In this episode of the podcast, host Alex Blumbergert talks about the impact of the latest midterm elections and the impact on consumer spending on the economy. He also talks about a new report from the Wall Street Journal on Target s disappointing sales numbers for the second quarter and the implications for the future of the retailer. And then, he takes a look at the impact that President Trump's unpopularity has had on the stock market, and how that could have a negative impact on the company's sales and profits. Finally, he talks about why it's important to remember that a lot of what s going on in the economy isn't about the economy, it's about politics and the way that politicians use it to advance their agenda and get their message out there to the public. It's time to turn it all on its head and focus on what's really going on, and that's what's going on at Target and other retailers across the U.S. Today's episode is a special bonus episode featuring some of Alex's favorite segments of the show, and some of his favorite segments from the news and his favorite places to listen to the latest episode of The FiveThirtyEight podcast. Enjoy and spread the word to your friends and family about this episode! Alex Bergert's new book, Rules for Radicals: The New Normal: How to Win at Work and Win at the Same Time as President Trump, Outrageous Politics, out there on Amazon, Outtro: How Conservative Candidates Are Winning the 2020 election, out now and What's Happening in 2020, out in 2020 and 2020, and what's Next, we'll be doing in 2020. Alex talks about how to win at Target, Target, Bud Light, and more, and why you should be buying more Target, not less Target, and much more! - Alex talks all things that matter to you, not more Target. - and more. Subscribe to our new podcast, including the latest news and more! Subscribe to stay up to date with our newest episodes of Outtro, including our newest episode of Outposted, Outposting, Outfront, and the latest in Outtrope, out and Out and Out of Bounds, and Outward, out of Bricks! - Subscribe to Out and Down, Out and Bricks, out! Subscribe and Out! Learn more about your ad-free version of Out and out and out, and get the inside scoop on all that's going to be more like it!
00:00:00.000So, there's a lot of talk these days about whether conservatives can win anymore.
00:00:04.000And that's serious talk, considering that Republicans haven't won the popular vote in any presidential election since 2004, and before that, since 1988.
00:00:14.000It's been a very long time since Republicans regularly won popular votes in the presidential election.
00:00:20.000And when you look at how Republicans ran in the latest round of Senate races, they really underran where their numbers should have been.
00:00:26.000In the latest House races, they should have walked away with a far broader House majority.
00:00:30.000So there's always this serious question about whether conservatives can win.
00:00:41.000Saul Alinsky, of course, was the community activist in Chicago who basically provided the ideological foundation for people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
00:00:49.000He wrote a book called Rules for Radicals in 1971, talking about how you go after your political opposition.
00:00:56.000And one of the things that he said is you have to personalize every issue, and you have to polarize every issue, and you have to put your enemy on the wrong side of that polarization.
00:01:19.000And Republicans, conservatives, have shown that they can win when they actually follow that rule, when they actually personalize and polarize.
00:01:24.000And that's what they did with, for example, Target.
00:01:27.000So, fascinating report out from the Wall Street Journal.
00:01:29.000Title, Target, much like Bud Light, is stung by culture wars.
00:01:33.000Target discovered the cost of getting caught in the middle of hot button social issues in a politically divided United States.
00:01:38.000Sales at both businesses, from Target to Bud Light, suffered over marketing efforts that backfired and caused shoppers on both sides of the topics to call for boycotts.
00:01:46.000Anheuser-Busch came under fire for a social media promotion with a transgender influencer.
00:01:50.000Target was criticized for store displays of merchandise for Pride Month that included gender-neutral swimsuits.
00:01:55.000Then, when each company sort of backed off its original point, the LGBTQ plus-divided-by-sign community decided that they were going to boycott.
00:02:01.000In return, Target said chopper backlash over its Pride Month collection as well as cautious consumers pushed sales sharply lower in the most recent quarter.
00:02:09.000The retailer said it expects sales to decline again in the current quarter and lowered its profit goal for the full year.
00:02:14.000Executives said they would still mark Pride Month next year but with a more focused assortment of merchandise.
00:02:21.000That is a major corporation that is backing off of much of its social push for wild leftism.
00:02:28.000Again, if you look at Target's sales change year over year, what you find is in first quarter of 2022, they had about a 3% increase in sales over the prior year.
00:02:44.000Fourth quarter, they were down to about 0.5%.
00:02:46.000First quarter of 2023, they were about 0%, pretty much flat.
00:02:50.000And then, second quarter, absolute collapse.
00:02:52.000You see an almost negative 6% growth rate.
00:02:56.000Over the prior year, which means a massive sales drop-off.
00:03:00.000The stock had fallen about 16% this year through Tuesday's close.
00:03:04.000Backlash surrounding the Pride collection aided sales, particularly in June after Target started selling the annual collection.
00:03:09.000Sales recovered steadily in July, according to Brian Cornell, who's Target's longtime chief executive.
00:03:14.000He said multiple economic cross-currents are putting pressure on consumers.
00:03:18.000At Target, shoppers continue to spend less on apparel, home goods, and other discretionary items in the midst of high prices for food and other essentials.
00:03:23.000So part of this is Joe Biden's inflationary economy, but a lot of this actually is politics.
00:03:30.000And the way that you can tell that is because retail rival TJX, which owns TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, actually saw a 6% jump in comparable sales in the same quarter and raised its sales growth at profit targets for the year.
00:03:41.000So in other words, a bunch of people who were going to Target instead went to TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods.
00:03:45.000By the way, my family is one of those families.
00:03:47.000We used to go to Target almost every Sunday to pick up, you know, necessary household items.
00:03:51.000We stopped going there and went to Walmart instead.
00:03:54.000In May, Target offered Pride products for sales it has for the past 10 years.
00:03:56.000But this time, they decided to go with a very aggressive Pride display that was targeting children.
00:04:21.000And this should be a lesson going forward for Republicans.
00:04:24.000Pick particularly popular causes and then polarize those causes.
00:04:28.000Make clear what the left's perspective on those causes is and wrong-foot the left.
00:04:32.000And the left is perfectly willing to step into it because the left is right now engorged by its own power.
00:04:38.000The left actually believes that it can do pretty much anything in the United States specifically because they've won so many elections in a row or done better than expected in so many elections in a row.
00:04:47.000But the thing that Republicans can't do is make it hard for the center person, for the independent, for even maybe the slightly left-leaning person to even look at them and think about voting for them or think about backing their cause.
00:05:00.000And one of the things that Governor Ron DeSantis did in Florida that he hasn't been doing in the national race so far.
00:05:05.000In Florida, there are a bunch of DeSantis Democrats.
00:05:07.000Those are people who are very happy with the way he ran the state because he took a really common sense driven perspective with regard to COVID, with regard to education.
00:05:15.000These are all popular issues in the state of Florida.
00:05:17.000Now, on the national level, he kind of ran as Trump-lite.
00:05:20.000He took many of the most polarizing social issues, and he decided that he was going to run almost solely on those, as opposed to the solid governance in the state of Florida that actually made him quite popular with Democrats in the state of Florida.
00:05:31.000And now it looks like DeSantis may be shifting his campaign away from the sort of Trump-lite approach, which is a little late, but necessary, obviously.
00:05:40.000It's why you're also seeing some popular upswing among some Republicans for people like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, or Brian Kemp in Georgia.
00:05:47.000And a lot of this has to do with the idea that if Republicans and conservatives wish to win, they need to pick issues that are popular, and then they need to run on those issues.
00:05:55.000All of this raises the serious question as to what Republicans are going to do in the 2024 race.
00:06:00.000Because if they decide to once again hitch their wagon to the 2020 election horse, that does not seem like a particularly smart strategy.
00:06:09.000Whatever sympathy you have for President Trump as a human being who's been put under pressure by dozens of indictments, virtually all of them on specious charges, You can feel that sympathy and you can still understand that talking about that endlessly for the next couple of years is not going to result in victory for Republicans.
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00:07:26.000It's an easy thing to do and it's a responsible thing to do.
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00:07:31.000Now again, I feel the sympathy for Trump the same that you do, and I particularly feel that sympathy when you can feel Democrats trolling.
00:07:37.000Hillary Clinton was on with Rachel Maddow the other night and she did a full-scale 2016 elections in aisle routine.
00:07:45.000This sort of stuff, it's this sort of stuff that really gets the goat of conservatives and leads them to want to throw the orange middle finger.
00:08:42.000Not only was it legitimate, it launched a thousand legal cases against Donald Trump.
00:08:45.000The Mueller report was specifically based on the idea that Democrats could not handle the idea that Hillary Clinton had lost the election.
00:08:51.000There's a perfectly plausible solution as to why Hillary lost in 2016.
00:08:54.000She was one of the worst candidates in American history.
00:08:57.000The proof is that she lost to Donald Trump, who is the second least popular candidate in America at that point.
00:09:03.000Hillary was the least popular and Trump was the second least popular.
00:09:06.000I mean, that's how bad she was, but they decided instead she must not have lost, and so they launched a bunch of legal cases against Trump and investigations based on specious nonsense.
00:09:16.000And now, of course, Trump is facing serious charges across a wide range of jurisdictions, and those are going to bog him down for legitimately the entirety of the election cycle.
00:09:26.000I mean, when you look at the slate of cases that he is facing, it's gonna be a full-scale disaster area for him.
00:09:33.000I mean, forget about whether he goes to jail or not.
00:09:36.000Just in terms of the politics, just in terms of the money.
00:09:41.000Right now, here are the cases that are calendared.
00:09:43.000He has the New York Manhattan nonsense case about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
00:09:48.000That trial is scheduled to begin March 25th, 2024.
00:09:52.000Meanwhile, the classified documents case is slated to begin May 20th, 2024, right in the middle of the election cycle.
00:09:59.000We still don't have a date on the Washington DC case regarding January 6th and the lead up to January 6th from Jack Smith, but he has proposed January 2nd, 2024, which is just two weeks before the Iowa presidential caucuses.
00:10:12.000And Fannie Willis wants to launch her case presumably within six months of the indictment, she says, which would put it smack dab in February of 2024.
00:10:19.000So just to look at his calendar, that is a stacked 2024 calendar for the presidents of the United States.
00:10:24.000That is a calendar that starts with a legal case In DC in January, a legal case in Georgia in February, a legal case in New York in March, and a legal case in Florida in May.
00:10:37.000That's going to be the entirety of the year.
00:10:39.000Each one of those cases is going to take months at a minimum.
00:10:43.000Donald Trump is going to be consumed with that day and night.
00:10:45.000He's consumed with it right now and they haven't even launched the trials yet.
00:11:33.000If Joe Biden were facing an approval rating among Democrats of 60 or 70%, which is what Trump is looking at right now, that would be a disaster area for him.
00:12:22.000That means a full quarter of Republicans would sit it out rather than vote for Trump in 2024.
00:12:27.00053% of Americans say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee, which means the election is over if that stat is real.
00:12:35.000If a pure majority of Americans say they will never vote for you under any circumstances, how do you win?
00:12:41.000You can't lose 53% of the vote and win a national election.
00:12:45.000Another 11% said they probably would not support him in November of 2024, which leads to 64% of Americans saying that they certainly would not or probably would not vote for Donald Trump in November 2024.
00:12:57.000So what is the case that this is suddenly going to turn based on the indictments?
00:13:01.000That the more we talk about the indictments and the injustice of the indictments, which is true, the more we talk about that, the more people will rally to Donald Trump's cause.
00:13:09.000That seems like echo chamber kind of stuff to me.
00:13:12.000And there are some people who are in my industry who are going to fib to you and tell you that the more you talk about this, the more popular Donald Trump will become.
00:14:01.000Because Donald Trump was a drag on the senatorial ballot.
00:14:04.000He was a massive drag, not just in 2021, but also in 2022.
00:14:07.000When he handpicked Herschel Walker and then Herschel Walker ran basically on 2020.
00:14:11.000And it turns out people don't like that sort of stuff.
00:14:14.000It also turns out that the people of Georgia are not particularly interested in hearing that the election was stolen, and that they don't know how to run an election in Georgia.
00:14:22.000So, I understand why people are angry at Mike Pence, because they believe that Pence should be standing stronger with Trump against legal indictments.
00:14:28.000I also understand Mike Pence's view on some of this stuff, which is, well, I was the one that Donald Trump was saying could stop the election from actually being certified, which is false, and then people were threatening to kill me, so I'm not super hot on that.
00:14:41.000But when Mike Pence says the Georgia election was not stolen, He happens to be correct.
00:14:47.000Now Donald Trump says he's going to present a slate of new evidence on Monday.
00:14:50.000Now as I think, I don't think he actually is going to present a slate of brand new evidence that totally shakes things up.
00:14:54.000I think he's going to present an awful lot of speculation and rewarmed sort of microwavable leftovers that have already been examined.
00:15:03.000None of these things have been filed in court.
00:15:05.000What that really is more about is establishing that he doesn't have requisite intent to commit the crime that he is being charged with in the state of Georgia.
00:15:12.000He's gonna say, I legitimately believed I was deprived of the election, even if I'm wrong, it's what I legitimately believe, right?
00:15:16.000That's really what Monday, I think, is more about.
00:15:19.000Suffice it to say, I'm not sure that you can win Georgia as a presidential candidate after saying over and over and over that every election in the state of Georgia is rigged against you.
00:15:27.000And ripping on the popular governor of the state of Georgia in the process, trying to primary him with David Perdue, who then got wiped out by like 40 points in the primaries.
00:15:35.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:16:50.000In fact, the Georgia Secretary of State literally went and asked, through the vote, which are the people behind 2,000 mules, they asked them for the evidence of the charges that they had been constantly making, and through the vote asked them to stop asking.
00:17:03.000Okay, so here's Mike Pence saying the thing that you're not supposed to say, apparently.
00:17:08.000Despite what the former president and his allies have said for now more than two and a half years, the Georgia election was not stolen, and I had no right to overturn the election on January 6th.
00:17:22.000But here's the even more important thing.
00:17:24.000A president who keeps saying over and over that Georgia steals elections is not likely to do amazing in elections, especially because Republican voters in Georgia may say, well, if the election is going to get stolen anyway, why do I bother going to the polls?
00:17:34.000Again, the one question that Trump really has not answered to, I think, anyone's satisfaction if they're watching is, you say the last election was stolen.
00:17:55.000But at some point, if you make a claim that the election was stolen, you should have a plan to stop all of that.
00:18:00.000The problem is that these sorts of claims are not just RIPPING APART THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AT A NATIONAL LEVEL IN TERMS OF WHO THEY NOMINATE.
00:18:09.000SO IF YOU LOOK AT THE ARIZONA STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY, IT'S IN A STATE OF DISARRAY.
00:18:12.000BECAUSE HALF OF THE ARIZONA STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS ALWAYS TRUMP.
00:18:15.000THE OTHER HALF IS NOT SO HOT ON TRUMP.
00:18:18.000VIRTUALLY ALL OF THE SORT OF POLITICOS IN ARIZONA LOOK AT THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR VARIOUS POSITIONS IN ARIZONA, AND THEY SAY, WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?
00:18:25.000ARIZONA, JUST A FEW YEARS AGO, WAS A STATE WITH A REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR AND TWO REPUBL That's not evidence of victory.
00:18:35.000That is not picking the issues that matter to the people of Arizona and focusing in on those issues like a laser beam.
00:18:40.000That's focusing in on Maricopa County audits, which by the way, that audit resulted in more votes for Joe Biden than it did for votes added for Donald Trump.
00:18:50.000Is focusing in on Carrie Lake's bizarre, quixotic quest to reclaim the governorship of Arizona on the basis of presumably no evidence that she can actually present in court and win with?
00:19:04.000And when you talk to people in Arizona or in the Arizona GOP, they're tearing their hair out because their money, their money raising is gone.
00:19:15.000Michigan is getting torn apart right now because of all of this.
00:19:18.000According to the Wall Street Journal, When a fight broke out at a closed-door meeting of the Michigan GOP State Committee, a kick to the groin and broken dentures interrupted discussion of the dismal finances of the state Republican Party.
00:19:29.000The altercation last month at the Dougherty Hotel in Clare, Michigan made clear the Michigan Republican Party, now dominated by its right flank staunchly aligned with former President Trump, has descended into chaos.
00:19:40.000State lawmakers have taken to raising money on their own, unable to rely on the party at a time when Republicans are seeking to reclaim a majority in the state legislature and prepare for the 2024 election in Michigan, a crucial presidential swing state.
00:19:51.000Michigan GOP's infighting is an extreme example of the dysfunction in many states, as the Chamber of Commerce Republicans who used to define the party gave way to populists who are deeply skeptical of elites and institutions of power.
00:20:00.000Now, you could make common cause between those two things.
00:20:03.000The so-called Chamber of Commerce, you know, people who actually care about business climate in states?
00:20:06.000They don't have to be at odds with the so-called populists.
00:20:09.000But what you do need to do is pick issues that your candidates can win on and then run the parties in order to win the elections.
00:20:16.000What I don't understand is the party Political parties, believe it or not, are not supposed to be repositories of principle principally.
00:20:31.000First, The Ben Shapiro Show is supported by Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.
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00:21:11.000Okay, so, political parties used to be vehicles for victory.
00:21:15.000What that meant is that, yeah, there were a set of party bosses and those party bosses focused in very heavily on who could win elections.
00:21:21.000Then, in a populist move, a lot of these parties, Democrat and Republican, decided to devolve more authority to the voting population inside the parties.
00:21:28.000And what that meant is that the best organized positions inside those parties were likely to win.
00:21:33.000The best organized positions were often held by the people who had very, very strong positions.
00:21:39.000All of that is fine if there is a counterbalance which asks the question of who can win.
00:21:44.000However, when the party becomes a non-profit, Then you got a problem.
00:21:48.000Okay, in the non-profit world, here's the way the non-profit world works in general.
00:21:51.000I know, I used to work for a conservative non-profit.
00:21:58.000Not for everybody, there are a lot of non-profits doing amazing work, but the general non-profit model, the metric of success is what?
00:22:05.000Well, it isn't profit, it's a non-profit, right?
00:22:06.000The metric of success for Daily Wire in terms of marks we have to hit is audience size and money earned, because we are a business and we have to employ people.
00:22:39.000Well then presumably you just kind of go back to your day job.
00:22:43.000So nonprofits very often are interested in the problem of magnifying the size of the problem and presenting it as the most important problem in human history.
00:22:52.000Well, if you are the Republican Party, your goal is to win elections.
00:22:58.000But what if the metric for success changes?
00:23:00.000And the metric of success is no longer winning, which would be actually measurable.
00:23:04.000And if it were measurable, you'd be punished for not hitting those metrics, right?
00:23:06.000When people at Daily Wire don't do their job, they get fired.
00:23:09.000When people in non-profit don't do their job, very often they just stick around and claim that the problem they're fighting has gotten worse.
00:23:15.000Okay, the Republican Party is supposed to work more like an LLC than a non-profit.
00:23:18.000In other words, it either delivers victory or everybody gets their ass booted out the door.
00:23:21.000But lately, that's not the way that it's working.
00:23:23.000If you lose, you stick around and you claim that you have to stay and that you lost because the problem is just so big.
00:23:29.000In fact, every time you lose, the problem gets even bigger, which is why you're even more necessary.
00:23:33.000But that's because the problem is getting even bigger and you're even more necessary.
00:23:36.000But that's just because the problem is getting even bigger, which is why you lose.
00:23:39.000You see, it's an endless cycle of uselessness.
00:23:42.000And that's a real problem because, again, meanwhile, Democrats are winning.
00:23:46.000The Democratic Party is a party that is dedicated to victory, which is why they have been winning consistently.
00:23:52.000Now, you could design a party with an apparatus that actually is oriented toward victory.
00:23:56.000That's happened in the state of Florida, where the party is oriented toward taking political positions that are victorious across a broad swath of the population, for example.
00:24:05.000There are other states that do this, too.
00:24:07.000The New York Republican Party actually outdid itself in the last election cycle by nominating a series of pretty good candidates in swing seats and also pursuing redistricting.
00:24:17.000But if you have state Republican parties that have basically decided that their goal is to just yell at the problem a lot, and the louder they yell, the more they lose, which means they have to yell even louder, which means they lose, then how exactly do they plan to achieve victory here?
00:24:57.000It's how you end up with the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin.
00:25:01.000That was a very conservative movement, but why?
00:25:04.000It was driven at a parent population that just did not want sexual indoctrination of kids.
00:25:07.000They picked an issue, and they polarized it.
00:25:09.000I'll tell you the one issue that if Republicans run on it, they will get skunked in 2024, and that is the election of 2020.
00:25:15.000If the election of 2020 is what they choose to run on in 2024 in all of these states, and everything becomes a loyalty test to President Trump, as opposed to about getting rid of Joe Biden, Republicans will lose, and they will not lose it.
00:25:30.000By the way, I should remind everybody at this point that because of the intervention of Donald Trump in those Georgia Senate races, if you worry about Biden inflation, if you're at $7 trillion spending packages, that is because Democrats had control of the Senate, which they never should have had.
00:25:43.000And again, we should be focused on Joe Biden's record because it absolutely sucks.
00:25:47.000By the way, Joe Biden is now in the consistent cover your ass mode.
00:25:51.000So Joe Biden has now announced that he is going to be visiting Maui.
00:25:54.000on Monday. That was after he spent the entire week vacationing and ignoring questions about it.
00:25:59.000This is the way that Joe Biden's shtick actually works. The way that Joe Biden's shtick actually
00:26:03.000works is that he makes a boo-boo, and then the boo-boo starts to get worse and worse and worse.
00:26:06.000And then finally, he slaps a band-aid on the boo-boo. And as the gangrenous wound sets in,
00:26:10.000leading to possible amputation, the media declared that the problem has now been fixed.
00:26:14.000So Joe Biden and First Lady Jill will travel to Hawaii on Monday. The President and First Lady
00:26:19.000will travel to Maui on Monday, according to the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre,
00:26:23.000to meet with first responders, survivors, and federal, state, and local officials in
00:26:26.000the wake of deadly wildfires on the island.
00:27:35.000Meanwhile, the Deputy NEC Director, Bharat Ramamurthy, he showed up and explained that the Inflation Reduction Act is actually a green investment.
00:27:43.000Remember when we said that and we were told that that's not true?
00:27:45.000Because it was called, after all, the Inflation Reduction Act, and every act that is named after a thing is that thing.
00:27:50.000So it reduced inflation, even if it didn't reduce inflation.
00:27:53.000Well, now they're finally admitting that it was just, you know, a climate boondoggle.
00:27:57.000Hey, Beran, it was reported that the president said at a fundraiser the other day that it probably wasn't the best named legislation, and I'm wondering what the White House would want to call it if it were fresh today.
00:28:08.000Maybe you could call it the Economic Growth Inflation Reduction Deficit Reduction Cost Savings Act, Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Bill.
00:28:36.000They said it was about inflation reduction and that's how they passed it.
00:28:39.000And Joe Manchin said it would reduce inflation, all the rest.
00:28:41.000And then it was just, you know, a bunch of giveaways to the friends of the Biden administration, which is how this place works.
00:28:45.000Meanwhile, John Podesta, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, another Obama holdover and Hillary Clinton holdover, he says people across the spectrum support Joe Biden's green mandates, which is weird because I don't see any data to that effect.
00:28:57.000Across the political spectrum, they support the movement to cleaner forms of energy, cleaner forms of transportation, and the other processes I mentioned, industrial processes as well, because it has enormous benefits to the economy, to job creation, to business investment, To public health?
00:29:20.000So, how do you feel about the Biden administration spending, you know, a trillion dollars of your money on random crap while you can't pay the bills?
00:30:24.000But apparently the Biden administration is just going to try and get away with it.
00:30:28.000So here is Karine Jean-Pierre saying that the real thing about Joe Biden and Hunter is that Joe is just really proud of how Hunter is rebuilding his life.
00:30:46.000He is proud of how his son is rebuilding his life.
00:30:49.000And as far as anything specific about any investigation, any criminal investigation, we just are going to be consistent and just not comment.
00:30:57.000Okay, so here is the problem, of course.
00:30:59.000Well, Joe Biden tries to pass this off as just, you know, an interior family notion.
00:31:04.000David Weiss, the special counsel, who's now been given special counsel status after having tried to cut a sweetheart deal that completely blew up in his face.
00:31:11.000Well, now, theoretically, he could be going after Hunter Biden, as he should, for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations, FARA violations.
00:31:56.000Let's say that you have an employee, we'll call him Zach.
00:31:58.000There's a strange resemblance to Andrew Garfield.
00:32:00.000And every day, Zach really, he's buzzing around like a bee in the studio, you know, putting
00:32:06.000For some reason, the wires just randomly come undone and need to be redone like every single day.
00:32:10.000And then, you know, Zach will show up with the thumbnail and the thumbnail may need a few tweaks because sometimes it's amazing and sometimes like the weirdest thumbnail you've ever seen.
00:32:18.000Well, you know, let's say that you just want to keep Zach on his toes.
00:32:20.000Well, then you'd threaten him with ZipRecruiter.
00:32:22.000ZipRecruiter knows how tough it is to find great employees, but they figured out solutions for the problems you're facing.
00:32:55.000If you're looking for a placement for Zach so you don't get distracted talking about the latest superhero movie right before the show, head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire.
00:35:57.000The second annual DailyWire Fantasy Football Draft Party is coming up soon.
00:36:00.000This year we have a sweepstakes for you to enter to be the 10th member in our league.
00:36:04.000If you win, you would participate with us during the live draft and go head-to-head with your favorite DailyWire hosts throughout the fantasy football season.
00:36:10.000To enter, head on over to Crane and Company's YouTube page or subscribe to their channel.
00:36:13.000Then, like the DailyWire Fantasy Football sweepstakes video, comment your fantasy football team name, and fill out the Google form on the pinned comment.
00:36:20.000Meanwhile, again, the biggest issue here is Joe Biden's economy, which is failing for the vast majority of the American public who have experienced mass inflation under Joe Biden.
00:36:27.000And Democrats keep trying to happy talk this thing.
00:36:28.000They will end August 19th at 1159 p.m. Eastern Time.
00:36:32.000Okay, meanwhile, again, the biggest issue here is Joe Biden's economy, which is failing
00:36:37.000for the vast majority of the American public, who have experienced mass inflation under
00:37:38.000This matches the highest rate for mortgages since 2001.
00:37:41.000It is crimping both sales and refinancing activity.
00:37:44.000The contract rate on a 30-year fixed rose 7 basis points to 7.16% in the week ending August 11th.
00:37:51.000The latest jump in borrowing costs presents a fresh headwind for the housing market, just as the sector had been showing signs of finding its footing.
00:37:55.000So we have credit card debt that is stacking up.
00:37:57.000We have people who are not going to be able to buy new homes, which means that the prices eventually are going to drop because the market is going to drop, which means there will be people who are underwater on their own homes, which sets us up for another real estate problem.
00:38:09.000Meanwhile, there's a rising risk of bank downgrades, according to The Hill.
00:38:13.000That's a serious problem as well, obviously.
00:38:16.000Fitch Ratings Analyst Chris Wolf has warned that dozens of U.S.
00:38:18.000banks, including JPMorgan Chase, could face downgrades if the rating agency's assessment of the industry's health declines a little bit further.
00:38:24.000Wolf was the lead author on Fitch's commentary when the rating agency lowered its operating environment score for U.S.
00:38:32.000If Fitch downgrades the industry score even further from AA- to A+, the agency would then be forced to reevaluate ratings on each of the more than 70 banks it actually covers.
00:39:25.000Again, at a certain point, you have to wonder about that, given the fact that the economy remains, according to Ipstos, the number one issue, with a bullet.
00:39:33.000Like, 20% of Americans count the economy, unemployment, and jobs as the number one issue facing the country, followed by crime and corruption.
00:39:41.000Those are issues that Republicans should be hammering.
00:39:45.000The third issue, they say, is environment and climate, but the fourth is immigration.
00:39:49.000Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all say that the economy is the top issue.
00:39:55.000And by the way, all Americans, 69% of Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
00:40:02.000Wouldn't that be evidence that Republicans can win if they refocus a little bit here?
00:40:07.000The question is whether they actually will or whether they will not.
00:40:10.000Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to prop up, you know, elderly, senile people.
00:40:15.000Here I'm speaking specifically about Dianne Feinstein.
00:40:17.000In fact, there's a brand new court filing out from the daughter of Dianne Feinstein alleging that she is actually the victim of elder abuse.
00:40:25.000According to sanfranciscogate.com, the co-trustees of a trust in the name of Richard Bloom, the deceased wealthy husband of Dianne Feinstein, have now been accused of elder abuse against Feinstein in a recent court filing submitted by her daughter Catherine, who has limited power of attorney over the senator.
00:40:38.000The filing, submitted August 8th, partially confirmed what had previously been reported by other outlets that Catherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco County Superior Court judge and current San Francisco Fire Commissioner, has limited power of attorney over her mom, which the senator signed over to her July 23rd, 2023.
00:40:52.000The recent court filing notes this entitles Catherine to make legal decisions for her mother in certain civil-related matters.
00:40:57.000Well, in the August 8th filing, Catherine Feinstein made the striking allegation that Michael Klein, Mark Shulvick, and Verit Mems, who control the Disputed Trust, are committing financial elder abuse against the 90-year-old senator.
00:41:09.000In the filing, Catherine alleges the co-trustees didn't fund a trust her mother is the sole income beneficiary of, and they've not made required distributions to the senator since Blum's death in 2022.
00:41:18.000Catherine, who's Feinstein's daughter from a previous marriage, also alleges that the co-trustees are purposefully slow-rolling payments to the senator because they intend to benefit Richard Blum's biological daughters, who stand to inherit millions of dollars that should go to Senator Feinstein if the trustees never make the required distributions to her.
00:41:33.000Among other asks, Catherine wants the courts to suspend the co-trustees pending a decision on whether to remove them.
00:41:38.000Now all of this suggests that perhaps this should not be, you know, a sitting United States Senator, given the fact that basically all of her financial decisions are now being made for her.
00:41:46.000So her vote is making your financial decisions for you, but she is having all of her financial decisions made by trustees at this point.
00:41:54.000These are the people that we have appointed to the highest positions of power in America.
00:41:59.000Meanwhile, next week is going to be the first Republican debate.
00:42:03.000President Trump is putting the RNC in a bit of a bind.
00:42:05.000He has refused to sign the RNC Loyalty Pledge.
00:42:10.000He's expected to announce in the coming days whether or not he's going to attend the event.
00:42:12.000It's very unlikely, I think, that he's going to attend the event.
00:42:15.000According to The Hill, RNC Chairwoman Ron Romney McDaniel must now navigate the thorny situation of appeasing Trump while maintaining her control as head of the party.
00:42:23.000Brian Sychik, a Republican strategist and Trump campaign alum, says it's a distinct possibility the Republican nominee for president could simply decide to shun the RNC itself.
00:42:30.000When a candidate refuses to play by the rules, it obviously weakens the RNC's position.
00:42:53.000McDaniel told CNN's Chris Wallace recently, it's beat Biden pledge.
00:42:56.000And what we're saying, and the debate committee has met for over two years, people from Alaska to Illinois to Tennessee, is if you're going to stand on the RNC debate stage, you should be able to support the nominee and beat Biden.
00:43:05.000Everybody has to sign the beat Biden pledge.
00:43:09.000The pledge states the candidate will support the eventual nominee of the party primary, and the candidate will not participate in any debate the RNC has not sanctioned.
00:43:15.000The pledge is part of a criteria Republican candidates must meet to qualify for that presidential debate.
00:43:20.000But again, in August 2015, then-candidate Trump was the only candidate on stage at one of the debates who wouldn't raise his hand to show that he would support the eventual nominee in the 2016 primary.
00:43:29.000And there's something kind of wrong with this, you know, it's just a general rule.
00:43:32.000If what you're about is Republicans winning, like you'd like to see Joe Biden not be in office, the fact That loyalty only runs one way.
00:43:39.000That there is just expected loyalty from everybody to Trump.
00:43:41.000But the minute that Trump is asked whether he'll support another nominee, if that person beats him, he refuses to raise his hand.
00:43:45.000It kind of shows you where things stand right now.
00:43:48.000The only reason there was a need to do a loyalty pledge was because of Donald Trump, said Alex Stroman, a Republican strategist and RNC alum.
00:44:07.000It's whether Donald Trump is willing to support the party if he's not the person who's in charge.
00:44:12.000Jennifer Horne, who is a spokesperson for Trump, she says the RNC needs Trump a lot more than Trump needs the RNC.
00:44:18.000If they lose Trump, they lose the support of the Trump voters and their base for the Senate candidates, their House candidates, their state candidates.
00:44:23.000Horne also said that if Trump decides to debate without signing the pledge, the other candidates should be given the same treatment.
00:44:30.000Honestly, a debate without Trump on the stage is very likely to benefit some of the fringeier candidates because, again, those candidates are going to be able to free wheel, and they're not going to be the target of attacks.
00:44:39.000If Trump were on the stage, presumably some of the other candidates would go after Trump, and that would turn into a brawl.
00:44:43.000If he's not, then it'll turn into the lobster pot, right?
00:45:30.000It's a book by a reporter named Ben Schreckinger called The Bidens, Inside the First Family's 50 Year Rise to Power.
00:45:35.000He goes through the details of the entire business relationship between Joe and Hunter, Joe and Frank, Joe and Jim, basically how since the earliest days of Joe Biden's rise to power, he was using that power in ways that benefited members of his family.
00:45:50.000And his members of his family were using Joe Biden's name in order to get ahead.
00:45:56.000I mean, it's literally the same story over and over.
00:45:58.000Joe Biden is a shadowy background figure being used by members of his family in order to obtain benefits for themselves.
00:46:04.000And then him denying that he ever knew anything about it.
00:46:06.000And this ranges from everything to fundraising to the kind of jobs that he was able to get Hunter coming out of college and law school.
00:46:12.000It includes Things like how he presumably helped his brother obtain financing for some of his businesses, even though his brother is a complete ne'er-do-well, Jim is a complete ne'er-do-well.
00:46:22.000Somehow, this family has been clearing tens of millions of dollars over the course of the past few decades, and none of it has to do with Joe, despite the fact that none of them have any real qualifications for literally anything.
00:46:32.000The book is definitely worth the read.
00:46:34.000Again, the Bidens inside the first family's 50-year rise to power.
00:46:37.000One of the things that's pretty amazing, actually, is that if you search for biographies of Joe Biden, they don't really exist.
00:46:55.000But number two, he's like old school, just corrupt.
00:46:57.000He's just an old school, normal, corrupt politician who cares much more about his own personal benefit than he does about anything remotely resembling a policy agenda or the country.
00:47:07.000The fact that he's been able to get away with it for all of these years is, again, just an homage to the media's ability to whitewash somebody who's been obviously dirty for decades on end.
00:47:17.000Okay, time for some quick things that I hate.
00:47:22.000So this has to be, you know, the dumbest story of the day.
00:47:26.000So there's a Republican congressperson named Max Miller, Republican from Ohio, and he stepped in it after he told a Christian Republican activist to delete a quote-unquote bigoted post That's really stupid.
00:49:23.000But let me just make it clear that religious freedom means a bunch of people can believe stuff about religion that you don't yourself believe.