Joe Biden's numbers continue to fall, and a new poll shows him losing ground to Donald Trump in the midterms. Meanwhile, Biden's campaign is trying to figure out how to keep him from tripping and falling down in public, and it's getting pretty close to working out the kinks. Plus, a new report from Axios on how Biden is struggling to keep up with modern day day day-to-day life, and how he's trying to prevent himself from falling over in public. And, of course, there's a new piece from the New York Times about how Biden's doctor thinks he's got a mild case of post-fracture foot arthritis, which could have a major impact on his running for re-election in November and why it's a good thing he's not running for president after all. And, as always, thanks for tuning into HYPEBEAST Radio and MIC/LINE. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms! Subscribe, and tell a friend about this podcast if you like what you're listening! Thank you for listening and share it on your social media! Timestamps: 1:00 - Joe Biden's failing economy numbers 4:30 - Biden's economic numbers 5:15 - Donald Trump's lead in the polls 8:40 - Is there a ceiling for Donald Trump? 9:10 - Is it possible for Joe Biden to win the election? 11:00 12:15 13:00 Joe Biden can still run against Trump? 16:00 Biden's fall? 17:30 18: Is there any ceiling for Trump a ceiling? 19:40 21: Is Biden a real presidential candidate? 22:00 Is Biden running against Trump a real possibility? 25:00 Can he be a serious contender? 26:10 27:20 Is this a ceiling or a real chance? 29: Is this guy a liability? 31:00 Who s going to win in November 2020? 32: What s a good bet? 33:00 What s the ceiling for Biden s running for President? 35:00 Does he really have a chance of winning in November? 34: Is he a real shot at the White House? 36:00 Should he have a shot at it? 37:00 Do you think so?
00:00:29.000Remember, Joe Biden, like a moron, decided that he was going to brand his entire economic program Bidenomics, which gives a shorthand to his Republican opponents, to now hang the economy around his neck.
00:00:39.000They're gonna do that anyway, but now he himself has cut ads for them, saying Bidenomics is working over and over, creepily into a microphone.
00:00:47.000Like, just juxtapose that footage with all of the inflation stats, juxtapose all of that footage with the stagnating economy, how people feel about the economy, and it's not going to work well for the Democrats.
00:00:58.000These are really, really bad numbers for Joe Biden.
00:01:01.000And so if you're wondering why it is that in every major national poll, Donald Trump is running either even to or above Joe Biden, the answer is because Joe Biden is terrible at the president thing.
00:01:11.000Well, even James Carville, who of course is a Democrat, pollster, analyst, even Carville is like, somebody over there needs to wake the F up because Trump could easily win this election.
00:01:22.000Let's assume the election was November the 3rd of this year.
00:01:26.000And they said the candidates are Joe Biden, the Democrat, Donald Trump, the Republican, Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan, no labels, and Cornel West.
00:02:47.000It looks as though he is desperately attempting not to fall over.
00:02:49.000According to Axios, as voters expressed deep concerns about the 80-year-old president's age and fitness for office, Biden seemed to be taking extra steps to prevent him from stumbling in public.
00:02:58.000With a physical therapist, Biden has been doing exercises to improve his balance as far back as November 2021.
00:03:02.000He's been wearing tennis shoes more often to avoid slipping, and using the short stairs on Air Force One, entering the plane on a lower deck than before, because every time he goes up the stairs, he keeps falling up the stairs.
00:03:12.000Democrats, including some in the administration, are terrified Biden will have a bad fall, with a nightmare scenario of that happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election.
00:03:19.000You remember, this actually happened to Hillary Clinton when she collapsed into a van just a couple of weeks out from the 2016 election.
00:03:26.000According to Axios, some senior Democrats privately have been frustrated with Biden's advance team for months, citing the incident with a sandbag where he tripped over a sandbag and fell down, and noting that the president often appears not to know which direction to go after he speaks at a podium.
00:03:39.000Biden's balance difficulties are likely the result of what his physician has diagnosed as a combination of significant spinal arthritis and a mild post-fracture foot arthritis.
00:03:47.000He works out many mornings with his physical therapist, and he has to have proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.
00:03:56.000Apparently, the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Axios this isn't new.
00:04:00.000This was disclosed in a 2021 report from the president's doctor, and then again this year.
00:04:05.000So, Biden's erratic behavior, his inability to actually stick with a train of thought, and the fact that he's literally falling down, all of this undercuts the feeling that this is a durable candidate.
00:04:17.000There's footage immediately after the story came up.
00:04:20.000Joe Biden was going up the short stairs.
00:04:21.000Again, they're not having him take the long, tall stairs like the middle of the plane anymore.
00:04:24.000They're having him take the short stairs, which makes sense since he usually rides the short bus.
00:04:28.000In any case, here he was going up the short stairs and nearly tripping.
00:04:41.000Again, I've been saying for months that watching Joe Biden do a press conference or go up a flight of stairs or anything, it feels like watching Nick Wallenda cross a volcano on a tightrope.
00:04:51.000You just don't know when you're going to be watching history in the making every time he goes down or up a flight of stairs.
00:04:57.000Now again, he could survive all of that if he were well respected.
00:05:01.000He could survive all of that if there weren't a broad scale recognition that he's very bad at the president thing.
00:05:06.000That when it comes to the policy, he's really bad.
00:05:08.000And also, he's still plagued by serious corruption allegations.
00:05:11.000And there's more news breaking on those corruption allegations, actually.
00:05:14.000Like a rather significant piece of news breaking on those corruption allegations.
00:06:07.000I trust Birch Gold to help you diversify into gold.
00:06:09.000If a central bank digital currency were to become a reality, well, it'd be nice to have some gold.
00:06:13.000to depend on because otherwise you're depending on government bureaucrats to keep your savings safe.
00:06:16.000Never an excellent bet. Again, text Ben to 989898 to get started with my friends over
00:06:21.000at Birch Gold. So in breaking news, Representative James Comer, who's the leader of the GOP
00:06:26.000Oversight Committee in the House, he has now revealed that there was a wire amount from a
00:06:34.000Chinese figure to Hunter Biden, and it was listing on this wire amount Joe Biden's home address.
00:06:42.000According to James Comer, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James
00:06:45.000Comer announced the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed and obtained two bank wires,
00:06:49.000revealing Hunter Biden received payments originating from Chinese nationals, including
00:06:52.000Jonathan Lee, in July and August 2019 when Joe Biden was running for president of the United
00:06:57.000Joe Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home address is listed as the beneficiary address for both wires.
00:07:03.000He said, quote, bank records don't lie, but President Joe Biden does.
00:07:05.000In 2020, Joe Biden told Americans his family never received money from China.
00:07:09.000We've already proved that to be a lie earlier this year.
00:07:11.000Now we know two wires originating from Beijing listed Joe Biden's Wilmington home as the beneficiary address when he was running for president of the United States.
00:07:18.000When Joe Biden was vice president, he spoke on the phone and had coffee with Jonathan Lee in Beijing and later wrote a college letter of recommendation for his children.
00:07:26.000Joe Biden's abuse of public office for his family's financial gain threatens our national security.
00:07:30.000What do the Bidens do with this money from Beijing?
00:07:32.000Americans demand and deserve accountability for President Biden and the First Family's corruption.
00:07:35.000Okay, so we have now moved the goalposts.
00:07:38.000Remember, the goalposts were Hunter Biden never did anything.
00:07:42.000To, okay, Hunter Biden may have taken Chinese money, but Joe never knew about it.
00:07:46.000To, well, Joe knew about it, but he was never involved in the business.
00:07:48.000To, well, Joe was involved in the business, but only tangentially by, you know, joining for like business calls.
00:07:53.000To, well, Joe knew and he was probably kind of involved in the business and knew that his son was trafficking in his name and helping out his son, but the money never physically entered anything remotely to do with Joe Biden.
00:08:03.000To, well, yeah, I mean, the wires did have his home address on them, but did Joe Biden personally take that check to the bank?
00:08:10.000That is where we are now in this particular story.
00:08:12.000By the way, it is worth noting that at the time that this wire listed Joe Biden's home address, you know who was not actually living at the home at that time?
00:08:22.000According to his own memoir, he was living in California at the time.
00:08:25.000So apparently he was just, I don't know, using the home address of Joe Biden, best case scenario, because it was kind of a stable address for him to send the money.
00:08:35.000By the way, that would be the same home address where Hunter Biden was sometimes staying and Joe Biden was keeping all of those classified documents.
00:08:42.000Speaking of which, the Biden classified documents scandal is now apparently increasing.
00:08:47.000According to the ABC News report, the federal investigation into Joe Biden's handling of classified documents prior to becoming president has now grown into a sprawling examination of Obama-era security protocols and internal White House processes, with investigators so far interviewing scores of witnesses, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
00:09:04.000Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from Special Counsel Robert Herr's office have been interviewing witnesses for nearly nine months, targeting an expansive constellation of former aides, from high-level advisors to executive assistants and at least one White House attorney.
00:09:15.000Apparently, as many as 100 witnesses have already been interviewed.
00:09:19.000Apparently, authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden's vice presidency.
00:09:24.000It seems to them that it was more likely a mistake than criminal act that Biden took these documents with him, but they've reached no final determinations and the investigation remains ongoing.
00:09:32.000Now, all of this would be significantly less suspicious.
00:09:36.000Were Hunter Biden not receiving wires from foreign sources while Joe Biden had been presiding over the policy and then Joe Biden runs for president, he's keeping these documents in the garage next to his Corvette where Hunter Biden is present.
00:09:48.000Not only that, by the way, all of this would be a little bit less troubling if it were not for the fact That we now know, for example, that Joe Biden and his friends apparently like hanging out with, like, Iranian sources.
00:10:02.000There's a fascinating scoop from Semaphore talking about how the senior Iranian foreign ministry actually created an effort to boost Iran in the United States, and they effectively co-opted a bunch of Obama-era officials, including people who ended up in Joe Biden's administration.
00:10:19.000If you're talking about documents floating around, you're talking about suspicious people hanging around those documents.
00:10:24.000If you're talking, frankly, about lack of national security awareness or care, Joe Biden is near the top of that list.
00:10:35.000Not just Hunter Biden receiving bribery money, which is pretty obviously what was going on here, but the fact that you've got these classified documents that are floating around every which way.
00:10:42.000You can say it was a mistake that Joe Biden took all that stuff home.
00:10:45.000All right, but at the very least, I mean, he took those home.
00:10:51.000He left them in his Wilmington, Delaware, in his garage.
00:10:55.000And apparently, Iranian officials were swarming the Biden administration and the Obama administration.
00:11:02.000According to Semaphore, in the spring of 2014, senior Iranian foreign ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran's image and positions on global security issues, particularly its nuclear program, by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers.
00:11:15.000They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.
00:11:17.000The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semaphore and Iran International.
00:11:27.000The officials working under President Hassan Rouhani congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative.
00:11:31.000At least three of the people on the foreign ministry list, people who are considered allies of Iran, were or became top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration's special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of a security clearance.
00:11:46.000The documents offer deep and unprecedented new insights into the thinking and inner workings of Iran's foreign ministry at a crucial time in the nuclear diplomacy.
00:11:54.000The communications reveal the access Rouhani's diplomats have had to Washington and Europe's policy circles, particularly during the final years of the Obama administration, through this network.
00:12:02.000One of the German academics in the IEI offered to ghostwrite op-eds for officials in Tehran.
00:12:06.000Others would at times seek advice from the foreign ministry staff about attending conferences and hearings in the United States and Israel.
00:12:13.000The emails describe the IEI being initiated to follow Rouhani's 2013 election when he was looking to find an accommodation with the West on nuclear issues.
00:12:20.000And basically they just started planting people around Washington, D.C.
00:12:23.000and a bunch of those people ended up in the Biden administration, including people surrounding Robert Malley.
00:12:30.000I mean, this is frightening stuff and demonstrative of just how corrupt the ties are between foreign adversaries like Iran and the Obama administration.
00:12:43.000I mean, truly astonishing stuff right there.
00:12:48.000This is why Robert Malley, who was again brought on by Barack Obama and was an Iranian ally apparently, and also was then brought on by Joe Biden to negotiate with Iran and was surrounded by people who had been cultivated directly by Iran, That is frightening stuff, obviously.
00:13:03.000Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the fact that because Joe Biden is flailing in the polls because his policy is really bad, because he's surrounded by bad people, now he's forced to take extremely radical measures to shore up his sort of core of support.
00:13:18.000Let's imagine for a second that your job is to go and obtain artifacts like old artifacts and so you find yourself in South America trying to make your way through some sort of bizarre cave and it's got traps everywhere and as you as you're moving through this cave A giant boulder.
00:13:37.000You try to substitute a sack of sand for a statue, trying to make the weight even, and it doesn't work, and a giant boulder is rolling after you.
00:13:43.000As that boulder rolls after you, you think to yourself, man, I should have listened to Shapiro.
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00:14:30.000Okay, so, because Joe Biden is flailing in the polls, because the independents are turning away from him, because, at best, he's running competitive with Donald Trump.
00:14:38.000Again, that should be, like, every morning bell should be going off for Democrats.
00:14:42.000Democrats believe that Donald Trump is deeply unpopular.
00:14:45.000And by the polls, Donald Trump, his popularity ratings, his His popularity, unpopularity ratings remain absolutely bad.
00:14:52.000I know that there are a lot of people on the right who love him.
00:14:55.000That does not change the fact that when you look at his approval rating, when you look at Donald Trump's approval rating, what you find is that his approval rating is really, really bad.
00:15:03.000The latest approval rating is for Donald Trump.
00:15:07.000Right now, according to FiveThirtyEight, his latest approval rating is 41%, unfavorable 55%.
00:15:29.000It means that Joe Biden has to lock down that core support.
00:15:31.000How's he going to lock down that core support?
00:15:33.000Well, apparently it means that he is going to now signal to every union in the United States that if they strike, he's going to stand on their side against their employer in the middle of an inflationary wage price spiral.
00:16:03.000They want a 36% pay increase across a four-year contract.
00:16:07.000They also would like annual cost of living adjustments, which means an automatic raise, They also want their benefits plans moved from defined payments plans to defined benefits plans.
00:16:23.000So instead of you getting back sort of what you pay in plus a percentage, they want a defined benefits plan, which is what bankrupted the automakers in the first place.
00:16:31.000They also want a 32-hour work week, and everything above 32 hours paid is overtime.
00:17:07.00032 hours for 40 hours of pay, which is nuts.
00:17:10.000They also want a right to strike over plant closings.
00:17:13.000So, if the plants close because the profitability goes away, they want to be able to strike over that.
00:17:19.000They also want a working family protection program that pays UAW to do community service work if the company's shut down a facility.
00:17:25.000So, if they shut down a facility in Detroit, UAW is now going to have to, basically Ford, if they shut down, Stellantis, if they shut down a factory, they're going to have to pay the UAW workers to go to a food kitchen and work.
00:17:39.000They also want to represent workers at their electric vehicle battery factories, which are being built right now in joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers.
00:17:52.000It's particularly nutty given the fact that, again, these car makers are about to face the hammer of the Biden administration trying to force through electric vehicle transitions.
00:18:01.000So the big three are deeply reliant, as I said before, on gas-powered engines.
00:18:08.000And Joe Biden, because he is captured by his environmentalist base, believes that he can force down and cram down through government mandates that all of these companies move toward electric vehicle manufacture.
00:18:18.000The problem is a lot more of that stuff is automated.
00:18:21.000And so it means the number one profitability for these companies is going to go down because their chief sources of profit are going to go away in terms of the gas powered engines.
00:18:29.000And number two, A lot of the jobs are going to go away.
00:18:32.000So at a time when the jobs are threatened, thanks to the Biden administration, and the profitability is threatened thanks to the Biden administration, Joe Biden is siding with the UAW.
00:18:40.000So yesterday, Joe Biden went to the actual Michigan picket line.
00:18:44.000He did this because he's afraid that the UAW is not going to get out the vote for him.
00:18:50.000Sean Fain had already said, we're not going to issue an endorsement of Joe Biden because you either stand with us or you don't stand with us.
00:18:55.000And so Joe Biden, like a good little lapdog, then went to Michigan and went to the picket lines with Sean Fain, which is crazy.
00:19:01.000Again, the federal government should not be taking open sides between businesses and unions.
00:19:08.000It's their job to help facilitate, if anything, You already have the NLRB, which exists, the National Labor Relations Board, an abomination of American government, that exists to help facilitate these things.
00:19:17.000They're really just a union cutout when Democrats run the place.
00:19:20.000So actively going and picketing with the UAW, saying, we agree with you on your demands.
00:19:56.000According to the Wall Street Journal, he walked a Michigan picket line with striking auto workers on Tuesday, offering an unprecedented display of union support.
00:20:02.000As he and former President Donald Trump prepared for a fight for working class voters, Biden joined members of the UAW union at a GM customer care center, a politically risky step that makes him the first U.S.
00:22:19.000Trump had announced his Michigan visit first.
00:22:20.000Biden's team then announced that he was going to go to the picket lines himself to demonstrate again full fealty to bend the knee to Sean Fain.
00:22:29.000Joe Biden was cheered by the UAW as he arrived, because why wouldn't?
00:22:33.000He doesn't work for you, the taxpayer.
00:22:34.000Remember, the most corrupt bargain in American politics is unions electing the very people who then help negotiate rich contracts on their behalf, using the full weight and force of the federal government.
00:23:12.000Okay, well, if they'd earned it, then presumably they would have been able to negotiate this without striking and bringing the President of the United States as the pressure cooker for the big car companies.
00:23:38.000Cram down a bunch of crappy contracts, bankrupt the auto companies, make them uncompetitive, and then come in and bail them out with taxpayer cash.
00:25:39.000I mean, first of all, let me point out that the reason that the UAW had to make concessions to the automakers in 2008 is because the automakers were bankrupt.
00:26:34.000And she's like, well, I'm not going to say.
00:26:36.000I mean, he's out there on the picket lines with them, but he's not expressing a policy preference.
00:26:40.000Well, I noticed that when you endorse one side in a negotiation that generally involves endorsing their positions, that's an absurdity.
00:26:49.000All you had to do was not go to the picket line if you didn't want to express a policy preference.
00:26:52.000If I go to a picket line where people are literally striking for X, Y, and Z, and I don't express my policy preference, I just put on their hat, and I talk about how wonderful they are, and how they deserve everything they're striking for, well, yeah, I mean, he's endorsing the UAW position, but the problem is, now the White House is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
00:27:08.000Because as the economy continues to turn south, Guess who's going to get blamed?
00:27:12.000Joe Biden out there on the picket lines.
00:27:22.000Here is Kareem Jean-Pierre trying to somehow get out from this sticky position.
00:27:27.000It seems like by going to stand with workers at a picket line, the President is literally standing with them in the terms that they're seeking in the contract dispute.
00:27:36.000But when you're asked about some of the specifics of that, you seem to be saying you guys don't want to get into the specifics of the dispute.
00:27:44.000Is he not standing with them on the terms with which they're trying to negotiate?
00:27:49.000I mean, to be very clear, he is standing with them to make sure that they get a fair share.
00:27:53.000That is what he's standing with them on.
00:27:55.000He's standing with them, and we've said this, that they get the record profits mean a record contract for UAW.
00:28:14.000But the details, the specifics of what that looks like, what makes both sides happy or anything at the negotiation table, that is for them to decide.
00:28:46.000But he's a ridiculous president of the United States.
00:28:48.000Meanwhile, the line that is being used here by the Democrats is that Joe Biden is able to do this because he's overseeing a manufacturing renaissance here in the United States.
00:28:56.000Debbie Stabenow, senator from Michigan, she's saying that Joe Biden can take sides with the UAW because he's bringing manufacturing jobs back to America.
00:29:03.000That's one of the big lies that Joe Biden tells.
00:29:16.000And for the auto workers, what is the significance of the president being there today?
00:29:21.000Well, Willie, it's always great to be with all of you.
00:29:24.000Let me just start by saying it is historic that we have the President of the United States that will be joining with the union on the picket line.
00:29:31.000He's actually been overseeing the largest manufacturing renaissance in our history, for all of us in our lifetimes right now, creating more jobs.
00:29:41.000We want to make sure they're good-paying jobs.
00:30:24.000People have been creating new technologies, robotics.
00:30:27.000If it's that expensive to hire the UAW, why not just build the machines that are going to take those workers off the line?
00:30:34.000In the United States manufacturing sector, productivity has more than doubled since 1980, even as employment has fallen by about one-third.
00:30:45.000We're never going to go back to the 1950s with the percentage of people who are in manufacturing.
00:30:49.000But the notion that Joe Biden can stand with the UAW and make labor in the United States more expensive and simultaneously increase the number of manufacturing jobs, it belies pretty much all data.
00:31:00.000Meanwhile, Steve Ratner, who was the Obama administration's car czar, actually slammed Joe Biden for doing all of this.
00:31:06.000He said for him to be going on the picket line is outrageous.
00:31:12.000The progressives all said, we don't want a mediator, we want an advocate.
00:31:15.000And he bowed to the progressives, now he's going to go out there and put his thumb on the scale and it's wrong.
00:31:19.000He's in favor of the UAW getting some more benefits, but he said increasingly militant UAW is overplaying its hand with an overly lengthy and overly ambitious list of demands.
00:31:28.000This is a prolonged strike, which could lead to far more widespread shutdowns of auto facilities, could jeopardize the economic recovery.
00:31:34.000Our nearly $800 billion auto industry accounts for 3% of economic output, with particular concentration in the Midwest, where states like Michigan are critical to Biden's reelect effort.
00:31:44.000So again, that's Obama's own Karzai saying this is insane.
00:31:49.000And his coalition, basically right now, is union heads, minorities, college-educated white ladies.
00:31:55.000That is the coalition for the Democratic Party.
00:31:58.000And Joe Biden was trying to bring all that together.
00:31:59.000He spent 12 minutes on the picket line, according to the Free Beacon, with those autoworkers, and then he headed directly to a fundraiser in California at the home of a billionaire couple that funds the movement to abolish policing.
00:32:10.000So he stayed there for like 12 minutes, gone, immediately moved over to California to pick up some checks from the rich libs.
00:32:17.000So, solid stuff there from the President of the United States.
00:32:20.000By the way, the economy continues to stagnate.
00:32:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the amount of cash the U.S.
00:32:26.000household piled up after the pandemic struck has shrunk.
00:32:30.000household savings exploded after the pandemic because the government was signing people checks for nothing.
00:32:36.000So the question now is how much cash is left, if any.
00:32:39.000According to the Wall Street Journal, The easiest way to see what happened to savings in the wake of the pandemic is to look at the personal savings rate.
00:32:46.000Measuring the share of after-tax income that doesn't get spent, in April 2020 it was 33.8%, compared to 8.8% over the course of 2019.
00:32:50.000It stayed elevated throughout 2020 and most of 2021.
00:32:51.000compared to 8.8% over the course of 2019.
00:32:54.000It stayed elevated throughout 2020 and most of 2021.
00:33:04.000So, one way that economists have tried to figure out how much excess savings are on those household balance sheets is basically to add up all the after-tax income that didn't get spent since the pandemic hit.
00:33:13.000One of the more pessimistic takes out there is from the federal researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
00:33:18.000They calculate that excess savings peaked at about $2.1 trillion in August 2021.
00:33:22.000By the second quarter of this year, less than $190 billion remain, putting them on pace to be completely depleted in the current quarter.
00:33:29.000In other words, all those savings that people had saved up We burned through it.
00:33:33.000And now, the Fed rate hikes are having a significant impact on people's wallets.
00:33:37.000According to the Wall Street Journal, consumers in the market for loans to buy homes and cars are discovering that because of the Federal Reserve's rate increases, their money gets them a lot less than it would have just a few years ago.
00:33:46.000Meanwhile, those with credit cards and other loans that carry rates pegged to broader benchmarks are finding they've gotten way, way, way more expensive.
00:33:53.000Borrowers shopping for mortgages or auto loans are experiencing sticker shock.
00:33:56.00030-year fixed-rate mortgages are around 7%.
00:33:59.000That's up from 3% just a couple of years ago.
00:34:01.000This is why there's stickiness in the real estate market.
00:34:02.000Nobody can sell in order to buy again because you're not going to sell your house even if you made money on your house because then you have to get into a 7% mortgage.
00:34:09.000Buying a home or a car right now is completely unaffordable for the typical American household because you're mixing the higher borrowing costs with the high prices, said Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics.
00:34:18.000He estimates the typical American household would need to use 42 weeks of income to buy a new car, up from 33 weeks three years ago.
00:34:25.000The National Association of Realtors calculates the typical American family cannot afford to buy a median-priced home.
00:34:30.000And then you wonder why Americans are pessimistic about the economy?
00:34:34.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration doing its best to make life even more unlivable is having the FTC sue Amazon.
00:34:40.000So Amazon, which is the cheapest and easiest way for people to get product in the United States right now, is now being sued by Lena Kahn, who is a wild lefty at the head of the Federal Trade Commission.
00:34:50.000She's trying to sue Amazon on the theory that they are effectively a monopoly and using monopoly power to enrich itself.
00:34:56.000Now, the problem, of course, is that there are two theories of monopoly.
00:34:59.000One is you own to larger percentage of the market.
00:35:01.000The second is that it's harming consumers.
00:35:03.000Name the way in which Amazon is harming consumers.
00:35:06.000They're bringing you products cheaper and faster than any company on planet Earth right now.
00:37:05.000The mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leaser, he was thanking Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary in FEMA, for disaster money.
00:37:13.000They wouldn't need disaster money for illegal immigration if they weren't opening the borders and allowing, you know, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to pour into the country every single week.
00:37:22.000On the federal level, do you feel like the administration has been responsive to the scale of your needs?
00:37:28.000Well, the city of El Paso couldn't do it on their own.
00:37:31.000It's an impossibility that we would be able to fund these kinds of millions and millions of dollars.
00:37:35.000So, we've been very thankful for the Secretary of Mallorca, FEMA, that's actually given us the funding to move forward.
00:37:42.000But we do understand that funding may end and it would be an impossibility for a city like El Paso to be able to do that and make sure that people are not on the street and we continue to protect the safety of our community and also our visitors.
00:37:56.000The same El Paso mayor also suggested, by the way, we don't have any more hotels.
00:38:00.000We've literally run out of hotel space for illegal immigrants.
00:38:32.000And when I talked to Chief Owens from the Border Patrol, he told us to prepare for about 2,000 crossings a day.
00:38:38.000Meanwhile, Chicago alderman Raymond Lopez, he's out there openly saying that Joe Biden needs to get his head out of his ass.
00:38:45.000What we see here is the fact that Chicago can't sustain this.
00:38:49.000Chicago can't answer this crisis because this is the federal government's failure at the border brought to our backyard.
00:38:57.000Literally, here in the middle of the city of Chicago, in front of a police district, a scene that's been repeated 22 times over, where we have nearly 1,600 people living in police districts, in the lobbies, in tents, in the parkways.
00:39:09.000You know, you can't keep asking cities like Chicago, whether they are a sanctuary or not, to come up with the solution for the federal government's failure.
00:39:18.000Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, all of Congress need to get their heads out of their rear ends and start focusing on what's important.
00:39:25.000There's a reason that Joe Biden's approval rating on immigration is 20%.
00:40:56.000And the fact that you have an administration that has basically sicced its Attorney General, its DOJ, on police departments all over the country has predictable effects, including massive crime waves, particularly when it comes to mass shoplifting and looting, that have taken over America's major cities.
00:41:09.000According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Target is going to close nine stores across four states because of theft and crime.
00:41:16.000You mean the Black Lives Matter movement that ended with the police not being involved in any way in American life and basically standing aside as people loot stores?
00:41:22.000You mean that damages businesses and then the businesses leave?
00:41:26.000According to the Star Tribune, Target is going to shutter nine stores across four states on October 21st because of theft and threats to safety, the company announced on Tuesday.
00:41:34.000The latest and loudest example of a retailer exiting urban locations because of crime.
00:41:38.000Target said it made the difficult decision to close the stores.
00:41:40.000They include locations in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, Seattle, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay Area after Target determined that the theft preventative measures had proved ineffective.
00:41:50.000The company said it tried adding more security, including third-party guards and using deterrents like locking up merchandise.
00:41:55.000But the company also said, quote, We cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests and contributing to unsustainable business performance.
00:42:04.000We know our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all.
00:42:13.000Apparently, Target says that they expected inventory shrink, attributed to theft and organized retail crime, to reduce the company's profitability by $500 million this year.
00:42:25.000Target stores saw a 120% increase in theft involving violence or threats of violence in the first five months of the year.
00:42:33.000The National Retail Federation, which represents retailers across the country, reported on Tuesday that the average shrink rate in fiscal year 2022 increased slightly to 1.6%.
00:42:42.000That brought losses to $112.1 billion to the industry in 2022.
00:42:48.000More than 45% of retailers had reduced store hours, nearly 30% had altered store selections, and 28% had closed their location because of crime or violence.
00:42:56.000Okay, that is all because of the Black Lives Matter movement and the aftermath and the Democratic Party's endorsement of lawless policy all across America's major cities.
00:43:05.000Then these businesses leave, and then it is the businesses accused of racism because they're leaving predominantly minority areas where the crime rates are highest.
00:43:23.000There are the legal attacks and there's sort of the publicity attacks.
00:43:25.000So the legal attacks, one of the stupidest legal attacks that we've seen is this ridiculous lawsuit by Letitia James, who is the Attorney General in New York, who came into office pledging to get Donald Trump And then filed no criminal charges against Donald Trump because she couldn't find anything.
00:43:39.000So instead, she filed a civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization for Fraud, which was absurd.
00:43:44.000She was basically alleging that they had inflated their assets and their worth in order to get particular loan deals.
00:43:49.000The problem is, the loan companies should be the ones suing.
00:43:52.000Like, why is Letitia James, if the loan company doesn't like the loan that it cut with Trump and they think he was fraudulent about it, they could sue him, but they're not suing him, so instead Letitia James is.
00:44:00.000Well now, a judge has ruled that Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president's companies removed from his control and dissolved.
00:44:10.000Judge Arthur Engeron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers, and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.
00:44:22.000He then ordered that some of Trump's business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it impossible or difficult for them to do business in New York.
00:44:33.000Apparently, they allege that Trump, his company, and key executives repeatedly lied about his riches on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs.
00:44:43.000Those tactics crossed the line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump's contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.
00:44:56.000And if he defrauded the government, shouldn't they be bringing criminal charges, not civil charges, on all of this sort of stuff?
00:45:03.000Engram found, for example, that Trump consistently overvalued Mar-a-Lago, inflating its value on one financial statement by as much as 2,300%.
00:45:08.000The judge also rebuked Trump for lying about the size of his Manhattan apartment.
00:45:18.000People are just gonna go, oh, so he's just super rich, not super duper duper rich.
00:45:22.000Meanwhile, the media are agog over the latest tell-all from the Trump administration.
00:45:26.000Every so often, a member of the Trump administration leaves, gets a sweet gig over at CNN by talking about all the juicy stuff that happened during Trump's presidency.
00:45:34.000The latest bombshell thrower is Cassidy Hutchinson.
00:45:37.000Far be it for me to deny Cassidy Hutchinson's truthfulness, but I have some doubts.
00:45:43.000The reason I have some doubts is because she's made multiple claims over the course of the last year or so that turned out not to be true.
00:45:48.000So, for example, Greg Price has a good rundown of this on Twitter.
00:45:51.000Hutchinson testified that Trump assaulted Secret Service agents and lunged for the Wheel of the Beast on January 6th.
00:45:56.000Remember this one, that he's like, I want to go to the Capitol.
00:46:00.000And then it turns out that everybody in the car was like, no, that didn't happen.
00:46:03.000And then she also testified that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone personally warned her not to allow Trump to go to the Capitol or quote, we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable.
00:46:12.000There's only one problem, which is that Cipollone was not at the White House when Hutchinson claimed he was.
00:46:16.000She testified that she was personally handwritten a note at the direction of Mark Meadows.
00:46:19.000But it turns out that it was the former Trump White House lawyer, Eric Hirschman, who said that he had written a particular note.
00:46:25.000Hutchinson testified that the former senior Justice Department official Jeff Clark strategized with Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign to object to the election, but those two never met each other.
00:46:33.000She then continued to work for Trump a full nine weeks after January 6th.
00:46:37.000In her private text with friends that were reported by the Federalist and Daily Caller at the time, she joked about the riot on January 6th.
00:46:43.000She said the J6 committee was phony and BS, and begged Trump officials for financial assistance after she was subpoenaed by the committee.
00:46:49.000Then she didn't receive the financial assistance, and then she turned on Trump and wrote this tell-all.
00:46:53.000So now she has a new book out, and the media are doing an excellent job selling it for her.
00:48:39.000And I wasn't deliberate to confuse the reader, but I was in this confused fog of a divided loyalty, but knowing what I wanted, but not feeling empowered to sort of break away from that.
00:48:52.000Specific to actually moving to Florida with him after.
00:48:55.000And again, in my hindsight now, I realize that this is not normal.
00:48:58.000I should not have been thinking like this.
00:49:00.000But I did genuinely put a lot of the blame on myself, on the people that had surrounded the president, because I felt that it was our job to advise him.
00:49:10.000It was our job to stop him from making bad decisions.
00:50:14.000Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow was giving her the red carpet treatment and, uh, and asked her about all of the, uh, the creepy claims of the sexual harassment in her book.
00:50:22.000And like, like I say, she makes like a bunch of these sorts of claims.
00:50:26.000Hutchinson, one of the claims in your book that received some attention ahead of publication is an allegation you make that Rudy Giuliani effectively groped you at the Trump rally on January 6th.
00:50:39.000You say that he reached his hand under your blazer and then under your skirt.
00:50:45.000Mr. Giuliani's spokesperson has called this a disgusting lie against Mayor Giuliani.
00:50:51.000He gave us that statement again himself tonight.
00:50:53.000But I was struck by the fact that he was not the only one.
00:50:57.000Page 52 of the book, you say that John Boehner, of all people, looked down at my cranberry vodka and whispered dark liquor or red wine from now on.
00:51:06.000Then he tugged on the ends of my hair, saying, and loosed the ponytail.
00:51:11.000You describe the president, and this is not groping, this is not physical, but you describe him
00:51:16.000as telling you to add blonde highlights to your hair, which you then went home and did and came back to them.
00:51:54.000She also claims that Trump was okay with Mike Pence being hanged, which, again, people have already testified to the idea that Trump basically did nothing in the White House, so she's not really adding anything here, but she claims I hear him say hang repeatedly.
00:52:15.000Mark hands his phone back to me, the cue for me to return to my desk.
00:52:18.000Back in my office, my phone notifies me of a Trump tweet.
00:52:22.000Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.
00:52:35.000Hutchinson continues, I'm struggling to process what's happening as Mark, Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin and Eric Hirschman stumble back to the office.
00:52:43.000I overhear their conversation and suddenly everything makes sense.
00:52:46.000They are calling for the Vice President to be hanged.
00:53:10.000So there is a Republican debate tonight.
00:53:12.000Now Donald Trump is leading the field by leaps and bounds.
00:53:15.000So, the question is going to be, exactly what is the purpose of this debate?
00:53:18.000So, the number of candidates on the stage is now down to seven.
00:53:23.000It obviously should be lower than that.
00:53:24.000The number of true candidates, even for the number two slot right now, is effectively DeSantis, Haley, Scott, Ramaswamy, Pence, and Christie, right?
00:54:20.000So you presume that there's going to be a lot of fire.
00:54:22.000There wasn't any fire trained on DeSantis in the last debate, but I think the other candidates sense blood in the water.
00:54:26.000They're presumably going to go after DeSantis.
00:54:27.000DeSantis, meanwhile, is going to need to presumably fend off those attacks and make the case as to why he is going to be the best candidate to beat Joe Biden.
00:54:37.000And the more that Trump continues to lead in the race, the less these debates seem to matter, to be perfectly frank.
00:54:43.000With that said, it'll be fascinating to see the internal politics here.
00:54:46.000Because basically right now, it seems like everybody is sort of running for second and then waiting for Trump to fall down.
00:54:52.000It seems like a lot of people are waiting for the indictment to come through or for Trump to actually get arrested again.
00:54:56.000I mean like fully or convicted or whatever it's going to be.
00:54:59.000And maybe that'll knock him down and then somebody sort of picks up the slack here.
00:55:03.000So it's fascinating to see the lobster scrum, the crab pot, as everybody tries to pull each other back down into the pot.
00:55:09.000I would imagine most of the incoming is coming for DeSantis today.
00:55:22.000So, Knott's Berry Farm is a place for children.
00:55:26.000Whenever people on the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign left say they're not coming for the kids and to train them in their morality, I wonder why then is this becoming such a common sight?
00:55:35.000Why is this sort of stuff happening at places with kids?
00:55:39.000So here is a bit of an act from Knott's Berry Farm.
00:55:43.000It's Knott's Scary Farm because we are now about to enter October.
00:55:47.000And they had a satanic show involving apparently a Sam Smith knockoff in bondage gear, a male slapping the asses of other men as male and female gyrate around to the background of satanic imagery.