Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan steps down. The Trump probe pushes the president toward precipitous action.

And James Comey's book is a coming. We'll have all of it. This is the Ben Shapiro show.

So we do have a lot to get to today. And we'll get to all of it in just a second. First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at LegalZoom. So it is a fact of life.

Attorneys are really, really expensive. I know because I am one. You're likely to pay around 300 bucks an hour for even a mediocre to decent attorney. There is just one reason why smart business owners turn to legal Zoom. Over two million Americans have used LegalZoom to start their businesses with LLC's incorporation and more. But even after your business is set up, up, legal zoom can still help you out. Things like lease agreements, changing tax laws, contract reviews. All of these things are part of owning your own business, as you know, if you own business. But these are precisely the kinds of legal hurdles that take time and money away from growing your own business, which is why LegalZoom has actually created something new. It's called their business legal plan. With it, you get legal advice for your business from vetted independent attorneys and tax professionals available in every state. You also receive access to NDAs, lease agreements, and more. And the best part is that you're not going to get charged by the hour since LegalZoom is not actually a law firm, so you're not going to be shelling out $2,000 for a contract when you don't have to. Instead, you pay just one low upfront price. Check out LegalZooms, business legal plan, at legalzoom.com now and get special savings when you enter Ben at checkout. LegalZoom.com and enter Ben at checkout. LegalZoom is where life meets legal. LegalZoom.com. And again, enter a code, Ben at checkout. and you can check out some special savings on their business legal plan.

It really is fantastic because, you know, for most of the time legal zoom's been around, you've really been using it for wills and trust in sort of simple forms, but now you can actually use it for legal advice itself, end around those law firms and save yourself time and money, legal zoom.com and use that promo code, Ben, at out for some special savings and also to let them know that we sent you. Okay, so Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, is now out. And what's been fascinating to see is how the left and how the media have reacted to Paul Ryan leaving. So for a long time, they were looking at Paul Ryan as though he was the future of the party. He was the alternative to Trump. And there are a lot of people who are thinking that this was a Trump-Ryan battle. That was the battle that really mattered. Now, listen, President Trump won the presidency, and that battle ended in a certain way with a rapprochement, which is that President Trump was going to be the attitude of the party, and Paul Ryan was going to be the idea man of the party. And that's essentially how things worked for the first year, because let's be real, most of Trump's

sort of heretical priorities, you know, the things like trade wars or infrastructure plans,

those things didn't go anywhere with Paul Ryan in the House. The stuff that actually did move

were some regulatory reform measures, were the tax cuts, the attempt to restructure entitlements

in the tax bill, all of that was Paul Ryan stuff. So what you actually got was Paul Ryan

type governance in many areas and Donald Trump style rhetoric. That was the sort of agreement that

Republicans came to. But with Ryan out, now what you're seeing is an attempt to recast this entire battle as a battle between Ryan and Trump, even though Ryan was actually pushing a lot of Trump's priorities and Trump was signing a lot of Ryan's priorities. That doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. And this misread, I think, is an attempt to paint everyone in the Republican Party as sort of beholden to everything bad about Trump.

See, this is the goal of the left now. So the left tried to do this in 2016 by calling everybody a deplorable who supported President Trump. Now what they're attempting to do is they're attempting to say that anyone who even tangentially worked with President Trump actually made a Faustian bargain with President Trump. This is the tenor of the media coverage. And I don't think that that's correct. I don't think it's a Faustian bargain at all to say, listen, I don't like President Trump's character. I don't like what he's been doing on character, but I like a lot of his policy. That doesn't seem like a Faustian bargain at all. That seems like normal politics on a pretty daily basis in Washington, D.C., where everybody sucks and where the politics is what matters in the end. The policy is what's supposed to matter in the end. But Paul Ryan was asked about this by Jake Tapper. Tapper on CNN said to Ryan, you know, did you make a Faustian bargain with President Trump? I'm really proud of the accomplishments we have here. And so I don't see this as some Faustian bargain, devil's bargain or whatever it is you call it. I see it is the country said, go fix these problems. You guys get the majority in the House. You get the majority in the Senate. Here's the presidency. Now go do something with it. That's what we're doing. That's not devil's bargain. That's actually doing what the people in this country asked us to do and keeping our word. and I'm very proud of that fact. I mean, I'm wondering what exactly the media mean when they say things like devil's bargains. Do they mean that Paul Ryan has not been critical of Trump on character grounds? Because that's not true. Do they mean that Paul Ryan has sometimes soft-pedaled those character criticisms in order to get policy done? Maybe that's true. But he's also working with a Republican. He's working with a president in his own party, and he has to keep his eye on the prize when it comes to policymaking, which, after all, is his job as Speaker of the House. Tapper continued to push Ryan on this on CNN yesterday, saying, does Trump embarrass you? I know after the Access Hollywood tape came out in October 2016, Mr. Trump was asked not to appear at an event for you.

Now it's back in the news in a major way. This must bother you, access Hollywood, Stormy Daniels,

Karen McDougal at a certain point. It must be embarrassing. Well, look, I didn't even read the article.

I mean, I'm obviously familiar with what you're talking about. So we're pretty focused on just getting our work done here. And so this is something that I'll

let you guys speculate about. Right now, I'm busy trying to get things done in Congress. We've got a

big agenda here. And so that's kind of where my focus is. And I don't really have much punditry

to offer you on this.

And look, I just think the way the president ought to handle this is compartmentalize it and focus on doing your job. We've got issues with Syria. We've got a balanced budget amendment we're passing this week. We've got a lot to do. and that's what I'm focused on.

So here's what's hilarious about this.

Basically, if you're Paul Ryan

and you're just a guy

...