Style over substance? 2020 Democrats try to stand out from the pack

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Style over substance? 2020 Democrats try to stand out from the pack

From pumping iron at the gym to jumping on countertops, the 2020 presidential hopefuls are pulling out all the stops to be seen and heard. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and senior adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign Katrina Pierson react.

This is a rush transcript from "Watters' World," March 23, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JESSE WATTERS, HOST: Welcome to "Watters' World." I'm Jesse Watters, and this is a Fox News Alert. Robert Mueller has submitted his report on the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr. Fox News is reporting that Barr will deliver a letter to Congress as early as tomorrow and that letter will summarize Mueller's key findings.

Here is what else we know. Mueller is not going to indict anybody else and Mueller was not obstructed in anyway during his investigation. So at the end of nearly two years of investigating, no one has been charged with anything relating to Russian collusion, and they won't be.

ABC News is reporting that President Trump is in quote, "great mood" and told friends at Mar-a-Lago that he was quote, "glad it's over." He even hit the links with Kid Rock at Trump International earlier today.

And the left couldn't have been more wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN DEAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I think that more indictments are coming and I think they will be broad based and there will be a general conspiracy indictment.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, D-CONN.: There are indictments in this President's future. They are coming.

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIRMAN: We believe we may well have a criminal in the White House. The next step is going to the Trump family itself.

REP. STEVE COHEN, D-TENN: There was activities with the Trump campaign and Russia in releasing those hacks and guiding them to the States and localities where they came from. Some of that was Jared Kushner's responsibilities. Some of it was Donald, Jr. I think you're going to probably see indictments of both of those people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: And recall the media is saying that the Mueller report was supposed to end -- end -- the quote unquote "Trump treasonous presidency." Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: This is nothing short of treasonous.

WILLIAM COHAN, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, VANITY FAIR: Vladimir Putin and his associates -- somebody has something on Donald Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is outright treason. I mean, there is no question that what he is doing is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

WOLF BLITZER, ANCHOR, CNN: President Trump could be indicted and possibly face jail time.

CARL BERNSTEIN, AMERICAN JOURNALIST: I think this is a potentially more dangerous situation than Watergate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's that serious. I think it's that grave. I don't think anybody really can gauge how imperiled this presidency is. The end is in sight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: The end isn't in sight for Donald Trump. But the end may be in sight for those who set the whole thing up. Joining me now with reaction, House Judiciary Committee Member, Congressman Matt Gaetz, Fox News contributors Dan Bongino and Sara Carter and former Deputy Assistant to President Trump and host of "America First" on Salem Radio, Dr. Sebastian Gorka.

This is probably the best panel assembled outside of a "Hannity" show. So I'm just happy to be part of it. And I will begin with you, Dan because I know you have been chopping at the bit all day. I can just see it in your eyes.

Here is how I feel because I am a feelings guy, I want to tell to you guys about how I feel about this. On the one hand I feel like this delivers a knockout blow to the press and the Democrats who've been saying collusion, collusion, collusion for the last two years and when you couple that with a hot economy and the decimation of the ISIS caliphate, this is a two-term presidency, so the Democrats are going to have to start working with this President and not working against them.

But on the other hand, I'm pretty angry because the people that set this up, what's going to happen to them? What is going to happen to the people that set this whole thing in motion? Are they going to be accountable or not, Dan?

DAN BONGINO, CONTRIBUTOR: Jesse that's really a terrific question because it sets up exactly where I was going to go. I think what's getting lost in this scrum here after the Mueller report and the report that there's going to be no additional indictments -- you know, a lot of people who knew there was no collusion are obviously celebrating because the truth came out.

But Jesse, think about the damage here. The real case - the FBI's case was entirely based in this dossier. The dossier is the collusion scandal. That's everything, so if Mueller could not indict and vindicate even one small component of that dossier, all of the players who spied on Donald Trump, used human intelligence assets, weaponized the Intelligence Agency have now nothing to fall back on.

And one more quick point on this. Here's the key question here, Jesse, when exactly did Mueller find out there was no collusion? Because this whole initial memo and his reason for existence was to investigate collusion and that begs the question, what is that second scope memo that he got? What does that say?

Because I think Mueller knew early on this thing was a big stinking pile of dog -- you get it -- was a hoax.

WATTERS: Right, well we know that Peter Strzok knew that there was no there, there. We have the text messages that say that, Congressman, so to Dan's point, Hillary paid for the dossier filled with Russian lies, it gets laundered through the Justice Department and the FBI and through the State Department. They buy this warrant to spy unconstitutionally on several campaign officials. They throw spies to infiltrate the campaign and then at the end of the day, once he takes over and during the transition, everybody starts leaking and unmasking everybody.

There's a lot of potential felonies that happened and abuse of power from the Obama administration. Are they going to get away with it? Because it looks like, potentially they might.

REP. MATT GAETZ, R-FLA: They were getting away with it under Jeff Sessions in Rod Rosenstein. The hope is with Bill Barr as the Attorney General, there's a new sheriff in town. We had two dozen Members of Congress who called on a Special Counsel to investigate the collusion that went on with the Clinton campaign where you had hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to the Clinton Foundation to influence policy.

Also as I think Dan correctly pointed out, the real collusion here were Democrats hiring a foreign spy who was a known liar to the FBI to work with Russians to tell lies about the President to destabilize what has now become one of the most successful presidencies in the entire modern era.

And so here, it's 675 days the Mueller investigation took longer than the U.S. -- the United States' involvement in World War One and the Whiskey Rebellion combined, out of those we freed Europe and got cheaper whiskey; out of the Mueller investigation, we didn't get a single indictment on collusion with Russia that was the underlying issue.

I don't think that that the President's supporters should uncork the champagne quite yet. I think there will be negative things about the President in the report, but I mean this was a biased group of people that only looked at President Trump and didn't look at the true collusion that Dan pointed out and I know Dr. Gorka and I have talked about on Salem Radio.

WATTERS: That's right so the Democrats, Sarah had a meeting today. It was a big conference call and I would just love to have listened to that conference call.

SARA CARTER, CONTRIBUTOR: Me too.

WATTERS: God, I would love that that tape, but the point was, according to Fox News sources that they were trying to call the dogs off and it was a therapy session and saying, "Listen, I know Mueller did not, you know, produce the collusion that you were looking for, but guys, you can still go ham on this presidency with the subpoenas and the hearings in the Southern District, so you know, everything is going to be fine. We're still going to get this guy." Where do you see the Democrats pivoting to now?

CARTER: Well, they've already made it perfectly clear. They want to pivot to President Trump's family, to his businesses. They are definitely exploiting everything they can with the Southern District of New York and those cases that are there now in the Southern District of New York, but let's talk about this.

They're focused on both the election whether there was election fraud, the family, the foundation while we have on the other end probably one of the biggest, most egregious breaches with our intelligence community just as Dan said and Congressman Gaetz said with the FISA, of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, malfeasance within the FBI and also within the DOJ and we have to realize, right now there is also an Inspector General who is working on this. Inspector General Michael Horowitz, whose report hasn't come out yet and will come out probably within the next month and that should tell us a lot more about what happened during the Hillary Clinton investigation, but more importantly what happened during the Russia investigation, Jesse.

And I think that what we're going to see is William Barr, we're going to see a lot of these criminal referrals move forward. We're going to see indictments, but not of President Trump, not of President Trump's family, but of people within the FBI and people within the DOJ and people within the intelligence community that abused the law and abused the Constitution of the United States.

So the Democrats can keep pushing and pushing and pushing and they will, but they're only going to exhaust the American public's patience. People are exhausted of this. They don't want to see another two years of this and I tell you, it's going to backfire on the Democrats big time.

WATTERS: Yes, there does have to be some sort of accountability for the people that were involved in this from the very beginning. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, my theory on this whole thing is that they tried to set Trump up during the election. Trump caught them, fired Comey. They triggered the Special Counsel. The Special Counsel was just trying to cover up the abuse of power and the sting operation from the get-go.

So to me the Mueller report looks more like a whitewash of all the Federal abuses that were going on and less of a search for the truth because like Dan pointed out at the top, we knew early on there was no collusion.

DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO DONALD TRUMP: Jesse, you nailed it. Remember what we saw in those texts those messages from inside the FBI and the DOJ, "We need an insurance policy if Donald Trump wins." This is the insurance policy. Remember what happened. We had two years, $25 million dollars of our taxpayer money, your taxpayer money wasted to prove what? That Paul Manafort lied on his mortgage application? This is a travesty.

The fact is the only reason we had the Mueller probe was because Hillary Clinton lost and they had to have a cover-up for everything they did to spy on another Presidential campaign.

This is the biggest political scandal in American history and all I can tell you is when the President told me 2017 in the Oval Office, "Sebastian, they'll never find anything because there is nothing." We've spent two years on a witch hunt and the President was vindicated. People have to pay a penalty for what they did with our money and how they used the law enforcement powers of this country as a political weapon, Jesse.

WATTERS: That's a great point because if Hillary were elected, none of this stuff would ever come out.

GORKA: None of it.

WATTERS: None of the abuses. You mentioned the word "witch hunt" and that word was polled, the phrase by "USA Today" Suffolk University. Look at this. Look at this poll. "Has President Trump in subjected to a witch hunt?" A majority of this country believe yes, 50% of Americans believe yes, this President was subjected to a witch hunt, you know, about 47% say no and this is after two years of the President hammering witch hunt, hoax, no collusion, fake news and he's been castigated, Dan for the phrase "fake news."

If this report comes out and tomorrow we expect it to and it says there was no criminal collusion involving Donald Trump's campaign and the Russians, what is the word "fake news" mean? That word now has been completely vindicated and the media who's been selling this hoax as the President calls it, what do they do with it? I mean, their credibility is shot beyond belief.

BONGINO: Well, I'll tell you what it means. It means that Donald Trump may be the first higher up government official to take on the entire swamp, weaponized Intelligence Community and the Democrat media complex, Jesse, and win.

WATTERS: Yes.

BONGINO: For all the people who say, "Oh, he should stop tweeting." Fine, I don't care about his tweets. You're entitled to your opinion, but there's no question his 52 million followers got the message that this was a witch hunt because it was.

And Jesse, one more thing on this, I mean, listen people are getting tired of the Democrats changing the goalpost. First, it was treason, then he was a traitor, then it was collusion, then it was obstruction. They've come up empty-handed on every single one of these. Obstruction is dead in the water. McCabe has already testified in the Hill under oath. There was no effort to obstruct the investigation and Comey's own memos say that Trump asked him to look at his quote "satellites" if they were doing anything wrong. Obstruction is dead in the water. It's nonsense.

WATTERS: All right, well you bring up something else that they've been wrong about. Remember how they talked about how Trump was interfering with the investigation and was firing Mueller at any moment? Let's listen to some of that sound and then Congressman Gaetz can react.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN BURNETT, ANCHOR, CNN: President Trump ordered the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller last June.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why he moved to fire Robert Mueller.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That the President sought to have Mueller dismissed.

ANDERSON COOPER, ANCHOR, CNN: An effort to fire Mueller.

CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN: His attempt to fire Mueller.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trying to stop Robert Mueller from doing his job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: All right, so the report already said that Mueller was not obstructed in any way whatsoever by the White House or the Department of Justice, Congressman. I mean, these people, how wrong can you be?

GAETZ: It shows, Jesse, that the witch hunt continues. They were wrong about the President's intentions, the President's actions. They were wrong about Russia. I mean the entire Russia narrative is like the Democrats' own version of the Fire Festival. It's all hype and build-up, but no substance.

And I suspect that this will go on. The Democrats have launched an 81- pronged investigation into every element of the President's life because they need something to talk about and in the absence of evidence, they have to continue to stoke their base with the theory that they're going to be able to undo an election that Donald Trump won in historic fashion, and I think that voters who want to see better healthcare, better roads, better trade deals, who want to see wars ended and an American economy rebuilt are actually going to appreciate this President for maintaining focus on the lives of the American people, while Democrats have been so impacted by Trump derangement syndrome that they haven't been able to focus on anything else.

WATTERS: Congressman, I'm glad you brought that up because I was on "The Five" yesterday right when this was breaking and I said, "Regular Americans, they care about their NCAA picks, their brackets; they care about spring vacation, what's on Netflix," and then I got hammered over at MSNBC saying, you know, "How dare Watters, you know, put down the American people." These people live in a bubble.

The exit polls from 2018, Russia wasn't even on the list. No one even cares about Russia collusion outside of the swamp and partisans like, you know, you and I, but you know, people on the street don't talk about the dossier and Russia and the Kremlin. They don't talk about that and the media has built this up so much that people on MSNBC were actually crying, reporting the news last night. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF.: I certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.

BLUMENTHAL: He was colluding with the leader of a hostile power.

REP. MAXINE WATERS, D-CALIF.: So much involvement, so many connections with the Kremlin.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, D-CALIF.: It's so obvious that they were eager to collude with Russia, now we're seeing the evidence that there was a conspiracy to cover up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Well, that was the wrong video but that was the Russia collusion allegation that we heard for many years. This was Rachel Maddow crying last night. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, ANCHOR, MSNBC: As far as this letter goes from the Attorney General, Bill Barr tonight, Barr says he never exercised that power. He is notifying Congress. Formerly, there was never anything the Special Counsel sought to do that Bill Barr stopped Mueller from doing, and that's fascinating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Oh, and she was tearing up and I think, Sara, the person that tweeted that out actually got banned from Twitter, I guess, you can't even do that anymore. I don't know what to say.

CARTER: I don't know what to say either, Jesse. I mean, this is so insane. I feel like I'm living in upside-down land. I feel like -- and I think I've said this to you before, if President Trump ate borscht at a restaurant in New York City, they would want to indict him for it. It's just insane.

I remember election night, I remember being there at the hotel -- I was, you know, at the Trump victory party waiting for the results like everyone else and as they started to pour in, I looked over and I just saw reporters with their mouths hanging open, tears coming out of their eyes, not because they were happy, but because they were astonished. They thought -- I mean, they literally believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win.

WATTERS: Now this is this whole thing has been a reality check for the left.

CARTER: That's right.

WATTERS: Dr. Gorka, you have 30 seconds left, any last words for the people watching tonight.

GORKA: I wish it were a reality check. These people live in an alternate universe. It's the "Twilight Zone." It's "Alice in Wonderland," but we can laugh about this stuff, Rachel Maddow and everything else, but this is a very serious issue. We have people who call the President a traitor who are on Congress. They need to be punished in 2020 at the polling stations.

WATTERS: They definitely need to wise up. All right, guys. Thank you very much.

Up next, Democrats getting weird on the campaign trail. Wait until you see this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: The 2020 race getting more interesting by the day. The Democrats all vying for attention, pulling bizarre stunts and standing out in ways that are just plain weird. Here are some of this week's highlights.

We begin with Kristen Gillibrand pumping iron at the gym, calling attention to her t-shirt, remember referring to a moment last month where one ignored her at an event just trying to get some Ranch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... base and the grassroots care about -- sorry, ma'am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sorry, I am just trying to get some Ranch.

GILLIBRAND: Go ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: So she is most famous for people ignoring her. Also now, Beto O'Rourke, full of some very strange behavior. He's taking his campaign to new heights, one countertop at a time, but the restaurant manager is not too happy with Beto's theatrics since customers eat on the counters that he's stepping all over.

But Beto isn't the most sanitary guy. He reportedly ate New Mexican dirt for its regenerative properties after losing to Ted Cruz.

Then there's Cory Booker getting a little too personal, sitting down with Ellen gushing about his new so-called love connection with actress Rosario Dawson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER, D-N.J., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She is just a deeply soulful person and has taught me a lot of lessons about love already and that sometimes you show the greatest strength when you make yourself vulnerable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Speaking of personal moments, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper sharing this story about watching porn with his mom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN HICKENLOOPER, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I didn't know what the next movie was. We thought was a little naughty, but we didn't think it was that bad. You want to "cum" and it's an X movie, I don't know -- you know, I just -- I was sure that she wouldn't say no. I made a mistake. So I took my mother to see "Deep Throat."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: You've got to respect his honesty, I guess, then there's 2020 long shot, Andrew Yang getting some traction this week for his progressive platforms including universal basic income, but it's his position on a touchy topic making headlines. "The Daily Beast" writing this, "Andrew Yang upstart Democratic Presidential candidate comes out against circumcision." We're just going to leave that there.

Meanwhile speculation building about a Biden 2020 run. The former VP hasn't officially announced yet, but is reportedly already considering naming a VP right out of the gate. Stacey Abrams, the Democratic who couldn't even win Georgia's governor's race last year.

Joining me now, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci and senior adviser to the Trump campaign, Katrina Pierson. All right, Anthony knows this better than anybody. You either have buzz or you try to create buzz and these people are just trying to create it and you can't really create a movement.

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Or you actually accidentally step in buzz, too, it's in there as well.

WATTERS: That's right. So let's say Gillibrand at the top, you know, can we pull up the video of her, so I think these were dumbbell flies, incline maybe 15, she's got going there. I thought she was for gun control. Look at those pipes, Smooch.

SCARAMUCCI: Yes, it's not doing it for me. I've just got to be honest with you, yes, I mean, she's not going to make the next Jane Fonda fitness a video, but I mean, the thing about her which I find fascinating is the level of lack of self-awareness.

I mean, you and I know we have some level of self-awareness about our bone headedness, but her, he actually thinks she could be President, so I just think it's funny.

WATTERS: I predict she'll be the first one to drop out on the Democratic side. Katrina --

SCARAMUCCI: Yes, she's got no shot.

WATTERS: No shot. No shot.

SCARAMUCCI: She is not even on the board for casino purposes.

WATTERS: No, no. She's not even a long shot. Katrina, so you at someone like Gillibrand and then you look at Cory Booker who, you know, perhaps he is romantically involved with Rosario Dawson. It just seems a little staged considering he announces he is running for President and then confirms on "Ellen" he's dating a famous Democrat activist from Hollywood. Are you buying it?

KATRINA PIERSON, SENIOR ADVISER TO TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: No, Jesse. Full disclosure, I to dip my pizza in Ranch, but I also say that you mentioned Cory Booker, but he also did this after this #MeToo allegation that's been floating around out there, but he doesn't have to worry because Ellen DeGeneres gave him permission not to get married before he's elected.

So we're going to have to see how that goes, but I actually have a different theory about all of the chaos that's going on, on the left and these contenders who are competing for the most outrageous claim of the week, still can't quite get over the circumcision prohibition or watching a dirty movie with your mother who sat all the way through it, but I will say perhaps, this is all just a tactic sort, a sort of a strategy to distract from the real issues because as long as we're talking about this, they're not talking about the policies that they want to promote.

WATTERS: Well and the policies they want to promote are completely out of the mainstream and notice, they're not talking about the economy. They're talking about these little things like circumcision, not a little thing to a lot of people, a big thing, but nevertheless.

Anthony, can you believe that neither the son nor the mother didn't leave the X-rated movie. They actually sat and watched the whole thing. Is this oversharing a symptom of the Democrats desperation?

SCARAMUCCI: Well or they're basically trying to get out there, out of a conventional style box because one other thing the President has going for him that's so successful because he's not a politician and he's done so many unconventional and frankly, he's lived a great life and so they're trying to say like cuckoo la-la things in an effort to become less quote/unquote "standardized, standard-issue politicians," and so I think that's the move that they're trying to do strategically.

WATTERS: What about Joe Biden.

SCARAMUCCI: That's obviously not going to work either because that's not authentic. One thing you can say about the President is he's very authentic.

WATTERS: Yes, sometimes people say he is too authentic.

SCARAMUCCI: Yes, well, I love that about him. You love that about him.

WATTERS: It could get him in trouble. Of course, you do, because you're just as authentic as he is.

SCARAMUCCI: Oh, yes. That's why we both get in trouble when we can giggle at the act that it is, but Joe Biden, again, I think he's trying to bring in a younger Vice-Presidential person because Joe has got three things that are not going for him. He is male. He is pale and he is stale. With that combination, it's not going to help him in that party right now at this time.

WATTERS: Yes, Katrina, is this pandering to the African-American community by naming a VP a female, an African-American woman so early. I mean, is this like -- is this lazy because he doesn't want to campaign that hard? He's just going to send her out to do the dirty work?

PIERSON: Well absolutely, Jesse, and not only is this pandering, but I'm kind of curious as to why these Democrats are toying around with Democrats who lost in red states? Biden is going to have to compete against Beto, which is the guy that the media is propping up to take over his centrist position, so what does he do? He goes out and finds a very liberal black female hoping that it's going to balance him out and I think it's a non- starter.

WATTERS: All right, Anthony and Katrina, thank you guys very much.

SCARAMUCCI: Great to be here.

PIERSON: Great to be here.

WATTERS: All right, up next, Ben Shapiro breaks down how desperate Democrats are to beat Trump. We will show you a radical they're getting.

AISHAH HASNIE, CORRESPONDENT: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Aishah Hasnie. A dramatic rescue is underway right now off the coast of Norway after a cruise ship sent out a mayday call following some engine problems. This video here shows crews using helicopters to evacuate 1,300 passengers from the Viking Cruise Ship. So far a hundred people have been brought to safety. The problems began as rough weather hit the country's coast. Authorities say a storm with high waves is preventing them from using lifeboats to bring people ashore.

Experts are warning the massive flooding hitting the Midwest is far from over. They say it could last for months as warmer temperatures melt more snow on top of the rainfall. The flooding is being blamed for three deaths. Thousands of people have also been forced from their homes as a result of rising levees. I'm Aishah Hasnie, now back to "Watters' World."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every vote matters. We can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.

BOOKER: Term limits for Supreme Court justices might be one thing to give every President to have the ability to choose three with people holding on to those seats in ways that I don't think is necessarily healthy.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Democrats so desperate for a competitive edge against the President. They've resorted to changing up the rules like pushing for an end to the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court and even lowering the voting age. Tell me does this kid here on your screen who looks like around 16 years old lighting himself on fire, do you think his brain is functioning at a level high enough to cast a vote for President? And I wonder who he'd vote for?

Regardless Ben Shapiro is the editor-in-chief of dailywire.com and the author of "The Right Side of History." He joins me now. We're going to get to the book in a second, Ben, but I don't know what they're doing. If I were a Democrat running for President, I'd differentiate myself and I'd say, "Guys, I don't need to change the rules. I'm going to beat Donald Trump in 2020 with the rules as they are and I'm going to get over 300 electoral votes and that's how it's done."

BEN SHAPIRO, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, DAILYWIRE.COM: I mean that's exactly right, but it does show where the passion of the base is because I feel like a lot of these candidates, they all know none of this is going to change before the election or long after the election for that matter, so this is really most about pandering to the base and what you see is this bizarre scenario where one candidate will race out to the left on an issue and then all the other candidates like lemmings will immediately race out to the left to follow that person. Well, there is a cliff out there and eventually you're going to end up over it.

WATTERS: That's right. They did that with the Green New Deal. They've done that with marijuana, with reparations, with prostitution. Hopefully though they don't run off the circumcision cliff because that could get really terrifying. Do you think that this just shows that they don't believe they can beat Donald Trump in 2020? You've got a hot economy. They're not talking about that.

The word on the street is the Mueller report might not be the explosive result that they've been hoping for to now like shimmy around the edges and pander to the base with these sort of weird constitutional changes, I just think they look weak and insecure.

SHAPIRO: Well, I mean there is certainly a feeling that they are not quite as strong as they seem to be. As I say, I think that a lot of these candidates are still relatively confident they can run at least competitively with President Trump, but it's not betraying a whole lot of confidence when every five seconds you're talking about changing the electoral system or changing the age of voting or getting rid of fundamental American institutions. We all know they wouldn't be talking about any of these things if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016. So it's all just political partisanship.

WATTERS: That's a great point you mentioned going after institutions. They're always accusing President Trump of trying to take down institutions. They're just doing the same things with the ones they don't like.

There is a report in POLITICO that really caught my attention and it says, POLITICO projects Trump 2020 landslide based off economic models. I want to show you a quote here. It's from the report, "If the election were held today, he'd likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking Presidential winners and losers."

And Ben, as you and I know, you can't really handicap Donald Trump because he's such an unorthodox politician, but seeing what you've seen in terms of the economy and as we mentioned at the top of the Caliphate being destroyed, how do you break down 2020?

SHAPIRO: You know I've stopped betting on elections because I lost too much money on the last one, frankly. But when it comes to 2020, my view of this is, it has always been that if President Trump could get the public to focus on his record and focus on Democrats, then he'll win. If it turns into a referendum on Trump's personality, then he's got a problem, which is why the best thing that he could do is simply stand there and point -- just point at the Democrats and then with his other hand, point at his economic and foreign policy record and I think he would do really well.

This is the conventional wisdom for a long time, I think it's basically correct. President Trump alienating suburban women and young people is largely a personality issue. It is certainly not a record issue.

WATTERS: All right, so you've got this great new book out. Dana Perino has already probably finished it. I just started it, but I wanted to get your opinion because, you know, I used to run out in the street and ask people about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, they just had a poll out. It says no one even knows what the freedoms are in the First Amendment. No one has even ever heard of the Bill of Rights, one in five doesn't even know what it is.

You talk about kind of being on the right side of history. Why is it so important to get back to those fundamental principles that created this country?

SHAPIRO: Well, because the argument of the left has been that America is fundamentally an unfair terrible place that with a power hierarchy basically reinstalled by all of these ideas, that the Declaration of Independence is just a fake. Really what it's about is certain people cramming down their power on other people.

To understand that that's not the history of America, you really do have to understand the ideas of the founding fathers and going back even further, you have to understand the ideas that the founding fathers were basing their thought on because those ideas not only made the west what it is, but raised 80% of people from abject poverty across the globe, freed hundreds of millions, if not billions of people from tyranny around the globe, it has created the most prosperous, free and equal society in the history of mankind.

It is amazing. There's this profile of AOC in "Time" magazine and the journalist, Charlotte Alter suggested that millennials have not experienced prosperity. How ignorant you have to be to believe that statement and then think that the system that has built American prosperity is inherently bad, but unfortunately that sort of ignorance is prevailing.

WATTERS: Yes, well, I like how you disparagingly said journalists when you mentioned that woman's name. Yes, I think we have a hot economy right now. I think everybody could agree. All right, Ben Shapiro, "On the Right Side of History," there he is. Thanks for joining "Watters' World."

SHAPIRO: Thanks so much.

WATTERS: Up next, Larry Elder on this week's edition of media malpractice.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: Media bias running rampant among the mainstream media and former ABC newsman Ted Koppel calling it out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TED KOPPEL, JOURNALIST: When you talk about "The Washington Post" these days, we are talking about organizations that I believe have in fact decided as organizations that Donald J Trump is bad for the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Joining me now radio show host, Larry Elder. All right, Larry, I think I know why it's so personal with the media and why they hate him so much, it is because he's tearing apart the Messiah's legacy. Barack Obama was loved by these people. It's in tatters. He's putting all these people on the Supreme Court. He proved all the pollsters and the prognosticators wrong on Election Day. He's Teflon when it comes to political correctness. They can't take him out like that and he just goes over their head with Twitter and makes them feel useless. So that's why they're so angry at him and that's why they despise him so very much.

LARRY ELDER, RADIO SHOW HOST: I would also add, Jesse, they're also angry because they know they helped to create him. Remember all the free publicity they gave him. They thought it was a joke at first. And every time they put him on the poll, their ratings went up and they just thought for sure he was not going to go all the way, so no harm no problem. Surprise, surprise.

And then of course, he viciously went after the media for their bias. It was about time a President has done that and he's done it effectively and as you pointed out, he's got 60 million followers on Twitter, so he can go around CNN, go around MSNBC and get his message to the people and they hate that.

WATTERS: Right, no one has punched back at the media ever, Republican or Democrat, so they don't know how to handle it. You talked about before, you know how vicious and nasty they are. Think about the things that they've said about the First Lady? What about the things they've said about Ivanka? The C-word. I mean they put out this dirty dossier which now caused two years of total chaos and they tried to Bourke his Supreme Court justice.

To say that they're just holding him accountable is not true. I mean these people are actively cheerleading his impeachment and I think Ted Koppel hit the nail right on the head.

ELDER: Well that's right. They are actively cheering for this man's impeachment. I've never seen the like of it. Now, the media has never liked Republicans. They attacked Ronald Reagan, Walter Cronkite went after Ronald Reagan after he retired. He went after George W. Bush and accused Bush of arrogance for the Iraq War.

So they've always disliked Republicans, but this is a whole another level of disdain and again, it's because they created Trump. They regret it. They feel guilty about it and now they feel responsible to take him down.

WATTERS: That's true. All right, just to show everybody how villains and heroes are framed in today's media. You remember the New Zealand shooting the other day. Some prankster gets up, some New Zealand senator said some really nasty thing about Muslims, he then cracks an egg on him. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRASER ANNING, SENATOR, AUSTRALIA: And people are getting attacked in their own --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: So egg boy is famous. The media loves this guy showering him with love and affection. He has raised like 50 grand from his GoFundMe thing and I remember the Covington kid close to the same age did nothing. He just stood there in the face of someone very aggressive and he was vilified as some sort of racist.

ELDER: Yes, and remember when that Iraqi reporter through two shoes at George W. Bush and he ducked and the media laughed at all of that. This is how they roll. The reason they cheer the egg boy is because of the statements that were made by the politician that were anti-immigrant and so they made a hero out of him. They assumed that the kid from the school, Covington was a racist and so they were mocking him. So it depends on whether or not they agree with the left side's point of view.

WATTERS: They choose sides before they even know what the facts. Hey, Larry, thank you very much.

ELDER: Thank you.

WATTERS: All right up next, Beto and Liz Warren and Diamond and Silk's crosshairs.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: Liz Warren back in the hot seat this week after throwing her family under the bus. The senator seeming to blame her parents for her DNA debacle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRENNA BREELAND, LAWYER AND U.S. ARMY RESERVE OFFICER: How do you respond to people who think that regardless of the underlying facts, the way you handled the question of your Native American heritage was tone-deaf, offensive and indicative of a lack of Presidential tact.

WARREN: Well, you know, I grew up in Oklahoma. I learned about my family from my family and based on that, that's just kind of who I am and I do the best I can with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Joining me now, Diamond and Silk. Wow. Throwing mom and dad under the bus. That's a big no-no where I come from.

DIAMOND, VIDEO BLOGGER: It is a big no-no and you know who she is, is a liar. You know she perpetuated this story about her heritage and it turned out to be a lie, but you have to understand now, Elizabeth Warren is also pushing for reparations. We want to know why.

So maybe it's something in her family history that is horrible that she don't want the public to know about, but she wants to atone and sort of amend all of that and make all of that go away with the reparations push.

But Elizabeth Warren did all of this to herself.

SILK, VIDEO BLOGGER: That's right.

WATTERS: That's right, I mean, her parents didn't tell her she was Native American. They said she was a very small part Native American. I mean, she's fairly white. I mean look at her. She's a white woman. Anyway, all right, we've had enough of Liz Warren. It's almost every week she does something silly.

Beto, he went down to New Mexico to eat some regenerative dirt to kind of cleanse his palate and find himself after he lost the Senate race in Texas to Senator Ted Cruz. Ladies, who eats dirt on purpose?

DIAMOND: Well, first of all, he may have a condition called pica, so he don't need to be running for President. He needs to be running to the nearest doctor to see what's wrong with him.

SILK: That's right.

DIAMOND: Or he may have you know a mental illness, we don't know, but we don't need him to be President.

SILK: But my question is, was the dirt fertilized? And what was it fertilized with?

WATTERS: Wow, I mean he's already in trouble for hopping up on diner countertops and making those things dirty, now he's eating dirt. I also heard another report he took stuff from his kid's diaper and gave it to his wife in a bowl and called it avocado to punk her.

DIAMOND: That's a mental illness. Listen, we don't need him running for President. He needs to run to the nearest doctor.

SILK: Mental institution.

WATTERS: Okay, I know you're not allowed to diagnose people's mental health on television, but I don't know, guys, Beto.

SILK: That is --

WATTERS: Beto, we're worried about you, baby. Ladies, thank you very much. Up next, "Last Call."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: Time now for "Last Call." We came across a video on Twitter, one of the wildest things I've ever seen. Check out this footage from a little while ago, all right. A man who appears to be just a little bit intoxicated busting through a security barrier at an airshow, running away from security, then climbing into an airplane and taking it for a ride. He gets the plane off the ground. He wobbles from side to side. You'd think he's going down at one point. He actually takes it straight up vertical in the air, but he barely hangs on, all right. But not all is it seems. The pilot isn't drunk at all. He's a flying ace who does this all for fun. "Gotcha."

That's all for us tonight. Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and remember, I'm Watters, and this is my world.

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