feelings or where I am, stops and says, hold on.
	He turns, he looks me straight in the eye and he said, Sarah, the only reason they come after you is because you're good at your job.
	One of the things I love about doing the Sunday Special is the wide variety of guests.
	I don't know if there's any other show where one week you'll get Matt Iglesias from Vox and the next week you'll get Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
	It's definitely a lot of fun.
	We have an eclectic group of guests this year, scheduled for this season, so go check that out.
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	Okay, so we are in the midst of a completely generated news cycle.
	It's a news cycle spun up out of nothing.
	Trump was having a very good week.
	He had the Supreme Court nomination on his hands.
	Politically speaking, he had the Democrats once again providing tacit support to rioters and looters, as per their usual arrangement.
	This was a pretty solid political week for Trump, leading into the debates.
	And then Trump stepped in and he was asked a specific question about whether, win, lose or draw, which is a weird way to word it, win, lose or draw, would he concede the results of the election and accede to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost, was basically the idea.
	He misdirected.
	He essentially said, I'll keep all my options open because there might be fraud.
	And the media immediately took this to mean he's going to coup it.
	He's going to he's going to hope he's going to put a big padlock like a bike lock on the front door of the White House.
	And then he's going to stay inside.
	He's going to pee in jars like Howard Hughes.
	And that's going to be the new White House.
	And we're going to have to bust down the door.
	I mean, this is all their fever dream fantasies, right?
	This is all the things they want to happen, because they've always wanted to see Trump frogmarched out of the White House.
	So that's like their dream, is the Navy SEALs rappelling in through the top of the White House to capture President Trump, like White House down or something.
	This is what they have been fevered, masturbatorily thinking about for years.
	They hate Trump this much.
	And Trump stepped in it because that's what Trump does.
	If there's a pile of poop, the president has an uncanny ability to step in every pile of poop.
	If you let him loose on a polo ground, he would find every horse dropping and put his foot directly in it.
	This is just his special gift.
	I know some people think that this is all planned.
	It is not planned.
	Okay?
	It is not planned.
	This is not me saying that the president is a complete dolt.
	It is me saying he has an uncanny ability to jump on every rake with both feet.
	So, he jumped on that rake, and the media immediately spun it up.
	Now, what are they really doing?
	Why are the media doing this?
	Okay, for two reasons.
	One, there's a report that came out several weeks ago now, in which the media reported that Democrats were preparing all sorts of post-election noise and chaos.
	That all these liberal progressive groups had gotten together and they were planning not only protests in the streets, but they were trying to figure out, you know, how rabid would they have to get?
	What sort of measures would they have to take in order to prevent Trump from stealing the White House?
	See, the thing is that if you generate a narrative that Trump's going to steal the White House, you have to take preventative measures, of course.
	We saw stories a month ago that John Podesta, part of the Biden campaign, war-gamed out what it would look like if Biden refused to concede in case of a close election.
	And that included things like the state of California seceding from the union.
	Not kidding.
	So they've been trying this for a while.
	They're trying to legitimize every plan they have for the dissolution of the union and or for the violation of law.
	And all they need is the slightest indicator from Trump that maybe that's a real possibility.
	So that is point number one.
	Point number two is they're trying to drive Trump off of his generalized point, which is if there are questionable practices in the election, then he should immediately ignore the questionable practices in the election and just concede the election.
	And that's going to be particularly true this year.
	What they want is for Trump to concede as fast as humanly possible, or if Trump spots evidence that bad stuff is happening, for him to ignore that so we can all move on with our lives as the Democratic president.
	That is the goal here.
	Now, Trump, for his part, has suggested that there is the possibility of voter fraud in mail-in voting.
	There is that possibility.
	How broad that possibility is has yet to be discovered.
	There is not a lot of data to suggest widespread voter fraud, meaning like tens of thousands of ballots, which it would take to swing some of these states, for example.
	Or hundreds of thousands of ballots nationally.
	The president has suggested repeatedly that there might be some sort of screwing around with the balloting process, which, again, is bad news.
	Democrats have been doing this, too, by the way.
	So this is not unique to one side of the aisle or the other.
	All of this undermines faith in the elections.
	But it's only bad when Trump does it, according to the left, because they expect that Biden is going to win.
	Now, this is getting really complicated because the Democrats made a very large strategic error here, which was, in the middle of the pandemic, they said to all of their voters, we want you to vote early.
	Right, we want you to get your mail-in ballot, we want you to vote early.
	The problem is, mail-in balloting is actually a lot harder than going to the polling place.
	You go to the polling place, out here in California anyway, as long as I have been voting, they have not digital voting, they have the actual paper ballots, and you punch out the chads, and they have kind of a system by which you can ensure that the chads have actually fallen out, so you don't end up with like the pregnant chad problem that you had in 2000.
	In Florida, in Miami-Dade County, and Palm Beach County.
	So, voting in person is actually a lot easier than voting by mail.
	Voting by mail, you get the ballot, then you have to fill in one envelope, then you put it in a second envelope, in a third envelope, you have to, in some areas, take it to a specific mailbox.
	It gets very complicated.
	Democrats realized that they were shooting themselves in the foot by basically telling everybody not to go to the polling places, so now they've reversed themselves, and they're like, everybody should go vote in person.
	But what they're afraid of is that on election day, it's going to look like Trump won, because everybody who votes in person is going to be a Republican, and everybody who votes by mail is going to be a Democrat.
	Conversely, by the way, Donald Trump suddenly realized about two months ago that it was a mistake to tell elderly people in Florida, who are the most likely people not to go to the polls, to not vote by mail.
	He was like, you know what?
	Every place else, every place else, voting by mail is bad.
	Florida, it's good, right?
	I mean, it's very obvious and transparently political what is happening right now, but The media's narrative here is that no matter what happens, Trump should concede.
	If Trump looks like he has won, he should concede.
	If Trump looks like he has lost, he should concede.
	The only situation in which Trump should not concede, presumably, is one in which it looks like he has won the popular vote, which is, of course, the most unlikely of all scenarios, considering he lost the popular vote by two and a half million last time.
	So President Trump was asked about it again yesterday.
	Are you going to concede if it's a close election?
	Are you going to accept defeat?
	Will there be a peaceful transfer of power?
	Now, the normal answer to this question is, Of course, once all of the information is in and the election has been decided, there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
	That's the obvious answer.
	But President Trump goes another direction.
	He points out correctly that Hillary Clinton has said that she would tell Biden never to concede.
	We want to make sure the election is honest, and I'm not sure that it can be.
	I don't know that it can be with this whole situation.
	Unsolicited ballots.
	There are unsolicited millions being sent to everybody, and we'll see.
	But if you remember, Hillary Clinton just a week ago or so told Joe Biden, do not accept the results of the election under any circumstances.
	But you don't ask her that question.
	You only ask me the question.
	Okay, he is right that they never asked Joe Biden the question as to whether he will concede the election and there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
	Of course, Biden doesn't step on that rake particularly.
	Like, he'll be a little bit more fluid with that.
	But it's perfectly obvious there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
	Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, was asked about this and he was like, of course there will be an orderly transition.
	He tweeted out, Yes, duh.
	The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th.
	There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792.
	Yes, duh. That of course is true. And the media of course ignored that.
	This is not a partisan issue.
	Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor, ranting against Republicans, the Republicans are preparing to militarize in defense of President Trump seizing power or something.
	Here's Chuck Schumer being utterly and obviously and consistently dishonest as per our usual arrangement.
	Where are our Republican colleagues?
	This is not a partisan issue.
	Democracy is at stake.
	And every constituent from every corner of the land, regardless of party or ideology, should be asking their Republican senators to speak out and demand that Donald Trump .
	Not be allowed to do what he says he's going to do and say they will join all of America in standing in the way if he tries.
	No one believes he's even going to try this.
	It is perfectly obvious he's not going to try this.
	I mean, come on, come on.
	Everybody knows that there will be a peaceful transition of power.
	Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, she says, of course, Trump's going to accept the results.
	If he loses, he's going to leave.
	And if he wins, he's going to stay.
	Like, this is so stupid.
	Here's Kayleigh McEnany yesterday.
	The President will accept the results of a free and fair election.
	But I think that your question is more fitting to be asked of Democrats who have already been on the record saying they won't accept the results of an election.
	In fact, I have several of them here for you.
	South Carolina Democrat Jim Clyburn has said that Trump is not going to win fairly.
	And then you have that beautiful quote from Hillary Clinton that Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstance.
	So I think your fitting is more a fitting question for Democrats.
	Of course, that is exactly right.
	But the media have generated a narrative because, again, the goal here is that if there's any confusion in the election, Trump should concede preemptively.
	And also that if there is chaos after the election, it's justified by Trumpian rhetoric, which has been their consistent position for quite a while.
	Now, meanwhile, there was a story yesterday that the FBI is investigating at least nine discarded military mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
	Apparently all nine were marked for Donald Trump.
	The FBI announced on Thursday it was investigating issues with mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania's Luzerne County after covering at least nine votes that had been improperly discarded.
	Since Monday, FBI personnel working together with the Pennsylvania State Police have conducted numerous interviews and recovered and reviewed certain physical evidence, said the DOJ.
	At this point, we can confirm a small number of military ballots were discarded.
	Investigators have recovered nine ballots at this time.
	Some of these ballots can be attributed to specific voters.
	Some cannot.
	Pennsylvania has faced controversy over its mail-in voting process because of the issue of naked ballots, meaning ballots that are not inserted into a second secrecy envelope.
	The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday officials could reject ballots that do not arrive in the second envelope, which is aimed at preventing them from seeing how ballots are filled out.
	State election officials previously issued guidance telling counties to count the ballots.
	Now, the problem, of course, is that you want to make sure that people can't actually just look through the envelope, see who you voted for, and then just toss the ballot.
	Pennsylvania is one of 16 states that provides such envelopes.
	Philadelphia City Commission Chair Lisa Dealey warns in a letter Monday the issue could result in as many as 100,000 votes being lost.
	The FBI did not say whether it was related to the ballots discarded in Luzerne County.
	Trump won Pennsylvania by just 44,000 votes in 2016, and he won Luzerne County by 26,237 votes out of the more than 130,000 cast. Apparently, two of the discarded ballots had been resealed inside their appropriate envelopes by Luzerne election staff prior to recovery by the FBI.
	The seven were for Trump.
	So, again, couple points.
	One, it's nine ballots, so that's not a ton of ballots.
	Two, is there potential for a serious fraud here?
	Yeah, there is.
	So this is the real question, and this is the problem.
	So Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, says, listen, there's been no evidence of massive voter fraud thus far.
	This is correct.
	There has been no evidence of massive voter fraud thus far.
	We take all election-related threats seriously, whether it's voter fraud, voter suppression, whether it's in person, whether it's by mail.
	And our role is to investigate the threat actors.
	Now, we have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise.
	We have seen voter fraud at the local level from time to time.
	Okay, so he's correct about this.
	That doesn't mean there's not the potential for serious voter fraud.
	Faith in elections is at an all-time low at a time when Americans are more divided than ever.
	So all of that is, of course, bad news.
	Okay, meanwhile, the president this weekend, probably tomorrow, is going to announce his Supreme Court pick.
	There are two possibilities that are seen as sort of above and beyond everybody else.
	One is Barbara Lagoa, who is an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judge.
	In Florida, she's of Cuban extraction, and her record, for what it is, is solid.
	She has expressed tremendous support for originalism.
	She would be a solid pick.
	Amy Coney Barrett, of course, is the other on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
	She's already been preemptively targeted by Democrats, who continue to maintain that Catholicism is some sort of barrier to serving in the government, which is hilarious.
	I mean, really, really funny, considering that Pelosi herself is a Catholic, and Joe Biden is a Catholic.
	So I have a question.
	I guess the way they mean this is that if you are an actual Catholic, meaning you follow the doctrines, and you follow the latest papal encyclicals, and you follow all of the rules and procedures of Catholicism, and actually take the views of the Catholic Church seriously, then you can't be in the government.
	So the only way you can be in the government and be a Catholic is if you are sort of a teatime Catholic, right?
	You only go to church once every so often, you kind of mouth the platitudes, you say a few, you say a little mumbo-jumbo in Latin, and then you go vote for abortion on demand.
	Then you can be in government.
	So in other words, you can't really hold Catholic values.
	Also, if you hold Catholic values, that inevitably is going to infuse your practice of the legal profession.
	So you have no capacity to separate off from your own personal convictions on the death penalty, for example.
	You instead are going to just vote against the application of the death penalty in every case because you're a Catholic.
	You have no capacity to actually enforce the law.
	Now, all of this is nonsense, but unfortunately, Democrats are promoting it.
	Nancy Pelosi yesterday was asked about essentially a religious test for the court, and she refused to say whether religion should be a barrier to being on the court.
	Article 6 which bans religious tests from being a qualification for office, do you think that that should apply to Supreme Court nominees as well?
	I'm not going to get into anybody's interpretation of one thing or another.
	The confirmation is the work of the Senate, and I trust the judgment of our Democrats.
	Okay, so that's a no.
	That's a no, she's not going to rule out a religious test for the Supreme Court of the United States.
	For her part, Dianne Feinstein is acknowledging full out that she just does not have the power to block any of Trump's nominees.
	According to USA Today, she said neither this committee nor the Senate should consider a nomination at this time.
	I recognize I don't have the power to carry that through, but I feel it very deeply.
	And because at least Dianne Feinstein has been in the Senate long enough to understand how the procedures work, this of course has led the Democrats, I'm not kidding you, to charge that she should be removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee because she is old and doddering.
	Not a joke.
	They're running Joe Biden, who is old and doddering and has declared a lid every day for the last seven years.
	And Dianne Feinstein is now not sufficiently with it to lead up the Senate Judiciary Committee because she points out, quite obviously, that the Democrats just don't have the votes in the Senate.
	Meanwhile, things are at a high pitch in this country, I think it is fair to say.
	So President Trump and Melania Trump visited the RBG Memorial.
	She was lying in state.
	Apparently, it's OK to have giant crowds as long as they're paying tribute to RBG or protesting racial justice.
	In any case, Trump and Melania went to visit the RBG Memorial over at the Supreme Court.
	And promptly were greeted by what sounds like ghouls shrieking from hell.
	That is all.
	I mean, that's what it sounds like.
	I can't confirm that that's actually what it was, but that is exactly what it sounds like.
	like they were screaming at Trump for the great sin of paying some sort of homage to RBG.
	Sounds like his soul's in the damned.
	Shrieking up from hell at Trump.
	My goodness.
	That is solid stuff right there.
	Making a difference, by the way.
	Making a difference in the middle of a pandemic.
	Shouting at Trump.
	And then chanting, vote him out.
	Okay, so good times right there.
	How crazy have some people gone?
	There was an editorial that was making its way around the internet yesterday from a person named Jamie Smith.
	Here's the title of the editorial from Huffington Post.
	The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pushed me to join the satanic temple.
	Fair enough.
	I'm a 40-something attorney and mother who lives in a quiet neighborhood with a yard and a garage full of scooters and soccer balls.
	I'm not the type of person who would normally consider becoming a Satanist, but these are not normal times.
	You might want to consider your life choices if your politics have now driven you to become a Satanist.
	Like so many other women in the United States, says this idiot columnist for the Huffington Post, when I learned of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, my first reaction was not grief, but fear.
	I fear that Americans are inching closer to living in a theocracy or dictatorship, and the checks meant to prevent this from happening are close to eroding beyond repair.
	Again, even if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow, abortion is not going to be outlawed in California.
	That is not the way any of this works.
	But, doesn't matter.
	We gotta pretend that we are on the verge of theocracy.
	We're on the verge of the Handmaid's Tale.
	Members of the Satanic Temple do not believe in the supernatural or superstition, which is weird because they call themselves members of the Satanic Temple, in the same way that some Unitarians and some Jews do not believe in God.
	Satanic Temple members do not worship Satan, and most are atheists.
	They are not affiliated in any way with the Church of Satan.
	Instead, the Satanic Temple uses the devil as a symbol of rebellion.
	Again, if you are using, you know, the symbol of Pure evil.
	In order to show that you are rebelling against the system, I don't think that you are a good person.
	According to this columnist, when Justice Ginsburg died, I knew immediately action was needed on a scale we've not seen before.
	Our democracy has become so fragile, the loss of one of the last guardians of common sense and decency in government, less than two months before our pivotal election, has put our civil and reproductive rights in danger like never before.
	And so I have turned to Satanism!
	Yeah, that seems like the rational decision.
	You didn't go out and buy a protest sign or register somebody to vote.
	You went and you joined Satan.
	Why the hell not?
	I mean, just live your creed, man.
	I mean, if you're for abortion on demand, I kind of see it.
	Like other faiths, the Satanic Temple has a code their members believe in deeply and use to guide their lives.
	These seven fundamental tenets include that one should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
	And that the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
	And that one's body is inviolable subject to one's will alone.
	Unless you're sticking a scalpel into, like, the head of an unborn fetus.
	That kid's body doesn't matter at all.
	Also, I do love, the struggle for justice is an ongoing necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
	As the laws and institutions are not, in many cases, founded on justice.
	They're not always founded on justice, but in many cases they are.
	So this lady became a satanist.
	That seems like a good solution.
	RBG dies, so you go to a satanic temple.
	I have joined a community who will stop at nothing to safeguard my family's rights and all of our rights when they are at their most vulnerable.
	Jamie Smith is an attorney and mother who cares about civil rights and also worships Satan.
	But not really, because they're just facetious about it, you see.
	Yes, we may have all lost our minds.
	Okay, meanwhile, COVID-19 updates.
	So we are seeing a surge in some states in COVID-19.
	We're seeing a sort of second wave happening in more rural areas of Arizona.
	There's some 22 states that have seen an uptick in coronavirus in the recent past.
	None of them are on the verge of being overwhelmed.
	The hospital system is not being overwhelmed in any of these states.
	We've seen a flattening out in many of the biggest states, Florida, Georgia.
	These are states where you've seen a flattening out in the number of active cases.
	And in fact, you're on the other side of active cases in Florida.
	The bell curve is already coming down the other side.
	The daily deaths tend to lag a fair bit.
	With that said, I've got bad news and I've got good news.
	So the bad news is that according to Jackie Salo reporting from the New York Post, a new COVID-19 mutation appears to be even more contagious.
	According to a study, experts say it could be a response by the virus to defeat masks and other social distancing efforts.
	Scientists in a paper published Wednesday identified a new strain of the virus, which accounted for 99.9% of cases during the second wave in the Houston, Texas area.
	The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, said people with this strain, known as the D614G mutation, had higher loads of virus, suggesting it is more contagious.
	Though the strain isn't more deadly, researchers said it appeared to have adapted better to spread among humans.
	He said it's possible, David Morin's virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said it's possible that the virus had now evolved to resist efforts like hand washing and social distancing.
	Morin said wearing masks, washing our hands, all those things are barriers to transmissibility or contagion.
	But as the virus becomes more contagious, it statistically is better at getting around those barriers.
	In other bad news, by the way, the vaccination effort will not be complete until July, according to the CDC director.
	Robert Redfield told the Senate Health and Education Committee in a Wednesday hearing that it would take us until April, May, June, maybe July to get the entire American public completely vaccinated.
	So that means middle of next year at best.
	As we say, we've seen spikes around the country.
	Now, we are not seeing the deaths follow yet.
	The death rates in Europe remain actually extremely low despite massive increases in the number of cases.
	And it's important to note here that the massive increases in numbers of cases are not happening under Trump's watch.
	This is not Ron DeSantis.
	This is happening in France.
	It is happening in Israel.
	It is happening in Great Britain.
	We're seeing massive spikes around Europe right now.
	In fact, in Israel, they've basically declared martial law.
	I mean, because Yom Kippur is coming up, which is a time when people go to synagogue and they tend to pray, they have like a big controversy over in Israel because the left wants people to be allowed to protest in certain numbers, and the right wants people to be able to pray in certain numbers, and the government is trying to shut down everything.
	Daily cases in Israel have spiked to nearly 7,000 apparently.
	Meanwhile, record infections in France and restrictions have sparked an outcry there too.
	So people are protesting restrictions there as well.
	Figures from the Public Health France show that 16,096 people had tested positive for COVID over the last 24 hours, which is a record.
	Even though experts advised that testing during the first coronavirus wave in March and April captured only a fraction of the cases.
	The centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron announced a series of new measures on Wednesday to try to slow the spread of the disease, including the closure of all bars and restaurants in Marseille and earlier closing times in Paris and elsewhere.
	Prime Minister Jean Castex called for responsibility and implied his opponents were playing politics.
	He said, what I don't want is that we go back to March, which is referring to the strict national lockdown that was used by the French government.
	Marseille has now been put on maximum alert.
	Paris and 10 other cities have been put on elevated alert as well.
	The question is, how long the hospitalizations are going to lag, according to the New York Times.
	The cases that are upticking in Spain and France and the UK means that more people are now being restricted to their homes.
	Boris Johnson and other European leaders, according to the New York Times, are dealing with a confusing, fast-changing situation with conflicting evidence on how quickly new cases are translating into hospital admissions and how severe those cases will end up being.
	In Spain, where new cases have surged to more than 10,000 a day, hospitals in Madrid are close to capacity.
	The government said it is preparing to open field hospitals and hotels and in the city's largest exhibition center.
	But in France, which reported 66,000 new cases over the last seven days, hospital admissions and deaths, they're rising, but they're going up much more slowly.
	There's also a divergence between infection rates and hospitalizations in Germany and Austria.
	In Britain, which reported over 6,000 new COVID cases on Wednesday, just 134 patients were admitted to hospitals.
	That's barely a 10th of those admitted in early May.
	Some experts argue this shows the virus has lost potency or that it is now infecting mostly younger people.
	Others say it's a testament to social distancing and face masks.
	See the problem is that the social distancing face mask thesis is really kind of unprovable.
	Because in certain places like northern Europe, they're doing social distancing but not face masks and they have not seen this massive uptick in death.
	By the way, Sweden has seen no uptick in caseload or death because they already got hit.
	Norway is seeing a pretty significant uptick in caseload but not death.
	Indiana, for what it's worth, is now moving toward total reopening.
	According to the Indianapolis Star, nearly three months after suspending Indiana's reopening plan, Governor Eric Holcomb on Wednesday announced the state will move to the final phase, stage five, as the statewide mask order remains in place indefinitely.
	That means restaurants, bars, fitness centers, and stores will now be able to operate at full capacity, but people will be expected to maintain social distance in these places and keep their masks on, except while eating and drinking.
	Holcomb led with the reopening, which is good news to some, then followed up with the continuation of the mask order.
	He acknowledged that his preference would be not to wear face coverings, but doing so is essential to allowing the state to move toward reopening.
	And this seems correct.
	The only people who really should not be masking at this point are small children, who apparently are not spreading this thing in major numbers.
	K-12 schools across the world have been avoiding COVID surges thus far.
	According to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, he said, everyone had a fear there would be explosive outbreaks of transmission in schools and colleges there have been.
	We have to say that to date, we have not seen this in younger kids.
	That really is an important observation.
	By the way, there's a good case to be made that at colleges, you should basically just shut the colleges to the outside and let the kids basically go about their daily lives.
	And if infection spread at colleges, the number of 20-year-olds who are going to die from COVID is very low, and then they can't be pathways for transmission.
	Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi has abruptly shifted her course and started pushing relief after shutting it down for several months on end.
	Quick note on this.
	So Anthony Fauci, there's a wildly publicized exchange between Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul a little bit earlier this week.
	And I didn't have a chance to comment on it on the podcast, and so I would like to now.
	Here was Dr. Fauci versus Rand Paul.
	It turns out that Fauci is just not right on some of this stuff.
	They've developed enough community immunity that they're no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop.
	I challenge that, Senator.
	I'm afraid.
	Please, sir, I would like to be able to do this because this happens with Senator Rand all the time.
	You were not listening to what the director of the CDC said, that in New York, it's about 22%.
	If you believe 22% is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that.
	Okay, well, nobody has suggested that herd immunity kicks in at 20%.
	What people have suggested, correctly, is that there is something called T-cell immunity and resistance.
	And that means that people who have pre-existing sort of immune response to COVID, because they had a cold a couple of years ago, they have a bit of a coronavirus response mechanism already in place, that they are not getting as serious forms of the disease.
	Anywhere from 20 to 50% of the population may already have that.
	You can't just add 20% fully immune to 20 to 50% partially immune.
	What you can suggest is that the vast majority of the population is not extraordinarily susceptible to COVID.
	But this has been true for a long time.
	The vast majority of the population is not extraordinarily susceptible to COVID.
	And by extraordinarily susceptible, I don't mean that this thing is on the par with the flu.
	It isn't.
	It's much more deadly than the flu.
	What I mean is that the actual numbers of people who die after obtaining COVID is not 50%, it is not 10%, it is not 5%.
	The actual number of people who die after obtaining COVID is something, on average, like maybe 5 in 1,000.
	Not 5 in 100.
	5 in 1,000.
	Which is bad.
	That's not great.
	I mean, that's the average rate of death after you obtain COVID, right?
	For the flu, it's 1 in 1,000.
	But here is a Dr. Scott Atlas kind of debunking what Fauci says right there.
	The reality is that according to the papers from Sweden, Singapore, and elsewhere, there is cross-immunity, highly likely, from other infections, and there is also T-cell immunity.
	And the combination of those makes the antibodies a small fraction of the people that have immunity.
	So the answer is no, it is not 90% of people that are susceptible to the infection.
	I guess my question is, I'm not a doctor, I defer to your expertise on this, not to his, but so Americans hear one thing from the CDC director and another thing from you, who are we to believe?
	You're supposed to believe the science and I'm telling you the science.
	Hey, Alice happens to be correct about this.
	Fauci said there's no study.
	He actually said there's like one study that says that T-cell immunity isn't a thing.
	There are probably 25 studies that say T-cell immunity is a thing.
	Okay, so what is the good news?
	What is the bad news?
	The only good news here, really, is that people are recognizing, sooner rather than later, that we're going to have to learn to live with the virus.
	And what that means... Europe has said this.
	Many Republican governors have been saying this.
	I've been saying this for a long time.
	That means if you are younger and healthier, you should be going back to work.
	It means that you should be wearing a mask and you should socially distance when possible.
	That's all.
	And if you are uniquely vulnerable, if you are elderly, then you should stay out of the way.
	And if you know one of those people, you should stay out of their way.
	That's it.
	That's all we know.
	All right, so this weekend, President Trump will make his SCOTUS pick.
	I'm not gonna be here Monday, so I won't be here to comment on it because it's Yom Kippur, so I'll be doing some repenting.
	I feel like I have some things to repent for this year, so I will be doing that on Monday, but we will be back here on Tuesday.
	The debate happens Tuesday.
	A lot coming up.
	Try not to burn things down while I'm gone.
	Please, for the love of Pete, you're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.
	So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
	Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

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