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July 19, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:24
BREAKING: Trump Targeted By DOJ Over January 6
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So apparently Donald Trump's team knew about this since Sunday, but they waited until Tuesday to break the news that they'd received a so-called target letter from Special Investigator Jack Smith.
Jack Smith, of course, is the special prosecutor who has brought charges against Trump in the classified documents case down in Florida.
There's a possibility he may also do so up in New Jersey.
And now apparently he is preparing charges against Donald Trump.
Another arrest, more indictments.
Along the lines of what Donald Trump did on January 6th.
Now it is unclear exactly what those charges are going to look like.
According to CNBC, former President Trump on Tuesday said he'd been told he was a target in that January 6th criminal investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump suggested he may soon face indictment for the January 6th probe, which is focused on Trump's efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.
Trump wrote that he was given what he called the horrifying news on Sunday evening by his lawyers.
This does raise the question as to why Donald Trump released that on, you know, Tuesday.
I would suspect that it has something to do with the fact that Ron DeSantis was about to do a rather ballyhooed interview with Jake Tapper that night.
So a great way to take attention away from your chief rival is to drop a massive bombshell, another one, into the middle of the campaign.
It is, I will say, an incredible dynamic whereby every time Donald Trump gets indicted, his pulls inside the Republican Party go up.
And then his polls kind of generally go down.
It's an unbelievable dynamic because, and I understand it, Republicans look at Trump and they see a man who's being targeted over and over and over by Joe Biden's Justice Department.
And they say, well, if they're that out to get Trump, then probably I need to defend Trump.
The best way to defend Trump is to vote for him because maybe he'll become president and then he can protect himself from these legal charges.
I get the dynamic.
I'm just saying that if your chief goal is to win the presidency, maybe nominating the guy who's under multiple indictments is not like the best general election strategy.
We'll get to that in a moment, however.
A hearing in the classified documents criminal case is already set for Tuesday in Florida federal court.
Trump's lawyers wanted to push that beyond the 2024 election.
Smith's prosecutors opposed that bid.
It seems like the judge in that case is skeptical of the idea of the debt.
That particular case, the classified documents case, gets pushed beyond the 2024 election.
In all likelihood, it probably goes to trial sometime at the beginning of 2023.
So what exactly is in these latest indictment charges?
Well, again, we don't know because they've not been released as of yet.
However, according to the New York Times, President Trump and his allies are going to be hit with a variety of charges.
On Tuesday, Trump disclosed that he'd been hit with the so-called target letter.
But apparently there are three statutes that may be applied here.
The statutes concern a couple of different charges.
Apparently one is wire or mail fraud relating to Trump's fundraising efforts in the name of overturning the election results.
So it could end with a fraud charge.
The fraud charge presumably would have to do with the idea that he knew that he wasn't actually still going to be president of the United States, but he started raising a bunch of money which he then put in his own pocket and he didn't actually use for his legal cases, for example.
So that would be the mail fraud or the wire charge or apparently obstruction of justice charges that are also being considered.
Presumably that would have to do with President Trump going to particular witnesses in the January 6th case and then pressuring them to testify in a certain way.
That would sort of be the other aspect of this.
But again, it's hard to sort of say how credible the charges are or how credible the charges are not, given the fact that we don't actually know what the charges are as of yet.
One thing that is absolutely clear is that the number of different cases coming down the pike against Trump, I mean, there's obviously something political here.
It is the same DOJ run by the same Merrick Garland that appears to have essentially buried the Hunter Biden case that is now dropping a ton of bricks on Donald Trump via the special counsel.
Again, there was no special prosecutor who was actually appointed for Hunter Biden.
That was kept well within the purview of the DOJ.
In fact, that's one of the big controversies with regard to Hunter Biden is whether the Attorney who ended up bringing charges against Hunter Biden in Delaware, David Weiss, whether he had actually asked for special counsel status and been denied it by the DOJ.
According to the IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, that's exactly what happened, that they'd been barred from doing a full investigation by the DOJ.
So the question there is whether the DOJ is blocking charges against Joe Biden allies and pursuing charges against Donald Trump.
A bunch of theories politically as to whether the Democrats are trying to promote Trump in the primaries by indicting him over and over and over again.
I don't think it's probably as complex as all of that.
I think that probably you sick special prosecutors on people and the idea they don't come up with charges is really, really rare.
That is why when it came to the special The special investigation regarding Trump-Russia collusion?
They came up with nothing.
That means they came up with less than nothing.
Because typically the way that it works is the minute you appoint a special counsel, a special investigator, a special prosecutor, any of these things, that person is just going to dig and dig and dig until they hit even some minor level of paydirt.
And so it is not particularly shocked that once you appoint a special counsel in the January 6th case, that they're going to come up with something.
The White House, for its part, is claiming that this is the rule of law restored, which I find hard to believe from the administration that continually violates the rule of law.
Here's Corinne Jean-Pierre, World's Worst Press Secretary.
Former President Trump received a letter from the special counsel that he's being investigated for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the Biden administration has decided to, quote, weaponize government to go after their number one opponent, end quote.
How do you weaponize government?
Here's what we have done.
The president respects the Department of Justice, their independence.
He has been very, very steadfast on making sure that the rule of law comes back in this administration, comes back in the White House and clearly the administration more broadly.
And that's what you have seen.
I'm just not going to comment on this particular case.
Um, yeah, again, do I believe that this administration cares deeply about the rule of law?
Absolutely not.
I mean, they've evidenced zero concern, truthfully, about the rule of law at this point.
We'll get deeper into what these charges are and what they are not, because one thing that you'll notice is that they probably will not be under the Insurrection Act, right?
There's not gonna be any charges of treason here from Jack Smith.
There are not going to be any charges that Donald Trump was attempting an insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States, anything like that.
He's not going to be hit with the same charges as the January 6thers are being hit with.
He's being hit with secondary charges like obstruction of justice, like fraud.
Those are the most likely charges that are going to come up for President Trump.
We'll get to more on that in a second and how a state case in Michigan may tie into the broader January 6th case against President Trump first.
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Okay, so the fact of the matter is that when it comes to this particular prosecution,
it looks like it's going to be on secondary lines.
Now, there have been some claims that Rudy Giuliani may have flipped.
The reason there was speculation about this is because apparently he did not receive a target letter.
There's a lot of talk about the possibility that Rudy Giuliani had been really facilitating a lot of the claims in the aftermath of the election that Donald Trump had won the election and he was going out there and he was actually soliciting alternative electors in various states to create Sort of elector slates that could be theoretically selected by the Congress of the United States in place of the actual certified electoral slates.
There's a lot of talk that Giuliani was going to get indicted in the January 6 probe.
Apparently that is something that is not going to happen.
According to The Independent from the UK, Giuliani reportedly participated in a voluntary interview with prosecutors as part of what is known as a Queen for a Day deal, under which the ex-mayor can avoid indictment for anything he tells prosecutors about during the interview.
And apparently, again, he did not receive a target letter in the January 6th probe, according to his own lawyer.
With that said, Giuliani's people are saying that he's not testifying against President Trump in any of these cases.
Again, it's very hard to assess the merits of the case itself before you actually have the incitement.
What I will say is that all of this has been pretty public.
I mean, we all saw all of this happen.
It is now year 2023.
All this happened in late 2020, early 2021.
So the idea that any new information has been uncovered here that radically changes the math, I'm very skeptical of that idea.
I just, I have a very tough time believing that they uncovered anything that is brand new in this particular case.
And of course, there's still more charges to come, right?
This latest federal case is not the state case in Georgia.
Now, the big problem for Trump is actually in the state cases.
In the federal cases, yes, that is a problem for him.
He could theoretically be prosecuted.
He could theoretically get prison time.
But if Trump were to win the presidency, he could pardon himself.
That is not true when it comes to the state-level cases.
So let's say that he gets prosecuted in Georgia for some sort of election interference statute.
Let's say that he got prosecuted and convicted and went to jail.
Just on a legal level, the president of the United States cannot pardon himself of the state crime.
So that would create a rather large constitutional crisis.
Again, the target letter they are saying is about obstruction and it's about fraud.
These are all secondary charges that might be easier for them to actually prove than the insurrection charges.
But I want to see the evidence.
I want to see what they came up with that supposedly changed the math so radically that now Trump is going to be prosecuted on this, you know, the year before the election while he is currently the Republican frontrunner.
It is also obvious that the prosecutors want to get this thing in before the election, right?
They definitely want this guy in the dock during the election season.
When Trump says this is election interference, again, two things can be true at once.
Number one, it can absolutely be election interference.
And number two, it can be that Trump fulfills the elements of the crime.
That's probably true when it comes to the classified documents case.
And it does speak to President Trump's lack of common sense with regard to the classified documents case.
When it comes to the January 6th stuff, and when it comes to obstruction and fraud and all the rest, The same math may apply, that it's obviously political to target him, and at the same exact time, he may fulfill the elements of a crime, especially when you're talking about trying him in a place with a jury that is democratic.
Presumably, if Jack Smith brings charges on obstruction of justice, he's not going to bring it in Florida.
Presumably, he's going to bring it in someplace like Washington, D.C.
Okay, meanwhile, this ties into the larger sort of January 6th election schemes.
So, for example, Michigan, the state of Michigan is now charging 16 people in the Elector Scheme.
And that is, you know, kind of fascinating.
According to the New York Times, the Michigan AG announced felony charges on Tuesday against 16 Republicans for falsely portraying themselves as electors from the state in an effort to overturn Donald Trump's 2020 defeat there.
Each of the defendants was charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery on accusation they'd signed documents attesting falsely that they were Michigan's duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president.
Here is the Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is a Democrat, who of course is bringing these prosecution charges.
This seems to me like this might violate First Amendment considerations, which will, I'm sure, be a defense here.
Here is Dana Nessel announcing the charges.
As part of the orchestrated plan, we allege that 16 Michigan residents met covertly in the basement of Michigan GOP headquarters and knowingly, and of their own volition, signed their names to multiple certificates stating that they were the duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the state of Michigan.
That was a lie.
They weren't the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it.
They carried out these actions with the hope and belief that the electoral votes of Michigan's 2020 election would be awarded to the candidate of their choosing instead of the candidate that Michigan voters actually chose.
Now this looks spurious.
The reason this looks spurious is because I can call myself the President of the United States today if I actively think I'm the President of the United States today.
If I'm under the weird impression that that is in fact the case, then I have not violated the intent part of this particular statute.
In fact, what Dana Nessel is doing here Looks very much like trumping up charges as the predicate to going after Trump in Michigan in the same way that you have this attorney, Fannie Willis, down in Georgia, who's preparing to go after President Trump down there.
As the New York Times notes, Nestle began investigating the matter in early 2021, but then she referred it to the DOJ in January 2022.
She said at the time there were grounds to bring charges, but there was better investigative resources over at the federal level.
And a few months later, she posted on Twitter, quote, if we don't hold the people involved in the alternate elector scheme accountable, there's literally nothing to stop them from doing this again because there will have been no repercussions for it.
By January of this year, federal prosecutors had taken no apparent action.
Because, presumably, they saw that this was not a crime.
If I sign a document saying that I'm an elector in the state of Florida, even though I've not been quote-unquote duly appointed, but I think that I am duly appointed because I believe, because I've been told by foolish lawyers, for example, that there was, in fact, a statute under which I could be considered a duly elected member of an alternate slate, and that I could then be selected by the Congress of the United States, intent is part of the crime.
This is the big problem.
A lot of these statutes that are now being used against people like these Michigan electors, intent is part of the crime.
You have to know that you're defrauding somebody.
You have to know that you're participating in something that is not true.
It's not that you interpret the law wrong.
It's not a negligence statute.
It's a statute where you actually have to have intent.
You have to have mens rea.
Is mens rea present here?
I have a harder time believing that, and this is the big problem with the case against Trump on January 6th.
You actually have to make the case that Trump knew full well that he had not been elected President of the United States, and he essentially trumped up all of this in order to avoid the consequences of that.
Now, as I've said before, proving intent with Donald Trump is actually a really, really steep hill to climb.
This is why, for example, the tape in the classified documents case is so damaging to Trump, because he's openly saying that he knows the thing that they would have to establish if they didn't have the tape.
If Trump said, I didn't know that the classified documents were classified, I really thought I could declassify, if you just said that, and he mourned on tape saying, I knew I could not declassify these documents, I was the president, I'm not the president, like, that tape is extremely damaging to Trump.
On the January 6th matters, virtually all of these crimes are intent crimes.
Now, obstruction is not, right?
Obstruction is a situation where if you offer a thing of tangible value to someone to change their testimony, that's obstruction, which presumably is why they're going to attempt to bring obstruction charges.
But the fraud charge is an intent charge.
You have to show that Trump actively knew that the money that he was taking from people was not going to be used for legal defense, and not only did he know it was not going to be used for legal defense, he knew that the legal defense itself was spurious, and he was doing it to put money in his own pocket.
That is, again, a high hell to climb.
Intent crimes are very difficult.
Now, in a second, we'll get to the politics of all of this, because you can see the sort of way that this has thrown, again, the race into disarray.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so all of the other candidates are now responding to all of this.
And the response seems to be very similar from all of the other candidates, which is, I would have done what Donald Trump did on January 6th, but the prosecution is political and unfair.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who's been extremely pro-Trump throughout this race, he said he would have made very different judgments than President Trump did on January 6th, but he also said that this is obviously politically motivated.
Ron DeSantis, he said that Trump should have done something differently on January 6th, but we can't have partisan prosecutions.
Here was Governor DeSantis.
Difference between being brought up on criminal charges and doing things.
Like, for example, I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn't do anything while things were going on.
He should have come out more forcefully.
Of course that.
But to try to criminalize that, that's a different issue entirely.
And I think that we want to be in a situation where you don't have one side Just constantly trying to put the other side in jail.
And that, unfortunately, is what we're seeing now.
Okay, that seems to be the generalized political take from a bunch of Republicans.
It's basically like, wouldn't it be great if Donald Trump had not gotten himself in all of this hot water?
Wouldn't that have been an awesome thing?
Also, it's politically motivated.
Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, who is no ally of President Trump, Kemp himself turned down Trump's attempts to swivel the election in Georgia.
He said they better have some pretty good evidence if they're going to go after him this way.
What do you make, if true, that he is the target of an indictment regarding January 6th?
I know there's a lot of people, conservatives like me, that are frustrated by things like the New York indictment, but there's no doubt that these things are a distraction to the former president.
And I would just tell you, if I was the prosecutor bringing these charges, he better have some damn good evidence if you're going after a former president.
And we'll see as the process plays out, but it's certainly a distraction from us beating Joe Biden.
Okay, and that is in fact the case.
So the question is going to be, in terms of the political consequences, is there a point at which the Republican Party, many members of the base, they have a lot of sympathy for Trump, they think he's being gone after unfairly, and also they realize that it turns out that this battle Is there sort of a drama limit for the Republican Party?
a problem for them. That the more that Trump is in the headlines about his
indictment, the more he is fighting legal battles, the less the headline is that
Joe Biden is a terrible president who ought not be president anymore. In other
words, is there sort of a drama limit for the Republican Party? You can support
Trump, you can back Trump, you can think this is all unfair.
All of that can be true.
And at the same time, you can also recognize that the presidential race should not be about the various indictments of President Trump.
The presidential race should be about something else.
And that's the case that Nikki Haley was making more clearly than any of the other candidates.
Here she was last night.
The rest of this primary election is going to be in reference to Trump.
It's going to be about lawsuits.
It's going to be about legal fees.
It's going to be about judges.
And it's just going to continue to be a further and further distraction.
And that's why I am running is because we We need a new generational leader.
We can't keep dealing with this drama.
We can't keep dealing with the negativity.
We can't keep dealing with all of this.
We've got China that's literally trying to be at war with us.
You've got Iran building a bomb.
You've got North Korea detaining a soldier and testing ballistic missiles.
We need to focus on the debt and the lack of transparency in schools and crime and the craziness on the border.
We can't be sitting there focused on lawsuits over and over again.
Again, she is not wrong.
And this is going to be the question for Republicans going forward.
Would you like to win?
Would you like to battle about Joe Biden's policies?
Or do we just wish to talk about President Trump in terms of this election cycle from here until the election day?
Do we think that's a winning strategy?
Serious question.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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Okay, so, with that in mind, with that question in mind, who is the best candidate to square up against Joe Biden?
Is there a candidate out there?
Or are there many candidates out there who would be good at squaring up against Joe Biden without the drama?
Again, put aside your heart for a second and think with your head.
If you think that this election is going to be about Donald Trump and his legal troubles, is that something that is likely to win Donald Trump the presidency?
Or are you just betting that basically Joe Biden falls down?
I don't really like betting on luck.
It's not my favorite thing.
You're going to bet that you get lucky and Joe Biden somehow collapses.
Right now, if you look at the Trump versus Biden polls, what you find is that Donald Trump Cannot break 45% with a hammer and a blowtorch.
He can't.
There's not a poll for the last several months that shows him at above 45%.
That is not a winning number.
You're not gonna win with 45%.
The only hope that you have at that point is that the turnout for Joe Biden is just extremely low.
But the question is whether all those people are gonna come home to Joe Biden when the actual money is on the line.
And the answer is, you know, in my opinion, probably yes, that most Democratic voters are still going to show up.
You have to bet on low Democratic voter turnout.
Well, the only way you're going to get low Democratic voter turnout is if Democrats aren't motivated by the presence of Donald Trump on the ballot.
Right now, Joe Biden is in various polls ranging anywhere from like 49% in the NBC News poll, all the way down to like 40% in the Economist poll.
But again, there are a lot of voters that I would assume are going to come home to Biden.
Who are the voters who are going to come home to Trump?
Do those voters exist?
It seems like his poll numbers are pretty stable.
It seems like Joe Biden has some wiggle room right there.
Now, when it comes to, you know, Ron DeSantis or other candidates inside the Republican Party, Those candidates have yet to really have a floor or a ceiling.
So if you look at DeSantis' range, there's some polls that have DeSantis all the way up at 47% and some that have him at 48%, even 52% in one recent poll, and some polls that have him all the way down to like 38%.
There's a big range, a big fluctuation, because it turns out there may be some people who are like, well, you know, maybe I'll give him a shot.
Maybe if you're an independent deciding on the last day between DeSantis and, say, Biden, you give DeSantis a shot because you're tired of Joe Biden.
And again, that is the story of 2016, as I've mentioned, and 2020.
2016 undecideds broke 2-1 for Trump on the last day of the election.
2020 undecideds broke 2-1 for Biden on the last day of the election.
So...
DeSantis' campaign has, according to the media, been really, really flagging.
It's been having serious troubles.
Now, I'm not sure that I buy that entire sort of narrative.
The reason I'm not sure that I buy that narrative is because if I look at the actual polling data with regard to Ron DeSantis, he's basically been in the same sort of bucket since late May.
He was polling in the Real Care Politics polling average at about 20%, 19.4% as of May 20th.
20%, 19.4% as of May 20th.
He's currently pulling at 20%.
Right, so he hasn't really lost a lot of ground since late May, and we are now in mid-July.
So for about the last eight weeks, he's been in kind of the same place.
The problem is, he hasn't caught fire yet.
So the question is, how does Ron DeSantis catch fire?
Well, I mean, it's possible that somebody like DeSantis, it doesn't have to be DeSantis, but one of the people like DeSantis might catch fire by going into hostile territory and knocking some heads together.
So yesterday, DeSantis did an interview with Jake Tapper, this was supposed to be sort of the relaunch of his campaign, and he did a really good job.
Tapper asked his questions.
His questions were, again, I think cleverly worded and obviously coming from somebody of more liberal bent politically.
I mean, Jake is definitely a political liberal.
There's no question about that.
But DeSantis handled him, I thought, very, very well.
And he didn't require cleanup on aisle five.
So, for example, here was Ron DeSantis asked about winning Suburban Moms.
As you go further and further to the right on some of these divisive social issues that could alienate moderates, suburban moms, etc., Republican voters see you as less and less electable.
I took a state that had been a one-point state, and we won it by 20 percentage points, 1.5 million votes.
Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms.
We're leading a big movement for parents' rights, have the parents be involved in education, school choice, get the indoctrination out of schools.
Of course, there's bread-and-butter issues that matter too.
Inflation, more economic opportunity.
Florida's economy is ranked number one of all 50 states.
We've worked hard to make that happen.
Crime.
You see crime in all these different communities that is now even going into suburbs in some areas.
Okay, again, these are good answers.
He's answering the question he wants to be asked, not the question that Tapper is asking him.
Right?
Tapper is trying to characterize him as a radical on all of these policies, and DeSantis is just refusing to have any part of it.
Right?
Here is DeSantis on abortion, for example.
So Tapper, again, goes after him and suggests he's a radical on abortion, and here's DeSantis' answer.
You recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida.
Yes or no, would you support that as a nationwide ban?
So I said I'm pro-life, I will be a pro-life president, and we will support pro-life policies.
At the same time, I look at what's going on in the Congress, and, you know, I don't see them, you know, making very much headway.
I think the danger from Congress is if we lose the election, they're going to try to nationalize abortion up until the moment of birth.
And in some liberal states, you actually have post-birth Okay, so, again, there's DeSantis taking a position that is absolutely winnable in a general election after having passed an extremely conservative law in Florida.
And what he's saying is absolutely correct, right?
You can get a six-week abortion ban in Florida, but you're not going to get that nationally.
And so this idea that this is like a giant threat, that the Congress of the United States is somehow going to unify and pass a six-week abortion ban, that's really not a thing that at a national level is going to happen.
That, of course, is true.
Here's Ron DeSantis on Ukraine, again taking conservative positions with regard to the issues and not messing his pants, right?
Not turning into a massive headline.
And I understand it's a lot more boring than Trump.
Of course it is.
Of course, because there's nothing more exciting than Donald Trump.
I mean, Donald Trump is alternatively A night jousting against windmills and a man crashing his clown car into a group of raving hyenas.
It's always entertaining.
If there's one thing you can say about Trump, the dude is never not entertaining.
He is always entertaining all the time.
DeSantis is not entertaining.
He's just professional.
So here is Ron DeSantis talking about Ukraine.
As a presidential candidate, you've said that the conflict is not a vital national interest.
So, as president, what will your policy be?
Will you want to stop arming Ukraine?
Will you stop financial support for Ukraine?
So first, a vital national interest to me means we would potentially send troops there.
And I don't think anybody wants to see troops in Ukraine, and I would believe that in 2015 as well.
It's more of a secondary or tertiary interest.
The goal should be A sustainable, enduring peace in Europe, but one that does not reward aggression.
And there's going to be different levers that you're going to be able to pull.
We will pull some levers against Russia.
We're going to be much more aggressive on energy and export, because I think that's been Putin's lifeline.
I want the Europeans dependent on the United States for that, not him.
We're also going to turn the screws on the Iranians.
The Iranians have been one of Putin's biggest benefactors, and they've benefited from Biden's approach there.
So we'll use the leverage that we have.
But the goal's gonna be a sustainable peace that does not reward aggression.
Okay, and then Tapper asked him about the trans issues, and he's suggesting that DeSantis is targeting trans, and it's really terrible.
And look how DeSantis turns this into a normal question for normal people, like, should we be subsidizing trans surgeries for members of the military?
Should boys be competing with girls?
You know, the actual practical ramifications of all the fuzzy gender ideology that's being pushed by the left.
Your new policy that you announced today about the military would ban transgender Americans from serving in the military, regardless of their ability, and this comes on the heels of your campaign retweeting a video that the Log Cabin Republicans, which is a conservative LGBTQ group, said, quote, ventured into homophobic territory, unquote.
There are more than a million trans adults in the U.S.
What are their lives and the lives of the people who love and support them going to be like under a DeSantis administration?
Well look, in the military it's all about the mission first.
So there's a whole bunch of reasons why you focus on mission first.
People's individuality, it does take, you do have to check that at the door.
Again, what he's doing is he's taking the temperature down on these issues while maintaining a very consistent conservative position.
That is a smart way to do politics, what DeSantis is doing.
It's one of the reasons why, again, he turned a purple state into a bright red state in Florida.
DeSantis is actually very good at this.
And him being in hostile situations and showing that he's capable of doing this could theoretically recast the race.
Because if what Republican voters are looking for is someone who can beat Biden and who is very conservative, Then they might stop looking at the shiny fireworks over here, right, which is all of the Trump indictment kind of stuff.
And they might start looking at the actual question, which is who can beat Joe Biden and who is conservative.
So, again, I found DeSantis did an excellent job on Tapper last night.
That's no surprise, again.
I think he's a terrific governor.
I think that he is a solid candidate for president.
He's not the only one.
I think there are other solid candidates for president inside the Republican Party.
But Republican voters are going to have to decide whether they wish to be entertained or whether they wish to win.
I really think that it's a binary question.
I do not think these are the same.
Am I saying there's no chance that Trump could win the presidency of nominee?
Of course not.
I would say there's like a 35% chance that Trump could win the presidency if he receives the nomination.
It's not 0%, but it's not 70% either.
If somebody else is the nominee, it's at least a 50-50 shot.
You're increasing the odds fairly dramatically.
Because again, the person on the other side should be the issue.
Joe Biden should be the issue, not Donald Trump.
Joe Biden should be the issue, not Ron DeSantis.
Joe Biden is a weak, incoherent president who's simultaneously pushing garbage policy.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Also, men and women They are different, not just physically, but also on a much deeper level.
Ironically, the more the left tries to erase those differences, the more pronounced the differences actually become.
For example, women are generally more nurturing than men.
That is an evolutionary biological fact.
If you don't believe me, you can ask my wife as well.
Holding on to simple facts like this, understanding them, it's essential.
That's at the heart of Dennis Prager's new episode of PragerU, Master's Program.
In this series, Dennis is sharing 40 years worth of hard-earned wisdom as he explores all kinds of topics.
How to be a good person, hurdles to happiness, and the case for marriage.
This newest episode is extremely important because the more men and women understand each other, the more they'll be able to accept and celebrate their unique differences.
It's a great episode, you're not gonna wanna miss it.
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Okay, meanwhile, now the real issue in the 2024 campaign should be the current president of the United States.
Typically, the incumbent is the person upon whom there is a referendum.
Occasionally, that's not the case.
You see that, for example, in 2004 it actually became a referendum, not really on George W. Bush, but on John Kerry and his failures.
In 2012, Barack Obama was able to shift the election question into a referendum, believe it or not.
Okay, well, this should be a referendum on Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is incompetent.
He's no longer with us.
I mean, he's not only incompetent in that he's bad at his job, he's mentally incompetent.
it should have defeated him, except that he was also able to turn it into a referendum
on Romney.
Turnout wasn't amazing on the Republican side of the aisle and all the rest.
Okay, well, this should be a referendum on Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is incompetent.
He's no longer with us.
I mean, he's not only incompetent in that he's bad at his job, he's mentally incompetent.
He's not competent.
So, for example, yesterday he was meeting with the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog.
This is part and parcel of a broader attempt by the Biden administration to draw away from Israel.
Joe Biden, who is not congenitally pro-Israel, and neither is anyone in his administration.
Jake Sullivan, all the holdovers from the Obama administration.
Obama was by far the most radically anti-Israel candidate and president in American history.
Well, Barack Obama staffed his people, his administration, people who hated Israel.
A lot of those people are holdovers in sort of the foreign policy department of the Biden administration.
He has seen the current sort of divisions in Israeli society over judicial reform as an opportunity for him to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States.
And that's why he invited Isaac Herzog, who's the president of Israel, not Bibi Netanyahu, who's the prime minister.
There's been some talk that now he's inviting Bibi.
We'll get to that in a second.
But he has this presser with Isaac Herzog.
Again, the President of Israel is a non-political position.
It's not like the President of the United States.
It's basically more like the Queen of England, the President of Israel.
You're sort of a figurehead who's there to show unity in the state of Israel.
Biden invited Herzog specifically so he wouldn't have to invite Bibi as sort of a way of wrapping Bibi across the knuckles.
In any case, Biden just starts babbling incoherently because this is what he does.
And we brought Israelis and Palestinians together at a political level. And as I affirmed the Prime Minister...
I mean, it's just... he's just... what is he even talking about?
What is he even talking about?
It's fine, guys.
We're told by the media he's totally fine, he's in great shape, he's fit as a fiddle and ready for love.
And I'll just remind you that Joe Biden is the one who said the only way that he would run for re-election, basically, is if Donald Trump was the nominee.
It wasn't just that.
Joe Biden was asked some questions, like people in the audience, right, the journalists who are assembled for this little presser, they start shouting questions at Biden, and he reacts like your 80-year-old grandmother would react if you burst into the room asking her very loud questions.
Because Joe Biden is your 80-year-old grandmother who's in a state of decline.
I mean, he's in cognitive decline.
There is no way not to see this, clearly.
Thank you for your friendship and a lot to talk about.
Thank you all very much.
And a lot of shadow questions there, but the president, we're told, did not bite on any
of them.
Is the Israeli president Isaac Herzog makes a visit to the Oval Office.
The idea that this man is going to serve until he is 86 years old is insane.
And everyone knows this.
Everyone knows this.
Democrats know this.
Republicans know this.
Which, by the way, is why a bunch of Silicon Valley money people are now buzzing about RFK Jr.
They're just looking for anybody who is not Joe Biden on that side of the aisle.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has recently voiced support for RFK Jr., who's running against Biden for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Kennedy has been feted by a handful of other tech titans, including SPAC King Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sachs, co-founding executive of PayPal and trusted ear to Elon Musk.
Again, there are a lot of people who are looking at Kennedy, not because they think Kennedy is any sort of great shapes, but because he is just not Joe Biden.
And that is what the polls are showing inside the Democratic Party, by the way.
RFK Jr.
is not somebody who has like a career in politics that is tremendously compelling.
But the national polls among Democrats right now have Joe Biden running in the low 60s.
In the low 60s.
That means 40% of Democrats, of Democrats, are like, we don't want this guy to be the nominee.
The latest RealClearPolitics polling average, it has Kennedy running at about 15%.
But the more important stat is that Joe Biden, in that same statistic, is running at 63.5%.
He's the current sitting president of the United States, and the members of his own party are only favoring him 6 to 4.
That's crazy.
These are terrible stats for Joe Biden.
By the way, there's not a poll inside the Democratic Party for the last, like, four months that has him rated at above 73%.
Most of them have him down in the low 60s.
One, the Messenger Harris X poll from mid-June has him down at 54% inside the Democratic Party.
These are awful numbers.
He's supremely vulnerable and he should be supremely vulnerable.
That's why presumably he's now resorting to bribery again.
So Joe Biden is now, he tried to bribe everybody with the student debt relief nonsense.
He tried to say he had the unilateral power under statutes that clearly didn't apply to simply relieve student loan debt to the tune of trillions of dollars.
Well, now they're trying a second attempt.
James Cavall, the Undersecretary of Education, according to Politico, said Tuesday the administration was moving as quickly as possible under the law to craft a new debt relief program in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling last month that struck down Biden's initial plan to wipe out 20 grand of debt for tens of millions of borrowers.
So Cavall is now going to try to end a round.
It's not going to work, but that's the Biden way.
He's going to make empty promises and then hope that you don't notice when they go unfulfilled.
Joe Biden's administration is on very, very shaky legs.
He's relying on the continued strength of the economy.
I think economic stagnation is around the corner, and I'm investing like it.
I think a lot of people are.
I'm not the only one.
And he has chaos inside of his own party as well.
He's an insurrectionist Democratic Party.
In terms of policy that, for example, with Isaac Herzog, who again is a rather apolitical figure in Israel.
He's a former Labor Party head, right?
An opponent to Bibi Netanyahu.
You have the Democratic Party, a segment of which is doubling down on the radical anti-Israel rhetoric, and Joe Biden doesn't even have the strength to put down that revolt.
So you'll recall that Pramila Jayapal, who's made several anti-Semitic remarks with regard to Israel, again, there's a difference between being critical of Israel and saying that Israel cannot exist as a Jewish state and be democratic.
Or Israel is a racist state, as Pramila Jayapal said.
Treating Israel differently than any other state on earth is a form of anti-Semitism, obviously.
That is something that Democrats in the Squad particularly love to do.
Rashida Tlaib, who's a wild anti-Semite, I mean, like, associates with actual known terrorist supporters.
Rashida Tlaib came out yesterday and said, Israel's just like South Africa, which is absurd.
It's just crazy.
I will note, again, Rashida Tlaib is a huge fan of the governing bodies, presumably, in the Palestinian areas.
That'd be Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
Those bodies allow zero Jews.
You want to talk about an apartheid state?
How about a place where Jews, if you drive in there, you might be murdered?
That's significantly worse.
But here is Rashida Tlaib going after Israel yesterday, and the congressional leadership of the Democratic Party refuses to slap her or any of the other members of the squad down.
The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israel's own largest human rights organization, B'Tselem, all agree that Israel is an apartheid state.
To assert otherwise, Mr. Speaker, in the face of this just body of evidence is an attempt to deny the reality and to normalize violence of apartheid.
This week, we're going to hear consistently that, you know, people totting about, like, oh, this is bipartisan support here.
But don't forget, this body, this Congress, supported the South African apartheid regime, and it was bipartisan as well.
Oh, you mean that you're going to cite a bunch of left-wing NGOs who hate Israel and openly associate with anti-Semitic bodies?
Was there any response from Democratic leadership to that?
Not really.
AOC is doing the same thing.
AOC used to be anti-Semitic adjacent, now she's just anti-Semitic.
I mean, AOC doesn't just hang out with anti-Semites, she routinely says anti-Semitic things.
Here's her latest example, where she says that Israel is in the middle of a crisis of democracy and apartheid, and she's mirroring the idiocies of her fellow anti-Semites Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
Here she was yesterday.
The president is meeting with Herzog, this meeting happening today, and Democrats say they're boycotting this speech.
Listen.
Will you attend this address tomorrow?
I will not be attending.
There's currently a crisis of democracy and apartheid, and I think that this is something that has been a consensus among human rights organizations.
Now she's wearing her smart people glasses, so we can pretend that she actually has an IQ above 75.
It's always very impressive when she wears her smart people glasses.
In any case, The White House was specifically asked about condemning these sorts of comments, and they're like, no, no, no, we're not going to condemn them.
We're glad that people are sometimes walking them back like Pramila Jayapal, but we're not going to condemn those comments.
That'd be bad.
We can't condemn anti-Semitism inside our own party.
They have plenty of words, by the way, for RFK.
I'm just going to juxtapose here two takes on anti-Semitism from Karine Jean-Pierre.
So one is her take on the anti-Semitic comments of actual elected members of her own party.
Here she was yesterday refusing to condemn Pramila Jayapal.
Did the President have to address Congresswoman Jayapal's comment that Israel is a racist state?
What do you mean, had to address?
Did it come up at all in the conversation with President Herzog?
What we didn't hear was any condemnation of her comment from the White House.
The apology was the right thing to do.
And we've been very clear when it comes to anti-Semitism, this administration and the entire Biden-Harris administration have been clear that when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hate, that's anti-Semitism.
And that is unacceptable.
One of the reasons, and I just said this moments ago, back in May, the President put forward a comprehensive plan on how to counter anti-Semitism.
It is something that is one of its first of a kind strategy that we've not seen before, and it is comprehensive and it is ambitious.
I noticed you're not condemning the other members of the Democratic Party who are doing anti-Semitic things.
I noticed that also, the supposed anti-Semitism fight that the administration has taken on involved getting the Council on American-Islamic Relations involved.
I kid you not.
They had actual anti-Semitic groups in the room to decide the White House's anti-Semitic policies.
They're anti-Semitism policies.
Meanwhile, just contrast, here's how the White House dealt with RFK's comments.
So you'll recall that RFK was at a dinner and he suggested that maybe a bioweapon had been engineered by the Chinese government because there were certain genetic markers with regard to COVID that made it less likely to attack Chinese people or Ashkenazic Jews.
And that was based on a faulty study.
But apparently that's super anti-Semitic.
Again, I'm not sure exactly how, but you may notice a pattern here.
The rule is, if you're an ally of Joe Biden, nothing you say is actually anti-Semitic.
If you are somebody who opposes Joe Biden, anything you say can be construed as anti-Semitic.
That's the way this dumbassery works.
The claims made on that tape is false.
It is vile.
And they put our fellow Americans in danger.
If you think about the racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that come out of saying those types of things, it's an attack on our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans.
And so it is important that we essentially speak out when we hear those claims made more broadly.
I'm good.
The way that anti-Semitism works on the left is, by them and their friends, totally fine.
By anybody who opposes them, even if they're on the left, like RFK Jr.
Now all of a sudden, he's a threat to world Jewry, or some such silliness.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today, there's also a thing that I hate.
So there's a new Jason Aldean song.
Okay, this new Jason Aldean song is a massive hit.
It is called, Try That in a Small Town.
The video is controversial, so controversial that it was removed by, actually, Country Music TV.
It was removed because it essentially showed various riots, and then it said, like, try that in a small town and see how it goes for you.
The accusation is that this was racist.
Which is weird, because there are a lot of black people who live in small towns.
And it turns out black people are also not super fond of rioting.
But apparently the take of the media is that if you oppose riots and you think that in a small town that sort of thing doesn't go, that means that you actually want to kill black people just randomly.
That of course is not what the song is even remotely about.
Here is some of the music video for Jason Altine's song.
He's showing you Antifa Riot.
round up, well that s*** might fly in the city. Good luck, try that in a small town,
see how far you make it down.
And he's showing Antifa riots.
And he's, uh, you know, basically the idea is, try this Antifa crap here and see how it goes for you.
There's not gonna be looting in a small town because we actually have a sense of community, right?
And then you put out a statement saying, When you grow up in a small town, it's that unspoken rule of we all have each other's backs and we look out for each other.
It feels like somewhere along the way that sense of community and respect has gotten lost.
Deep down, we're all ready to get back to that.
I hope my new music video helps you all know that you are not alone in feeling that way.
Go check it out!
And well, the left-wing insane rage clickers, they decided that the song was actually racist.
It's racist.
You're not allowed to show, presumably, criminals who are black and then say that you don't wish for criminality to prevail, and in a small town it wouldn't.
Now, it doesn't matter that many of the criminals in the video are also white.
None of that matters.
They're accusing him of racism and CMTV actually removed the video.
So here is what Jason Aldean wrote, quote, In the past 24 hours, I've been accused of releasing a pro-lynching
song, a song that has been out since May, and was subject to the
comparison that I, quote, direct, quote, was not too pleased with the
nationwide BLM protests.
These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.
There's not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it, and there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage.
And while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music, this one goes too far.
As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91, where so many lost their lives, and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy.
No one, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.
Try That In A Small Town For Me refers to a feeling of community that I had growing up where we took care of our neighbors regardless of differences of background or belief.
Because they were our neighbors and that was above any differences.
My political views have never been something I've hidden from.
I know a lot of us in this country don't agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy or where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night.
But the desire for it to, that's what this song is about.
And that apparently is super duper duper bad.
It's terrible.
Again, the The fact that there are people on the left who feel the necessity to treat criminality and opposition to it as aspects of race is itself racist.
If I say criminality doesn't fly in my community and your immediate take is that's racist, you are being racist.
You are suggesting that the crime is only from black people or that by targeting crime you're actually targeting black people, which is ridiculous.
A majority of the crime in the country is coming from white people.
And now, again, a disproportionate share of crime, violent crime, like murder, is taking place among black people, by young black people.
That doesn't mean that if I oppose murder, I oppose black people.
The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of black people ain't committing murder, obviously.
It is the left that it suggests, that if you target a behavior, a disproportionate share of which is performed by a particular race, you're actually targeting the race?
That's ridiculous.
It's absurd.
It's like saying that if you target crime, what you're actually targeting is men, because virtually all crime is performed by men.
Did Jason Aldean do something wrong here?
Of course not.
Now, then they go to their backup argument.
Their backup argument is he filmed this in a town that 102 years ago had a lynching.
You gotta be kidding.
You really think that Jason Aldean was like, well, I'm gonna go to a town that had a lynching 102 years ago, and that's where I'm gonna film this video because that's where I really want this film.
It's subtle.
It's a subtle race bait.
Like, come on.
Come on.
Pathetic dweebs.
Think that people are sitting around thinking like this?
They're not.
Nobody is thinking like this.
Good for Jason Aldean for not backing down.
He shouldn't apologize.
And it doesn't seem like he will, which would make him one of the first artists who is not doing that in recent memory.
So good for Jason Aldean.
All right, you guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
Some of the stuff in the show today had to get cut because, you know, of the social media bros.
But you can go to Twitter or you go to DailyWirePlus and get all of it.
Now we'll be joined on the line by Jim Davis and Michael Graham discussing their new upcoming book, The Great De-Churching.
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