Ben Shapiro dissects the 2020 Iowa caucus chaos—where a failed app delayed results, letting Buttigieg and Klobuchar claim victory prematurely—while mocking Democrats’ habit of spinning failures as wins. He argues Bernie Sanders benefits either way: if he loses, he’ll cry fraud; if he wins, he’ll blame the system. The episode pivots to Trump’s impeachment trial, calling it a "fiasco" for ignoring Obama-era scandals like IRS targeting and focusing on a Ukraine call, while Schiff’s absurd claims (like Trump offering Alaska to Russia) expose Democratic desperation. Contrasting with Oxford students’ fossil fuel divestment demands, Shapiro praises Rush Limbaugh’s legacy of unfiltered debate, framing the episode as a clash between reality-based politics and performative outrage. [Automatically generated summary]
The two sides are making their closing arguments in the impeachment of Donald Trump for whatever the hell they're accusing him of this time.
Acting for the prosecution, Congressman Adam Schiff told the Senate that if Trump were not removed from office, quote, he could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war, unquote.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, oh, Clavin, you rambunctious, irrepressible dispenser of delight and hilarity, where do you come up with your zany satirical ideas?
And how do you keep your skin so soft and beautiful?
But no, the truth is, those are actually Adam Schiff's exact words.
He actually said if Trump wasn't convicted, he might give Alaska to the Russians.
As Schiff's words spread around the country, patriots rushed to the Alaskan border to defend the state from being handed over to Putin.
These were just brave, ordinary Alaskans, including a guy who moved up there to escape the upcoming invasion of Earth by the planet Kleptar, a Japanese soldier from World War II who hadn't heard the big news about Hiroshima, and a black bear who thought Adam Schiff said Trump would be giving away salmon because being only a bear, he couldn't imagine someone would say anything as stupid as what Schiff actually said.
Embarrassed to be called out by one of the lower mammals, Schiff later admitted he had meant to say that if Trump was not removed from office, he might give Putin a baked Alaska in return for support in the next election.
Although Schiff acknowledged Trump might not need Russian support in the next election, given all the new jobs and stuff.
Meanwhile, Jared Kushner, hearing Schiff's remarks, did in fact declare war on Mar-a-Lago, but his invasion was turned back when a volley of golf balls dented his Lincoln town car.
Hooray, Hoorah!00:03:55
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Ship-shaped hip-sy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
So on a day like this, with so much absolute hilarity in Iowa, our leftist tears tumblers are overflowing.
I hate to start on a sorrowful note, but I can't begin the show without a shout out to Rush Limbaugh, because without Rush Limbaugh, there wouldn't be a show or a Daily Wire or all the conservative voices that keep the ideals of the American founding alive and well.
Rush announced on his show yesterday he has advanced lung cancer.
I wish I didn't have to tell you this.
And I thought about not telling anybody.
I thought about trying to do this without anybody knowing because I don't like making things about me.
But there are going to be days that I'm not going to be able to be here because I'm undergoing treatment or I'm reacting to treatment.
And I know that that would inspire all kinds of curiosity with people wondering what's going on.
And the worst thing that can happen is when there is something going on and you try to hide it and cover it up, it's eventually going to leak and then people are going to, why didn't you just say it?
Why do you try to fool everybody?
And it's not that I want to fool anybody.
It's just that I don't want to burden anybody with it.
And I haven't wanted to.
But it is what it is.
And you know me, I'm the mayor of Rielville.
So listen, I'm not going to eulogize the guy.
I've seen people beat this crap when doctors said it couldn't be done.
And I know God listens to Russia's show because reality is conservative, so Russia must be where God gets his ideas.
So there's no way I'm counting Rush out.
Still, since he's not feeling well, this is a good moment for me and for all of us to say thank you to a man who all but single-handedly changed the American conversation for the better.
Yesterday I ended the show pointing out that with cancel culture on the rampage, it's only the right who defend freedom of speech.
Today I'm going to talk about how fiasco is the left's brand and claiming victory after a fiasco is the left's brand.
But silence is also the left's brand.
Don't say this, don't say that.
Use the words we tell you to use, shout down the opposition, and so on.
When I first heard of Rush, I was living in England and I read an article in a London newspaper in which a friend of mine, a major New York literary agent, said she didn't think Rush's book should be published.
I didn't even know I was becoming a conservative then because I was so far away from American politics.
But I wrote to my friend in New York and said that it seemed wrong to me that one side of the political conversation should be barred from publication.
I'd left America in the first place because I was sick of what was then called political correctness, because I've always believed we should say things and not not say things, that we should argue with one another and then drink together because whether with Democrats or Republicans, hallelujah, we all get to be Americans.
I think that point of view took a nosedive after the success of Ronald Reagan and the failure of the Soviet Union when the simple truth became blindingly evident.
Once you lose an argument in such a spectacular fashion, your only option is to silence the opposition, and that's the direction in which the left has gone.
And they might have gotten away with it completely if Rush hadn't reinvented the one medium they hadn't taken over, radio.
When I moved home from England, I sampled Rush out of curiosity, and I was surprised to hear not only how funny he was, how often he was just trolling the opposition, though we didn't have the word trolling then, but also how much sense he made, how many of the things he said seemed to me just basic American values.
Ashford University and Questions Answered00:02:36
He was a big part of the reason I began to change my political positions.
And it wasn't just me, my pal Andrew Breitbart also changed by listening to Rush 2.
And Andrew began to build the California movement that brought people like me and Ben Shapiro and Jeremy the God King and Steve Crowder and Bill Whittle and so many others together to start to speak up and speak out for the all-American constitutional values that Rush espoused.
You remember what the angels said in the movie, it's a wonderful life.
One man's life touches so many others.
When he's not there, it leaves an awfully big hole.
Well, I hope Rush will be there for a long time to come, and I'll be praying he wins the fight for his life, but he's already won the fight of his life, the fight to keep the voice of the American founding from being silenced.
And for that, I just want to say thanks, Rush.
Get well soon.
All right, let us talk for a moment about Ashford University.
You know, one of the things is I wish I had two lives, one life to live and one life to just read in.
And I think that reading, studying, advancing your mind, advancing your education is not just a great way to get ahead, it's a great way to become a bigger person.
It's hard to go back to school while you're working, and that's why there's Ashford University.
Ashford University's online bachelor's and master's degree programs allow you to learn at your own pace.
You can study wherever you're the most comfortable learning.
Ashford University's six-week-long courses allow you to take one course at a time.
Being enrolled in one class at Ashford means you are considered a full-time student.
The SAT, GRE, G, MAAT, and other standardized test scores are not required for enrolling in Ashford.
Ashford University is fully accredited by WASC, Senior College, and University Commission.
So get on the road to earning your degree and making your dream job a reality.
Enroll now by going to ashford.edu, ashford.edu slash Andrew.
That's ashford.edu slash Andrew to start your degree today, ashford.edu slash Andrew.
The mailbag is tomorrow.
You will want all your questions answered.
And you'll want to sound like that crazy person screaming because all your questions will be answered.
All you got to do is subscribe and send me your questions in the mailbag about anything you want, religion, your personal life, politics, anything at all.
And all my answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life possibly for the better.
You know, I just want to add one more thing to there's so much I would like to say about Rush, but I don't want to sound like a eulogy.
But I just want to add one more thing, which is that when people get sick like this, we know there are people on Twitter and on Facebook and all the social media who come on and celebrate.
Caucus Confusion00:15:19
The guys on the other side celebrate that somebody they don't like or disagree with is sick.
And I want to give you one unasked for piece of advice.
I never pay attention to those people.
I'm sure there are people on our side who do it when Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital or whatever that is.
But people who feel like that, people who are that filled with hate, they get their punishment.
You know, that's a small, ugly, mean way to live, and it makes their lives dark.
You don't have to argue with them.
You don't have to fight with them.
Just concentrate on the important things.
But before I move on to talk about Iowa, I just want to play one more thing to show you.
This is John Dennis, an amazing piece of video.
John Dennis is running against Nancy Pelosi for Congress in San Francisco.
So I imagine he hasn't got much of a chance.
But here he is talking to a guy from Antifa who's telling him that he's going to beat the living crap out of him just for being him.
I'm going to catch you when auto cameras aren't around.
I'm going to f ⁇ you up.
No, you've got the wrong guy.
No, no.
You've got the very wrong guy.
Why are you so angry?
I don't understand.
I'm just here chatting with you.
Why are you angry?
Excuse me, you probably disagree with me.
But I disagree with you.
What?
How do you know?
You don't learn one thing about me.
I go to a public housing project.
I can tell by looking at it.
I grew up in a public housing project.
Where do you grow up?
You said you don't want me to.
I don't need that.
I've got that experience under my thumb.
I'm doing other things now.
And including helping people get better.
I've lived here for 30 years.
I'm not supposed to tell you how long you've lived here.
No, I'm here 30 years.
No, I'm the guy.
I'm not going anywhere.
I got my family.
You can't keep Ruth back.
I want people out.
I'm going to catch you when auto-cameras aren't around and I'm going to f ⁇ you up.
Oh, you're quite.
No, you've got the wrong guy.
No, no.
You've got the very wrong guy.
Those are the two sides.
Those are the two sides.
It's not Democrats and Republicans.
It's one guy saying, I disagree with you, and you disagree with me, and I get that, and I'm going to try and make my argument.
And the other guy saying, when the cameras aren't around, I'm going to beat you up.
I'm going to take you out.
The guy stood up to him, very brave, incredibly brave guy, because the other guy was younger, big guy, tough guy, mean guy.
But those are the two sides.
And we're not going anywhere.
John Dennis is right.
We're not going anywhere.
We're going to keep talking.
We're all going to keep talking.
We're not afraid.
And that's why it's so important to say thanks to Rush, because he's the one who opened that path for us to be here.
We're not leaving.
It's not over.
It's never going to be over as long as somebody is left talking.
All right.
Now, let's start talking about Iowa because we've got to get to the jokes.
Iowa, Iowa was the Democrat Party in a nutshell.
Complete disaster, followed by Democrats declaring victory.
I mean, it was just great.
No one is exactly sure what happened.
They had this new app.
I mean, the whole caucus process is incredibly complex in the first place.
And they had this new app, and the app was supposed to be great.
You know, the Democrat Party, they've always got an app.
They're going to take over health care.
They're going to take over business.
We don't need businessmen to do business.
We've got the Democrat Party.
We don't need doctors to do health care.
We've got the Democrat Party.
They're going to fix everything.
They're new app, and no one can get on it.
It's not that they can't find the actual information because the thing about a caucus is it's people actually standing in a schoolhouse or in some gathering place and they actually go and they gather in a place and say, we're for Bernie or we're for Pete or whoever they're for.
And they gather in groups.
It's the least technologically advanced form of gathering information there can possibly be.
But then the Democrats had an app.
There was an app for that and they put this stuff in.
Now, by the way, this doesn't mean there were no results because the Republicans had an app-free system of voting and Donald Trump won 97% of the vote in Iowa.
This is a state he took by, I think it was like 10 points last time, but the Democrats had no result.
They had one guy.
This was my favorite guy.
His name was, what was his name?
Sean, Sean something.
He was a precinct captain in Iowa, and he called in.
He had been on hold trying to report the votes.
He was trying to tell the, you know, the Democrat headquarters in Iowa.
He was trying to tell them the results of his precincts.
Sean Sebastian, thank you.
He's trying to tell them the result of the votes in his precinct.
And while he's on, they hung up on him.
I just got off hold just now.
So I've got to get off the phone to report the results.
All right.
Go ahead.
Report your result.
Can we listen in as you report them, Sean?
Yep.
All right, let's listen.
All right.
Okay.
Hi.
Hello.
They hung up on me.
They hung up on me.
Okay.
I've got to get back in line on hold.
They just hung up.
It's so frustrating indeed.
So these are the guys.
Remember, remember, this is your health care.
These are the guys who want to run your health care.
So just imagine that you're on hold.
You're calling in because you've got the flu or your kid is sick or he's got an earache or something like that.
That's the guy who's going to be handling your health care if the Democrats get elected.
Just so you know, the best part of this, I hope if you're a subscriber and you had your leftist tears tumbler, man, you were using it last night because the best part of this was the media.
Because listen, the thing is, the media will turn on you in a second once their self-interest is at stake.
And you're sitting there.
You want to report.
You want to have things to talk about.
And there's no information coming on.
So hour after hour after hour, you're getting 0% reporting.
No votes are coming in.
And they start to realize, uh-oh, this is wrong.
This is a bad thing.
So Van Jones goes on, and he knows just whose fault this is.
This is cut seven.
This is starting to feel like possibly like a real debacle where if there's some technical problems that they're not disclosing, we could be very late on this.
I mean, I just think that the idea of the caucus has failed to meet the viability threshold.
Okay.
And the idea that the idea of the caucus itself has failed to meet the viability threshold because we've all been saying the whole time, why Iowa in the first place?
It's 90% white.
We have a party as diverse as this to be in a state that's not indiverse.
It's terrible.
People think people will vote and go home.
I don't like caucuses in the first place.
But then if you can't even deliver on your one job, Nia, Niam Lika said it exactly right.
You only have one job, Iowa.
There you go again.
That's right, people.
It's the fault of white people.
Why do we have to listen to all these white people in Iowa in the first place?
I mean, this is just, it was just what was so wonderful about it.
You know, everybody makes mistakes.
Everybody has problems.
But what was so wonderful about it, this was the Democrat brand.
This was everything just came out about the Democrats.
It was so perfect.
The idea that somehow suddenly Iowa didn't matter.
Jennifer Rubin, she had a headline back in May.
She wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, and the headline was, why Iowa is so important this time.
And yesterday, her headline is, what good are the Iowa caucuses anyway?
Because when things go wrong for the Democrats, this is another part of the Democrat brand.
When things go wrong, change the rules.
You lost because of the Electoral College.
Get rid of the Electoral College.
You lost because of the Supreme Court.
Pack the Supreme Court.
You lost because the rights' arguments are better than the left's arguments.
Forget about freedom of speech.
Just change the rules.
It was the left's brand in a nutshell.
And now, of course, part of the left's brand also conspiracies.
It's a conspiracy.
It's the Russians.
It's always the Russians.
I'm going to get back to that Adam Schiff cut that I was joking about in the opening because that was an actual thing.
But they're basically, you know, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders has a good reason to think, well, maybe they're trying to screw him.
Maybe he did better.
I think of communism when I think of Bernie.
I do too.
But, you know, Bernie Sanders has a perfectly good reason.
They did try to screw him last time.
She has a perfectly good reason to think, huh, maybe the votes started coming in on this app and Bernie was doing a lot better than Joe Biden.
And maybe they thought, yeah, this must be the app.
The app is broken.
It must be if I could just get this app to work, then Biden would be winning instead of Bernie.
He is one crazy dude.
But Biden wasn't happy either.
The campaign of former, this is from the Wall Street Journal, the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, said in a letter to the state party that acute failures are occurring statewide in the party's reporting system.
I shouldn't be laughing at this, right?
This is cruel of me to be laughing at the Democrats when they're making fools of themselves.
They said, we believe that the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing and an opportunity to respond before any official results are released.
And you know who was happy about this?
President Trump pounced on the uncertainty, calling the Democratic caucuses an unmitigated disaster.
In a Tuesday morning tweet, he said, nothing works just like when they ran the country.
Chris Matthews, I like Chris Matthews' line.
He had a really funny line.
Play that one.
The guy in the White House is chuckling all night here, showing the Democrats can't even get a three-car funeral organized or whatever you want to call it.
I would say to the people of Iowa, well, the last person leaving Des Moines, please turn out the lights.
This has not been a success.
Nope.
This has not been a success.
But a three-car funeral was pretty good.
A three-car funeral is a very nice metaphor because I don't think, you know, what are they running against?
What are they, they're running against jobs.
They're running against prosperity.
They're running against peace.
And they can't even get their stupid caucuses going.
And it's important.
I will talk about it in a few minutes.
I'll talk about why the caucuses were important.
But I just, I can't stop because I have my leftist tears tumbler because I do subscribe.
So I have my leftist tears tumbler.
I just want to keep it full.
So let's take one more look at the press as this thing developed.
This is Morning Joe.
So this is after it became clear because they're still not reporting, right?
I still haven't seen any numbers.
Are there numbers?
I don't think so.
So let's play Morning Joe reporting on the aftermath.
What is wrong with the Iowa Democratic Party?
Again, this is a party who botched the call four years ago, rushed it when the media was shocked that they would be so transparent.
And now they get on the phone for 74 seconds.
The world's watching this.
We're not being melodramatic.
For a year and a half, American politics has been focused on this moment.
And the Democratic Party has a crappy app, and they say, well, nothing happened to that.
But then you're hearing the reports that something did happen to the app.
Was there election interference?
Did somebody try to hack into the app?
Was it just pure incompetence?
Is the information lost?
Yeah, did they lose the information?
Why were they only on the phone for 74 seconds when they should be holding two-hour press conferences explaining to America and the world what happened?
This is a disaster on every level.
I mean, is this any different than the Obama administration?
You know, they had the Obamacare rollout.
That was a disaster, but they claimed, but it was great.
They loved it.
They had the Iraq pull out and then ISIS took over Syria, but that was great.
What a great general Obama was.
They had, oh, the whole thing, people dying in droves in the middle of the country, but the Obama economy was great.
This is the Democrats' brand.
Fiasco and then declare victory.
And we'll see him declare victory.
This was kind of the best part.
See, this thing about this is there are serious implications to the Iowa caucus, right?
I mean, the Iowa caucuses are just, it's just a small number of people.
And obviously, it's just a small number of delegates, delegates, but that's not the point.
The point is that this is where the momentum comes from, and there's a certain way that it works.
The thing is, you're supposed to come from behind.
People who come from behind and who win late in the day get a serious boost from the Iowa caucuses.
And that's what you're looking for.
First, let us take a pause and talk about NetSuite.
You know, if you want to know how your business is running, you got to know the numbers.
Even I know this.
Even I, who know so little about business, know that my business, when I watch my business, because I am an independent corporation, amalgamated metaphor, I have to watch the numbers in my business.
And if you don't know what they are, you don't know what's going on.
And the problem is, the problem growing businesses have that keeps them from knowing their numbers is there's a hodgepodge of business systems and you have to go to different places to find out what's going on.
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That's netsuite.com slash clavin to download your free guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits, netsuite.com slash clavin.
And the first strategy you need is how do you spell clavin?
There are no ease in clavens.
There are no easing favorites.
Just make it look this easy.
The thing is, you know what, the strategy you want, the strategy you want in Iowa is you want to be counted out.
That was what like Amy Klobuchar was hoping for, that nobody was paying attention to her.
And then you come and you declare victory.
This happened to Bernie Sanders last time, right?
He started creeping up on Hillary Clinton.
Nobody really noticed, and he lost to Hillary by three points.
But that looked like victory because he was supposed to be completely out of it.
Oh, everybody was saying nobody's going to vote for Bernie.
Bernie can't win.
So when he came within three points, that gave him momentum.
That gave him momentum because people said, whoa, he can really do this.
If you can come within three points, you can win.
Rick Santorum, you may remember, made a big mistake because he actually beat Mitt Romney, but it took him a while.
It took a while for the votes to come in.
He was counted out, and then he crept up from behind and he beat Mitt Romney, but he didn't declare victory.
He didn't declare victory, so it didn't look like nobody knew he beat Mitt Romney until it was too late.
A lot of this is the flow of information.
It's how information gets to the people.
People are watching the news, they hear this stuff, and they go, wow, this person came from behind.
So Amy Klobuchar didn't want to make that mistake yesterday.
So without any, no results had come in.
There were zero results.
They had like maybe like eight counties or something like this, eight precincts counted, nothing.
So she just said, well, I'm going to go out and declare victory.
It was actually a very smart strategy.
She had nothing going on.
She had no information, but this is what she said.
We know there's delays, but we know one thing.
We are punching above our weight.
My heart is full tonight.
So even in a crowded field of candidates, even during the well-earned impeachment hearing of Donald J. Trump, which kept me bolted to my Senate desk for the last two weeks, we kept fighting.
And you kept fighting for me.
You know, that was just really smart.
And the reason I kind of thought she may be right.
We don't know.
We don't even know yet.
Why We Keep Fighting00:15:29
But she's just going to make the victory speech because that's what people remember.
People go, you know, you got to go to bed at some point.
You're not going to stay up till 4 o'clock in the morning to hope that somebody counts a vote in Iowa.
So, you know, if Amy Klobuchar gets out there while people are still awake and she declares victory, that's good for her.
And, you know, I actually thought that Klobuchar had a chance to really, as she said, punch above her weight.
I mean, that may actually happen.
And the reason is the other candidates are just so bad.
You've got Bernie, this old communist, you know, kind of still waving the red flag.
You've got Joe Biden, who is abs.
Joe Biden.
Joe Biden had this, I got to play this clip with his daughter.
This is the one with his daughter, where he just came out and made this comment about, I don't think that's, I don't think that's the right one.
It's, hold on just a sec.
It is cut eight, cut number eight.
And he made this comment about his daughter.
Listen to this.
She's about 12 and a half years old.
You put this little butterfly in bed and you kiss it goodnight.
Next morning you walk in, there's a snake in the bed.
What the hell is he talking about?
You put your daughter to bed and she's a butterfly.
And the next morning there's a snake in the bed.
So that's the candidates they've got.
So I kind of started to think, well, maybe people are going to look at Amy Klobuchar and think, well, she's a girl.
That's a good thing because Hillary lost.
And there's still some angry women, you know, saying, oh, Hillary lost.
Not because she was a thief, not because she was incompetent, not because she was one of the biggest criminals in the country.
No, she lost because she was wearing a skirt.
You know, she was wearing a pantsuit.
That was why she lost because she was a female.
So maybe some of those would go for Amy Klobuchar, maybe just because everybody else was just so bad.
So then Pete Buttigieg, this is kind of one of my favorite parts of the evening.
I had a great time last night.
You know, this is why we do, why we follow politics, to watch when the other side gets in a car and somehow manages while being in the car to back the car over themselves.
That is why you watch politics.
That's what you want to hear.
So Pete Buttigieg gets up and he really delivers.
Again, no information, 0% reporting.
No votes have been recorded.
Nobody knows anything.
Pete Buttigieg gets up and delivers the victory speech of a lifetime.
Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.
So we don't know all the results.
But we know by the time it's all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation.
By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.
You know, one year ago, it was in the deep freeze of an Iowa January where we began this unlikely journey to win the American presidency.
We weren't well known, but we had a new idea.
The idea that at this moment when Washington has never felt further from our everyday lives, a middle-class mayor from the American Midwest could carry the voices of the American people all the way to the American Capitol and make sure they're actually heard.
Alfred E. Newman.
He looks like Alfred E. Newman, but that was pretty smart.
I loved it.
I just thought it was a great, a great, great victory speech with no precincts reporting.
You know, he said, we haven't got all the information.
They had no information.
I mean, maybe they knew there were a couple of things that trickled in, but they weren't official because they couldn't count them on the app because nobody could get into the app.
They say they've got all the numbers.
Who knows whether that's true or not.
But he's making that speech, you know, a little mayor from a small town and yet what I've done.
And it's all make-believe.
Also, the Democrat brand living in the make-believe, which is also the Democrat brand.
But I love the fact, complete disaster, declare victory.
That is the Democrat brand in a nutshell.
Let us pause for just a moment and talk about rockauto.com.
For one thing, I just love to say rockauto.com.
But also, it just makes sense to go to rockauto.com because when your car is missing a part, you don't want to get in your car and drive down to the car parts store.
One, because your car's not working.
And two, because why do you need somebody at the car park store to look in a computer and tell you what you could find out by looking in a computer in your own home if you go to rockauto.com to shop for your auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
They have everything you need, engine control modules.
I don't know what that is, but it sounds important.
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I also liked Bernie Sanders because Bernie is from another generation.
See, Pete Buttigieg is from the new generation, when reality doesn't matter, he just thinks it's just on TV.
If you see me declaring victory, I won.
Bernie's not quite so sure.
He's from an old.
He's been ignoring facts all his life.
But he knows the facts are there, you know.
So you listen to him and he's not.
He can't quite pull off that.
Pete Buttigieg's certainty, I imagine, have a strong feeling that at some point the results will be announced and when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we're going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.
Nope, you know, I have a feeling it is possible, it is very possible.
Bernie is right.
He's got all the enthusiasm.
He's got all the young people.
One of the things about the Iowa caucuses, by the way, is that it kind of you know, to use a leftist word it kind of privileges older people, because older people are more committed to voting, and older people are the ones who get in their cars and drive and you know, it's like I don't know what.
I don't know what the temperature is in Iowa, but if you're a Californian, it's cold.
It's always cold in Iowa around this time of year.
Here it's like 70 degrees, but there it can be 30 degrees.
So the people who actually get out of their houses and get in their cars are the people who are a little older and they're the people who are more likely to go for Joe Biden.
So that was an advantage that Biden had right there.
But for Bernie, I just think in some ways he may win this now anyway because, like I said, he has good reason to feel that the Democrat mainstream might want to cheat him.
He has good reason to feel that they might want to do him dirty, and so he can now say, well, this was a conspiracy, this whole thing was set up.
Now there's going to be.
There's already talk online.
This is I'm not making this up there's already talk online that Russia has something to do with this.
I mean, they've got Russia in the head that the left is like so crazy.
This is.
These are the same people who thought Russia was such a great idea when it was the slave state of the Soviet Union, but now they suddenly they hate Russia.
But still there's that conspiracy going on.
But Bernie has a point, you know.
Bernie has a point that the mainstream of the Democrat Party thinks he can't win and frankly, I don't even know that's true, but he feels that he was cheated last time.
There's good reason for him to believe that.
So let's just say that now the results come out and Biden has won or somebody else has won besides Bernie.
Bernie gets a leg up anyway.
This is actually a good thing for Bernie because now he can say to his young folks, he can say, you know, they cheated me again.
Look, they're doing this again and they can go after the establishment.
It is actually the victim card is a good card for Bernie and he's sure to use it if he didn't win.
And if he did win, then all the better for him.
So this is a good day, actually, for Bernie Sanders.
All right.
This year, as you are probably well aware, it's going to be nuts.
The Democrats keep trying one way or another to get Trump out of office.
Who knows?
They may even try beating him in an election.
That's something they've never done before, but that may be a new idea they get.
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The mailbag is tomorrow, so you will sound like that one.
Just become a crazed lunatic.
She has, but we love her anyway.
You will sound just like that when all your problems are solved.
So the Iowa was not the only fiasco on the left.
I think we should point that out.
I mean, let's not forget that the impeachment fiasco is still going on and that is actually circling the drain.
I think the vote on that is tomorrow.
So Trump will give his State of the Union address tonight and then the vote that will undoubtedly let him off the hook for this not.
I mean, I still, you know, from the very beginning on this, I have not been able to believe that anybody took this seriously.
I have resented talking about it.
Ultimately, you have to talk about it because once it was on TV all the time, all day long, it was the news.
You can't just say it's not the news when it is the news.
But I have just thought this was the stupidest thing ever.
And it's not that I think, oh, Trump's, you know, phone call was perfect.
And it's not that I think anything, you know, Trump can do no wrong or anything like that.
It has nothing to do with it.
But it's like, so the hell, what?
You know, I want a president impeached when he threatens my freedom, when he threatens the Constitution, and that you can make an argument that two things he said to the president of Ukraine about the fact that Hunter Biden is likely corrupt and Joe Biden is likely as corrupt as he was and Barack Obama likely knew how corrupt they were.
That's what I'm supposed to impeach him over.
I'm not supposed to impeach Obama for actually spying on an opposition candidate.
Not supposed to impeach Obama for using the IRS to silence the opposition during an election year.
No, not.
I'm supposed to.
I'm supposed to believe that.
And I just, maybe it's just me.
I know that other people who are brainy and smart were saying yes, well, we have to talk about this.
But me, I was staring at this thinking like, really, really, after Russia, after you pulled that whole hoax with Russia collusion, and then you tried to say, well, Trump not, you know, not being convicted, that was obstruction of justice, and now you're going to this, and we're still supposed to keep a straight face while you do all this.
Well, it devolved yesterday into absolute hilarity as the senators got up to make their closing arguments.
I made this gag about Adam Schiff in the opening about what he said, but I just want to play it for you because he really did say this.
If abuse of power is not impeachable, even though it is clear the founders considered the highest of all high crimes and misdemeanors, but if it were not impeachable, then a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in a president would now be beyond reach.
Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election, or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision whether to go to war.
Because those things are not necessarily criminal, this argument would allow that he could not be impeached for such abuses of power.
Of course, this would be absurd.
More than absurd, it would be dangerous.
Stop it.
Get some help.
I just can't believe that was Adam Schiff.
This is the guy.
I mean, this guy goes on and he lies to the press deadpan, right?
He goes on again and again and he says, oh, you know, I've got the proof that Trump colluded with Russia.
No, I never talked to the whistleblower.
What are you talking about?
And he lies again and again.
And the press goes out there like the good little Democrat soldiers they are, and they keep talking about his closing argument.
You know that the Media Research Center said that the press covered the defense of Donald Trump 100% negatively and over 90% positively for the prosecution of Donald Trump.
So you would think, anyway, since Trump is now giving Alaska to Putin, you know, he's on the phone saying, Putin, you want Alaska?
And Putin is going, no, net, I don't want, what am I going to do with Alaska?
There's nothing there.
So he doesn't even want Alaska.
But you would think Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would at least vote to remove Donald Trump from office before she loses her state because she could go home and there'll be all these Russians all over the place.
Does she want that?
But apparently she could not be moved.
The response to the president's behavior is not to disenfranchise nearly 63 million Americans and remove him from the ballot.
The House could have pursued censure and not immediately jumped to the remedy of last resort.
I cannot vote to convict.
The Constitution provides for impeachment, but does not demand it in all instances.
An incremental first step to remind the president that, as Monesque said, political virtue is a renunciation of oneself.
And this requires a, quote, continuous preference of the public's interest over one's own.
Removal from office and being barred from ever holding another office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States is the political death penalty.
So that's it for Alaska.
I mean, I'm sure that Putin was watching this with his head in his hands going, oh, now I've got to take Alaska.
I don't know.
What am I going to do with Alaska?
It's just, if you haven't got Lisa Murkowski in your corner, and she's making a good point.
She's not letting Trump off the hook.
She's not, you know, she's saying they should have censured him.
That was something Joe Manchin was floating yesterday of censure.
It's a little late for that.
I mean, that's a little bit, that's not going to happen.
But Joe Manchin obviously doesn't want to go back to his state.
West Virginia doesn't want to go back and face the Trump voters there saying that he impeached Trump.
They may lose.
They may actually have a bipartisan acquittal, which would be really, really bad.
There's Joe Manchin, who's the other one.
There's Doug Jones in Alabama, Kristen Cinnamon in Arizona.
These are people who don't want to go back to their conservative Trumpian states and tell them that they voted to impeach the president.
Then on the other side, you've got Susan Collins of Maine.
And I like Susan Collins of Maine.
Susan Collins Fights Back00:05:35
I mean, she is running, she is a senator from a liberal state.
She has won a lot of elections there.
She's got a very tough one coming up.
She's got a tough opponent in the next election.
So Susan Collins, you know, she may actually vote to impeach Trump.
I'd be a little bit surprised.
Mitt Romney is the other one.
Now, Mitt Romney, I don't know how the people of Utah feel about him.
Like, I don't know what they feel about this kind of war he's been waging with Donald Trump.
It's just, you know, it's not that you can't criticize the president.
It's not that you can't criticize him when he's on, when you're on his side.
But there's been something about Mitt Romney, and I kind of always liked the guy, but there's something about him that just rubs me the wrong way.
Trump has been so successful.
He has gone forward in this way that is obviously off-beat and eccentric, and he has that attitude that I know is not the Mitt Romney way.
But Mitt Romney lost.
He lost, and he lost by playing patty cake with Barack Obama.
There's really no question about this.
Mitt Romney had Obama on the ropes, and he refused to drive home his victory because he was too much of a gentleman.
Maybe he didn't want to be seen to be taking on a black guy, taking down a black president.
I don't know.
How dare you?
How dare I know?
But like still, but still, you know, Mitt Romney lost.
And Donald Trump has shown that really these guys have to be fought in a very pugilistic way.
They have to be fought in a tough way.
I don't always like it myself, but I can't really see where Mitt Romney is going with this.
Is he going back to Utah and people are saying to him, Yes, you know, keep hammering the president.
That's what we want.
We don't want Donald Trump to be too successful.
We want to make sure that we undermine him so that the Democrats can come back.
I don't know if that's what he's thinking, but he may go over on the other side.
We'll see.
What I like, though, however, was that Susan Collins mentioned Montesquieu, a famous political philosopher.
But Jason Crowe of the Democrats, he beat Montesquieu out with his quotation.
Our parents, we all try to teach our kids the important lessons of life.
One of those lessons is that you won't always be the strongest, you won't always be the fastest, and you won't always win.
There are a lot of things outside our control, but my wife and I have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are our choices.
It's in that spirit that hanging in my son's room is a quote from Harry Potter.
The quote is from Professor Dumbledore, who said, It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.
That's pretty good, Rob.
I didn't know you could do that.
That's our own Rob Sterling on the ocarina, I think.
Does anybody even know what an ocarina is anymore?
That is also the Democrat brand fantasy.
He's quoting Dumbledore.
He could have quoted John Adams.
He could have quoted Thomas Jefferson, but no, he's quoting Dumbledore from Harry Potter books.
Also, the Democrat brand is fantasy.
And one of the fantasies they have had, they keep throwing at us, is that we are in some kind of an emergency.
And that is what's going to be so interesting about what the White House is saying is going to be an relentlessly optimistic speech by President Trump tonight at the State of the Union.
He has a lot to be optimistic about.
He has a lot of those good numbers.
He has a lot of things that he himself has turned around in this country.
So he's going to make a very, very optimistic speech in the midst of the shambles.
This is not a good day for the Democrats.
You cannot have the fantasy that Trump is Hitler when nobody is being carted away.
You can't have a fantasy that he's an authoritarian when he keeps obeying the court orders, some of which are completely insane and really unfair.
You cannot keep asking us to live in fantasy when we know we have better jobs than we had before, more money than we had before, and we're at peace.
This is going to be a very interesting state of the union.
Let me just end with a final reflection.
This is a story that was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
I love this story.
They say, I'm just reading this out.
When most people think of Oxford, what comes to mind are images of bright minds debating quantum physics or the existence of God.
But even the brainiest sometimes need a lesson in common sense.
That's exactly what the bursar at St. John's College, the most richly endowed college at Oxford, delivered when he responded to students occupying his 15th century quadrangle and refusing to leave until the college divested its oil company shares.
The students want the college to sell the more than $10 million of its endowment now invested in Shell and BP, and they want it now.
The Times of London reports that bursar Andrew Parker made them a counteroffer.
He said, I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice, but I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect.
Please let me know if you support this proposal.
And the idea that the students themselves make a fossil fuel sacrifice did not go over well.
One protest organizer complained that Mr. Parker was being flippant, noting that, quote, it's January and it would be borderline dangerous to shut off the central heating.
Another suggested that Mr. Parker was being provocative, and Parker responded, you are right that I am being provocative, but what I am trying to provoke is clear thinking.
It is all too easy to request others do things that carry no personal cost to yourself.
The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement, which I support as a goal.
Wish Many Colleges Follow This Lead00:01:47
Just, I wish so many more professors did this.
I wish so many colleges did this.
The problem we have in our colleges is not the Snowflake students.
It is the leftist administration caving in to the Snowflake students.
It is all of us caving in.
And again, that's why we should say a great big thank you to Rush Limbaugh, while he's not feeling well for teaching us to stand up and say what we have to say.
If we don't do that, it's lost.
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