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May 11, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:06:32

Trump STEAMROLLS CNN

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	Well, last night was Donald Trump's big town hall on CNN.
	There was a lot of consternation at the halls of CNN over having Trump on in the first place.
	About a year and a half ago, CNN was saying they would not have anybody on who had been an election denier.
	Anybody who said that there was a rigged election in 2020 was not welcome on the airwaves at CNN.
	Chris Licht came in, the new head of CNN.
	He said, we're going to open this thing up and we're going to allow broader conversations.
	But there was one problem for CNN last night.
	When they had Donald Trump on, they did not Not prepare Caitlyn Collins.
	Not only was Caitlyn Collins not really prepared, Caitlyn Collins came at the entire event from the wrong angle and Donald Trump just steamrolled her.
	It was the best night that Donald Trump has had in this primary, period.
	It was the best day that he's had in this primary, period.
	It was better than the day that he went to Ohio and he spoke with all the people who had been affected by the train crash.
	It was the best day for him.
	Why?
	Because Donald Trump is a creature who thrives on opposition.
	And Donald Trump is the guy who you want to bet on him in a fight mainly because he's crazy and he might hit somebody with a kitchen sink.
	He's like a cartoon character.
	If he's in a fight, he might actually just reach into his back pocket and pull out a giant jackhammer.
	And you're like, how did that jackhammer even fit in that pocket?
	I don't even understand.
	It's like, but it's a cartoon, so he can't.
	He just pulls out the jackhammer, just goes to town.
	Hey, that is Donald Trump in a debate.
	And so when Republicans see Donald Trump being oppositional, and when he's faced with an oppositional person like Caitlyn Collins, Republicans resonate to that.
	Now, does that mean that Donald Trump has a better shot of winning in a general election because he can beat up Caitlyn Collins on CNN over election stuff?
	No, but it does make Republicans really, really happy, which means there's a lot of kayfabe going on last night.
	Kayfabe is the WWE sort of fake conflict that's going on.
	Understand something.
	Donald Trump needs CNN.
	This is why Donald Trump went on CNN.
	Donald Trump requires opposition from the left, so that he is fighting the left, so that Republicans see him as their man.
	They see him as their representative.
	And CNN needs Donald Trump to be the nominee, because CNN, ever since Donald Trump has been president, When he left the presidency, CNN's ratings took a nosedive.
	They have not recovered yet.
	They are in serious trouble.
	And so they need, desperately, Donald Trump to be the nominee.
	And that was the dynamic that played out in full force last night.
	And you can see this, right?
	Donald Trump was super happy about going on CNN.
	Now, if you are normally, you know, a Republican, you look at the Republican candidates, the first rule of Republican politics is don't walk into a rigged interview.
	Don't do it.
	It's a stupid thing to do.
	Don't put yourself in a position where you're going to be asked a bunch of ridiculously biased questions, and then the media is going to cut it up and use it for campaign ads on behalf of the Democrats.
	Don't do it.
	But Donald Trump did it.
	Why did Donald Trump do it?
	Because he knows.
	He knows that the thing that makes people love him, I think rightly, the thing that makes people love him is the fact that he will just deliver a roundhouse, wild, flailing punch to somebody out of left field, using whatever is at his disposal.
	Again, just pick up a frying pan off the counter, pick up a toaster and just smack somebody with it.
	And the Republicans cheer if they don't like that person enough.
	And that's what happened last night.
	So Trump was ready for it.
	Trump, before the event even began, he went on his social media channels and he started pumping it up.
	Here's Donald Trump's announcement.
	I'll be doing CNN tonight, live from the great state of New Hampshire, because CNN is rightfully desperate to get those fantastic Trump ratings back.
	They were ratings like none other, and they want them back.
	They made me a deal I couldn't refuse.
	Could be the beginning of a new and vibrant CNN with no more fake news, or it could be a total disaster for all, including me.
	Let's see what happens tonight at 8 o'clock.
	Okay, that's the exact same problem he would do if he was actually wrestling in WWE.
	It could be a disaster.
	It could be unbelievable.
	It could be me hitting somebody with a chair.
	It could be me doing my count.
	No one knows.
	Trump's setting it up, right?
	And CNN billed this entire event wrong.
	And they billed the entire event wrong if the idea was to ask Donald Trump relevant questions to Republican voters.
	So here's one of the lies that CNN told.
	CNN billed this as a Republican town hall.
	So what did they do?
	They brought in a bunch of people who are Republican primary voters.
	Those Republican primary voters presumably would like Donald Trump to answer questions on things that Republicans care about.
	Let me list things Republicans don't care about.
	Here's a list.
	In random order of things Republican primary voters do not care about.
	E. Jean Carroll.
	January 6th.
	Georgia election questions.
	The missing documents from the National Archives.
	Alvin Bragg's allegations about campaign finance and Stormy Daniels.
	That's just a small list of things that Republican primary voters do not give any crap about at all.
	Here's a list of things that Republican voters probably care about.
	If you're talking about Donald Trump, why did Donald Trump appoint Anthony Fauci and then listen to him throughout the pandemic while condemning both Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp for reopening their states?
	Why did Donald Trump do criminal justice reform at the behest of Kim Kardashian in the middle of the Black Lives Matter riots?
	These are questions that, like, if you want to ask a tough question of Trump, these would be the tough questions.
	On the election fraud argument, President Trump, if you believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent, what would you do to reverse that result other than saying things about it on Truth Social?
	Like, what's your actual plan?
	Because all of the Secretary of State candidates that you ran in the 2022 election lost, all of them.
	Many of the senators that you picked lost.
	So what is your plan to reverse that?
	If you think it was stolen, how do you stop from being stolen again?
	If you say, I'm up in the polls, well, so what?
	The polls aren't the election and you say the election was stolen last time.
	So how do you, like, these are questions that I think every Republican wants to know the answers to because those go to, should I vote for you or should I vote for the other Republican?
	So what did Caitlin Collins ask last night?
	She asked none of those questions.
	She asked instead about E. Jean Carroll, January 6th, Georgia election questions, National Archives, Alvin Bragg, right?
	She asked all the questions Democrats want to hit Trump over.
	Now, this is a dynamic that works perfectly for Trump.
	This is Trump's favorite dynamic.
	It's the best dynamic.
	It's the dynamic where he's got a Democratic moderator and a Republican audience.
	This is like the dream scenario for Trump.
	All he has to do is just knock Caitlyn Collins through the wall, leaving a Caitlyn Collins-sized hole in the wall, cartoon style.
	That's all he has to do.
	And that's precisely what he did last night.
	He just steamrolled her.
	He turned her into like the Judge Doom pancake.
	And to the cheers of Republican audiences and to the lament of many on the Democratic side of the aisle, because here's the thing.
	Democrats, they have two conflicting wishes.
	One, they want Trump to be nominated because they think he's eminently beatable.
	And two, they really hate Trump and they want to see him clocked.
	But the thing is, the way that you are going to clock Trump if you are a Democrat is not by asking him about all the things you already hate him about.
	Republicans already know that.
	Everybody already knows that.
	You're going to have to ask him something new.
	You're going to actually have to, if you're going to fact check him the way that Caitlin Collins is trying to, you actually have to be prepared for him to do what he does, which is say a thing and not really care about how true it is.
	You're actually going to have to play a video of him, right?
	If you're Caitlin Collins, this is just from the interviewer's perspective.
	If you're going to do a fact check, the way that you do that typically is you do what Jonathan Swan has done, right?
	So what Jonathan Swan, the reporter, has done with many people he's talked to is he will ask them a question.
	He knows they're going to lie.
	And then he says, OK, let's roll the tape.
	And then he rolls the tape and it shows that they're saying precisely the reverse five seconds ago.
	But Caitlin Collins didn't do any of that.
	So instead, she just looked flustered as Donald Trump ran right over her.
	We're going to get to the clips of this because it was a very successful night for Donald Trump in the primaries.
	How that impacts the general election is anybody's guess, because again, that goes back to, is Donald Trump a super electable candidate?
	Or is he just sort of the alternative to the dead man who's really bad at his job in the White House right now?
	We'll get to all this in a second, because again, the best quality of Trump is his aggressiveness, and that was on full display last night.
	I mean, that was an aggressive performance by President Trump.
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	Okay, so let's get to the actual main event.
	So Trump walks out, and it's very obvious from the beginning this is gonna be a good night for Trump.
	The reason is, the crowd is stacked for Trump.
	Trump loves crowds.
	It is the thing he is most responsive to.
	It's a problem for him in terms of general election audiences, because Trump, as a great performer, and he is, he's a terrific performer.
	Understand that Trump is a lifelong performer.
	He responds to people in the room.
	So anyone who's ever performed in front of a crowd has to have a good eye and ear for the audience they're responding to.
	This is why a good comic is very reliant on the response of the crowd.
	There's nothing worse for a comic than you get on stage.
	And Trump is basically a comic.
	You get on stage and the audience is just dead.
	If the audience is dead, it's very difficult to do a good show.
	This is a live audience.
	This audience is ready for Trump and Trump is ready for them.
	So he walks out and there's a standing O and he is ready to go, man.
	Please welcome the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, former president Donald Trump.
	Look how happy he is.
	It's like his night.
	He's getting a standing O before he even sits down in a Republican, in a Republican primary town hall event.
	Now, again, this is like the best thing for him because he's not going to be asked about anything that Republicans care about.
	He's going to be asked, as we'll see, about only issues Democrats care about, and then he is just going to hit Caitlyn Collins over and over and over and over.
	That is the entire strategy.
	Massive failure of imagination.
	Now, imagine this were another candidate, say it was Brian Kemp, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley.
	All the questions, presumably, would be about things that many Republicans actually do care about.
	If it were Ron DeSantis, then what you'd be getting are questions about COVID.
	You've been getting questions about him taking on Disney.
	You've been getting questions on policy.
	For Trump, it's all about Donald Trump personally.
	And Republicans, when Donald Trump is attacked personally, they take it personally because they understand that Democrats have no standards on this crap.
	That Democrats are perfectly willing to allow Democrats to get away with anything.
	Right?
	That the same Caitlyn Collins, who asks Donald Trump about E. Jean Carroll's allegation that he raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf, that that same exact Caitlyn Collins will never ask Joe Biden about Tara Reade.
	Never, right?
	Tara Reade alleged something very similar about Joe Biden, in what I think is a significantly more credible fashion.
	And yet, that apparently is of no consequence.
	So when people go after Trump on the personal sort of stuff, on the personal conduct sort of stuff, everybody on the right's like, that's all baked into the cake.
	What, you didn't know the guy?
	He's been in the public eye for literally his entire adult life.
	Are we supposed to be surprised by it?
	And this is what you choose to spend the entire 75 minutes on?
	Seriously?
	So Caitlin Collins leads off.
	by asking about the election.
	And Trump then claims that the election was rigged.
	And then she, instead of saying, I want, like, specifics, and then saying, okay, here's a tape of, like, if you're gonna go this way, right, if you're gonna go this way, you better have the receipts.
	And her just arguing with him, it turns into a he said, she said, whatever, they're all saying things, and then the attitude is what matters more than anything.
	You either come with the receipts or you don't come with the receipts.
	So here's Caitlyn Collins versus Trump on the quote-unquote rigged election.
	If you look at the FBI and Twitter, they call it Twitter files.
	Made a big difference.
	If you look at- Mr. President, back to what you just said there, though, it
	was not a rigged election.
	It was not a stolen election.
	You and your supporters lost more than 60 court cases on the election.
	It's been nearly two and a half years.
	Can you publicly acknowledge that you did lose the 2020 election?
	Let me just go on.
	If you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes.
	So with all of that, I think it's a shame that what happened.
	I think it's a very sad thing for our country.
	So what did she think he was gonna say there?
	He's been saying this stuff.
	I mean, shouldn't you be prepared?
	Like, just as the moderator, you should be prepared for that sort of thing, should you not?
	By the way, what he's saying at the very end there is not even true, okay?
	I know Katherine Engelbrecht, at Truth or Vote, we had her on the show when 2000 Mules came out, and she explained that that's not even what she was alleging.
	Okay, so what he's saying there is actually not true, but she doesn't know how to fact-check him because she actually hasn't studied the issue because she didn't take it seriously in the first place.
	She just blew it off.
	Okay, so Trump says that sort of stuff and also notice how she conflates in the question rigged and stolen.
	Those are not the same thing.
	I will say that the 2020 election was rigged in the sense that all the voting rules were changed before the election, right?
	I'm not a stolen election guy.
	I don't think that voter fraud decided the 2020 election.
	I think Trump lost, but that does not actually mean that the election wasn't rigged.
	When you bar stories from coming out in the month before the election through a series of bullcrap maneuvers, using the federal government and the Joe Biden campaign to issue statements about Hunter Biden's laptop, that they're Russian disinformation, and you launder that into public view using the mechanisms of government, that's super duper corrupt!
	That's really bad!
	When you talk about changing all the voting rules, when you have major social media companies shutting down entire news media accounts, when you have attempts to actively Fund ballot harvesting in major states.
	When you do all that, of course that changes the course of the election.
	Of course it's rigged in sort of an informal sense.
	But she just conflates the two.
	So instead of saying, we're not talking about that, are you saying that voter fraud decided the election?
	Right?
	She didn't get specific.
	She gives Trump the opening.
	And so this is just the beginning.
	Okay?
	This is just the beginning of Trump steamrolling her.
	We'll get to more in just one second.
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	Okay, so then, Caitlyn Collins starts asking Donald Trump about regrets surrounding January 6th.
	And again, If you're a Republican voter, you don't care.
	We've litigated this 100 times.
	You don't care.
	This is a Democrat question from a Democrat moderator for a Democrat audience, but in front of, in a room, a very friendly to Trump Republican audience.
	How do you think that's going to go over?
	Even the question means that the audience is begging for Trump to put Caitlyn Collins through a wall, and that's what he does right here.
	Do you have any regrets about your actions on January 6th?
	Well, you know, January 6 was again, we go back to it.
	But January 6 had to do with the fact that hundreds of thousands of people and you don't see the pictures very often.
	A lot of the people here probably were there January 6.
	It was the largest crowd I've ever spoken to.
	That was prior to the walk down to the Capitol building.
	I don't think and I've spoken to hundreds of thousands of people.
	I've never spoken to a crowd as large as this.
	And that was because they thought the election was rigged.
	And they were there proud.
	They were there with love in their heart.
	That was an unbelievable and it was a beautiful day.
	Okay, so Democrats are like, I can't believe he's saying this about January 6th.
	And Republicans are like, why are we still talking about January 6th?
	And I'm so glad that he's putting the wood to people who are still talking about January 6th.
	Those differential responses are coming from two different realities.
	CNN pledged they were going to be in one reality, and they're not.
	They're just asking the stuff that CNN viewers supposedly want to hear.
	But the problem is, for CNN viewers, they're like, yeah, but you ask him and then you have to call him on it.
	You have to stop him from doing it.
	So CNN is actually in trouble with its own viewers.
	Because CNN basically pledged two different things to two different audiences.
	To Republicans, they pledged, we are going to ask fair questions that you care about to Donald Trump.
	They didn't do that.
	They pledged to CNN audiences what CNN audiences expected, which is Caitlyn Collins will get Trump in the crosshairs and then go for the kill.
	And instead, Trump just walked all over her.
	So CNN audiences are pissed off too.
	But here's the end goal for CNN.
	For CNN, as long as Trump's the nominee, they are happy.
	Because guess what?
	Their ratings last night were great.
	Like the best ratings that they have had in probably three years.
	Okay, there was a point last night, again, when we're talking about Trump walking all over Caitlyn Collins.
	So she says, you waited three hours to say anything about people who are storming the Capitol.
	But Trump, because Trump is, again, very good at this, Trump then proceeds to take out of his pocket a full timeline of his activities, January 5th and January 6th, and then read it to her.
	This is excellent performance art.
	I mean, it is performance art by President Trump.
	He literally takes out of his pocket a physical piece of paper and he starts reading to her his timeline.
	It's smart.
	Here we go.
	They were breaking into the Capitol, smashing windows, injuring police officers.
	Why did it take you three hours to tell them to go home?
	I don't believe it did.
	Oh, let me pull it out.
	I have to pull it out.
	I am asking for everyone at the U.S.
	Capitol to remain peaceful.
	This is right after, as it was happening.
	But what happened is they took it down.
	I don't know why.
	I think they took it down because it was so good they didn't like it being up there.
	Mr. President, I looked at the same timeline that you did.
	No, I know, but you didn't report that.
	You know why?
	Because it was taken down.
	We did report it.
	Okay, so, it was 1.45, I mean the technical timeline is 1.45 p.m., is when people started surging past the Capitol Police.
	And at 2.13 p.m., that is when Mike Pence had to be evacuated from the floor.
	And then at 2.24 p.m. so this is like you know 45 minutes later Trump tweeted about Pence.
	Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country
	and our constitution. And then at like 2.26 he called Mike Lee and then Trump tweeted at 3.13
	asking for people to remain peaceful.
	So it was like an hour and a half when he said that he asked for everyone to remain peaceful.
	So it wasn't three hours, it was like an hour and a half.
	So Trump is right to fact-check her on that, right?
	He's correct to fact-check her on that, but that's still a significant period of time, obviously.
	But it doesn't matter, because again, Trump wins the exchange.
	Trump is out there and he fact-checks her, and he does it by taking out a piece of paper.
	And then he didn't just, he didn't stop there, right?
	Again, Trump's entire mode here is never back down, never apologize, run him over.
	And for Republican voters, that's like catnip, man.
	That is what you've been waiting for.
	After years of Mitt Romneyism and John McCainism, and let's compromise and we'll all be nice to each other.
	And meanwhile, the Democrats are just shivving you in the guts.
	And a person named Ashley Babbitt was killed.
	Yes.
	You know what?
	She was killed, and she shouldn't have been killed.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump is like, you want to try that?
	Really want to try that?
	I will strangle you here on the stage in front of everyone.
	So he was asked about about violence at the Capitol building.
	And he calls the cop who shot Ashley Babbitt a thug.
	And a person named Ashley Babbitt was killed.
	Yes.
	You know what?
	She was killed and she shouldn't have been killed.
	And that thug that killed her.
	There was no reason to shoot her at blank range, cold, blank range.
	They shot her.
	And she was a good person.
	She was a patriot.
	There was no reason.
	There was no reason.
	OK, so again, he's just going right at it.
	Never back down.
	That motto is what gets Republicans super, super pumped for the twenty twenty four.
	Now, is that going to pay off with independence?
	I don't see any poll data that suggests it will.
	I don't think it will.
	But, for Republican voters, again, it's the attitude that matters.
	It's the attitude that matters.
	And Trump's got that attitude, man, and he will never drop that attitude, and that's why Republican voters love the guy to death.
	In just one second, we will get to Trump's response to the E. Jean Carroll stuff.
	Again, CNN only asked questions that Democrats give a crap about.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Okay, so...
	After CNN finished asking Trump about election 2020 and January 6th, then they moved on to other issues of vital importance to Republican voters like E. Jean Carroll.
	Now, I understand Kaitlin Collins has to ask Trump about this.
	There was a verdict yesterday in a civil case in which Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse or sexual touching.
	And for defamation, but not for rape and all of this.
	I understand she has to ask him, but if you think this is like top of mind for Republican voters, you're out of your mind.
	Republican voters don't think of this as top of mind at all.
	In fact, most Republican voters see the E. Jean Carroll allegations in the same way that I do.
	By the way, I think most reasonable people see those allegations in the same way that I do, which is they came 30 years after the fact.
	Every verifiable detail had been obscured by E. Jean Carroll.
	The trial really was about you don't like Donald Trump and you don't like him, but grab him by the comment.
	That was the thing that the trial was really about.
	So, she doesn't just go after Trump on this, and Trump gets really aggressive.
	Again, the aggression is the point.
	The action is the juice.
	The aggression is the point.
	So here is Trump being asked about Eugene Carroll and saying, like, you think that's making me less popular?
	Wrong.
	Usually you leave office, you say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to back home.
	I'm back home to my family and everything.
	I'm going to be resigned.
	My poll numbers went up and they went up with the other fake charge, too, because what's happening is they're doing this for election interference.
	This woman, I don't know her.
	I never met her.
	I have no idea who she is.
	OK, and then he goes even further.
	He starts going through, like, serious details that were not allowed in court.
	It talks about the fact that E. Jean Carroll is a kooky lady.
	Because guess what?
	She's a super kooky lady.
	She was a sex advice columnist back in the 1990s.
	And then, as we played yesterday on the show, she literally went on CNN after the allegations about Trump and she said, I think most people find rape sexy.
	What in the actual... So here was Donald Trump going after her.
	And I'm sorry, but it's funny.
	Okay?
	Her allegation... It's not my fault that E. Jean Carroll is a weirdo.
	That is not my fault.
	It's not.
	And the fact that she decided to... I mean, like, I challenge you to watch this clip of Donald Trump and not laugh.
	I know everybody's tutting him.
	Oh my gosh, he's not taking her allegations seriously.
	First of all, if you were falsely accused of rape, you might also not take the allegations particularly seriously.
	Here's Donald Trump, and the audience is laughing.
	The audience isn't laughing because they think rape is okay.
	They're laughing because they think that her allegations are silly.
	I had a picture taken years ago with her and her husband, nice guy, John Johnson.
	He was a newscaster, very nice man.
	She called him an ape.
	Happens to be African-American.
	Called him an ape.
	The judge wouldn't allow us to put that in.
	Her dog, or her cat, was named Vagina.
	The judge wouldn't allow it to put that in.
	I got nothing man.
	What do you want?
	What do you want?
	So the media are like, you laughed?
	How would you laugh?
	What do you mean, how would I laugh?
	He's like, she named her cat Vagina.
	That's funny.
	What do you want?
	OK, and then again, and then and then he's being tutted over that.
	This is not a strategy to get Donald Trump.
	This is a strategy to prop up Donald Trump, if you are CNN.
	Oh, man.
	And then he's asked about the Access Hollywood tape.
	And again, he just goes right at Caitlyn Collins.
	You defended the comments that you made on that Access Hollywood tape about being able to grab women how you want.
	Do you stand by those comments?
	said if you're famous the audience already said but I said of your star you
	are and I said women let you I didn't say you grip I said women let you know
	you didn't use that word but if you look women let you now they said will you
	take that back I said look for a million years this is the way it's been
	I want to be honest, this is the way it's been.
	I can take it back if you'd like to, but if you're a famous person, if you're a star, and I'm not referring to myself, I'm saying people that are famous, people that are stars, people that are rich, people that are powerful, they tend to do pretty well in a lot of different ways, okay?
	Millenia!
	Ever since we emerged, the amoebas, they call them amoebas, they emerged from the primordial ooze.
	The famous amoebas have been able to grasp by the **** the non-famous amoebas.
	That's what they've been able to do.
	I can lie.
	I can lie if you want me to.
	I can lie.
	But I'm not gonna lie!
	I'm not gonna lie.
	I'm not gonna lie.
	What do you want?
	These are ridiculous questions and Trump is treating them with the ridiculousness they deserve.
	And also like this is the back to the I'm not going to speak BS.
	I'm going to tell you the truth, Donald Trump.
	And people are like, OK, all right, particularly Republican voters.
	Now, as we'll talk about in a second, I keep saying it, but it's true.
	Republican voters, I want you to think with your brains instead of thinking with your balls for a second.
	OK, like I understand the appeal.
	I get it.
	It's super funny and it's fun to watch Donald Trump knock people about.
	It's fun to watch the kayfabe.
	It's fun to watch Donald Trump playing roller derby with people.
	It's great.
	But I have to ask you a question.
	Do you think independents are watching this and going, oh, that guy, he should be president?
	That's really the question.
	Okay, but this is why I say CNN had a goal.
	Raise the ratings, make Caitlyn Collins a hero because she asked Trump difficult questions, and three, make sure that Trump is the nominee because it raises the ratings and makes Caitlyn Collins a hero.
	So they actually achieved it for all of the consternation that the left is feeling today.
	Chris Licht has to be pretty happy.
	He got the numbers, didn't he?
	And he's going to get more numbers if Donald Trump is the nominee.
	And Donald Trump will keep coming on CNN because this is a great moment for Donald Trump on CNN.
	Finally, about like 45 minutes or 50 minutes into this thing.
	Finally, Caitlyn Collins, like maybe I should ask you about, you know, things that actually
	matter.
	So she asks him, for example, about the debt ceiling standoff.
	And Trump gives like a fairly decent answer on this.
	What do you think about the United States current debt situation and how can we move
	forward?
	Such an important question.
	So we're at $33 trillion, a number that nobody ever thought possible.
	When we have a debt limit, and they use that very seriously.
	I mean, they came in, Schumer came in with Nancy Pelosi and they were using it.
	We'll violate it.
	We'll do whatever.
	They talked a whole lot different than they do right now.
	I say to the Republicans out there, congressmen, senators, if they don't give you massive cuts, you're going to have to do a default.
	And I don't believe they're going to do it before because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave.
	OK, so again, not a bad answer there.
	And when he talks about the fact that Democrats just keep spending and spending and spending, I think most Americans actually resonate to that.
	Then he was asked about guns and he again said the correct thing.
	He said it's a mental health problem that we're talking about here, not really a guns problem.
	Here was Trump on the Second Amendment.
	With gun violence and mass shootings in the news cycle recently, I'm worried that state governments and the federal government are going to act to repress gun rights.
	Under your administration, you instructed the Department of Justice and the ATF to ban bump stocks.
	If elected president again, how would you act not only to defend our Second Amendment rights, but to restore rights that have been taken from us, such as, by example, recently the ATF's ruling on the pistol stabilizing braces?
	As you know, the bump socks are actually a very unimportant thing.
	And NRA, I went with them and they said it doesn't mean anything.
	Or actually, all they do is teach you how to shoot very inaccurately.
	So we did that.
	There's been nobody that's protected the Second Amendment, as you know, like I have.
	I protected it through thick and thin.
	Not easy to do.
	But we have a very big mental health problem in this country.
	And again, it's not the gun that pulls the trigger.
	It's the person that pulls the trigger.
	And we have to protect our Second Amendment.
	Again, that's a very good answer.
	Okay, then Trump was asked about his position on a federal law regarding abortion and Trump sort of took a middle line.
	He sort of fucks the issue.
	But, you know, again, not a bad answer.
	I consider the other side to be radical because the other side under Roe v. Wade and other things, the other side, they're radical because they will remember the debate with Hillary Clinton.
	They said rip the baby out of the womb at the end of the ninth month.
	They will kill the baby In the ninth month.
	If you look at that crazy governor of Virginia from the former governor, where he said, no, the baby will be born and then we'll decide essentially whether or not to execute the baby.
	But Mr. President, can we talk about what you would do if you are re-elected?
	No, but these are the radical people.
	It's not the pro-life people that are radical.
	But if you are re-elected and you're back in the Oval Office and you get legislation to your desk, would you sign a federal abortion ban into law?
	What I'll do is negotiate so that people are happy.
	They could kill the baby in the ninth month or after the baby was born.
	Now they won't be able to do that.
	But I think this is a really important question for you to answer because this is something every Republican, including those who are running against you for the nomination, are being asked about is would you sign a federal abortion ban into law?
	And many of them are going to give you the same answer as I. I am, first of all, I am honored to have done what I did.
	And a lot of people said, they said in 150 years, he's now the most consequential president because he saved so many lives.
	And I'm honored to have done it.
	OK, and this is a very good answer on abortion.
	It's actually, I thought that just in policy terms, that was Trump's best answer of the night.
	And so the combination of Trump knocking people through walls and actually giving some solid answers on, for example, the Second Amendment and abortion, that was good.
	His answer, he was asked about Ukraine as well, and he played the game where he said, I'll end the war in Ukraine tomorrow.
	I'm not sure how he would do that.
	But again, that's what many people want to hear.
	The question, however, is going to be on these issues, right?
	If Trump ran on these issues, I've said this before, if Trump ran, On the platform.
	Things were better when I was president, and here's how I will handle the current slate of issues.
	Then he has an actual shot of beating Joe Biden in an election.
	If the campaign is on the first hour of the Caitlin Collins content, he wins the primary and he has a real problem in the general.
	Here was Donald Trump on Ukraine yesterday.
	The current administration has made it clear that we should continue to provide military equipment to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves.
	Do you support this decision and how would you deal with the increasing threat posed by Vladimir Putin?
	First of all, thank you very much.
	It's really nice.
	And it's an important question.
	So important because we're giving away so much equipment.
	We don't have ammunition for ourselves right now.
	We don't have ammunition for ourselves.
	We're giving away so much.
	But here's the thing.
	I have to say it to start off.
	No longer matters.
	If I were president, this would have never happened.
	And even the Democrats admit that Putin knew it would have never happened.
	And his pipeline would have never happened.
	A lot of things would have never happened.
	But this would never have happened.
	And all those dead people, both Russian and Ukrainian, they wouldn't be dead today.
	And then Caitlyn Collins turned back to all the issues Republicans don't care about.
	So there's like a brief interlude where Trump was asked about those questions.
	There were no serious follow ups.
	He was, you know, he was not asked to sort of dig down into what he meant by any of this stuff.
	All the serious questions, all the sort of adversarial stuff was reserved mainly for all the personal stuff, which, again, is the stuff that Republicans want to see Trump hit back on.
	And that all ended with Donald Trump basically doing what you knew Donald Trump was going to do at a certain point.
	He just turned to Caitlyn Collins and to the hoots and applause of the crowd, called her a nasty person.
	Which, again, this is not new.
	It's not as though Donald Trump has never done this before.
	He did this to Megyn Kelly.
	He's done this to other moderators where he doesn't like the questions.
	But here he did it last night, and this was sort of the moment of the night.
	To the hoots and laughs of the crowd.
	documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then had given you a
	subpoena to return.
	Are you ready?
	Are you ready?
	Can I talk?
	Yeah.
	What's your mind?
	I would like for you to answer the question.
	It's very simple.
	That's why I asked it.
	It's very simple that you are a nasty person.
	I'll tell you.
	To the hoots and laughter of the crowd again, it's like.
	This is why.
	OK, can Republicans like the guy because he says that sort of stuff specifically because
	he says that sort of stuff because they feel so they're constantly being targeted by people
	like the people at CNN.
	And so that's how this thing finishes up.
	I mean, this is, again, big win for, how big a win was this for Trump?
	It was such a big win that I kid you not, the CNN town hall was slated for a 90-minute broadcast.
	The network expected the actual event to go 75.
	It went 70.
	They cut it early.
	The mercy rule applied.
	They needed to get Trump off the air because he was just beating Kate and Collins up so bad.
	OK, we'll get to the fallout from all of this in just one second, because there's fallout for Democrats who are very upset with CNN and upset that Trump has had the spotlight.
	And then there's the fallout for Republicans, because again, anything that elevates Trump means it's more likely that he will be the nominee.
	So what does that actually look like in practice?
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Okay, now for the blowback.
	There was big reaction to the town hall on CNN last night with Donald Trump and Caitlin
	Collins.
	The Democratic camp broke into sort of two separate camps.
	In camp one are sort of the commentators, the commentators who are very upset that Donald
	Trump was given this moment.
	Now, are they really upset or are they kind of happy that Donald Trump is being elevated
	to the center of the discourse?
	I think the answer is there's some internal conflict over there.
	Joe Scarborough, who's had himself a very rich history with Donald Trump, including
	you'll remember during 2016, hosting Donald Trump regularly on MSNBC, including to watch,
	you know, various debates and involve himself in various events.
	And then he turned against him because Donald Trump was actually Hitler, which was weird because he was in the room with him five seconds ago.
	Well, now Joe Scarborough is comparing that town hall to January 6th, which I've been informed by reliable sources, like Joe Scarborough, was the worst thing ever to happen in the United States.
	It was just it was a disgraceful performance.
	Yes.
	I'm constantly telling people not to catastrophize over Trump that he's actually going to lose because he keeps drilling down deeper and deeper into his base.
	But it is, I can't believe I'm going to use catastrophizing language here.
	But it was just, it was disgraceful on every level.
	What I saw last night at least was as chilling as anything I've seen on television since January the 6th.
	Just chilling.
	Just chilling.
	And then there's a list of all the terrible, evil, very bad things that Donald Trump said that he puts up there, including the fact that he said that Caitlyn Collins is a nasty person.
	Just chilling.
	Just absolutely chilling.
	Meanwhile, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the irrepressibly stupid congresswoman from New York City, she tweeted out, CNN should be ashamed of themselves.
	They've lost total control of this town hall to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of January 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim.
	The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.
	This falls squarely on CNN.
	Everyone here saw exactly what was going to happen.
	Instead, they put a sexual abuse victim in harm's way for views.
	This was a choice to platform lies about the election and January 6th with no plan but to have their moderator interrupted without consequence.
	Now again, of course that was going to happen because this program was directed at Democrats.
	That was the lie.
	If they directed at Republicans, they wouldn't have asked him and spent time on any of this stuff.
	They would have asked about, you know, things that Republicans care about.
	They didn't.
	Instead, they asked him about stuff that AOC cares about, and then she's unhappy that Donald Trump didn't, like, crumble into a quivering ball of sadness in the corner, crying to himself and rocking.
	Or maybe taking a picture of himself outside some sort of fence, wearing a white outfit and weeping for the cameras.
	She's disappointed that Donald Trump was still Donald Trump, which is really funny.
	Meanwhile, you had the Daily Beast's Justin Baragona.
	He tweeted, And that's true.
	There's a lot of blowback for CNN in all of this.
	personality to me just now on the CNN town hall.
	It's so bad.
	I was cautiously optimistic despite the criticism.
	It's awful.
	It's a Trump infomercial.
	We're gonna get crushed.
	And that's true.
	There's a lot of blowback for CNN in all of this.
	Politico has an entire piece titled, How Trump Dominated CNN.
	They say the live studio audience ate it up.
	They cheered when he denied moderator Caitlin Collins' factual assertion he took three hours to tell the January 6th rioters to go home.
	They applauded when he called E. Jean Carroll a whack job.
	They laughed when he called Collins nasty and questioned whether she understood what she was talking about.
	The night underscored how CNN has changed under the management of Chris Licht.
	Before the town hall began, CNN faced heavy criticism, but it's pretty clear that everybody was very angry.
	Does CNN count that as an in-kind campaign donation?
	asked Dan Rather.
	It was a complete disaster, one CNN employee told Playbook.
	It made it seem like CNN was endorsing that behavior, the employee said, incredibly disappointing.
	So on the one hand, you have the media and they're like, they're beside themselves.
	Oh my God, we platformed again.
	How could we do that?
	It's so terrible.
	How could we do that?
	Oh, it's just, oh my, oh no.
	It's just, it's just awful.
	On the other hand, there are the Democratic politicos.
	And let's be clear, the Democratic politicals, like the people who are interested in the 2024 election, not the posturing and preening of AOC, for example, the people who are actually up running against Donald Trump are very, very happy.
	Joe Biden tweeted out immediately after this happened, quote, It's simple, folks.
	Do you want four more years of that?
	If you don't, pitch into our campaign.
	His entire campaign relies on you thinking about Donald Trump 24-7, and in particular, thinking about the stuff that Caitlyn Collins was asking Trump about and that he seemed very warm to talk about.
	If there's a confluence of interest between Donald Trump and CNN on the stuff that should be talked about in a Republican primary, namely, E. Gene Carroll, missing documents, Trump Organization foibles, January 6th, election rigging.
	If Trump wants to talk about that and CNN wants to talk about it, Trump wants to talk about it because he loves that stuff and he loves talking about himself and all the victimization routine that he does.
	He loves that stuff.
	It's his favorite thing to talk about.
	I mean, check Truth Social.
	It's what he does 80 to 90% of the time.
	And if CNN loves talking about it because it pleases the base and also elevates Trump, then the chances are very strong that Trump ends up the nominee.
	And then meanwhile, when it comes to the actual election, it doesn't play all that great because this is what Democrats are begging for.
	They're openly doing it.
	Democrats want, I mean, you can, you can vote for him.
	If you vote for him in primary, he still has a shot at winning the general for sure.
	Because again, Joe Biden is a terrible president with a very low approval rating.
	But does Donald Trump run a greater risk of losing to Joe Biden than other candidates?
	Well, of course he does.
	He lost to him last time by 7 million votes in the popular vote.
	And aside from, like, some national polls showing him competitive with Biden in the early going, on a state-by-state level, the polls do not show Donald Trump winning a majority in places like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
	Those are the actual stats that matter, by the way.
	And so, CNN, counter to popular opinion, everybody got what they wanted last night.
	Instead of seeing everybody as sort of dissatisfied, we should see everybody as pretty satisfied.
	CNN's Chris Lick got the ratings, and he elevated Trump.
	Trump got elevated, and he got to shellacked Kaitlyn Collins.
	Kaitlyn Collins got to stand up to Trump, and appear to be a sort of heroine for doing so.
	Everybody got what they wanted.
	Except for, you know, the Republican primary voter, who got the enjoyment of watching the slap fight on CNN.
	I'm watching the WWE slap fight.
	But no real answers on sort of the clarifying questions that might determine who you would vote for in a primary.
	Again, if you look at the polling data right now, probably 25 to 30 percent of the Republican base is set on Trump.
	Fine.
	But there's another 70 percent who might have wanted to hear some answers to those questions.
	None of those questions were even asked last night.
	And if you look at the data, there's a guy named Chris Wilson, who's the head of data for a group called Never Back Down.
	And he quotes, this is a DeSantis group, but he quotes a study from WPA Intel, analyzing research, and what they found is that Trump probably cost Republicans in 2022 15 seats, 11 in the House and 4 in the Senate.
	And down ballot, he elevated Democrats.
	So, you know, again, does that mean that Trump necessarily will lose?
	No.
	Is Trump wildly entertaining?
	Absolutely.
	There's no way to watch Trump last night on CNN and look away.
	You can't look away.
	Democrat, Republican, Independent, you can't look away.
	But that's the entire problem.
	If you are focused on Donald Trump, you know who you are not focused on.
	The old man in the White House who is directly running this country into the ground like a 747 at full speed, cutting the engines.
	I mean, it's an amazing thing.
	We have a border crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, and foreign policy crises, plural.
	And meanwhile, we're talking about Donald Trump and Eugene Carroll.
	Who does that benefit?
	It benefits Trump.
	For the moment.
	Does it benefit Republicans in the long run?
	I have some serious doubts.
	So here's the thing.
	If we're all talking about Trump on CNN last night, you know what we're not talking about, and what Joe Biden would prefer that we not be talking about, is the allegations of corruption that have now been brought to the fore by the House Oversight Committee Republicans.
	So according to News Nation now, the House Oversight Committee claims it uncovered evidence indicative of the Biden family's influence peddling and financial deception on Wednesday, warranting further investigation and legislative solutions.
	Representative James Comer is the committee chairman.
	Here he was laying out some of the allegations.
	Every one of those subpoenas returned valuable information that had been unreported and that contributed to this committee's understanding of how the Bidens conducted their businesses.
	The committee is concerned by the complicated, suspicious network of over 20 companies.
	We have identified the Bidens and their associates used to enrich themselves.
	Most of these companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden's vice presidency.
	The bank records show the Biden family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies.
	And that's a lot of money.
	The committee is accusing Joe Biden of lacking transparency regarding the family business, claiming the bank records reveal the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign sources.
	Now the media are immediately jumping on this saying, well, you haven't shown that Biden received any of the money.
	Right.
	That's why they're doing further investigation.
	Also, you might, you know, point out at this point that it's weird that the entire Biden family, like everyone, was picking up foreign cash while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States.
	Comer wrote a memo saying the transactions in Romania and China show related but separate issues identified by the committee that raise serious questions about financial disclosures and risks to national security.
	So again, they were picking up like giant bags of cash pretty much everywhere.
	We got Romania, we got China, we've got Ukraine.
	Like, name a country and there's a good shot that a Biden family member was picking up cash from there while Joe Biden was VP.
	Comer alleged that nine Biden family members had received foreign-sourced payments.
	These include Joe Biden's brother and Hunter's uncle, James Biden, Hunter Biden, James Biden's wife, Sarah, Beau Biden's widow, and Hunter Biden's ex-girlfriend, Hallie Biden, Hunter Biden's ex-wife, Kathleen Buell, Hunter Biden's current wife, Melissa Cohen, and three children of Joe Biden and or of James Biden, all recipients of such payments.
	Now, you know what might be helpful is if we actually had access to all the information.
	Unfortunately, they're not getting access to all that information.
	Because, as it turns out, the FBI is actually refusing to give Congress the information that it currently seeks.
	Now, imagine for a second that the Democratic Congress had sought documents on the relationships between Donald Trump's kids and foreign sources.
	And the FBI were like, nah, don't think so.
	The media would be all over it, right?
	And you'd be like, wow, that's kind of weird that the FBI, which is in the executive branch run by Donald Trump, is not giving over the information that might be damaging to his kids.
	The FBI is in the executive branch.
	Still, Joe Biden is president.
	And now, according to the New York Post, the FBI has refused to give Congress an informant file alleging that President Biden took bribes while he was VP.
	House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comey issued a legally binding subpoena last week, requiring the FBI to turn over the file by noon on Wednesday.
	The Bureau instead replied with a six-page letter raising various objections.
	FBI Acting Assistant Director for Congressional Affairs Christopher Dunham said, information from confidential human sources is unverified, and by definition, incomplete.
	Oh, so now we're gonna worry about unverified information being released into the public.
	That's weird, because I'm old enough to remember when the head of the FBI, James Comey, laundered into the public view of the Steele dossier.
	I'm old enough to remember that.
	And the SEAL dossier was nothing but unverified crap.
	And yet it somehow made its way into the halls of government and then into the press.
	Weird how this works.
	So if it's unverified information about the Trumps, it hits the press.
	If it's unverified information about the Bidens, we gotta keep that secret, man.
	That's a problem.
	Denham said, as is clear from the name itself, confidentiality is definitional to the FBI's confidential human source program.
	Confidential human sources often provide information to the FBI at great risk to themselves and their loved ones.
	Comer then slammed the FBI's stonewalling.
	He said it's clear from the FBI's response that the unclassified report the oversight committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the committee.
	Pretty wild stuff.
	So there's a document somewhere in the halls of the FBI alleging open bribery of Vice President Biden and the FBI won't turn it over to Congress.
	Because we're supposed to trust them.
	Well, let's just say that our trust in the FBI is at low ebb.
	Now, this should be one of the big stories of the day, should it not?
	Or how about the fact that the Biden administration, when it was the campaign, the Biden campaign worked hand in glove With members of the former Intel community in order to lie about Hunter Biden's laptop and claim it was Russian disinformation.
	And now we find out that according to the Washington Examiner, at least 11 ex-intelligence officials who signed that letter have scored numerous visits to Joe Biden's White House.
	Between October 2021 and January 2023, 11 letter signers frequented the White House a total of 24 times.
	24!
	four times 24 so wouldn't that be a but we're not talking about that
	What are we talking about?
	We're talking about Trump and Eugene Carroll and how he beat somebody up at a town hall.
	As long as the focus is on Donald Trump, Joe Biden is strengthened.
	It is this simple.
	When it comes to a binary election, wherever the focus is, is where people are focused.
	And the other person is just skating by.
	That's exactly what Joe Biden did in 2020.
	Now, in 2020, he was able to do that because of COVID.
	He was able to sit in the basement and do nothing.
	Maybe he won't be able to do that in 2024.
	Or maybe he will.
	Because maybe, A man who loves attention so much that every camera has to be on him will allow the attention to be drawn to him and away from the guy who's really bad at this because every day Joe Biden proves he's unfit for this job.
	Yesterday, Joe Biden got lost on stage again.
	Set that work days without accident sign back to zero.
	Here's Joe Biden getting lost.
	Where is he going?
	No one knows.
	Again, where?
	I don't know.
	It's over here?
	Where?
	Where'd you make it?
	Oh boy!
	Okay, he got lost twice.
	That was one time yesterday.
	And then he got lost again.
	I'm not being solicitous.
	What we should be doing, and I'm proposing when I try to finish this job, and proposing that we, for example, if we start instead of Head Start, which they want to cut 21,000 Head Start spots in this state alone, We should be sending, all the studies show that if we sent, no matter what the background of a child, if we sent that child to a school at age 3, learning reading, writing, arithmetic, to age 3 and 4 and 5, we end up increasing by 56% the chance they'll graduate from high school and go on beyond high school.
	He's rambling nonsensically.
	This is our President of the United States.
	Meanwhile, inflation is now embedded in the American economy.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the Labor Department reported Wednesday that consumer prices rose 4.9% in the year through April.
	That is the lowest in two years.
	It's down from 9%.
	It is still two and a half times what the Federal Reserve is seeking.
	Inflation is embedded.
	Core inflation, excluding food and energy, Is 5.5% in April.
	That's down only slightly from 5.6% in March.
	On a monthly basis, core prices rose 0.4%, that's equivalent to 5% at an annual rate that's in line with the past four months.
	Originally, they say the inflation was about the pandemic and supply chain problems with Ukraine, but that's not the fact at this point.
	Now it's just embedded in the American economy.
	And the more it's embedded in the American economy, the more your savings are worth less.
	Meanwhile, we don't just have a breeding, a burgeoning economic crisis thanks to the catch-22 in which the Federal Reserve finds itself.
	Either they allow inflation to become permanently embedded in the American economy, or they raise those interest rates.
	By raising the interest rates, they undercut regional banks.
	By undercutting regional banks, they necessitate more inflation.
	We also have a crisis on the border.
	Right now, over 10,000 people a day are arriving on America's southern border.
	And Joe Biden's answer is, well, you know, the border is, you know, it's a chaotic place.
	And then, you know, there's also an M.O.
	Here we go.
	Joe Biden.
	Oh, it's been broadcast for a number of years.
	So, yeah, I noticed you've also been president for a number of years and it got way worse while you were president.
	And then the person backing up, Joe Biden is even worse at this than Joe Biden.
	Again, if the focus is on the Democrats, they lose.
	If the focus is on Donald Trump, Donald Trump probably loses.
	This is the simple binary of any election.
	Why isn't the focus on Kamala Harris, who's the likely person to finish out Joe Biden's second term?
	He will be 86 if he actually finished out his second term, and that dude is in a state of severe cognitive decline.
	Here's the thing, Kamala Harris isn't in a state of cognitive decline, this is just her normal.
	And it's pretty much as bad as Joe Biden in a state of mental decline.
	Here is Kamala Harris trying to explain equity yesterday.
	We also understand there's a difference between equality and equity.
	Equity is everyone deserves to have, right?
	And be treated equal.
	But equity understands that not everybody starts out on the same base.
	So if you're giving everybody an equal amount, but they're starting out on different bases, Are they really gonna have the opportunity to compete and achieve?
	I'm gonna make some metaphors.
	I'm gonna put them in a Venn diagram, the metaphor.
	And then we're gonna feel better about buses.
	That's the backup.
	That's the backup plan.
	This lady laughing at her own terrible jokes yesterday.
	Ah, she's so awkward.
	She makes Michael Scott look suave.
	It's amazing.
	Everything is in context.
	My mother used to give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, I don't know what's wrong with you young people.
	You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?
	You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
	She's the worst animatronic robot of all time.
	Honest to God.
	If she actually became president and Disney had to put her in Disneyland in the Hall of Presidents, the animatronic robot in the Hall of Presidents would be significantly more lifelike than Kamala Harris.
	Kamala Harris is one of the few human beings I've ever seen who actively herself falls in the Uncanny Valley.
	It's an amazing thing.
	And yet, somehow, that's the... Again, if you focus on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they lose.
	I'm gonna say it over and over again to all of my Republican colleagues.
	Think about where you wish the focus of the election to be.
	That would be the question.
	Okay, meanwhile, in other news, George Santos has now pled not guilty.
	I feel like he might be lying.
	The reason I feel like that is because I don't actually know his real name.
	And also, I don't know who he is or anything about him.
	I mean, again, he's only marginally worse than other Congress people in this score.
	Best Babylon Bee headline yesterday said, George Santos arrested 534 Congress people still at large.
	I agree.
	Here was George Santos yesterday saying that he's not going to resign.
	Why would he resign?
	That would require shame.
	Shame is a characteristic in our politicians that no longer exists.
	Shame is actually a problem for you.
	If you're a politician and you're ashamed or capable of shame, this makes you vulnerable.
	So George Santos is, he's sort of like the apex predator of shamelessness.
	$750,000.
	They said that you reported that wrongly.
	Do you have any comment to that?
	Like I said, I will be delivering all the finances of my company.
	I'm delivering all my finances to them to dispel their accusation against me.
	And again, you will not resign?
	I will not resign.
	Yeah, he's not going anywhere.
	And by the way, why should he?
	I mean, seriously, the qualifications for being in Congress right now do not include being sentient.
	They wheeled, I'm not kidding, they literally, this is not even a joke, they wheeled Dianne Feinstein back into Washington D.C.
	yesterday.
	She's not going back to the Senate.
	They're pretending that this is about her having shingles.
	It's not about her having shingles.
	She is not capable.
	Everyone, including Democrats, recognizes she's not capable, but they refuse to actually oust her from the Senate.
	She's 89 years old.
	She does not have a functioning brain at this point.
	And she's fine.
	They've got John Fetterman in there.
	And John Fetterman went absent from the Senate for like two months because of depression, because they forced a man who had a debilitating stroke to run for the Senate.
	That makes George Santos like the third least qualified person to be in Congress at this point.
	Here is Dianne Feinstein yesterday.
	I mean, look at this tape.
	I feel bad for her, honestly.
	It's terrible.
	Well, just moments ago, Senator Dianne Feinstein arrived back on Capitol Hill for the first time since February.
	Looking healthy here.
	As you can see, out of car, into a wheelchair.
	The 89-year-old Democrat has been recovering from shingles.
	In a statement released a short time ago, she said she is still experiencing side effects from the virus, and her doctors have advised her to work Things are going amazing.
	Things are going absolutely amazing.
	committee has held up the confirmation of multiple Biden nominated federal judges.
	That prompted calls within her own party for her to resign.
	But of course, now she's back up on the hill.
	Things are going amazing. Things are going absolutely amazing. Okay. Meanwhile, on the
	international scene, one of the greatest moral tests in America and abroad is how you feel
	when terrorist groups fire rockets at random Jews in Israel.
	If you are a bad person, then you think that there is a level of moral equivalence between people who deliberately fire rockets civilians and people who try to kill terrorists.
	So here's some video.
	Yesterday, there have been 200 rockets that fell yesterday in the middle of Israel from the Gaza Strip, which is run entirely by a terrorist group, Hamas.
	Israelis are running from cover in the state.
	You can see the sirens go off and literally you're just on the side of the road.
	You pull over and you run for cover.
	There are no bomb shelters available.
	So you simply sort of hope that Iron Dome, which is this miraculous technology that is capable of shooting down rockets above major Israeli cities.
	You hope that works.
	Here's what that actually looks like and sounds like.
	And that's life in Israel right now, where every so often, every few months, they just
	have to worry about rockets falling in their major civilian sensors.
	In the middle of that, the Democratic Party, at least some members of it, like Rashida Tlaib, who's a radical anti-semi-terrorist supporter, she decided it was a wonderful time to hold Nakba Day.
	Nakba Day is, according to radical Palestinian activists, the day of Israel's establishment.
	So they say that Israel is established On this day, therefore it is a disaster, it is a catastrophe.
	Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic.
	So Nakba Day literally means catastrophe day.
	And it means the establishment of the state of Israel is a catastrophe that can only be rectified by the destruction of the state of Israel.
	So she is commemorating that while terrorists fire rockets at the state of Israel because, you know, solidarity and all.
	Originally, she was supposed to hold this in the house.
	And then the House Democrats are like, no, we don't really want to be associated with this.
	So she went to her best friend, Bernie Sanders, and Bernie gave her the space to hold Macba Day.
	It was really exciting.
	She vowed to defy Speaker McCarthy and hold Macba Day at the Capitol as the rockets fall on civilians in Israel.
	I mean, hitting like empty school buildings and such.
	Let me just point out here, you expect this from Rashida Tlaib, who's a radical anti-Semite.
	Bernie Sanders is about as Jewish as a ham sandwich.
	Bernie Sanders is a disgrace.
	When people say that Bernie Sanders is Jewish, he's Jewish only in the technical sense that his mother was Jewish.
	He has no connection to Judaism, he has no connection to Israel, he has no connection to Jewish values, he has no connection to anything remotely Jewish.
	And using Bernie Sanders like a frontman for your radical anti-Semitic pro-terror activity, which is what Rashida Tlaib is doing here, demonstrates what a moral What a moral disgrace Bernie Sanders is.
	He truly is a full-on moral disgrace.
	According to the Jerusalem Post, House Speaker McCarthy had blocked her from holding Nakba Day because it turns out that what you typically don't want to do if you're in the American Congress is call the establishment of your allies a disgrace.
	That same day, Palestinians fired 500 rockets at Israeli civilians, but Bernie Sanders let her hold the event in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing room.
	Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not have the jurisdiction to stop the chairman from hosting meetings in their committee rooms.
	And there, she argues that the Nakba never ended, meaning the continuation of the existence of the State of Israel is continuing to be a catastrophe.
	The only solution for that, presumably, would be the disestablishment of the State of Israel, the destruction of the State of Israel, and the death of millions of Jews, because that's what would attend upon that.
	Representative Cori Bush, adjunct member of the Squad, she attended the event as well.
	These are just delightful, delightful people.
	And a reminder that for all of the talk about, you know, the supposed anti-Semitism of Republicans, Rashida Tlaib takes the cake and so do her allies like AOC and Bernie Sanders and the like.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, Tom Hanks, old school Hollywood is beginning to sort of sound its voice.
	You have Richard Dreyfuss, who the other day said he doesn't like any of this crap about how you have to have diversity qualifications in order to be nominated for an Oscar.
	And you've had J.K.
	Rowling, who sounded off and said that men are not women and women are not men.
	And now you have Tom Hanks, who's vowing to boycott any book that is rewritten to avoid offending modern sensitivities.
	He did a pre-recorded interview on BBC Radio on Tuesday.
	And he was asked for his thoughts on editing Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie.
	And he said, Well, I mean, good for Tom Hanks.
	we're all grown-ups. We understand the time and place and when those things were written.
	It's not very hard at all to say that doesn't quite fly right now, does it? Let's have faith
	in our own sensibilities here instead of having someone decide what we may or may not be offended
	by. Let me decide what I'm offended by and not offended by.
	I'd be against reading any book from any era that says abridged due to modern sensitivities.
	Well, I mean, good for Tom Hanks. The fact that this is now considered like a
	controversial proposition is pretty amazing.
	This should be pretty simple.
	If you're an old-school liberal, on this show, I make a very big distinction between liberals and the left.
	I do not think they are the same.
	I think there are some liberals who are of the left, and there are many members of the left who would consider themselves liberals, but they are not the same group.
	They are overlapping, but not identical.
	If you're an old school liberal, you disagree with me on taxes, you disagree with me on abortion, you disagree with me on a wide variety of issues.
	But, you believe in free speech, and you believe that people should be able to say what they say, and you believe that old authors shouldn't be bolderized in order to make people feel better about the now.
	If you're on the left, you believe that basically anything you don't like is morally evil, and therefore ought to be banned from the public sphere.
	That is the difference between liberals and the left.
	So, Tom Hanks, like an old school liberal, it's good to see some sanity left in Hollywood from people like Tom Hanks.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, this may be the most indicative headline in terms of American society I've ever seen.
	Okay, here's the headline.
	This is from the Associated Press, quote, Trans minors protected from parents under Washington law.
	Let me read that again.
	Trans minors protected from parents under Washington law.
	So, here's what's happened.
	The state of Washington has now passed a law That will prevent parents of kids who claim that they need gender affirming care, meaning to chop off their genitalia or carve fake genitalia or get hormone treatment.
	The state of Washington will now prevent parents from having input on any of that.
	So the state is more important than the parents.
	Because the predominant assumption of that headline is that parents are the threat to children, not the state.
	Not the social media infrastructure, which dictates a social contagion, saying that boys are girls and girls are boys.
	No, the real threat is parents.
	Again, trans minors protected from parents under Washington law.
	They have to be protected from their own parents.
	Their parents are the predators.
	Not the state that is removing a minor child from the care of their parents because the parent says to a little boy that he's a little boy, not a little girl.
	The state is the protector.
	The parents are the people who have to be shunted aside.
	Very, very important.
	According to the Associated Press, The new law is part of a wave of legislation this year in Democratic-led states intended to give refuge amid a conservative movement in which lawmakers in other states have attacked trans rights and limited or banned gender-affirming care for minors.
	I mean, so many euphemisms there that you lose count.
	Licensed shelters and host homes in Washington had generally been required to notify parents within 72 hours when a minor came into their care.
	Which makes sense, right?
	Your kid goes missing.
	You don't know where your kid is.
	They show up in Washington State in a homeless shelter.
	The homeless shelter is supposed to call you within three days.
	But under the new law, facilities can instead contact the State Department of Children, Youth, and Families, which could then attempt to reunify the family if feasible.
	So the state decides whether you're reunified with your missing child.
	Youths will be allowed to stay at host homes, private volunteer homes that temporarily house young people without parental permission.
	That's not a recipe for predators at all.
	You have a group of people like, yes, I'll take your child.
	I'm happy to take your child from you.
	Your child wants a gender transition?
	They're welcome here.
	I will be their new mommy, says the male.
	Inslee said, quote, With this bill, Washington leads the way by taking a more compassionate, developmentally appropriate, reasoned approach to support these youth as they access gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care services.
	So apparently it's also going to be about abortion.
	So you have a kid, your kid runs away, your kid wants an abortion, they run to Washington State, go to a homeless shelter.
	You don't get the call.
	The state of Washington gets the call and determines whether you're an unfit parent.
	This is like Orwellian stuff.
	Separating kids from parents on the basis that Jay Inslee and people, Youth Services of Washington know best for your child about whether they might carve a false flesh penis from their arm.
	It's just vile.
	Vile, disgusting.
	This should be, by the way, a pretty obvious violation of constitutional rights.
	If you're a parent, you have rights over your child.
	The state of Washington does not have rights over your child to prevent you from seeing your child because you don't believe that your child is a member of the opposite sex.
	This is insane.
	Legislation, says the AP, is intended to keep estranged young people housed, according to experts and lawmakers sponsoring the bill.
	The bill does not address custody, and would not result in the state taking children away from their homes and parents.
	That's exactly what the bill does!
	It literally says that parents don't even have to be notified if there's a disagreement between the child and the parents.
	The Washington legislation requires the State Department of Children, Youth, and Families to make a good-faith attempt to notify parents after they are contacted by shelters or host homes and offer services designed to resolve the conflict and accomplish a reunification of the family.
	Family reunification efforts would be pursued when possible.
	But when possible is the entire thing.
	Because they'll just say it's not possible to reunify the family.
	You won't accept it.
	Your son has a daughter.
	This means that it's not possible to reunify you guys.
	Vile, disgusting, but this is where we have come.
	This is the wages of social leftism.
	And for children, they may very well be, at the very least, mutilation and maybe death.
	Alrighty, guys.
	The rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll get into a case made by New York Times columnist that Cleopatra was black, even though she clearly was not black.
	Plus, we'll get into the mailbag.
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