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Feb. 2, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:52

Democrats Unleash Their Impeachment Strategy: Feelings | Ep. 1186

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	The Democrats unleashed their impeachment strategy, and it's all about emotion.
	President Biden moves to ram through a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, and the media continue playing offense against Republicans.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro show.
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	Alrighty, so we are quickly approaching the Senate conviction trial for President or ex-President Trump.
	He was, of course, impeached in the House with all the Democrats voting in favor of impeachment, 10 Republicans voting in favor of impeachment.
	There was a preliminary vote in the Senate to declare that a conviction of a person who is no longer in office would be unconstitutional.
	Only five Republicans voted in favor of that.
	Those five were Senator Mitt Romney, Senator Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey were the five who voted against the idea that this was an unconstitutional trial.
	What that really suggests is that there's not going to be tremendous support in favor of conviction of President Trump in the Senate.
	And here's the reality.
	For Democrats, they know this.
	Democrats understand that the chances that Trump is actually convicted in the Senate trial are extremely, extremely low.
	And so what this is all going to be about is about ratcheting up the emotion.
	It's all going to be about ratcheting up the idea that Republicans are entirely responsible for what happened on January 6th.
	And they are retroactively responsible for what happened on January 6th if they fail to convict Trump in the Senate after he was impeached in the House.
	That is the idea.
	And you saw that strategy unleashed yesterday when Dana Bash on CNN basically said that directly to Senator Rob Portman, who's not been an ally of President Trump's, at least on a personal level.
	She said, if you don't convict him, aren't you basically just excusing the behavior?
	Well, that's not the way any of this works.
	You can say that what Trump did in the month and months leading up to the January 6th riots was really, really bad.
	You can say that he was lying to people because I think that he was when he was claiming that there was vast voter fraud that was responsible for his failure to win reelection, when he was attacking Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan.
	You can say all of that.
	Was really ugly.
	It was not only unpresidential, it was bad morally.
	He never should have been doing any of that.
	Some of us were saying all along he had no evidence.
	There were courts of law.
	He had a place where he could have contested all of that.
	He tried to contest some of that.
	In many of those courts he didn't even allege voter fraud.
	So that was not a worthy endeavor at all.
	Also, is that impeachable?
	Very doubtful.
	And when you actually look at the impeachment charge that passed through the House, again, with a Democratic bloc and then 10 Republicans voting in favor, when you look at that actual impeachment charge, the problem is that the standard that is set by the impeachment charge is not one that is actually warranted by the fact.
	Because what they're actually trying to impeach Trump for is what they call incitement to insurrection.
	So let me reread the impeachment charge, because remember, this is what the Senate is going to have to vote on.
	The Senate is not voting on whether Trump did something bad.
	That would be a censure arrangement.
	I think that Kevin McCarthy in the House should have brought a censure bill.
	And I think he should have forced Democrats to vote in favor of that.
	I think Mitch McConnell should put forward a censure.
	But as far as impeachment, there you actually have to fulfill the charge that you're making.
	And here's what the actual impeachment charge is, just to refresh everybody's memory, because again, this is a legal proceeding.
	This is not just a, let's vote on whether we think Trump is bad after he's out of office routine.
	So here's what they are accusing him of.
	They say that in his conduct while president of the United States and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States in that on January 6th, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the vice president of the United States House of Representatives and Senate met at the US Capitol for a joint session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College.
	In the months preceding the joint session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by state or federal officials.
	And now, if they'd wanted to impeach him solely on that basis, theoretically, they could have They could have said that that was an abuse of power, that he shouldn't be challenging election results.
	It would have been awkward for them, since for four years they had been claiming that Trump was not legitimately elected because of Russian interference, and they keep claiming that Governor Stacey Abrams is actually the governor.
	Stacey Abrams as opposed to just Stacey Abrams failed gubernatorial candidate in Georgia.
	Shortly before the joint session commenced, Trump addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
	There, he reiterated false claims that quote, we won this election and we won it by a landslide.
	He also willfully made statements that in context encouraged and foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol.
	Such as if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
	Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the joint session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
	Unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress, the VP, and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts, right?
	So that is the basic contention, is that Trump ramped everybody up, and then on January 6th, he unleashed the mob on the Capitol building.
	And that is the narrative that has been pushed throughout.
	Now, there are a couple of countervailing points to be made here.
	One is that he actively said in that speech that people should go peacefully protest over at the Capitol building.
	That does matter.
	I know people are dismissing that.
	It does matter.
	Because the truth is that Congress members, presidents, lots of people in politics use inflammatory language all the time.
	That can be a not wonderful thing and also not incitement to violence.
	And when Republicans point this out, Democrats wave their hands and say it's not comparable.
	But in many cases, it absolutely is comparable.
	Bernie Sanders suggested that the Republican health care plan was for you to die.
	He said that, and then one of his supporters went and shot up a congressional baseball game.
	Does that make him guilty of incitement?
	No.
	Barack Obama kept saying over and over during his presidency that policing in America was systemically racist.
	He kept making statements about the inherent racism of the American system.
	Racism was baked into the American DNA.
	Then a Black Lives Matter supporter went and shot six cops in Dallas.
	Was Obama responsible for that?
	No, he was not.
	That was not incitement to violence.
	It can be irresponsible language without being incitement to violence.
	And the question of causation comes into play here.
	So on a legal level, there are two levels of causation that usually come into play when it comes to law.
	One is what we call but-for causation, and the other is what we call proximate cause.
	But-for causation is a very low standard.
	But-for causation is the idea that but for your activity, X would not have happened.
	The problem is that that applies to a wide variety of activities that are not in and of themselves guilty.
	But-for causation would suggest that, for example, if I were If I were hit by a train and that morning I had missed the bus and therefore I had to take the train, the but-for causation would suggest that because I missed the bus, I was therefore hit by the train.
	Does that mean that the bus driver is responsible for me being hit by the train?
	No, it absolutely does not.
	Butforecausation is a very weak standard.
	It is not usually used in law.
	Then there's proximate cause.
	Proximate cause is something different.
	That suggests that your action was not only necessary to the chain of events, but it was causal of the chain of events.
	That it was foreseeable that you saying this stuff would have resulted in the overrunning of the Capitol building.
	The problem with that is that nobody really oversaw the overrunning of the Capitol building except maybe for the FBI who didn't do their damn job.
	And it turns out that they had indicators, according to the New York Times, that there were groups that were mobilizing in advance of Trump's January 6th speech in order to go and do these things.
	So unless you can show that Trump knew that those people were going to go do that and was encouraging those people to go do that, it's going to be very difficult to show proximate cause in this particular case.
	Deep political irresponsibility does not equate to incitement.
	There's not a lawyer in America who really believes that Trump is guilty of legal incitement here.
	So what they're really saying is that Trump did a bunch of stuff that's bad, and because it's bad, he shouldn't be allowed to hold office again, and so we're gonna convict him in the Senate.
	Okay, well, the question is, when does bad rise to the level of convictable in the Senate?
	And what standard are you setting for when something is convictable in the Senate?
	So in other words, let's say the riots had not occurred.
	Would Trump have been impeached?
	Let's say Trump had made that rally, and nobody has stormed the Capitol building.
	Right.
	What is activity in and of itself have been impeachable on that basis?
	I think most people would say probably not.
	It would have been bad, would have been ugly.
	But it's the riots that made it, quote unquote, impeachable.
	Well, the problem is if you didn't cause the riots, then it's not really impeachable either.
	Right.
	So that is the question that should be up for debate at the actual at the actual Senate trial.
	Right.
	Is the question of actual causation.
	What did Trump know?
	When did he know it?
	Who knew what?
	What was the activity on that day like?
	That should really be the case.
	But because Democrats know that they are going to be hard pressed to actually make that case in the public view, because they know that there's going to be pushback from Republicans along a wide variety of lines, including, you know, you guys used a lot of inflammatory rhetoric during the summer when $2 billion in property damage was done.
	And I believe about 20 people were killed over the course of the summer in various Antifa and BLM riots.
	You know, where were you guys?
	Is that incitement?
	I think Democrats want to avoid all that.
	So what they're doing instead is they're ramping up the talk of what actually happened that day.
	They're going to turn the Senate trial into essentially a cavalcade of recollections of the horror of that day.
	I have nothing against that.
	I think it's perfectly fine.
	I think we should all be aware of how horrible that day was.
	I think that, frankly, Republicans who were threatened should be calling witnesses to talk about how horrible that day was.
	I think we should all agree how horrible that day was, how threatening that day was.
	I mean, I talked to active Republican members of Congress while the riots were going on, while they were being sheltered in place.
	I talked to at least a couple of senators, I believe, that day and at least one congressperson, all of whom were being sheltered in place.
	And it was really, really bad.
	And I think that the American people should be forced to look at that.
	I think that's good that the American people remember that.
	That is not a case for incitement.
	It is not a case for impeachment.
	We'll get to what the actual agenda here is in just one second.
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	Okay, so the Democratic strategy here during this trial is not going to be to make the legal case for why Trump was responsible for what happened at the Capitol.
	Again, that should be the case they are making.
	Instead of making the causation case, what they are going to do is they're going to recount the horrors of that day.
	And then they're going to use how horrific that day was in order to essentially smear every Republican.
	The idea is going to be that if you voted for Trump in 2016, it was foreseeable.
	And if you voted for Trump in 2020, it was foreseeable.
	If you think that Trump's behavior is egregious and doesn't meet the impeachable standard, then you are responsible for all of this.
	That is the goal, is to broaden out the indictment of January 6th to include not just people who engaged in criminal activity, but people who engaged in non-criminal activity.
	And not just to indict people who engaged in cynical politicking, But to somehow incite people who are not engaged in any of that, right?
	The concentric circles of blame are going to be widened and widened and widened.
	And at the very center is January 6th.
	So what you're going to see over the next several weeks is Democrats coming out and telling their stories of horror of January 6th, and then members of the media urging them to impute that horror to everybody who disagrees with them on the other side of the aisle.
	You're seeing this over and over and over.
	So for example, Mondaire Jones, he's a Democratic congressperson from New York.
	And he and many other Democrats have been claiming that in the midst of the Capitol riots, they were literally fearful of sharing space with Republicans.
	They were fearful of being in the same offices as Republicans during the riots because they felt like the Republicans were actually on the side of the rioters.
	Now, those rioters were there presumably to take prisoner people like Mike Pence.
	Mike Pence is Donald Trump's vice president.
	They weren't going to be kind to Mitch McConnell or any of the other senators, presumably.
	They were not there to make friends with congresspeople on either side of the aisle.
	I was talking to congresspeople who were in the rooms with Democrats while all of this was happening.
	Okay, but Mondaire Jones, he goes out there and he claims that he was fearful of sharing space with the Republicans because he thought that the Republicans were essentially part of the effort to go ahead and kill members of Congress.
	Now, this is a claim that has been made over and over and over by Democrats.
	I have yet to see a shred of evidence to support it.
	If they have evidence that there are members of Congress who are actively coordinating with the rioters in order to do harm to Congress people, Those Congress people then they committed actual treason, like actual treason, legal treason, right?
	If they were complicit in a scheme to overthrow the workings of the United States government by selling out the location of their colleagues in coordination with criminals intent on doing harm, their accessories to attempted murder, Right, so I would like to see some evidence of those sorts of allegations instead of just these broad-ranging allegations without any evidence to support them so far as I can tell.
	Like seriously, let us know because I don't want traitors in Congress, do you?
	Okay, but here was Mondaire Jones making the case that he was fearful of sharing space with the Republicans, for example.
	You cannot trust a number of these people.
	And that is an extraordinary thing to say about your colleagues in the United States Congress.
	But the fact is that a number of these people, in addition to having incited that violent insurrection that we saw, likely were coordinating more explicitly with these people.
	And so the investigation is ongoing.
	And every day we learn more about the level of involvement of a number of our colleagues.
	Okay, he's saying a lot of stuff right there.
	If we learn about that, that would be criminal activity and those people should go to jail at a minimum.
	I mean, it seems to me that if you commit active treason against the American government and you're an elected congressperson, I mean, that may fulfill the actual legal requirements of treason that ends with the death penalty under the Constitution of the United States.
	So, I mean, let's see some evidence of that sort of thing.
	But again, that's not the goal here.
	The goal here is to indict everybody who disagrees with you and to use the most colorful language possible in doing that.
	The person who's been doing that the most over the course of the last couple of days has, of course, been Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who last night took to Instagram for 90 minutes to talk about her experiences at the Capitol.
	Now, there are some people on the right who have been mocking her retelling of her story at the Capitol.
	I'm not mocking her retelling of the story at the Capitol.
	I know that there are people who are in legit danger.
	I don't think that she's wrong to have feared for her life in the middle of what was going on in the Capitol riots.
	As we will see, however, I think that she is wrong when she then starts to suggest that fellow members of Congress are akin to rapists.
	This is where I think she goes wrong.
	So we'll get to AOC in just one moment because she has been the most colorful exponent of this sort of line of argumentation, which is something truly horrible happened.
	I was traumatized by it.
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	Okay, so yesterday AOC went on her Instagram.
	Sorry, the Honorable Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-Twitch.
	She went on her Instagram, which is the place to make very serious allegations, is Instagram.
	And she talked about her experiences during the day.
	There are a couple controversial things that she said in here.
	Let me start with what is uncontroversial.
	It has got to be a horrifying experience.
	If you're a member of Congress, you are rushed out of your office to an alternative site because rioters have stormed the Capitol.
	So I'm not going to doubt that she was freaked out.
	The one part of the story that's a little bit humorous is that she apparently she landed in the office of representative Katie Porter and she said that Katie Porter was sitting there sipping coffee and basically waiting for all of it to end.
	So kudos to Katie Porter. In any case, AOC describes those experiences. But then she goes on to do a couple of things that are pretty One is that she suggests that when a Capitol Police officer arrived in her office to warn her to go to someplace else.
	Now, the rioters never actually got into her office, to be clear.
	A Capitol Police officer arrived in her office and told her that she needed to rush out of her office and get to someplace safer.
	When the Capitol Police officer arrived, she suggested that she had doubts whether he was actually a Capitol Police officer because he was flustered and because he was white.
	And that was something that she said, which, I mean, again, I don't think now is the time to actually be like crapping all over the Capitol Police who are doing their jobs and protecting members of Congress.
	But I guess that it is not foreign to Democrats, unfortunately, to crap all over the police at every available opportunity.
	In any case, AOC talks about that.
	But the parts, again, that are legit when she talks about being scared and traumatized I've been in the middle of difficult situations, not to this extent, obviously, but I've been at the center of situations where I'm speaking and we require 600 police officers in order to guard my speech at Berkeley, or I've been in the middle of a quasi-riot, like a small-scale riot over at DeKalb State.
	Los Angeles, where we required police officers, people were banging on the doors.
	It's not pleasant.
	And this must have been way more unpleasant than that, right?
	I mean, this must have been truly scary, obviously.
	I mean, there were people there who were baying for blood and injuring police officers.
	So I mean, this was way worse than anything I've ever had to experience.
	So I don't doubt that her trauma and experiences are real here.
	Where she goes next, that's where I have some problems.
	So here's what Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had to say on her stream last night.
	These folks who tell us to move on, that it's not a big deal, that we should forget what's happened, or even telling us to apologize.
	these are the same tactics of abusers and I'm a survivor of sexual assault.
	Um, and I haven't told many people that in my life.
	Um, but when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.
	Okay, so a couple of things.
	One, Sexual assault is something that ought to be treated with the utmost, utmost seriousness, the utmost care.
	When people talk about sexual assault, it should not be done cavalierly.
	Sexual assault, and I'm not suggesting that she's talking about her own sexual assault cavalierly there.
	I don't think she is.
	Okay, sexual assault is, in my opinion, the worst crime a human being can commit against another human being.
	I've long suggested that rape should be punishable by death.
	I think it is a worse crime in many cases than murder.
	Rape is just a horrific, horrific thing, obviously.
	So, Two things can be true at once, as always.
	One, sexual assault is a grave, grave matter.
	A supremely grave matter.
	The gravest crime one person can commit on another person.
	Second, to compare sexual assault to people you disagree with politically saying that impeachment is unnecessary at this point for a person who did not actually participate in the Capitol riots, Trump, that is an injustice.
	It's an injustice.
	Okay, the suggestion that, the people she was talking about there were Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, the senators, who have both suggested that we should move on in terms of impeachment, right?
	Not that we should forget what happened on January 6th, not that the criminals of January 6th shouldn't be punished, but that impeaching Trump at this point, he's already out of office, so there's constitutional questions there, or linking him directly via modes of incitement to the activity at the Capitol building, that the evidence isn't there for that.
	To compare those people to rapists, which is what she's doing right there, That's an ugly thing to do.
	It's a really, really ugly thing to do.
	And you're not granted unlimited license to compare people to your sexual assaulter because you have suffered a sexual assault.
	The person who is comparable to the sexual assaulter is the sexual assaulter who should be in prison, who should be in jail.
	I hope to God that she goes to the police and whoever sexually assaulted her ends up in prison.
	Because that's where they belong, at a minimum.
	But the attempt to suggest that Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are like abusers who want you to forget about the abuse?
	To compare them to people who have engaged in sexual assault?
	It's truly extraordinary.
	And this is coming from the same congresswoman who in the past week has suggested that Ted Cruz tried to have her murdered without evidence.
	Which is, again, normally when you allege that somebody is an accessory to murder, you ought to have some evidence to that effect.
	Otherwise, this makes you a false witness.
	There are biblical commandments against such things.
	So what is the actual goal here?
	The actual goal here is to malign anyone who you disagree with politically or disagrees with you on impeachment as not only complicit in that, but complicit in the worst crimes available to humankind.
	And that's really inappropriate stuff from a sitting congressperson.
	Again, that is not to undercut anything that she says about the trauma she experienced during the day.
	That is not to undercut anything that she has said about the trauma of her experience as a sexual assault survivor.
	It is to suggest that you don't get to compare people to sexual assaulters Without evidence that they have committed sexual assault, the worst crime you can commit against another human being, and you certainly don't get to do it on the basis that they disagree with you about impeachment of a person who's already out of office and who, in my opinion, didn't commit an impeachable offense anyway in using inflammatory, inappropriate, and ugly language.
	I mean, if the new standard is that if you use inflammatory, ugly language in order to quote-unquote, incite an uprising, and Alexander Ocasio-Cortez has some explaining to do, here is AOC justifying Black Lives Matter violence during the summer.
	Here, I mean, again, I don't think that she should be impeached from Congress for this.
	Here is Alexander Ocasio-Cortez doing this again during the summer.
	A little bit of a flashback here.
	If you're trying to call for the end of unrest, but you don't believe healthcare is a human right, if you're afraid to say Black Lives Matter, if you're too scared to call out police brutality, then you aren't asking for an end of unrest.
	You are asking for injustice to continue and for your people to continue to endure the violence of poverty, the violence of a lack of housing access, the violence of police brutality, And not say a damn thing.
	That's what you're asking for.
	Okay, so again, there she was using logic during the summer, basically suggesting that if you're not calling for universal health care, then you ought to just be okay with the riots that were happening during the summer.
	I mean, that's as inflammatory as anything that Trump said in the lead up to January 6th.
	So if the goal here in an impeachment trial is to demonstrate causality, if the goal in an impeachment trial is to demonstrate actual incitement, you're gonna have to do better.
	Then what Trump did on January 6th.
	And so that's why my deep suspicion here is that for Democrats, this is all a PR move.
	I mean, Joe Biden has basically said that.
	Joe Biden has said that he understands that there is not going to be a conviction here, that essentially this is all about just browbeating Republicans who didn't have anything to do with January 6th and many of whom were in the same exact rooms as Democrats waiting to be preyed upon and lumping all of those people in.
	And you wonder why Republicans are, again, suspicious of impeachment?
	It's because of exactly this type of move.
	This is all part of a broader effort by members of the Democratic Party and members of the media to lump Republicans in with their most extreme outliers.
	To take the most extreme components of the Republican voting base and then say, that is all of you people.
	That is everyone.
	Now, here's the thing.
	It was Mitch McConnell who got up on the floor of the Senate after the Capitol riots and suggested that American government had withstood the predations of these radicals.
	It was Vice President Mike Pence who presided over the actual certification of the vote that made him not vice president anymore.
	It was Republicans who did that.
	So the next move for the media are of course, is of course to suggest that everybody on the right is now in league with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	She's become the new outlier that we can smear everybody with.
	And just take Marjorie Taylor Greene and paint the entire Republican Party with the specter of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Now, again, here's the problem.
	Most of the Republican leadership, as far as I can tell, has condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene's comments in the past about Jewish space lasers and the Parkland massacre and all of this nuttiness.
	She's a crazy person and a radical, and she believes crazy, radical things.
	Okay, here is what Mitch McConnell had to say about that yesterday.
	Quote, he's talking about Liz Cheney, right?
	Liz Cheney has been targeted by some Republicans.
	She's the number three in the House GOP caucus, and she voted in favor of impeaching Trump.
	Again, I think that there's a case to be made to vote in favor.
	I think there's a case to be made against.
	I'm on the against side, but I don't think that if you vote in favor that it's unthinkable in any way.
	In any case, Liz Cheney, right, has been hit with a wave of rage by some members of the Republican base.
	Here's what Mitch McConnell said.
	He said, And then he went on and just blasted the living crap out of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	He said that she embraces loony lies and conspiracy theories.
	in our nation. I'm grateful for her service. I look forward to continuing to work with her on the crucial issues facing our nation. And then he went on and just blasted living crap out of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right. He said that she embraces loony lies and conspiracy theories. He said that that's a cancer for the Republican Party. He said in a statement, quote, Somebody who suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9-11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can
	strengthen our party.
	But the goal of the left is, of course, not to let Republicans disassociate from Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	The goal is to lump them all in with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Now, I will note that the Democrats are very keen on expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress.
	This is their goal right now.
	Now, Cynthia McKinney, as far as I'm aware, was not expelled from Congress.
	Cynthia McKinney, I believe, lost an election.
	But in any case, Ilhan Omar is treated as a member of leadership in the Democratic Party.
	Rashida Tlaib, who's an anti-Semite, is treated as a membership, a leadership member in the Democratic Party.
	I'm right about McKinney, by the way.
	She was defeated in a primary by Hank Johnson, who is similarly radical, but not quite as outspokenly crazy.
	In any case, the Democrats are saying that Taylor Greene should be expelled from Congress.
	Well, no, you have to do something as an actual member of Congress in order to be expelled from Congress.
	She hasn't done anything expulsion-worthy yet.
	This is why we actually have elections.
	If she had honor, of course, she would resign.
	If she possessed shame, censure and an apology might suffice.
	King lost his primary inside the Republican Party.
	Here is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who absolutely did not work to expel any of the Radical Democrats in her caucus, saying that Marjorie Taylor Greene should be expelled.
	If she had honor, of course, she would resign.
	If she possessed shame, censure and an apology might suffice.
	Expulsion is a fitting punishment, but it takes a two-thirds vote of the House, and that would require support from enough Republicans who aren't morally bankrupt, which is unlikely.
	So reducing the future harm that she can cause in Congress and denying her a seat at committee tables where fact based policies will be crafted is both a suitable punishment and a proper restraint of her influence.
	Okay, so again, the push by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is the former head of the DNC, to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	What that really is about is then saying that if you don't vote to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene, right, it's the sort of analog to what's happening with impeachment.
	If you don't vote to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene, again, there may not be a legal basis for expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a nut job and should not be in Congress.
	Then this means that you're complicit with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	And this is the pitch that is being made by Democrats in the media, particularly Michelle Goldberg, who again is a fool and a simpleton, but writes for the New York Times.
	She has a piece titled, It's Marjorie Taylor Greene's Party Now.
	She embarrasses some Republicans, but she's no outlier.
	No, she's pretty much an outlier.
	I mean, she believes that Jewish space lasers are responsible for a wildfire in California.
	And while that would be kind of awesome, as a person who would undoubtedly be part of the council meeting on Friday nights to decide where exactly to deploy the Jewish space laser, I will say that I don't think that that is a mainstream position inside the Republican Party.
	I will tell you what is a mainstream position inside the Democratic Party, is that Jews are privileged.
	Jews are privileged white people.
	That is a mainstream position inside the Democratic Party these days, which seems a lot more threatening to Jews than the fringe view that we control a space laser.
	But again, there's an old joke in Jewish circles, in which there's two Jewish guys, and they're sitting on a park bench, and one of them is reading Der Sturmer, which is the Nazi newspaper.
	And he's reading Der Sturmer, and he's laughing, in 1935.
	And the other Jew turns to him and says, what are you laughing at?
	And he says, I'm reading all these headlines, and it says that we control the world, and it says that we control the banking system, and it says that we control the army, and it says that we control finance.
	I mean, I read this stuff, and it's great news.
	The wonderful thing about being a Jew is that everybody always imputes to you world-breaking powers that, if Jews had had, our history would be not quite so bleak.
	But in any case, the argument being made by folks on the left, of course, is that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Republican Party, just like they said Steve King was the Republican Party, and Todd Aitken was the Republican Party, and Christina O'Donnell was the Republican Party, and Donald Trump was the Republican Party.
	They're all the Republican Party.
	Whoever is the most outlandish outlier, that is the person who is the Republican Party.
	So says Michelle Goldberg.
	She says, Steve King, the former Republican congressman from Iowa, must feel robbed.
	Two years ago, he was stripped of all his committee assignments after asking in an interview with the New York Times, white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive?
	The Republican Party threw its weight behind King's primary challenger, and he was whisked off the national stage.
	Since then, standards have changed.
	Okay, let me just make something clear.
	When Republicans, like me, led the charge to primary Steve King, we were given zero credit by the Democratic press.
	None.
	Okay, the Democratic press instead suggested that we actually secretly backed Steve King.
	I'm not kidding.
	This is a thing that happened.
	People were like, oh, well, you know, why don't... Sure, they took away all his committee assignments and they had him primaried.
	But really, they're all like Steve King, aren't they?
	So now the new Steve King is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	They say, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, this is, again, Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times, is every bit as bigoted as King and 10 times as unhinged.
	By now you've surely heard her theory that California wildfires may have been caused by space lasers controlled by Jewish bankers.
	This wasn't Greene's first foray into anti-Semitism.
	In 2018, she shared a notorious white nationalist video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.
	Recently, Greene met with a far-right British commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has described migrants as roaches, et cetera, et cetera.
	They say, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, this is Michelle Goldberg, is meeting with Greene.
	It's far from clear he'll act against her because she represents much of the party's base.
	Oh, is that right?
	Is that correct?
	Well, again, I would assume that people who support her support a lot of what she does, but that doesn't mean that everybody who supports her does, or that an obscure first-term congressperson from a contested primary in Georgia is representative of the entire Democratic Party, but it doesn't matter.
	The whole goal here is to suggest that American conservatism is part and parcel of this insanity.
	Michelle Goldberg says, American conservatism, particularly its evangelical strain out of the Christians, bad, bad Christians, has fostered derangement in its ranks for decades, insisting that no source of information outside its own self-reinforcing ideological bubble is trustworthy.
	Oh, the irony of a columnist for the New York Times suggesting that siloing on information and creating a bubble of your own making is a problem.
	Oh, the irony.
	If you're steeped in creationism, says Michelle Goldberg, and believe that elites are lying to you about the origins of life on earth, it's not a stretch to believe they are lying to you about a life-threatening virus.
	Okay, so first of all, a lot of church believers, even a lot of new earth creationists, a lot of them are gonna take the vaccine.
	There are a bunch of lefties who are not going to take the vaccine, so that's a bit of a stretch.
	If you know the history of the revisionist, is the revisionist version of the Christian right, in which God deeded America to the faithful, pluralism will feel like the theft of your birthright.
	If you believe the last Democratic president was illegitimate, as Trump and other birthers claimed, it's not hard to believe dark forces would foist another unconstitutional leader on the country.
	There was a moment after the Capitol riot when it seemed as if a critical mass of the Republican Party was recoiling at what it had created.
	But the moment passed.
	The moment passed.
	On Monday, Politico reported, if Republicans don't strip green of committee assignments, Democrats will try to do it, bringing the issue to the House floor.
	Republican members will have the chance to distance themselves from her.
	If they don't, it will be because they know she belongs.
	Yes, I'm sure that that is what you guys would love.
	There's a reason that she is now the most well-known name in Republican circles, and it ain't because of Republicans.
	It's because of Democrats.
	This column is mirrored by one from Eugene Robinson in today's Washington Post, titled, literally, if the GOP is to rise from the ashes, it has to burn first.
	Oh, look, inflammatory language.
	Literally inflammatory language.
	It has to burn first.
	Before a sane, responsible political party can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of today's dangerously unhinged GOP, there must be ashes to rise from.
	The nation is going to have to destroy the Republican Party to save it.
	You might think the violent and deadly January 6th insurrection at the Capitol would snap the GOP back into reality.
	Unbelievably, though, you would be wrong.
	If anything, the party is headed deeper into the wilderness.
	Look at how the two most powerful Republicans left in Washington behaved last week.
	Kevin McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee to Trump, and Mitch McConnell voted to question whether Trump's coming impeachment trial is even constitutional.
	The GOP now bears no resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln, says Eugene Robinson.
	Okay, my favorite part of this is where Michelle Goldberg and Eugene Robinson pretend that three minutes ago, the Republican Party was sane and they were cool with it.
	Ten years ago, they were saying the Republican Party was unhinged.
	Nothing has changed.
	They just have found a new brick to hit Republicans with.
	Eugene Robinson says, this is now the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Again, is Kevin McCarthy posing on the cover of magazines with Marjorie Taylor Greene?
	A lot more case that the Democratic Party is the party of Ilhan Omar Rashida Tlaib and AOC than the case that the Republican Party is the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Eugene Robinson admits that McCarthy and McConnell don't believe this nonsense, but they do believe they are within striking range of regaining control of both the House and the Senate, and they are choosing power over principle.
	Their hopes must be utterly dashed.
	So yeah, this is the actual goal, right?
	In the end, and again, there's another column in the Washington Post by Colbert King saying the same thing.
	The GOP once knew what to do about problems like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	But now, again, I'm not going to listen to this crap from people who literally put Ilhan Omar and anti-Semite and Rashida Tlaib on the cover of magazines.
	Like, that it just does not wash.
	It seems extraordinarily cynical because it is extraordinarily cynical and it is all part and parcel of a broader attempt that has been going since January 6th to suggest that every Republican, every conservative is responsible for what happened on January 6th.
	And the more you say it, the more it will be true.
	It doesn't make it true.
	Because it's not true.
	It hasn't been true.
	It is not true.
	Even the people who believe that the election was stolen are not responsible for the people who went into the Capitol.
	Lots of people in the United States can believe lots of horrible and terrible and untrue lying things, but lots of people do.
	That doesn't, in the same way that Black Lives Matters supporters believe that America is systemically racist, which I think is a lie that is unbased on facts.
	Hey, even though they believe that they are not responsible for people going in burning cities.
	In the same way, even people who believe the untruth that the election was stolen, if they weren't rioting at the Capitol and storming the Capitol building, you can't blame even the people who went and peacefully protested with Trump and then left when they saw what was going on for the people who stormed the Capitol.
	But of course, the same standard just does not apply for the Democratic Party.
	It just does not.
	Okay, in just one second, we are going to get to the breakdown of political bipartisanship.
	So we have seen in terms of policy, we've already seen the breakdown of supposed bipartisanship in terms of the moment of unity that did not last for beyond five minutes during January 6th.
	Now we'll move on to actual policy because Joe Biden is a uniter, not a divider, except when it comes to, you know, all the things.
	We'll get to that in a moment first.
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	Okay, in just one second, we are going to get to Democrats setting the clock back to zero days since bipartisanship.
	Okay, they're setting that clock back to days since we abandoned bipartisanship, setting that clock back to zero.
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	♪♪ Meanwhile, in policy terms, remember that time that Joe Biden said he was going to be a moderate?
	Ha ha ha ha ha!
	Yeah, that was funny.
	That was funny.
	Some of us warned you that was not going to happen.
	Some of us suggested to the so-called never-Trump Republicans that you guys would keep saying...
	Joe Biden is going to be a moderate uniter.
	Nope.
	No, he's not.
	He is simply a facade for the radical left.
	And what has happened?
	He is a facade for the radical left.
	All his administration has done so far is issue more executive orders in the first week of any term than any president in American history.
	And those executive orders are filled with things like boys should race in girls sports.
	And also, we should make sure that racial equity is the basis of all of our policies, meaning racial favoritism based on supposed victimized status by group.
	So yeah, things are going great.
	Also, they're going to ram through a $1.9 trillion COVID package that is unnecessary.
	It is not necessary.
	What we need right now is temporary help for people who are in need.
	We don't need more aid that is just thrown out the window to people who have jobs, who are currently working.
	We also don't need people to be paid more than they were making when they were actually working.
	That is not something that we require right now.
	And yet that is exactly what is being proposed by Joe Biden.
	He's also proposing a raise to $15 minimum wage, which makes no sense federally because it turns out the states have widely variant styles of living.
	$15 goes a long way in Mississippi.
	It doesn't go halfway in New York.
	The idea of a federal minimum wage is idiocy on its face, especially when it's raised to some exorbitant level that is greater than like one third of all the wage earners in a particular state.
	In any case, Democrats, they could have come up with a compromise deal here.
	In fact, 10 Republicans headed on over to the White House to talk with Joe Biden.
	Democrats headed on over.
	Democrats were meeting with Republicans.
	It was all supposed to be happy bipartisanship.
	Susan Collins led the way, the senator from Maine, and she was super happy to talk to Joe Biden.
	It was a very good exchange of views.
	I wouldn't say that we came together on a package tonight.
	No one expected that in a two-hour meeting.
	But what we did agree to do is to follow up and talk further.
	I think it was an excellent meeting and we're very appreciative that as his first official meeting in the Oval Office, The president chose to spend so much time with us.
	Oh, well, I mean, I'm glad that Susan Collins is feeling super flattered by spending time with Joe Biden.
	I mean, like, that's the best.
	It's when they spend time and they play, like, D&D, and it's just fantastic, right?
	They sit there, they play board games, they have a cup of tea.
	Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are just going to ram through this bill.
	They're just going to ram it through.
	According to The Daily Wire, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a joint resolution on Monday afternoon that will allow them to pass President Joe Biden's coronavirus stimulus package without needing support from the Republican Party.
	Introduction of a joint budget resolution is the first step to potentially enacting a budget reconciliation bill, one legislative tool available to Congress to quickly pass bipartisan COVID relief legislation, said a joint statement from the two Democratic leaders.
	The resolution outlines the reconciliation instructions for each House and Senate committee or how much funding can be spent in their jurisdictions.
	Congress has the responsibility to quickly deliver immediate comprehensive relief to the American people hurting from COVID-19.
	The cost of inaction is high and growing.
	The time for decisive action is now.
	Remember, it was Democrats who were holding this thing up while Trump was president.
	They were holding it up before the election for months, even though there was a bipartisan deal in place.
	They rejected a big bipartisan deal in order to literally hold it up until after the election.
	Nancy Pelosi admitted that.
	But now is the time to make sure this gets done, and we're just going to ram this thing through.
	So while Susan Collins is doing happy talk with Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, the White House Press Secretary, is like, yeah, I'm glad they came over.
	And yeah, we had some fun and it was pretty great.
	We played Rummikub.
	But also, we're not going to do anything they want.
	We're just going to do exactly what we want to do.
	This is an opportunity to exchange ideas, to have a conversation.
	That's why he invited them over here to the White House.
	There are some real impacts, which he will certainly reiterate, as he has publicly and privately in many conversations.
	But they've put forward some ideas.
	He's happy to hear from them.
	But he also feels strongly about the need to make sure the size of the package meets this moment and feels the American people expect that of their elected officials as well.
	So in other words, I'm glad they showed up.
	Good to see them.
	Also, we're just going to completely ignore everything that they just had to say.
	Super bipartisanship happening right there.
	It's like the Simpsons.
	Set that clock back to zero.
	Days since we broke bipartisanship.
	Set that clock back to zero.
	It was not even a day and setting it back to zero right now.
	The White House put a statement also They said that the president and vice president had a substantive and productive discussion with Republican senators this evening at the White House.
	The group shared a desire to get help to the American people who are suffering through the worst health and economic crisis in a generation.
	While there were areas of agreement, the president also reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently.
	Whenever Congress is bold and urgent, hold on your wallet, man.
	Whenever a politician says bold and urgent, what they mean is we are going to spend more money than has ever been created by God or man.
	They noted many areas in which the Republican senator's proposal does not address the problems.
	Biden reiterated while he is hopeful that the rescue plan can pass with bipartisan support, a reconciliation package is a path to achieve that end.
	The president also made clear that the American rescue plan was carefully designed to meet the stakes of the moment.
	Any changes in it cannot leave the nation short of its pressing needs.
	So in other words, thanks so much for stopping by.
	It's been fun.
	Also, we're going to completely ignore everything you have to say.
	Captain unity, unitying it up over there.
	I mean, like, super lots of unity happening inside the Democratic Party.
	So here's what we've gotten in the age of unity, the new golden era so far.
	We've gotten, if you don't vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial, this means that you are in league with the January 6th rioters, that if you believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a nutjob and a crazy person, but also you can't expel her from Congress for stuff that she said before the election, That's why we have an election process in the United States.
	And if you actually believe that, you can remove it from committees and stuff, that makes you the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	And also, if you want to cut a deal on stimulus, if you want to cut a deal on COVID relief, like right now, and you've wanted to for months, but it's not Joe Biden's deal, we're just going to ignore you.
	So super unity happening right now.
	Loving the unity, feeling the unity.
	There's no unity.
	Meanwhile, speaking of no unity, it's always fun to see how the Democratic Party manipulates the media and how the media just go along with it.
	It really is fun.
	So for months and months and months, Joe Biden did not answer a non-prescreen question.
	His media team was taking questions from the media that they had prescreened, basically.
	That was the allegation during the campaign.
	Kamala Harris did not do a single press conference for months after being selected as vice presidential candidate by Joe Biden.
	Not for months.
	Meanwhile, all we heard was, why won't Trump talk to the press?
	Why won't he do a press conference?
	Then when he did talk to the press, it was like, why is he even out here talking to the press?
	Okay, so here is what we are now learning from the Daily Beast.
	Maxwell Taney reporting.
	If you are a reporter with a tough question for the White House press secretary, Joe Biden's staff wouldn't mind knowing about it in advance.
	According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, as well as written communications reviewed by the Daily Beast, the new president's communications staff have already on occasion probed reporters to see what questions they plan on asking new White House press secretary Jen Psaki when called upon during briefings.
	The request prompted concerns among the White House Press Corps, whose members, like many reporters, are sensitive to the perception that they are coordinating with political communications staffers.
	OK, so first of all, the only reason Jen Psaki is asking to hear the question beforehand is because she believes a lot of members of the media will go along with that.
	Can you imagine Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Kayleigh McEnany emailing a member of the New York Times being like, you know, what would be great is if you could let me know what controversial question you're going to ask me today.
	Jim Acosta from CNN, can you let me know what you're going to ask me?
	There's a reason they would never send that email.
	And it's because Jim Acosta would immediately go on air and say they had sent an email asking to pre-screen questions, correct?
	But the media are so in the pocket of Democrats that they have to anonymously leak this story to the Daily Beast.
	Shouldn't a journalistic establishment that cares about its own prerogative just say openly, we are not going to engage in this?
	And not only are we not going to engage in this, they should say by name.
	I am Reporter X. I have been asked by the White House to prescreen my questions with them.
	I am not going to do that, nor is it appropriate for them to ask me to do that.
	They're not doing that, though.
	Instead, they're leaking.
	They don't want to offend.
	You wouldn't want to offend the Biden administration.
	Jen Psaki.
	Ooh, you would not want to offend Jen Psaki.
	Truth teller extraordinaire.
	How refreshing, how refreshing in the words of Brian Stelter.
	So much truth, so much transparency.
	Also, if you could just submit your question in writing beforehand so they can prep for it, or so they can ignore you, that would be just excellent.
	That'd just be great.
	According to the Daily Beast, one reporter raised the issue during an informal White House Correspondents Association Zoom call last Friday.
	According to multiple sources, leaders at the meeting advised print reporters to push back against requests by the White House press team to learn of questions in advance, or simply to not respond to the Biden team's inquiries.
	One White House correspondent said, Okay, just a quick note.
	They've already lied repeatedly.
	Jen Psaki went out there the very first day and said there was no COVID relief, there was no vaccine plan available.
	None.
	They entered office and there was nothing but chaos.
	It was a lie.
	It wasn't true.
	Then she suggested that it was going to be a dramatic ramp-up to get to a million shots a day.
	They were already at a million shots a day.
	So that was a lie as well.
	She was already not telling things that were, but again, what you're going to hear from the White House press is, thank you, sir, may I have another?
	That's all this is.
	Yeah, they're lying to us, but they're really telling the truth, don't you see?
	They're just telling us the truth all the time.
	One White House correspondent told the Daily Beast, the press can't really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want.
	That's not really a free press at all.
	It pissed off reporters for people to flag it for the White House Correspondents Association for them to deal with, said another knowledgeable source.
	The White House Correspondents Association Zoom call was off record.
	Daily Beast staffers participated in the call.
	Those staffers had no input into this story whatsoever.
	The reporter who wrote this story was not bound by the terms of the call's agreement.
	All of the information in this article was independently gathered and without his colleagues' knowledge.
	So this is now the Daily Beast reporter trying not to out his own colleagues.
	God forbid somebody from the Daily Beast who's a reporter should say, you know what, it's really inappropriate that they did this publicly.
	It's all gotta be anonymous.
	Wouldn't wanna tick off Biden.
	Wouldn't wanna tick off Team Refreshing over there.
	According to the Daily Beast, since Biden took office two weeks ago, the White House press team has visibly attempted to draw a contrast with the Trump press team, which had a notoriously antagonistic relationship with the reporters and eventually scrapped their traditional daily briefing altogether.
	Saki has pleased many members of the press pool by ensuring that reporters in attendance aren't doing so in vain.
	During her first presser, Saki promised to restore regular briefings, including those with top administration health officials, adding she had a deep respect for the role of a free and independent press and that they shared a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.
	A quick note to the American press.
	If you share a common goal with a person whose literal job it is to do spin for the White House, you're not a member of the press.
	You're a member of the lapdog media at that point.
	Biden's press team did not deny that staffers had solicited questions from reporters, but the White House contended it had tried to foster a better relationship with the press corps than the previous administration, and has tried to reach out to reporters directly in order to avoid appearing to dodge questions during briefings.
	Oh, that's why.
	So we can be more transparent and honest by asking for your questions in advance so we can spin it in advance.
	And then I love this.
	Even the Daily Beast tries to spin this, right?
	This practice isn't totally unheard of in previous administrations, departments, or federal agencies.
	For instance, former President Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was known to have asked certain news outlets about their questions in advance of some major or high-profile Trump oppressors or events, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
	Communication staffers during the Bush and Obama years would ask reporters for the gist of questions in advance if they wanted to interview Cabinet Secretaries.
	That's not the same thing.
	That's not the same thing.
	OK, if the idea is we are setting up an interview with the president, what kind of questions are you going to ask the president?
	That's stuff that happens on this show all the time.
	We'll ask a guest to come on.
	The guest will be like, what do you want to ask me about?
	That's normal.
	What is not normal is for the press office to routinely ask reporters what they are going to ask them during a normal press conference.
	I mean, I'm sorry, this is just, it's ridiculous.
	But, don't worry.
	According to Eric Schultz, former deputy press secretary in the Obama White House, quote, this is textbook communications work.
	The briefing becomes meaningless if the press secretary has to repeatedly punt questions instead of coming equipped to discuss what journalists are reporting on.
	OK, like, let's be real about this.
	There are a lot of things the press secretary should know about.
	And punting is a thing that, like, a lot of conservatives were making fun of Jen Psaki over the past couple of days because she kept saying during pressers, I'm gonna circle back on that and get back to you.
	And people were cutting montages for saying, I'm gonna circle back, I'm gonna circle back, I'm gonna circle back.
	Let me just point out, that's okay to say.
	There's nothing wrong with Jen Psaki saying that she has to circle back because she doesn't have that information.
	That's fine.
	It's normal.
	Not normal is asking reporters what they're going to ask her in advance of the actual press conferences so we can stage these things.
	And meanwhile, it's always encouraging to hear from the Biden White House again, which again, their only issue is what they want, unity.
	Unity, unity, unity.
	That they would love to have social medias.
	Social media platforms reduce the amount of free speech on the platform.
	So here's Jen Psaki yesterday from the White House saying that she wants to push social media to reduce hate speech on their platform.
	She said this in response to questions about Trump being banned from social media.
	Does President Biden support the continuing ban of President Trump on their sites?
	I think that's a decision made by Twitter.
	We've certainly spoken to, and he's spoken to, the need for social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech.
	But we don't have more for you on it than that.
	Oh, we've just been pushing the social media platforms to reduce hate speech.
	By hate speech, we mean anything we don't like.
	It's that commitment to free speech that really is making conservatives feel good these days and really solidified and unified these days with the new administration.
	Meanwhile, what kind of free speech do they like?
	They like the speech from the media where the media just play cover for Democrats.
	That's always amusing.
	Like, for example, it's super fun that MSNBC interviewed members of the Lincoln Project over and over and over and over over the past few weeks and never once asked about allegations that the co-founder was sexually soliciting young underage people.
	So that's fun that MSNBC did that.
	Apparently Steve Schmidt is according to Mediaite.
	Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Conway all appeared on MSNBC to conduct interviews 17 times after the allegations were first made public on January 11th by Ryan Gerdersky, according to records collected by Media Clipping Services.
	That's how he was first noted by the Daily Caller's Michael Ginsburg.
	So it's always got to be fun to be an MSNBC person and never ask relevant questions to people.
	Meanwhile, Daniel Dale, remember fact checker extraordinaire over at CNN?
	And his job was just to be like, I'm going to fact check everything Trump ever says.
	In the most didactic terms, right?
	I'm going to get into, like, the nitty-gritty details, and I'm going to fact-check not only the broad statements he makes, but I'm going to, like, find flaws in statements that are generally true and then claim they are false.
	So now he's doing the opposite.
	Now, as an adjunct member of the Biden White House press corps, he is going to essentially spend his days spinning on behalf of Joe Biden.
	So on this show, we played a clip of Joe Biden during the campaign talking about how if you use executive orders outside the scope of your executive power, you are engaging in dictatorship, right?
	He was talking about taxes specifically, but it was a more general point.
	The more general point was if the president acts outside the bounds of his actual capacity, then he is engaging in dictatorship.
	And many of us on the right pointed out, okay, you just enacted more executive orders in the first week of your administration than any president in history.
	Many of those executive orders had no actual statutory room for you to do that, right?
	That not every one of those executive orders was enabled by the members of Congress in a piece of legislation.
	Well, now Daniel Dale has decided his job is no longer to compile lists of Trump lies.
	Now it's to compile lists of how everybody's being mean to Joe Biden.
	So he did like a full five minute thing on CNN about how people just keep saying mean things about Joe Biden, and Daniel Dale doesn't like that very much.
	We have to stop saying mean things about Joe Biden, guys.
	The key word there is things.
	Biden was saying, as he did at other moments of the campaign, that there are certain policies you can't impose via executive order.
	He didn't say that executive orders themselves are inherently dictator-like, and he didn't even say that doing a lot of executive orders is dictator-like.
	In fact, Biden explicitly campaigned Okay, but I will point out that a lot of people complained about Trump's executive orders, and many of those executive orders were successfully challenged in court for being outside the scope of Trump's authority.
	But I will point out that a lot of people complain about Trump's executive orders and many of those executive orders were successfully challenged in court for being outside the scope of Trump's authority.
	So yeah, I'm wonderful to see that the fact checkers at CNN have now decided that their job is to just be Jen Psaki.
	And why even have Jen Psaki?
	The media are going to do it for you.
	They're coordinating with Jen Psaki and the media are going to spend their days fact-checking Biden's critics, as opposed to actually fact-checking Biden.
	That's very, very exciting stuff.
	So that is where we currently stand with our wonderful, wonderful media.
	They're doing an excellent job.
	By the way, note about the media.
	Have you noticed that the media have turned on Andrew Cuomo?
	That only took like a year.
	That's fun.
	So Andrew Cuomo is a garbage governor.
	Some of us have been pointing this out since last March, that he's a garbage governor, that he's responsible.
	For a horrific death toll inside his own state, that he was shipping old people back into nursing homes with COVID in order to free up hospital beds, and that resulted in mass death in the nursing homes.
	Some of us have been pointing out for months that there are open reports that were pretty obviously documented that he was undercounting the number of seniors who had died of COVID in nursing homes.
	Well, now the media are finally catching up.
	It only took seven months for them to catch up on this thing.
	These are the people we should trust, I think, probably.
	So here are Jake Tapper and Sanjay Gupta from CNN blasting Cuomo.
	Where's Chris, by the way?
	Chris there to rebut this thing?
	Or is Chris just not going to report on it?
	Or does he have like a giant Q-tip that he can make jokes about with his brother?
	CNN, your most trusted name in news right here.
	That seems like a wildly irresponsible thing for a leader to say during a pandemic.
	We need the public to believe the experts.
	Do you have any concerns?
	I'm really quite stunned that that's what he said.
	If you start to take away some of the credence of these experts, I think that's really, really harmful, especially now.
	Oh, well, I'm glad that CNN has picked up on this.
	By the way, the New York Times has picked up on it as well.
	According to the New York Times, the deputy commissioner for public health at the New York State Health Department resigned in late summer.
	Soon after, the director of its Bureau of Communicable Disease Control also stepped down.
	So did the medical director for epidemiology.
	Last month, the state epidemiologist said she, too, would be leaving.
	The drumbeat of high-level departures in the middle of the pandemic came as morale plunged in the health department and senior health officials expressed alarm to one another over being sidelined and treated disrespectfully according to five people with direct experience inside the department.
	Their concern had an almost singular focus.
	Governor Andrew Cuomo, this is the New York Times.
	Even as the pandemic continues to rage and New York struggles to vaccinate a large and anxious population, Cuomo has all but declared war on his own public health bureaucracy.
	Departures have underscored the extent to which pandemic policy has been set by the governor, who, with his aides, crafted a vaccination program beset by early delays.
	Now, I just want to note the timeline in this story.
	This is the New York Times itself reporting.
	So, when did these people leave?
	Deputy Commissioner, late summer.
	Soon after, the Director of the Bureau of Communicable Disease and the Medical Director for Epidemiology.
	So, where was the New York Times?
	Because last summer, last I checked, was not today.
	Today is February 2nd.
	So where were you guys?
	Oh, that's right.
	You were busy massaging his ass.
	So yeah, I think we should definitely trust you guys.
	The arbiters of truth and decency in our media.
	I trust them, don't you?
	I mean, they're just so trustworthy.
	I mean, they were praising this guy as the governor for all Americans.
	Well done.
	Well done.
	I can't imagine why so many people are turning to conservative media outlets for an alternative source of actual information.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon.
	The Matt Walsh Show airing at 1.30 p.m.
	Eastern.
	Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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