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Oct. 20, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:06:50

The Media Pleasure Themselves | Ep. 1119

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Time	Text
	Jeffrey Toobin is suspended from The New Yorker after an unfortunate Zoom call incident.
	The media continued to refuse to ask serious questions about Hunter Biden's emails.
	And Trump goes to war with Anthony Fauci over COVID strategy.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	You have a right to privacy protected at expressvpn.com.
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	Okay, so.
	Last night, something strange happened over at the New Yorker.
	So it is not supremely shocking that Jeffrey Toobin just got caught pleasuring himself on a New Yorker Zoom call.
	I mean, so a couple of things.
	One, everybody understands that Zoom calls generally are a waste of time.
	So I think we can all take it that metaphorically, they are masturbatory and useless, but Jeffrey Toobin took that extremely, extremely literally.
	Jeffrey Toobin apparently has now been suspended for masturbating on a Zoom video call between members of The New Yorker and WNYC Radio last week.
	Toobin says he did not realize his video was on.
	Well, I would imagine.
	I mean...
	I can't imagine he was like, boop, video on.
	All right, go to town on yourself.
	He said, I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake believing I was off camera.
	I apologize to my wife, family, friends, and co-workers.
	I believed I was not visible on Zoom.
	I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me.
	I thought I had muted the Zoom video, he added.
	Apparently, two people who were on the call told Vice separately the call was an election simulation.
	Oh God, featuring many of the New Yorker's biggest stars.
	Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans.
	So it turns out that the most perverse pornographic thing about this actual event is that Jane Mayer, the reporter who has been putting out like Brett Kavanaugh fan fiction, was playing the establishment Republicans.
	Evan Asinos was Joe Biden.
	Jelani Cobb was Establishment Democrats, which is hilarious.
	Masha Gessen played Donald Trump.
	Andrew Marantz was the far-right.
	Sue Halpern was left-wing Democrat.
	Sexter Filkins was the military.
	And Jeffrey Toobin played the courts.
	Well, it turns out the court was in session.
	But motion, motion to withdraw denied.
	Both people who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely noted it was unclear how much each person saw.
	Both said that they saw Toobin going to town.
	The two sources described a juncture in the election simulation where there was a strategy session.
	The Democrats and Republicans went into their respective break rooms for about 10 minutes.
	At this point, it seemed like Toobin was on a second video call.
	Hmm.
	The sources said that when the groups returned from their breakout rooms, Toobin lowered the camera.
	The people on the call said they could see Toobin, um, Toobining.
	Then, Toobin left the call.
	Moments later, he called back in, seemingly unaware of what his colleagues had been able to see, and a simulation continued.
	Hilariously, the New Yorker says that Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter.
	So let's just be clear about this.
	First of all, if he has been suspended, he's not going to be gone for so long.
	But beyond that, Jeffrey Toobin, I mean, if this guy is on the right, how fast is he fired?
	How fast is he fired and gone forever, right?
	You don't just get to pull it out and enjoy yourself.
	I mean, I understand that this is what members of the media do in front of cameras all the time.
	And the good news for Jim Acosta, who is a fellow anchor at CNN, is that finally, we have discovered a CNN anchor who loves himself more than Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
	With that said, not a great look for Jeffrey Toobin.
	And yes, am I enjoying this story too much?
	Of course I am.
	But frankly, Jeffrey Toobin, of all the human beings on Earth, sort of deserves this, considering that, you know, years back, he sort of knocked up A woman who is the daughter of a family friend and then pressured her to have an abortion.
	He's a delight.
	He's a delightful person, Jeffrey Toobin.
	Farewell to Jeffrey Toobin, at least for now.
	His refractory period has yet to be established by The New Yorker.
	So that is where we are.
	Now, I think that there is a metaphor here for the media's coverage of everything, which is that it is all about self-pleasure.
	It is not about pleasing the American public.
	The American public does not go first in the world of the media.
	Instead, it is just the media pleasuring itself.
	All the media care about is making themselves happy.
	And what that means is pretending to be objective while simultaneously ignoring stories they don't want to be out there.
	And this brings us to the Hunter Biden story.
	So the fact is that the... You didn't think I was gonna make that connection, did you?
	You didn't see how I was gonna go there, did you?
	But it happened.
	That's right.
	We are professionals at segues here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
	It is incredible how the media's desire to pleasure itself at the expense of the American public means they will simply ignore stories that they do not like or mischaracterize those stories with no evidence at all.
	So the New York Post, of course, has reported over the last couple of weeks that Hunter Biden's emails have now been made somewhat public.
	Apparently, he dropped off his laptops, allegedly, with a Delaware computer salesperson, computer fixer, and then just left them there because he's a derelict, is sort of the allegation.
	Fox News now has gotten a hold of documents showing that Hunter Biden did in fact sign for the computers when he left them at this repair shop in 2019.
	And what do those emails show?
	Well, among other things, they show that he had emailed with Ukrainian oligarch who said that Hunter had brokered a meeting between Joe and this Ukrainian oligarch.
	The Biden campaign originally denied them.
	They said, well, maybe that maybe a meeting happened.
	Then there was a set of two emails that really were even worse for Joe Biden.
	was Hunter Biden talking with a Chinese company.
	And in the midst of that conversation, on which several people were copied, there was a mention that 20% of some sort of deal would go to Hunter Biden, with 10% held in escrow for the big guy.
	Fox News has reported, according to one of their unnamed sources, that the big guy refers to Joe Biden.
	So in other words, Joe Biden may have been directly benefiting from Hunter jet-setting around the world and doing these deals, which would cast a different light on the entire situation.
	It is one thing if Joe Biden knew nothing.
	It's another thing if Joe Biden knew something and was willing to let his son traffic off of his name to make money.
	It is a third thing altogether.
	If Joe Biden not only knew, but was actively involved in taking money for all of this, that now verges on the criminal.
	Now, Joe Biden has steadfastly refused to answer any questions about this, and the media steadfastly refused to ask serious questions or follow up questions on any of this.
	They'll ask the occasional question and they let it go.
	So the media have come up with an alternative theory.
	See, here's what the media are afraid of.
	What the media are afraid of is that they do the same thing they did in 2016.
	Namely, they accurately report the Hillary Clinton email thing.
	And then, two weeks before the election, there's the James Comey letter, and Hillary Clinton loses.
	What the media are desperately afraid of is that they start actually reporting on the Hunter Biden story, and Joe Biden's lead dissipates, and now members of the media are responsible for Joe Biden not being President of the United States.
	See, the media got off scot-free last time.
	So the media They've internalized the fact that they sort of were responsible for Donald Trump's election a little bit, but they tried to blame it alternatively on social media.
	They tried to blame it on Facebook.
	They tried to blame it on the Russians.
	Well, now they are trying to preemptively blame an email scandal on the Russians.
	This is their new answer.
	They're saying, we're not even going to report on this because this is the Russkies.
	The Russians are hiding under their bed.
	The Russian dressing in their fridge was actually created by Russia because the Russians are hiding inside the house.
	After all the alarm systems are set, it's too late.
	It's just like Cape Fear.
	The Russians are actually hiding inside the house dressed as the maid.
	No matter what, the Russians are behind everything.
	Andrea Mitchell at NBC News, she said, you know, I think this is a Russian plot.
	Now, again, Notice, not a single aspect of the story has yet to be debunked or even remarked upon by the Biden campaign.
	And yet, NBC anchors are saying overtly this is Russian propaganda, despite the fact, like...
	You have to make a claim.
	Either this is Russian disinformation, in which case it's all false, or all the emails are real and being misconstrued.
	But you can't have it both ways.
	Here's Andrea Mitchell claiming that it's all Russian disinformation.
	There are new questions about an unverified report targeting Joe Biden's son and new reporting about possible ties to a Russian disinformation effort aimed at influencing the U.S. election.
	NBC senior Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell has details on this.
	Hey, Andrea, good morning.
	Hi there, Hoda.
	NBC News has confirmed that U.S.
	spy agencies have gathered intelligence that the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was dealing with alleged Russian intelligence agents last year on a trip to Ukraine as part of his effort to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
	Okay, that is nothing new.
	Okay, seriously, we've known this for a while, is that Rudy Giuliani was hanging out in Ukraine and was speaking to people who may or may not have been Russian agents.
	Rudy himself has acknowledged this.
	But that does not mean that the email scandal has to do with Russia.
	In fact, as we will see, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, overtly denied this yesterday and said there's no intelligence information to support this allegation put forward by the media.
	But the media are not in the business of conveying information to you.
	They're in the business of self-pleasure, Jeffrey Toobin style.
	They're journalism-ing all over the place.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so Politico also picks up on this Disinformation is the suggestion that false information is being put out by the Russian government in order to deceive the American public.
	That's what disinformation means.
	It does not mean that the Russians are trafficking in good information.
	Disinformation is like a KGB tactic.
	It's where you put out information that is overtly false in order to confuse people.
	That is not what is happening here.
	Nothing in the Hunter Biden email scandal has been even remarked upon by the Biden campaign or accused of being false.
	Good example, the Steele dossier is Russian disinformation.
	There's nothing in the Steele dossier that came from the Russians that has actually been confirmed as of yet.
	And there's plenty of stuff that is overtly false.
	Nothing in the Hunter Biden email scandal has been even remarked upon by the Biden campaign or accused of being false.
	And yet you have this article from Politico.
	More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden's son has quote, all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.
	Well, you know, if they're speculating without any inside information that this looks like the Russians must be the Russians.
	I guess that's the way this works now, is that open speculation is now taken extremely seriously so long as it cuts in favor of Joe Biden.
	Now, there's only one problem.
	The Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, he said openly yesterday, we have no evidence this is a Russian disinformation campaign.
	And again, there are now receipts with Fox News that Hunter Biden apparently dropped off this computer at a Delaware computer repair shop.
	Here is John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, denying the self-pleasuring media's narrative that this is all Russian disinformation.
	It is Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who, as you pointed out on Friday, said that the intelligence community believes that Hunter Biden's laptop and the emails on it are part of some Russian disinformation campaign.
	Let me be clear.
	The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there's no intelligence that supports that.
	And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.
	It's simply not true.
	It doesn't matter.
	Adam Schiff was pushing that story.
	Politico was pushing that story.
	Andrea Mitchell was pushing that story because they're all on the same side.
	They're all on the same side.
	See, when I say that the media are self-pleasuring, what I mean is that they are all Democrats and they want to see Joe Biden win.
	And they are very upset at the possibility that they would contribute to Joe Biden losing.
	And so they've become the overt policy, the overt communications arm of the Democratic National Committee and of Joe Biden's campaign personally.
	I mean, how bad is this?
	The Biden campaign can't even acknowledge that the, like they're saying that it's Russian disinformation or that it was a hacking job or whatever it is.
	A Biden spokeswoman named Jenna Arnold was on Fox News And would not say that the emails were inauthentic.
	So we keep hearing that the emails somehow are a lie or that all of it's not true.
	She wouldn't even claim that they were inauthentic.
	So what exactly is their case?
	Is the case that the emails are put out there by the Russians?
	Because we have no evidence of that.
	Is the case that the emails are fake?
	We keep hearing that.
	We keep hearing that this is quote unquote fake news, that the metadata don't match or something like that.
	But nobody from the Biden campaign is even willing to say that the emails are fake because apparently they're not fake.
	The emails are not fake, which means that at some point you actually have to answer the question as to whether Joe Biden... This is very easy.
	Honestly, this is very easy for the Biden campaign to kill the story.
	All they have to do is say, at no point has Joe Biden ever received money or had money held in trust for him by Hunter Biden.
	That's all he has to say.
	Why wouldn't he just say that?
	That's two sentences long.
	And why won't the media just badger him to say- I mean, he did a full-on town hall last week.
	And George Stephanopoulos did not ask him one question about this topic, even though it was the hottest topic in the country.
	Social media still have suspended the New York Post for even having tweeted the article.
	Twitter still has the New York Post account locked out.
	So you've got overt liars like Aaron Ruppar over at Vox, who literally just cuts clips out of context, puts them out there, and then pretends that his little paraphrases are accurate.
	I mean, so badly that yesterday, even the left-wing media, people like Daniel Dale at CNN were fact-checking Aaron Ruppar.
	His account is fine.
	But the New York Post account, again, have they even explained what is false about the original New York Post story yet?
	The answer, of course, is no.
	Here is Joe Biden's campaign spokeswoman admitting that no one says the emails are inauthentic.
	So much of this is unconfirmed.
	Okay, so Jenna, Jenna, it's real simple.
	You say it's unconfirmed.
	Tell us what parts are not true.
	I mean, Hunter Biden knows what emails he has and hasn't sent.
	Are you saying, in the campaign, saying that these emails aren't his?
	It's unclear to me.
	Can anyone say that these emails are inauthentic?
	And so far, I haven't heard anybody say that.
	Yeah, I think that's fair.
	I don't think anybody's saying they are inauthentic or not.
	Okay, so she says, I've never heard anybody say that the emails are inauthentic.
	So then when you keep saying that it's unconfirmed, you just kind of confirmed it right there.
	You just confirmed the emails are real.
	So what exactly is unconfirmed?
	They keep saying unconfirmed.
	Unconfirmed just means that you don't know the original source of the story.
	Okay, but actually in this case, you kind of do know the original source of the story since Fox News has the receipt as to the laptops being sent to this guy in Delaware.
	In fact, we know much more about this story than we know about most of the stories that the mainstream media puts out through their anonymous sourcing.
	And yet the media refuse to cover this thing straight.
	They refuse to cover it.
	They refuse to ask the Biden campaign questions.
	And this, of course, has pissed Trump off to no end.
	And he is absolutely right.
	I mean, honestly, he is right to say that the media are botching the story.
	So Trump said yesterday that Biden is going to stay in his basement.
	He will stay in his basement.
	He declared a quote unquote lid again.
	OK, lid means that he's going to stay in his basement.
	He declared a lid until Thursday.
	Yesterday was Monday.
	We are two weeks from an election and he declared he is going to literally hide in his basement and watch Cocoon on loop until the debate.
	Here is here is Trump going after Biden for it.
	They put the lid on it.
	Every day you wake up, where's Biden today?
	Sir, he's littered out.
	He's littered out.
	What does that mean?
	That means he's going to stay in the basement all day.
	But I think today he's staying in the basement to talk to his lawyers.
	They caught him, Cole.
	Okay, you know, he's not wrong about this.
	Joe Biden is, in fact, hiding in his basement, for sure.
	Okay, then Trump went even further, and we'll get to that in just one second, because that, of course, becomes the headline.
	The media don't want to cover what Biden is doing.
	They want to cover what Trump is doing.
	Biden knows this, which is why he refuses to answer simple questions like, will you pack the court?
	Instead, he says, just, if I answer that question, come on, man, if I answer that question, you're going to focus on me.
	You're not going to focus on what you need to focus on, Trump, and he's bad, and he's orange.
	I'm gonna go to sleep now.
	I need your apioca pudding.
	I'll see you later.
	Bye, guys.
	Early bird special.
	Denny's.
	Takeout.
	Too much COVID in the restaurant.
	Catch you later.
	And then you're like, okay, let's go focus on what Trump is saying.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	OK, so Trump is talking about Biden on the campaign trail and he lashes out at the Bidens.
	He says that they are criminals, which again, Trump throws this term around a lot.
	Basically, anybody that he doesn't like or that he suspects of criminal activity becomes a criminal, like literally everyone.
	And then he uses the word criminal in a different sense.
	He says that that the media are criminal for not covering the story.
	And in a colloquial sense, I mean, people say that kind of stuff all the time, right?
	You say, it's absolutely criminal that this person didn't do X. We don't actually mean that we want them to be physically locked up.
	But the media pretend to take this incredibly literally, like Trump is threatening to lock up the reporter.
	He's going to activate his AG to go arrest the reporter for not asking a question about Joe Biden in violation of zero criminal statutes.
	That, of course, is not true.
	Trump is really loose with his language.
	The great lie of this election is that we have to treat every absurdity by Trump as the new low.
	I keep saying this, and I've been saying this for a long time.
	There's no new bottom for Trump.
	It's not like he says something new, and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe he's this bad.
	Everybody just goes, all right, yeah, that's Trump doing his thing, man.
	All right, some people love it, most people don't.
	You know, I look at stuff that he says on a daily basis and I just slap myself in the forehead.
	But is it like a new low?
	See, in order to use the phrase new low, it actually has to be lower than he has previously gone.
	And you're going to have to explain to me how him saying that the Bidens should be locked up is any different from him saying that Hillary Clinton should be locked up.
	If you're saying that he says, you know, bad things on a routine, you're going to have to explain to me how the stuff he says in 2020 is significantly worse than the stuff that he said in 2015, 2016.
	In other words, Donald Trump is consistently at the same level.
	And in order for you to be driven to the point where you vote for Biden, the media have to continue to focus in on every Trump headline.
	The only way to do that is if there is new news, right?
	It is not news that Donald Trump says stupid things.
	He says stupid things a lot.
	I've been very critical of the stupid things that he says.
	That's not news.
	In the same way that it is not news that my son is yelling again because I turned off the TV.
	That's not news.
	It's just what happens whenever I turn off the TV.
	Donald Trump, he is going to yell and scream and say things and then the media are going to treat it as a new low.
	Even though it's not a new low, they'll treat it as a new low so that you are reminded of Donald Trump as opposed to being reminded of the fact that Joe Biden still won't answer very simple questions about whether or not he was involved in some sort of corruption scheme.
	With his son.
	Now, so one half of the statement that Trump is about to make, look, a well-calibrated statement, I know, I'm just spitting in the wind here, but a well-calibrated statement here from Trump would be something like this.
	There are very suspicious activities surrounding Hunter and Joe Biden.
	The media refused to answer them.
	It's disgusting that the media refused to answer simple questions of my opponent and allow him to hide in his basement, and the only questions they ask him is about the flavor of ice cream that he's eating.
	That's wrong, and it's bad, and it's indicative of the evils of our modern day media, which is basically a wing of the Democratic Party.
	That would be the well-calibrated version.
	The Trump version is, we should lock Hunter and Joe up, and you're a criminal if you don't ask about it.
	Here's Trump.
	His strategy seems to be to call Biden a criminal.
	Why is that?
	He is a criminal.
	He's a criminal.
	He got caught.
	Read his laptop.
	And you know who's a criminal?
	You're a criminal for not reporting it.
	You are a criminal for not reporting it.
	Let me tell you something.
	Joe Biden is a criminal, and he's been a criminal for a long time.
	And you're a criminal, and the media, for not reporting it.
	Okay, so again, people decided to take this super seriously.
	Is that even close to a new low?
	That's not even a low.
	I'm sorry, that's like just normal Trump.
	Him saying that the Bidens are criminal when there are allegations out there about Biden corruption is not a shock.
	And him saying reporters are criminal for not reporting it, he doesn't actually mean that you're going to lock up the reporters.
	Again, the only person who tried to lock up reporters I'm aware of is Barack Obama, who actively attempted to wiretap the AP.
	He actually went after a Fox News journalist, James Rosen, while he was president of the United States.
	I know that we memory hole the entire Obama era, but I mean, the only person who threatened the press in my recent memory was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump.
	Trump says a lot of things.
	It was Barack Obama who did a lot of things.
	Which does bring us to a larger point here about the way that we are meant to perceive Joe Biden's campaign by the media.
	The way that we are meant to perceive Joe Biden's campaign and Joe Biden becoming president by the media is that it is a return to normalcy.
	I've been saying for years that this would be the Biden campaign return to normalcy.
	And in the aftermath of a Joe Biden election, make no mistake, that will be the media line.
	COVID will suddenly recede into the distance.
	Well, now it's being well handled.
	Wow.
	The world will be back on its moorings.
	The right people, the responsible people, are back in charge.
	And you're happier, right?
	I mean, Joe Biden isn't out there saying crazy things every day.
	He's not tweeting every day.
	We're back to normal.
	The lie there is that there was a normal.
	Barack Obama's administration was not normal.
	It was a new normal.
	Barack Obama was an incredibly divisive president.
	His economic plans were a disaster.
	Barack Obama's foreign policy was even more of a disaster than his economic plans.
	The simmering social tensions of America were kept slightly below the surface.
	The Trump era ripped them wide open because the left decided to burst out through the hole, like the alien through John Hurt's belly, an alien.
	Those tensions were there.
	And those tensions would still be there if Joe Biden were elected.
	They wouldn't just go away.
	I mean, there were riots in Ferguson in 2014.
	There were riots in Milwaukee in 2016.
	There was a mass shooting of Dallas police officers in 2016.
	Like, the idea that everything was hunky-dory and beautiful and placid during the Obama era is such a media creation.
	It's such a lie.
	I mean, again, that goes back to the media pleasuring themselves.
	The same media Who refused to cover the Obama administration in any sort of depth or detail, declaring that the only scandal for the Obama administration is that Obama once wore a tan suit.
	We'll go back to the lie, but I'm not sure that the lie may be comforting, but it's certainly not true, which is that we're back to normal.
	We're back.
	Everything is now fine.
	If things will still be not great in terms of our social fabric and in terms of social decay, if Joe Biden is president of the United States, particularly if the Democrats win back the Senate and you see the radicals on the march.
	The lie that the media have told is that Trump Was the murderer and not the coroner.
	That he got into office and suddenly things went south.
	That is not correct.
	Things were already quite south when it came to the social fabric of the United States.
	It had been fraying for quite a while.
	Barack Obama wildly exacerbated the fraying of that social fabric.
	Donald Trump didn't put it back together.
	But there's a lie that's out there, which is that everything will calm down if Joe Biden is president.
	On the surface, it will calm down because it turns out the way that many people consume the chaos is via the media.
	And the media have an interest in saying that things have calmed down if Joe Biden becomes president.
	But under the surface, will things have calmed down?
	No, they'll get worse because the underlying issues that we are addressing with politics, the underlying values divisions in the United States are not going to be lessened by a Biden administration.
	They're going to be heightened by a Biden administration, which is going to very aggressively pursue leftist agenda, social items.
	In contravention of your individual rights.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	Because again, the media are ignoring stories they don't like in order to promulgate a particular agenda.
	We'll get to that in one second.
	First, we hear stories in the news all the time.
	There's a good guy, he uses a gun to protect his family from criminals, and then he is the one arrested.
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	Okay, so again, the media are four square behind Joe Biden because they're gonna promulgate the notion that the only bad things that have ever happened are attached to Donald Trump.
	But Donald Trump did not arrive newly formed in Washington, D.C.
	and then turn Washington, D.C.
	into his image.
	Washington, D.C.
	was a very bad place before Donald Trump ever got there.
	The social fabric of the United States was already rent long before Donald Trump got there.
	And if Joe Biden should be put in charge, the media will try to put a lid on it I mean, Joe Biden has been enmeshed in the swamp for a very long time.
	is that they will whitewash it, but the rot is still in the walls. And in fact, the media whitewashing the rot in the walls means that people are not going to perceive as well the rot that is in the walls when it comes to our politics. I mean, Joe Biden has been enmeshed in the swamp for a very long time. Tim Carney has a good piece over at the Washington Examiner how Joe Biden and his revolving door lobbyist donor aid helped big oil profit off of Burmese oppression. He says, here's something Joe Biden has never explained.
	Why, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did Biden weaken sanctions against Burma to benefit a big U.S.
	oil company?
	Did it have anything to do with his chief of staff having been in the pay of that oil company, which was partnered with Burma's oppressive government?
	Biden's big oil lobbyist in Burma story starts in 2003, when Congress passed the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act.
	Mitch McConnell was the chief Senate sponsor.
	California Democrat Tom Lantos was the House sponsor.
	Congress barred imports from Burma in response to Burmese human rights violations.
	One of the companies lobbying on the bill was Unocal, a U.S.
	oil giant since merged with Chevron.
	One of its lobbyists on the matter was Alan Hoffman, formerly Biden's Senate Chief of Staff, would soon again be Biden's Senate Chief of Staff and would, in the future, hold top jobs in the Obama-Biden administration.
	Unocal was partnered with Burma's regime in a natural gas field and related pipeline, and so if Congress forced a full-fledged divestment, Unocal would lose millions in profits.
	Some advocates were pushing for exactly that.
	And this is what Hoffman and Unocal's other lobbyists were hired to fight against.
	Public records show Hoffman and his colleagues at K Street firm Timmons & Company lobbied the Senate, the House, and the administration on Lantos' bill in the first and second half of 2003.
	They got their money's worth, it seems.
	While the United States steadily pushed all sorts of companies out of doing business with Burma, Unocal and later Chevron were allowed to keep their gas fields and pipeline investment there, splitting the profits with the Burmese regime that was globally recognized as a human rights abuser.
	Hoffman left K Street, passed back through the revolving door, became Biden's chief of staff once more.
	In 2007, Lantos introduced a new legislation that would ban U.S.
	investment in Burma, forcing again Chevron to divest.
	When the House passed Lantos' bill, it included such a provision.
	Then Lantos died in early 2008.
	Biden became chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
	He passed a version of Lantos' bill that stripped out the language, forcing Chevron to divest.
	At this time, the Burmese government was getting about half of all of its revenue from oil and gas enterprises.
	So once again, you know, look, Biden is a swamp creature.
	He has long been a swamp creature, but we are going to go back to the new normal.
	We'll go back to the old normal of sort of normal type corruption if Joe Biden is president.
	And we're all supposed to be grateful for that because the media don't wish to focus on any of this.
	They wish to focus in on Trump's violation of rhetorical norms.
	Now, as I've said before, Trump's violation of rhetorical norms is a violation.
	And much of it is really bad.
	But that does not get to the underlying problems in the country.
	Like, at all.
	In any real way.
	Which brings us to a separate topic, and that is the treatment of Trump and COVID.
	Because it turns out that Trump's policy on a fair bit of his kind of agenda has been quite good, right?
	His foreign policy has been quite good.
	President Trump has not started any new wars.
	First president in my lifetime to not start any new wars.
	President Trump has brokered peace in the Middle East.
	That continues to bear fruit in the Israel-UAE relationship.
	Saudi Arabia is probably going to join into that sometime in the near future.
	Trump has been very harsh on China in a way the Obama-Biden administration never was.
	On foreign policy, Trump has been excellent.
	On domestic policy, we had the most booming economy in half a century under Donald Trump before COVID hit.
	And so Democrats have been forced to rely on COVID as their chief point.
	Democrats have been forced to rely on COVID as their chief point.
	So, I cut a video, I put it out yesterday, about why I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but I am voting for Trump in 2020.
	And it has racked up over almost 2 million views on Twitter, it's racked up probably at this point over a million views on YouTube, and people are watching it and taking it seriously, which I appreciate, because I think that it is a fair take on why a conservative would vote for President Trump.
	And one of the points that I make in there is that all of the Trump wildness and craziness and tweets and rhetorical excesses and immoralities, all of that is baked into the cake already, right?
	For better or worse, that is the normal.
	And it's not as though that normal just goes away as soon as Trump is off the scene, right?
	The boundaries have been pushed.
	That was not foreclosed in 2016, and so that is what it is.
	Okay?
	And not voting for him in 2020 doesn't actually change anything along these lines.
	It's not like we all go back to wonderful civility.
	The Democrats were not participating in wonderful civility before Trump arrived on the scene.
	They were calling Mitt Romney a homophobe who forcibly cut the hair of gay kids, strapped dogs to the top of his car, and was a vicious racist.
	So, rhetorical norms have been violated before.
	So Democrats have decided to focus in on COVID.
	So I cut this video.
	And the video does briefly talk about COVID.
	It talks about COVID specifically with regard to President Trump refusing to take top-down control over the entire country and essentially assert dictatorial executive branch control over lockdown policy.
	And I say that's a very good thing because this has been the greatest government power grab of my lifetime.
	You've seen governments literally shutting down every human activity.
	Against the science, by the way, because the WHO says that lockdowns are bad policy.
	There are ways in which you can operate your business safely.
	There's social distancing, there's mask wearing, right?
	There are things that you can do to continue to operate.
	Now, as I've said before, Trump's rhetoric on COVID has sucked, right?
	Trump has said a lot of things on COVID that are not good.
	Trump has not been a good advocate for his own positions, but the actual actions by the administration on COVID have been quite good.
	They got the ventilators where they needed to go.
	They got the PPE where it needed to go.
	They've developed Operation Warp Speed, which will result by the end of this year, in all probability, in a working vaccine.
	The fastest vaccine development in human history.
	All of that is quite good.
	And more than that, if you look at Trump's policy, Joe Biden has no different policy.
	This is a point that Mike Pence made in a debate with Kamala Harris.
	The COVID policy pursued by the Trump administration is identical to the COVID strategy that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden say they will pursue.
	With one exception, Joe Biden says that he will call people up and tell them to wear masks, which of course makes no difference at all.
	It also happens to be true that no one has a good handle on COVID.
	Basically, in countries where COVID was widely seeded, It has moved quickly across the entire country.
	Right now, Europe is seeing more of a spread than the United States.
	Is that Donald Trump's fault?
	I wasn't aware that Donald Trump was president of Belgium.
	I wasn't aware that he was president of France or that he was prime minister of the UK.
	I wasn't aware of any of that because he isn't.
	That is just a simple fact.
	No one has a good handle on COVID.
	And yet Democrats have created this alternative mental structure the entire media have bought into Which is that Donald Trump's behavior on COVID is singularly disqualifying.
	They've bought into the lie that if Donald Trump weren't president, 200,000 Americans would be alive right now.
	There is no evidence this is the case whatsoever.
	Even with regard to Trump's foolishnesses about public gatherings, right?
	Trump has basically gone out there, he's done public gatherings, people wear masks, there was a super spreader event at the White House.
	Right, that's bad.
	I said at the time that's bad.
	I disagree with all of that.
	I think it's political malpractice.
	It also happens to be true the entire Democratic Party said you could go out and party in the streets millions strong if you just shouted George Floyd's name without a mask.
	And that magically this woke virus would not affect you.
	So the notion that Democrats are going to handle this thing on a practical level, any differently than Republicans did, is just a lie.
	But there's been a narrative created.
	So people said about my video, why didn't you focus in on Trump's COVID policy?
	And I said, because I don't think that Trump's COVID policy is a point of differentiation between Democrats and Republicans.
	I don't see the magic bullet that Democrats would use that Trump has not attempted.
	I see ways in which Trump could have spoken differently and better.
	And I agree with that.
	But is that singularly disqualifying?
	Do I think that fewer people would be dead if Donald Trump were not president right now?
	I have serious doubts considering the vast majority of people who have died in the United States died in blue states where nobody supports Trump.
	Okay, so that is the media lie.
	I mean, I got some texts from people in the media like, I saw your video and it was good for what it was, but you didn't pay attention to COVID.
	I was like, because?
	If you're asking me to differentiate between the candidates, you can't give me an issue where everybody is basically the same.
	That happens to be the case when it comes to COVID.
	And the media myth notwithstanding, Trump's actions are identical to the actions that Joe Biden would have taken.
	And yet, this is the Democratic narrative and the media will continue to play it.
	That self-pleasuring media refusing to acknowledge the reality of the statement I just made, even though they know that it's true.
	I literally had phone conversations With people in the mainstream media, they acknowledge what I was saying was true.
	No one in Europe has a handle on this.
	Nobody in New York has a handle on this.
	No one in New Jersey has a handle on this.
	Nobody in Massachusetts has a handle on this.
	Basically, the harder you were hit the first time, the less hard hit you are being the second time.
	But that does not mean that you got all of this right.
	In fact, the states that have the lowest transmission rates right now are the states that got walloped the first time, including states like Louisiana, right?
	A red state with a blue governor in John Bel Edwards.
	We'll get to Trump and COVID, which again is the media's backup plan.
	They don't want to talk about Hunter Biden.
	They don't want to talk about Biden at all.
	So they just keep going back to Trump and COVID, which is predicated on a false idea about COVID.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	First, let us talk about the fact That malware is out there.
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	Okay, so again, the media have fallen back on the COVID narrative, right?
	Because in the end, they can't talk about the economy.
	Trump's economy was good.
	They can't talk about foreign policy.
	Trump's foreign policy was good.
	They can talk about two things, Trump's rhetoric and COVID.
	And they can't really talk about COVID.
	So instead, what they like to do is talk about Trump's rhetoric on COVID.
	Because again, the policy Trump has pursued is precisely the same as the policies that are now being pursued by everybody across Europe.
	Trump's refusal to take top-down control, I think of as an asset.
	He didn't nationalize American industry.
	He didn't nationalize the vaccine production process.
	Donald Trump did not assert massive top-down control over every area of the United States.
	I'm seeing members of the media lament that we're not like China.
	Right.
	So what you're saying is that you would like the president of the United States to weld people in their homes if they have COVID.
	You would like to see forcible quarantine if people have COVID.
	Just say it out loud if that's what you want.
	But Joe Biden has not even suggested that that is his policy.
	And when people say testing and tracing is going to fix this, not when you got community spread with hundreds of thousands of people it ain't.
	You could have locked everybody down, I suppose, and forced them to stay in their homes for months on end, but nobody in Europe has done that, and the spread continues in Europe.
	We're gonna have to learn to live with the virus until a vaccine is developed, and even after a vaccine is developed, it is possible we'll have to learn to live with the virus, because again, we don't know the efficacy of the vaccine when tried over a wide range of human beings.
	At that point, people are gonna have to go back to normal and take their chances.
	Everybody acknowledges this if they are rational about this, but the media have crafted a narrative.
	The narrative is Trump killed 200,000 people, And also that once Trump is gone, he's like a devilish, miasmatic evil.
	Once Trump goes, all bad things in the universe subside.
	This is how you know that politics has turned into paganism for so many people.
	When Barack Obama left office and Donald Trump took office, I didn't think that all bad things in the universe had stopped.
	Donald Trump is a person.
	He does things.
	Some of them I like, some of them I don't.
	But for Democrats, because they have so much invested in politics, because So little is played.
	I mean, honestly, I do think there's a religious aspect to this, because religion seeks an outlet.
	And if you're not a religious person, you seek that outlet in faith in the state, faith in the collective, faith in political actors.
	You end up saying wildly paganistic things about politics.
	And so this is the democratic narrative.
	Donald Trump, if removed from office, everything is justified in removing the devil, right?
	Anything that you can do to stop the devil, you do.
	That means you don't report.
	It means that you say false things.
	It means you promote false narratives.
	All of that is okay because you're stopping the devil.
	And once the devil is gone, then utopia reigns.
	Once Donald Trump, Satan is gone, then the sun breaks through the clouds.
	COVID magically dissipates.
	The economy starts to boom again.
	Racial tolerance is flowing across the land like milk and honey.
	If you believe any of this, you're a sucker.
	You're an absolute sucker.
	But this is what the media and Democrats want you to believe.
	We'll get to that false paganistic narrative in just one second.
	First, let us talk about the fact that I've been spending a lot of time at home and let me tell you something.
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	Okay, we'll get to more in just one second first.
	You may have noticed 2020's been nuts, man.
	Statues toppled, coupled with radical rioting and looting in American cities.
	It can feel at times like America is coming apart.
	Well, that's because it is.
	But it's not coming apart just because of politics.
	It's coming apart because there's a difference in vision for the country.
	This is what my book, How to Destroy America, in three easy steps.
	is all about.
	A top New York Times bestseller.
	It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies already.
	How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps really does trace the founding ideology of the United States, the history of the United States.
	I get questions a lot from parents, grandparents.
	How do I educate people on what America is all about?
	This is that book.
	How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps is really about how to build America in three easy steps.
	Philosophy, culture, history.
	What is the philosophy of the United States?
	The founding philosophy.
	What is the culture of the United States?
	A culture of adventure and entrepreneurialism.
	A culture of tolerance for other people's rights.
	What is the history of the United States?
	A glorious history, pockmarked by evil.
	Right?
	That is what this book is about.
	And it's about people who wish to misappropriate all of that philosophy, culture, and history in order to destroy the country.
	Disintegrationists.
	Go pick up the book right now, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
	It's a massive bestseller.
	You should own a copy.
	You should make sure that your kids read it.
	It is not a partisan book.
	It is a book that is about bigger ideas than simple partisanship.
	Meanwhile, as with everything in 2020, there's been a lot of drama with the presidential debates, but we are ready for the next final debate this Thursday.
	Join us at 8.45 p.m.
	Eastern, 5.45 p.m.
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	The narrative that has been crafted by Democrats with regard to the Trump administration is that once Trump goes, everything goes back to normal.
	And so just ignore everything bad that's happening.
	In pursuit of the devil, you can do anything.
	Now, there's a famous scene in one of my favorite plays slash movies, A Man for All Seasons, about Sir Thomas More, in which he has a son-in-law named Roper.
	And Thomas More is being basically blackmailed by a guy named Richard Rich, played in the movie by John Hurt.
	He's being blackmailed with the threat that he's going to tell the king that Thomas More does not approve of his divorce and remarriage.
	And Thomas More is talking to his son-in-law, Roper, and Roper says, you should arrest that man.
	And Thomas More says, on what charge?
	And he says, well, make up the charge.
	Just arrest him.
	He's going to get you killed.
	And Thomas More says, you'd cut down the law to go after the devil.
	And Roper says, I would cut down the law to go after the devil.
	I cut down every law in England to go after the devil.
	And Thomas More says, oh, you would.
	What happens when all the laws are down and the devil turns around on you?
	Where are you going to hide then?
	And that is what is happening in the United States.
	In pursuit of Donald Trump, every institution has been militarized.
	In pursuit of Donald Trump, every truth has been thrown out.
	In pursuit of Donald Trump, everybody has decided that the rules no longer apply.
	Because when you're going after the devil, the entire forest of laws, the entire forest of facts and objectivity, all of it has to go away.
	The media doesn't have to do its job because Trump has to leave office.
	We can tell overt lies about COVID policy because Trump has to leave office.
	You can simply ignore big and important corruption narratives.
	You don't have to do your job as a journalist because Trump has to leave office.
	So what happens when a Republican takes power again?
	Let's say that Trump wins re-election.
	How are all these journalists gonna maintain their credibility?
	They've destroyed their credibility.
	How are Democrats going to maintain their credibility?
	They've destroyed their credibility.
	The institutional collapsing that collapses we see all around us, the attempts to rip into everything from the police to corporations, the attempt to twist everything in pursuit of Donald Trump means that trust in America is at an all-time low, and it's going to get lower, not higher, in the future, because the institutional trust that we have in all of our institutions has basically been destroyed.
	It has not been destroyed by Trump.
	Trump has said things about our institutions that I've disagreed with and I think are bad.
	But it is the Democrats' willingness to actually use those institutions as brickbats against Trump that means that people no longer trust the institutions.
	So in pursuit of this narrative, Democrats are willing to say anything.
	How bad is this to Elizabeth Warren yesterday?
	She said something that many Democrats have said.
	She was campaigning for Joe Biden, was the senator from Massachusetts.
	And I know Elizabeth Warren a little bit.
	I met her a little, interacted a little bit with her at Harvard Law School.
	She's too smart for this.
	But again, this has become a pagan religion.
	Elizabeth Warren says that Donald Trump threatens all human life on the planet.
	All human life on the planet.
	He's Satan.
	And so if he is Satan, you can do whatever you want in order to target him.
	Here's Elizabeth Warren laying that out.
	He not only hasn't made things better, he has actively made them worse.
	He withdrew us from the Paris Climate Accord.
	He's put a coal lobbyist in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.
	What could possibly go wrong?
	He has opened up for offshore drilling.
	And he has said yes to the oil companies that can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve.
	Donald Trump Threatens the existence of human life, of all life on this planet.
	Okay, that's insane.
	I'm sorry, that's just totally crazy.
	That's crazy!
	The existence of all human... So you're telling me that by drilling an anwar, that all human life is threatened?
	That's been like a hot issue since I was in college in 2000, 20 years ago.
	You're telling me that if the climate warms approximately four degrees Fahrenheit over the course of the next century, that it threatens all life, not just human life, all life on this planet, according to Elizabeth Warren?
	That is her case?
	That's paganistic nonsense.
	It truly is.
	And that has been carried over to COVID, where without any evidence whatsoever, the media have suggested that if a Democrat were in charge, 200,000 people wouldn't be dead.
	Let's be very clear about this.
	If Hillary Clinton had been president in 2020, you know how many people would be dead?
	Probably about the same number as are dead under Donald Trump.
	Because nobody knows what to do with this thing.
	Nobody knows what to do with this thing.
	This bizarre idea that Donald Trump is responsible for people losing their lives through his COVID policy is idiotic.
	So, what they've decided to focus on is the only point of real contradistinction between Democrats and Republicans on COVID, and that is the rhetoric.
	And this is where Trump really has failed.
	He has stepped on rake after rake after rake when it comes to COVID.
	In the last two weeks of an election, you know what's a really bad strategy?
	Going to war with Anthony Fauci.
	That is a bad strategy.
	It's what Democrats have been begging for for months.
	Because again, Democrats can't point to anything that Trump has quote-unquote done in terms of policy that really has hurt the country in terms of COVID worse than any place else.
	Donald Trump is not responsible for the massive spike we are now seeing in case numbers in Europe.
	He is not responsible for the fact that blue states did much worse than red states in the early going.
	That would be on Andrew Cuomo, who's being touted at the DNC as Captain COVID Handler.
	Okay, but so they focus in instead on the point of distinction, which again, it always comes down to Trump's rhetoric.
	If you just stripped Trump's rhetoric from the Trump administration, the Democrats are stripped of virtually every talking point.
	So it always comes down to Trump's rhetoric.
	So since the beginning of COVID, they've been trying to drive a wedge between Trump and Fauci.
	Very early on, Fauci refused it and Trump refused it.
	Well now, Fauci's been doing more and more interviews.
	He was on the cover of InTouch Magazine, which again, I don't understand how you can perceive yourself as a serious public health official and be posing for photo shoots with InTouch Magazine.
	I gotta say, I'm not a huge Fauci fan.
	I've said that I think Fauci is doing his best under trying circumstances.
	I think that he has evolved with new information.
	I think that we only see snippets of him.
	Right, he was for lockdowns, then he was against lockdowns, he was anti-mask, then he was for mask.
	But okay, like everybody is moving with the new evidence as it comes out.
	Well, Fauci did an interview on 60 Minutes in which he got very angry that Donald Trump had used him in an ad, which again, was not illegitimate.
	Fauci is a trusted public figure.
	He said, we've done the best that we can, we've done more than anybody else could have, and Trump used that in an ad.
	Okay, well, he's the president, you work for him, right?
	You're in the executive branch, so who the hell do you think you work for, really?
	So that was illegitimate.
	It was.
	Fauci instead decided on 60 Minutes to go out and appear.
	So there was a private campaign phone call that has now been leaked, right?
	So I guess that since it's been leaked, we can't pay attention to it according to the media.
	That's the way this works, right?
	It's unauthorized leakage.
	I don't see Twitter taking any of this down.
	So Trump, on this phone call, ripped into Fauci and called him an idiot.
	Now, is this a smart campaign strategy?
	Of course not.
	Because Fauci has again become the repository of anti-Trump sentiment.
	So ripping into Fauci allows the Democrats to play a game with you, which is Fauci is captain science and Trump is captain anti-science.
	And then Trump plays right into that, right?
	He'll go out his rallies and he'll say, Joe Biden says, listen to the science.
	And Biden will be like, yep.
	Which is literally what happened the other day.
	Trump said that at a rally.
	He said, you know, Biden will listen to Fauci.
	And Biden just tweeted out, yes.
	That is a rhetorical idiocy on the president's part.
	This is where Democrats are really making their hay.
	So this campaign phone call has now become the big headline.
	Here was Trump calling Fauci an idiot on a campaign phone call.
	People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, these people.
	These people that have gotten it wrong.
	Fauci's a nice guy.
	He's been here for 500 years.
	He called every one of them wrong.
	Every time he goes on television, there's always a bomb.
	after Fauci, then he suggested that he was considered firing Fauci.
	He said that he had considered firing it, but it would cause more of a firestorm than just keeping him around.
	Every time he goes on television, there's always a bomb, but there's a bigger bomb if you fire him.
	Okay.
	And then Trump tweeted against Fauci, right?
	He tweeted out, Dr. Tony Fauci says we don't allow him to do television and yet I saw him last night on 60 Minutes.
	He seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late great Bob Hope.
	All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions.
	He said no masks and let China in.
	Also, bad arm, which is just typical Trump, right?
	Is that he threw out a bad first pitch.
	And then he reiterated this.
	Going to war with your health advisor on COVID?
	Like, two weeks from the election?
	reasons. Number one, it is not up to the high standards that he should be exposing. Number two, it keeps reminding me that Tony threw out perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of baseball. Going to war with your health advisor on COVID like two weeks from the election.
	Is that your final election pitch here? Is that your final election pitch?
	So Democrats, look for the point of distinction.
	The point of distinction is that Trump says things.
	And so Trump decides to double down on all of that.
	He decides to double down on that.
	Now, again, he's not wrong when he says the media have miscovered COVID.
	And so Trump at a rally called CNN dumb bastards.
	Fact check, mostly true.
	I mean, here is Trump going after CNN.
	They're getting tired of the pandemic, aren't they?
	Getting tired of the pandemic.
	You turn on CNN, that's all they cover.
	COVID, COVID, pandemic, COVID, COVID, COVID.
	You know why?
	They're trying to talk everybody out of voting.
	People aren't buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards.
	They're not buying it.
	Okay, so are they really trying to talk people out of voting?
	No.
	Are they really trying to talk people into the idea that Trump has killed tons of people from COVID?
	Of course.
	That is what CNN's overt goal is at this point.
	Trump walking directly into that door is not a particularly smart strategy.
	Now, again, I have serious doubts on whether the trust the science crowd actually trusts the science, considering that you still have Andrew Cuomo going out there and saying he literally will not trust a vaccine if Trump says to take it.
	Which, again, I'm not taking anything just because Trump says to take it.
	I'll take it because the scientific community says to take it.
	I don't even understand the point of this.
	The vaccine is not even going to be greenlit until after the election.
	Why are you sowing doubts about a vaccine that is not going to be greenlit until after we know who the next president of the United States is going to be?
	But here was Andrew Cuomo doing that.
	Here's Party of Science Andrew Cuomo.
	I'm not that confident, but my opinion doesn't matter.
	I don't believe the American people are that confident.
	You're going to say to the American people now, here's a vaccine, it was new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it's safe?
	And we're not 100% sure of the consequences.
	I think it's going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine, and it should be.
	So remember, the entire Democratic Party infrastructure has been, including Kamala Harris, has been sowing doubts about taking a vaccine, right?
	So when you hear about how people are getting people killed from COVID, the same party that said it was OK to march in the streets millions strong, said it was OK to go to a funeral so long as it was of a prominent leftist, the same party that suggests that vaccines are bad, Right now, because they're being developed under the Trump administration.
	Those are the people who are definitely going to protect you from COVID.
	It's all false narratives, all the way down.
	All the way down.
	Okay, meanwhile, there is a big piece of election news coming out of the Supreme Court.
	The Supreme Court, John Roberts is just a terrible justice.
	He is, I'm sorry.
	He thinks that his sole mandate is to somehow preserve, in some way, the legitimacy of the court.
	And his way of preserving the legitimacy of the court is to avoid quote-unquote controversy in the here and now, as opposed to controversy in the later.
	He's constantly kicking the can down the road.
	So on the ACA, he will rewrite the law just so that the Supreme Court is not required to strike down a law that was very controversial.
	He'll rewrite it just to quote-unquote re-establish the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
	Question, did it help?
	Answer, no.
	John Roberts is constantly doing this kind of stuff.
	So here's a perfect case in point.
	Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to take up a case, to split 4-4 on taking up a case on Pennsylvania voting.
	So here's the underlying fact pattern.
	In Pennsylvania, there is a law on the books.
	The law on the books is that you have to vote by November 3rd.
	November 3rd is not an arbitrary deadline, as Andrew McCarthy points out.
	It is the election.
	It's a date fixed by Congress for voting across the country to take place.
	Well, under the Constitution, states have a great deal of discretion regarding the manner in which elections are conducted.
	But that discretion is not limitless.
	The election is November 3rd.
	Whatever time frame the states allow for early voting, whatever procedures they prescribe for authenticating legitimate mail-in ballots, the voting has to be concluded on November 3rd.
	The Constitution states it is for Congress to determine the time of choosing the electors, in modern parlance, for conducting in each state the presidential election.
	The states don't have authority to alter that date.
	In Pennsylvania, they just altered the date.
	The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, says Andy McCarthy from National Review, is enmeshed in politics.
	Its members are elected, not appointed, for 10-year terms.
	A few weeks back, in a 4-3 ruling along partisan lines with Democrats in the majority, the court nullified the mandate, duly enacted by the state's legislature, that mail-in ballots must be received in the office of the County Board of Elections no later than 8 o'clock p.m.
	on the day of the primary or election.
	That law makes perfect sense, right?
	Because what you would like to do is start counting.
	So everything has to be received by a certain date.
	This is something, by the way, that the post office actually warned about months ago.
	They put out an actual notice to states across the country saying, you know, guys, you really should change your laws so that the final date on which people can send their mail for an election gives enough time for us to deliver that mail such that the thing can be received by the date of the election.
	The Constitution and federal law, as the Supreme Court has observed, vests discretion to set election rules in the state legislatures, not state courts.
	And as even the Pennsylvania court conceded, it was within the legitimate power of the state's General Assembly to set this deadline.
	There was no ambiguity about it, nor any legal infirmity.
	Right?
	If you wanted your ballot counted, it had to be received by November 3rd.
	Yet, the court's Democratic judges dictated a three-day extension of the lawful deadline for counting mail-in ballots.
	The vehicle for this act of willful usurpation was a lawsuit brought by, surprise, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
	The state court's majority invoked a hurl-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks combination of rationales said to flow from COVID, natural disasters, emergency situations, a loopy construction of the state constitution's Free and Equal Elections Clause, theorizing that since the virus does not affect all people the same way, provisions the legislature makes to deal with it somehow render elections unfair and unequal.
	So what does this actually do?
	What does the court ruling do?
	The court effectively ruled that you can vote after election day.
	The Pennsylvania court requires election officials to presume that any ballot received by its extended deadline, now November 6th, must be counted even if it lacks postmark proof it was mailed on or before November 3rd.
	So, you could see an election in which the entire thing comes down to Pennsylvania.
	In fact, this is quite easy to see because Pennsylvania is a battleground state, right?
	You could see an election in which Trump replicates all the states that he won, except for Michigan and Wisconsin.
	And now he needs to win Pennsylvania.
	And Joe Biden needs to win Pennsylvania.
	And the entire election rests on Pennsylvania.
	And it's November 3rd, and we don't know the results, right?
	November 3rd happens, and it's a very tight election in Pennsylvania.
	Again, right now, that election is within three to four points, right?
	It's close to margin of error.
	And you now have a Pennsylvania law that says that if, the day after the election, November 4th now, everybody looks at the TV, they recognize it comes down to Pennsylvania, and everybody rushes to their mailbox and sends in their ballot, people who didn't vote, they rush to their mailbox and now they send in their ballot.
	According to Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, those will be counted, if received, by November 6th, whether or not they are postmarked late.
	Even if it lacks postmark proof, it was mailed on or before November 3rd.
	As Andy McCarthy said, in effect, it greenlights voting after Election Day, even as the national media is reporting the results of a contest that is supposed to be over.
	For those reasons, the state's Republican Party asked the Supreme Court to stay the court's ruling to the extent it permits voting after Election Day.
	The Supreme Court adheres to a so-called Purcell Principle arising out of its 2006 ruling in Purcell v. Gonzalez that courts must not change the rules for an election late in the game.
	Purcell is now being flouted, not just in Pennsylvania.
	In Wisconsin, Judge William Conley, an Obama appointee on the federal district court, presumed to rewrite a number of state law election-related deadlines, including extending the deadline for counting absentee ballots until November 9th.
	In his wisdom, Judge Conley caveated that ballots should only be counted if they are mailed in by Election Day, November 3rd, which sounds fine in theory, but there's gonna be a lot of dispute about when ballots were mailed, right?
	You're gonna say, I dropped it off at the post office, I dropped it in a mailbox November 3rd, it wasn't postmarked until November 4th.
	So did I mail it in on time?
	So the Supreme Court could have intervened here.
	The Supreme Court could have done something here.
	Well, in April, the High Court intervened in a similar Wisconsin case.
	Judge Conley hadn't just extended by a week after Election Day the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by state election officials.
	He had ordered that votes be counted even if they were mailed after Election Day, and the Supreme Court stayed Conley's order.
	All four liberal-bloc justices, including now-deceased RBG, dissented from the unsigned opinion by a five-justice majority.
	The majority concluded that to permit people to keep voting after election day would gravely affect the integrity of the election process.
	But the opinion took pains to emphasize it was forbidding the counting of post-election mail-in ballots because Conley had ordered it unilaterally.
	So here's how this is going to go.
	Let's say that it does come down to what we're talking about.
	It comes down to Pennsylvania.
	might have approved post election day voting, which is insane. So now the court is essentially saying that they are going to put off decisions on whether or not to count ballots until after election day itself. So here's how this is going to go. Let's say that it does come down to what we're talking about. It comes down to Pennsylvania. It comes down to states that have extended their voting deadlines after election day, which is crazy, by the way.
	And now, you have a ninth justice on the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, who's gonna be confirmed this week or early next.
	And now, Democrats proclaim that a five-seat majority on the Supreme Court with Amy Coney Barrett in the majority is illegitimate because Amy Coney Barrett was rammed through.
	I mean, the possibilities here are devastating.
	And if you're talking about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, if that's John Roberts' chief concern, I cannot think of anything more calibrated to undermine that legitimacy than what the Supreme Court is doing right here.
	Okay, meanwhile, the debate is happening.
	Final debate between Trump and Biden is happening.
	It is happening on Thursday night.
	Well, now new rules have been set.
	According to the New York Times, President Trump and Joseph Biden will be muted during the portions of Thursday's final presidential debate, an effort by the organizers to avoid the unruly spectacle that played out at the candidates' first meeting in Cleveland last month.
	Now, here's the thing.
	I don't think that you should mute the mics.
	I actually don't think you should mute the mics.
	The reason is, if you're a Democrat, I'm confused why you'd want to mute the mics.
	If you look at the polls, what you see is that Trump's performance in the last debate killed him.
	It was terrible for him.
	He started dumping in the polls immediately after that, before he even got COVID, by polling data.
	So why exactly would you want to mute the mics?
	Okay, so fine, they're muting the mics.
	As in the first debate, each candidate will be allotted two minutes of speaking time to initially answer the moderator's questions.
	Under a plan announced on Monday, the opponent's mic will be turned off during that period in an attempt to ensure an uninterrupted response.
	Trump said he wasn't happy about it.
	Trump said, I'll participate.
	I just think it's very unfair.
	I'll participate, but it's very unfair they changed the topics.
	It's very unfair that, again, we have an anchor who is totally biased.
	The commission acknowledged both campaigns might be dissatisfied with the new rules.
	One might think they go too far.
	One might think they don't go far enough.
	The Thursday debate is the final meeting of the candidates.
	There were supposed to be three debates.
	The second one got canceled because the debate commission unilaterally suggested that Trump's COVID forbade it, even though there was no medical information that suggested that this was the case.
	Meanwhile, Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, he claimed that the nonpartisan commission, he called it the Biden Debate Commission, had promised that the national debate would be about foreign policy and asked for it to discard the six subjects announced last week by the moderator, Kristen Welker.
	Those topics are fighting COVID, American families, race in America, climate change, national security, and leadership.
	You can see why the Trump administration would like to talk about foreign policy, which is a big bright spot for them, as opposed to more conversation about racism, and is Trump a white supremacist, and all this garbage, again, again.
	So Biden's people are, of course, very happy with the rule changes.
	So once again, it'll be Trump versus the moderator, for sure.
	Now, final note here.
	It turns out that when people actually look at policy, When people look at policy, when they look beyond the personalities of the candidates, it turns out that Democratic policies are just not that popular.
	Polls show this.
	Polls show that Democrats may be more popular than Republicans, but that is a personality question.
	That is based on social disapproval.
	It is not based on actual policy.
	56% of Americans, according to Gallup, say they are better off now than they were four years ago.
	A plurality support Republican policies over Democratic policies.
	This culminated yesterday in 50 Cent, the rapper, This is according to, I believe, Fox Business.
	tweeting out a graphic of the top tax rates by state.
	This is according to, I believe, Fox Business.
	It showed top tax rates by states under the Biden tax plan.
	California would have a top tax rate of 62.6%.
	New Jersey would have a 60% top tax rate.
	New York State would have a 58% top tax rate.
	New York City would have a 62% top tax rate.
	That is according to the Tax Foundation.
	And that is because of an increase in social security tax, as well as an increase in personal income tax for people at the top tax bracket.
	50 Cent tweeted out, What the F?
	Vote for Trump.
	I'm out.
	F New York.
	The Knicks never win anyway.
	I don't care.
	Trump doesn't like black people.
	62%?
	Are you out of your effing mind?
	So first of all, it's not true that Trump doesn't like black people, but it turns out that Democratic policies are wildly unpopular.
	So here is the good news.
	If you're a Republican and you're deeply worried about the outcome of this election, as you should be.
	If Joe Biden is elected president, and if the Democrats take the Senate, right now, pollsters suggest there's about a 75% shot that Democrats take the Senate, there's no doubt Democrats will promptly go too far, pass a bunch of crappy policy, and there will be a reaction to it in two years, which means that what our real fear should be is them wrecking the system, adding seats to the Senate, and completely changing the constituency of the Supreme Court, institutional changes that outlast the temporary.
	If, however, Democrats push too far on the bizarre thought that this is not about Trump, they made the entire election about Trump, So if Trump is ousted, and then they say, well, really, it wasn't a referendum on Trump.
	It was a referendum on how much people love high taxes.
	They will go for it.
	They will go for broke.
	And the reaction will be exactly 50 Cent's reaction.
	And the pendulum will swing back the other way.
	OK, we'll be back here later today for two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
	Our Technical Director is Austin Stevens.
	Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	The Director of National Intelligence confirms that the Hunter Biden emails are real.
	A CNN analyst gets caught with his pants down.
	And more evidence of voter fraud crops up in Kentucky.

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