Russia has released footage of what appears to be a drone attack on the capital building in Moscow, and the top of the building is on fire. What does this mean for the situation in Ukraine? Is this a false flag attack, or is this part of a larger plan to destabilize the Ukraine government? And if so, what does that plan have to do with Putin and the Ukraine conflict? And what does it mean for Russia's relations with the West? All that and much more on this week's episode of the podcast, hosted by Alex Blumberg. Subscribe to our new podcast, The Dark Side Of, wherever you get your podcasts, to get notified when we deconstruct the latest breaking news and discuss the most interesting topics in world politics. Subscribe now using our podcast s RSS feed! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Subscribe in iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. If you like what you're hearing, please consider leaving us a five star rating and review our podcast on Apple Podcast. Please also consider reviewing our podcast by rating and reviewing it in your favorite podcast app! if you're a supporter of our work and/or reviewing our other products, we'd really appreciate it if you leave us a review and a rating and a review! Thank you for supporting our podcast! We're looking forward to hearing from you! Timestamps: 0:00 - What do you think of this episode? 1: 2:30 - Who stands to gain the most from it? 3:15 - What would you like to do next? 4: What do they stand to benefit the most? 5: What does Putin stand to gain from it most from this? 6:40 - What is your answer? 7: Who stood to do the most by me? 8:00 -- who stands to the most benefit? 9:30 -- what does Putin stands the most of this situation? 11:40 -- what do you stand to the least? 12:00 13:00 What does he stand to be the most in the most important thing? 14:00? 15:00 Does Putin have a point of power? 16: What is the biggest benefit from this conflict? 17: What are you standing to you? 19:00 is he not the most powerful? 21:00 Is he a victim of this conflict ? 16 :30 -- who do you want to do it best?
00:00:00.000Well, the most insane breaking news of the day is that Russia is now suggesting that Ukraine tried to attack the Kremlin, that of course is sort of the capital building in Moscow, with drones in a move designed, they say, to target President Vladimir Putin.
00:00:12.000They've actually released footage of what it looked like when the drone flew directly over the capital dome of the Kremlin.
00:00:39.000The reason I'm somewhat skeptical is because, again, everybody lies in these conflicts.
00:00:43.000Ukraine has lied about some of the things that have happened during this conflict.
00:00:46.000They lied very early on about all of their soldiers being killed off of Snake Island, for example.
00:00:50.000And Russia lies routinely when it comes to conflict.
00:00:53.000They throw people out of fourth, fifth-story windows, and those people fell to their deaths.
00:00:57.000They poison people they don't particularly like abroad.
00:01:00.000Russia is quite famous for dissembling about the stuff that it does on a military level.
00:01:04.000And the idea of them actually staging some sort of false flag attack, for example, and then using that as an excuse to bomb the living hell out of Kiev or to target Vladimir Zelensky, which they've been trying to do since the beginning of the conflict, that's not out of bounds either.
00:01:17.000But as we say, it is very difficult in the fog of war to know who is lying and who is not.
00:01:21.000After all, we still don't know who bombed the Nord Stream pipeline.
00:01:25.000At the very beginning, it was suggested that Russia had bombed its own pipeline, which made no sense at all.
00:01:28.000And then you had Seymour Hersh, who's kind of a weird journalist who sometimes gets it right and sometimes gets it wrong, suggesting that it was Ukraine that had bombed it and then the United States that had bombed it.
00:01:36.000So when all this stuff happens, you first have to say to yourself, I don't know anything.
00:01:40.000I don't know whether Ukraine actually tried to fly a drone directly over the Kremlin.
00:01:44.000In an attempt to kill Vladimir Putin, which by the way, seems like the least effective way of attempting to kill Vladimir Putin.
00:01:51.000Because from the video, it looks like a couple of drones that are not laden with enough explosives to actually damage the building sufficiently to kill Vladimir Putin.
00:01:59.000Like how do they know where he is in the building?
00:02:00.000They'd have to have pretty good intel in order for that to occur.
00:02:04.000By the same token, could they have tried something just to get the Ukrainian public excited about the war some more because they've already lost something like 150,000 people in the Ukraine war?
00:02:34.000And so now what he is attempting to do is probably ratchet up the tensions so the United States will come in and broker something.
00:02:40.000So if he can portray Ukraine as the aggressor, then presumably the West will come in and say, listen, guys, we got to cut this out.
00:02:45.000This is this has gone too far already.
00:02:47.000We can't have people attempting to assassinate each other's top leaders.
00:02:51.000Again, it's not as though Russia has not attempted to assassinate Zelensky.
00:02:55.000I mean, it was literally one month ago that Russian lawmakers were calling openly for the assassination of Vladimir Zelensky.
00:03:02.000Lawmaker Mikhail Delyagin said the only normal response last month was the immediate elimination of Zelensky and the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, a guy named Valery Zaluzhny.
00:03:11.000And several Kremlin-connected military bloggers had called for Ukrainian leaders to be assassinated and wiped out like the quote-unquote Chechen terrorists.
00:03:17.000Again, this is all well within sort of the boundaries of the sort of stuff that Vladimir Putin does.
00:03:23.000But could it be the Ukrainians actually attempting something?
00:03:43.000Because if Putin wanted to just shut off the oil to Europe, he could do it.
00:03:46.000He could just turn that spigot, the oil is shut off.
00:03:48.000So the who stands to benefit question about Nord Stream cut in favor of the idea that it was either the Ukrainians or the Americans or Ukrainian-American allies who had blown up the Nord Stream pipeline.
00:03:57.000In this case, the question is, who stands to benefit?
00:04:01.000And the answer in the failed drone attack on Vladimir Putin, the who stands to gain here, is Putin.
00:04:06.000Because now Putin gets to claim that he is the victim of an assassination attempt on the international stage, and this justifies all sorts of outsized action, and it also justifies, again, the notion that the West has to come in and broker some sort of deal before this thing spirals out of hand and a nuclear-armed state starts pointing its missiles directly at Ukraine.
00:04:24.000So we will continue to bring you updates on the situation as it develops.
00:04:27.000Again, the footage is really quite stunning.
00:04:30.000It looks like something out of a movie, honestly.
00:04:34.000Okay, we'll get in just one second to the United States military and the problems that we're having with the United States military.
00:04:39.000First, a good life insurance plan can give you peace of mind that if something happens to you, your family will have a safety net to cover mortgage payments, college costs, or other expenses.
00:04:45.000Life insurance through the workplace might not offer enough protection for your family's needs.
00:04:48.000It won't follow you if you leave your job.
00:04:50.000It's just a responsible thing to have the life insurance that you need.
00:06:29.000And that's largely because, again, Taiwan's TSMC, which is the leading producer of very sophisticated microchips on planet Earth, has all sorts of sanctions against China because Taiwan, of course, does not want to give China the military attack that China could then use to take over the island.
00:06:43.000And so China is going to have to get aggressive sometime soon.
00:06:46.000All of this would require, you would think, a buildup of the U.S.
00:06:50.000It turns out that whether the United States likes it or not, since we are the most powerful economy on planet Earth, since our Navy basically guarantees the freedom of shipping throughout the world, since it is America and our hegemony that has essentially kept the world somewhat peaceful since the end of World War II, The U.S.
00:07:08.000retreating from the world scene is really, really bad, and that means that you actually need to be able to recruit for your military.
00:07:12.000Well, one way that you recruit for the military, typically speaking, is you actually pitch the idea of patriotism.
00:07:20.000As patriotism dies, it's harder to recruit for the military.
00:07:24.000Typically speaking, the people who tend to join the military are young men, from patriotic backgrounds with military parents and grandparents.
00:07:31.000Those are the people who tend to join the military.
00:07:33.000You know who doesn't tend to join the military are people who are not patriotic.
00:07:36.000People who are only there for, for example, the college handout.
00:07:41.000But the vast majority of people who join the military are joining the military because they want to join the military.
00:07:45.000And the chief draw of the military is that it stands for the American flag.
00:07:48.000It stands for all the things that we're all supposed to stand for together.
00:07:50.000So as the social fabric frays, and as we have less that we agree on, And as patriotism begins to be seen as something polarizing, it's not surprising the military is having a tough time drawing people.
00:07:59.000You combine that with the fact that all the young people in America are apparently fat and unhealthy, and this makes for a very bad recruitment pool.
00:08:06.000And this is precisely what's happening with the United States military, which has decided, instead of steering directly into this, instead of counter-programming social media and saying, no, patriotism is awesome, come be part of the fighting force that makes the world safe.
00:08:19.000Come be part of the fighting force on behalf of American freedoms and rights, Come fight the worst people on earth.
00:08:43.000It has never been for that, which is why during times of serious war, a draft happens where people are compelled to join the military.
00:08:50.000There are many countries on earth where this is still the case.
00:08:53.000And then, the idea is that in order to be molded into a fighting force, everybody sort of gets broken down, and then they get built back up again as part of a community in which everybody is a series of interchanging parts.
00:09:03.000It's one of the reasons why, by the way, why so many people on the left are constantly talking in terms of war when it comes to their other part.
00:09:10.000When it comes to actual war, they don't like the army.
00:09:12.000But when it comes to, for example, economics, then they like wartime powers.
00:09:15.000Then they like the militarization aspect of the army.
00:09:43.000But instead, the army has decided that they are going to fall down the bizarre Adamistic individual, black hole, rabbit hole of trying to recruit this way.
00:09:54.000It's like, come to the army and find yourself.
00:10:04.000According to the Washington Examiner, in an effort to increase recruitment, The Navy has now invited a drag queen who's an active duty sailor to join its pilot's digital ambassador program because nothing says join the Navy quite like a dude dressing in drag and gallivanting around.
00:10:20.000Now, I know all the jokes about the Navy, guys.
00:10:23.000But you're not supposed to recruit based on the ridiculous joke.
00:10:26.000That's not that's not like the recruitment pitch.
00:10:30.000Come join the Navy, where you can hang out with drag queens on a submarine.
00:10:33.000Like, that really is not the recruitment pitch here.
00:10:36.000According to the Washington Examiner, as America's military faces a historic recruiting crisis, the new tactic is intended to broaden the Navy's reach of potential recruits through digital and social media platforms, according to a report.
00:10:46.000You will draw, like, two drag queens, and every young, masculine, patriotic American is gonna look at this and go, wait, your pitch is that I will be on a submarine with this guy?
00:10:59.000Yeoman second-class Joshua Kelly, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, made an announcement about becoming one of the first Navy digital ambassadors.
00:11:06.000Here is what this pathetic nonsense looked like.
00:12:04.000They are not for making sure that the seaways are clear for shipping.
00:12:09.000They are not to make sure that the Chinese Navy does not take over the South China Sea.
00:12:13.000They are to inspire people all over the world with a dude wearing makeup and a bunch of sticky diamonds on his face and a wig and making kissy face at the camera.
00:12:24.000A post from Harpy Daniels reads, I am Joshua Kelly, currently second class petty officer in the U.S.
00:13:57.000We are using all available levers in fiscal year 23 to increase recruiting while maintaining our standards.
00:14:02.000Well, I mean, you didn't maintain your standards.
00:14:03.000Your standards are now dudes who wear dresses and gallivant around doing splits in prosthetic breasts in front of other men.
00:14:11.000Do you wonder why the world is becoming a more violent and chaotic place?
00:14:14.000Maybe it's because people aren't all that intimidated by a navy that recruits using Harpy Daniels.
00:14:18.000Maybe that would be one of the reasons.
00:14:20.000Maybe it's that other countries look at us and they laugh because of that.
00:14:24.000And the only thing that stands between that laughter and that aggressiveness is the sophistication of our military tech.
00:14:30.000But we literally do not have the people to staff our current ships and we need more ships.
00:14:34.000We do not have the people to staff the army.
00:14:36.000And again, our institutions, like serious institutions, caving to the stupidity of atomistic individualism and sexual identity as like the core component of the army and navy.
00:14:52.000I struggle to even come up with an equivalent.
00:14:54.000The Army is the example par excellence of a communal organization that is oriented in the direction of a single goal in which people give up their individualism in pursuit of that goal.
00:15:06.000I mean, literally, the Army and the Navy are about go to this place and risk your life to do this thing without thinking twice about it.
00:15:13.000Like, the most individual part of you, namely your life, you need to take that hill.
00:15:25.000But before you do, I need you to dance around a little bit and do some splits and maybe wear a thong.
00:15:30.000Because you need to feel your, like, individualism is the core of the army.
00:15:33.000Individualism, what in the, what in the actual, what?
00:15:36.000Say what, and then recruitment is down.
00:15:37.000Yes, of course recruitment is down, because you can't pitch people opposite of what the pitch is.
00:15:41.000You can't tell people, join the Navy to find your inner drag queen, and then expect that a bunch of patriotic men are like, in, let's do this thing.
00:15:49.000And by the way, there ain't enough guys who want to be drag queens to staff the Navy.
00:16:04.000Speaking of being fat, the reality is that your health standard is set, you know, in terms of you need to have vegetables, you need to have fruits.
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00:16:33.000pesticides, or added sugar. The only thing in their capsules is pure fruits and vegetables.
00:16:37.000Balance of Nature sent a bunch of their product down to the studio for my team to try. We all
00:16:40.000love them. So producer Jake, he hates spinach like a normal human, but he does love Balance of
00:17:10.000So as I say, it's not just a problem of we are recruiting using drag queens to the military, but also the Army is missing all of its goals.
00:17:17.000According to military.com, literally yesterday, the Army does not expect to hit its ambitious recruiting goal of 65,000 new soldiers this year as the pool of young Americans eligible to serve continues to shrink.
00:17:27.000We're not going to make that goal, said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.
00:17:30.000We're doing everything we can to get as close to it as possible.
00:17:34.000The Army fell some 15,000 activity records short last year of its goal of 60,000 new troops.
00:17:39.000So that means, again, they're missing by 25% their goals.
00:17:44.000The Army National Guard is in a seemingly deeper hole, facing an uphill battle bringing new soldiers in, while simultaneously seeing retention issues with part-time soldiers heading for the exits as units struggle to juggle domestic and overseas missions.
00:17:54.000Most other military branches are also at risk of missing their recruiting goal.
00:17:58.000The only one that's an exception is Space Force.
00:18:04.000Also, because Space Force is not about Be a gay astronaut.
00:18:07.000Space Force is not like, perform drag in orbit.
00:18:12.000Space Force was launched by President Trump and still had that patina of, you're doing something cool in the United States military.
00:18:18.000Army leaders say the issues with recruitment are an amalgamation of barriers getting applicants into the ranks, topped by the high percentage of Americans in prime recruiting age simply unqualified for service.
00:18:26.000Army planners estimate only about 23% of 17 to 24-year-olds can meet the service's expectations, with many applicants failing the military's SAT-style entrance exam or being too overweight to serve.
00:18:37.000So everyone is fat and stupid and mentally ill.
00:18:40.000And so that means 77% of all 17 to 24-year-olds cannot meet the service's expectations.
00:19:04.000In August, to combat the worsening recruiting trends, the Army started the Future Soldier Preparatory Course.
00:19:08.000There, applicants who came up just shy on the body fat or academic standards attend a pre-basic training course for whichever of those two standards they didn't satisfy for enlistment.
00:19:17.000But that program can only help with part of the worsening recruiting picture.
00:19:21.000Now again, as society disincentivizes performance, as American society basically becomes fat positive, for example, body positive, you don't actually have to be healthy, as American society says, you demonstrating mentally disordered behavior is not a mental disorder, it's a sign of your emotional health.
00:19:39.000It's a sign that you are just bucking the trends.
00:19:41.000And then, as the military starts recruiting directly into those things, It turns out that it's a really shallow pool.
00:19:47.000The Navy is diving headfirst into an empty pool, the military is diving headfirst into an empty pool, and it's paralyzing the American military.
00:19:54.000These are the wages of a society that cripples an entire generation of people and makes them fat, stupid, and mentally ill.
00:20:11.000So good luck to the American military in this way.
00:20:13.000Honestly, like, I get questions all the time in the mailbag from people who were thinking about joining the military, and they're like, with the way the military is now, with the wokeness and the diversity, equity, inclusion, with the focus on teaching us that men can be women, women can be men, like, should I even join up?
00:20:27.000And my answer is, I can't make that decision for you.
00:20:30.000I mean, it's an amazing thing if you do.
00:20:32.000People who serve are doing more than I am, but that doesn't mean that the way that they are approaching the service, in the service, is the right way to do it, obviously, when you're falling short of your recruitment goals by leaps and bounds, and that affects all of us.
00:20:42.000This is literally the fundamental function of the federal government, is to protect and defend the United States of America, and they can't even do that properly because they're too busy recruiting using a dude wearing fake breasts.
00:20:54.000Amazing stuff there from the United States military.
00:20:55.000Just slow clap for the geniuses at the top right there.
00:20:59.000Alrighty, in just a second, we'll get to the crisis in America's southern border, which continues to be a time bomb waiting to explode first.
00:21:07.000Like, there have been studies done, I am the best father.
00:21:10.000I mean, there's just no question about it.
00:21:11.000Well, one of the things that makes me the best father is that I allow my kids to have pillow fights on my bed.
00:21:15.000And that means I want them to be comfortable when they're having that pillow fight.
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00:21:51.000But you're not going to want to return them.
00:22:14.000If there's no emergency, why do we need 1,500 troops on the southern border?
00:22:17.000According to CNN, the Biden administration is making plans to send an additional 1,500 active duty troops to the US-Mexico border in anticipation of an influx of migrants.
00:22:26.000When the Title 42 Public Health Authority expires next week, according to sources familiar with planning.
00:22:31.000military has long provided support to the Department of Homeland Security on the border, and a surge of personnel to the area is not unprecedented, says CNN.
00:22:37.000Currently, there are approximately 2,500 National Guard troops on the border, so they are increasing this by a factor of, what, 40% there?
00:22:43.000As they've done before, the troops would serve in administrative roles and not perform law enforcement function.
00:22:47.000The assistance is intended to free up other resources at DHS, so that Customs and Border Protection can go and do their job.
00:22:55.000On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder confirmed that Lloyd Austin's Defense Secretary had approved the deployment.
00:23:00.000Apparently, it will be a 90-day deployment.
00:23:03.000Well, I wonder why they could be doing this.
00:23:05.000Well, CNN actually did some reporting on what things are like in El Paso.
00:23:08.000The answer is that there are literally hundreds of illegal immigrants who are just camping on the streets of El Paso.
00:23:13.000So, again, the Biden administration is doing an amazing job of destroying all integrity in the United States.
00:23:24.000It's difficult to describe, Jim, with words, so I want to walk so you can walk with me and just see the magnitude of the number of individuals who are around this church here.
00:23:37.000A lot of these individuals you'll see are males, adult males.
00:23:43.000A lot of the women with children are actually in shelters and a network of shelters throughout El Paso.
00:23:49.000As you mentioned, the city of El Paso, under a state of emergency, they declared a disaster because of the influx.
00:23:56.000Because they know that once Title 42 lifts, that there is going to be a greater influx of migrants.
00:24:08.000When even CNN is forced to cover the fact that before Title 42 is lifted, there are so many migrants on the streets, they're just crowding street corners at this point.
00:24:39.000These are not the illegal immigrants you're looking for.
00:24:42.000Here's Karine Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented press secretary yesterday, saying, you know, Joe Biden's goal on immigration is to do things differently.
00:24:58.000The President understands that we need a system, an immigration system, that needs to meet the moment, that's modernized.
00:25:05.000And one of the things that he's been very clear about, he wants to do this in a humane way, and do it differently than certainly than it was done in the last administration.
00:25:15.000Oh, they want to do it differently, do they?
00:25:17.000Well, I mean, they've achieved that, certainly.
00:25:19.000They've achieved, again, a record number of border crossers in their first couple of years.
00:25:23.000Meanwhile, Corine Jean-Pierre is accusing Greg Abbott of playing politics by sending illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities.
00:25:29.000Now, I noticed, actually, it's kind of fascinating.
00:25:31.000They don't seem to care about illegal immigrants being in a Democrat-run city like El Paso.
00:26:19.000What is the administration doing to help State and local governments prepare ahead of the expected influx of migrants.
00:26:27.000So look, it's unfortunate that Governor Abbott continues to play politics with migrants and with the American people.
00:26:36.000Because what he's doing, that's what it looks like.
00:26:37.000It looks like a political stunt instead of trying to address the situation or maybe get the congressional members and senators that are in his state to actually ask them to work with us on truly dealing with a problem.
00:28:49.000Millions and millions and millions of people have already crossed the border under Joe Biden.
00:28:52.000Again, we have at least 1.3 million gotaways, just people we know got away and are already in the interior.
00:28:58.000And we've had, since Joe Biden took office, I've seen estimates ranging from like five to six million people who've been accosted at the border and either turned away or then processed and sent into America.
00:29:08.000These are massive numbers, and that's before Title 42 ended.
00:29:10.000Title 42 was the provision of law that allowed Border Patrol to just turn people away saying you might have COVID.
00:29:26.000Okay, just to put that in perspective, if you did that for one year, If you did that for one year, 10,000 a day, you would end up with 3,650,000 people crossing the border in one year.
00:29:45.000The only thing they could do is embrace exactly what Donald Trump was doing, but that's exactly what they say they will not do.
00:29:51.000Again, the priority is pretty obvious.
00:29:53.000It's why people, you know, when you look at this policy and you say to yourself, why is this happening?
00:29:57.000There are only two possible explanations.
00:29:59.000I always say this when it comes to politics.
00:30:00.000I like to attribute things to stupidity rather than malice because people are typically stupid rather than malicious.
00:30:05.000However, when you have years on end of the same policy being tried over and over and over, You have to start wondering, is the policy failing?
00:30:28.000Maybe you guys would like to bring in a bunch of illegal immigrants to the country, undercut the labor base in the United States, by the way, not maintain that border, out of some sort of perverse belief in a borderless world that ends with the destruction of American culture.
00:30:41.000Because if you get rid of all borders, then you get rid, inherently, of the culture that exists inside those borders.
00:30:50.000So what else am I supposed to think when the Democratic Party is attacking American ideals and culture inside the United States and then pretty much opening the border wide to millions of people crossing from south of the border and people disproportionately from areas of the world that have heavy government interventionism and they're used to heavy social benefits.
00:31:11.000I don't know what else to think of that.
00:31:13.000Are we supposed to pretend it's not malicious?
00:32:46.000And isn't there's an irony here that for all the insistence upon equality, The very foundation for that equality in Western culture, the idea that human beings are made in the imago dei, in the image of God, has been lost, of course.
00:33:06.000So it's almost as if, because of the erosion of this foundation, The drive for equality is stressed all the more.
00:33:15.000That's exactly what Nietzsche claimed would happen when he wrote, particularly in Beyond Good and Evil.
00:33:23.000He said that would be an inevitable consequence.
00:33:28.000In addition to Douglas and Jordan, I sat down alongside a group of big thinkers from different backgrounds to explore one of the most seminal books in the Bible.
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00:33:44.000Now again, when we are looking at the Biden administration and we see that they are achieving a certain result, And it's pretty clear that their policies are achieving that result.
00:33:51.000And the result is not something that we want, but they keep doing it.
00:33:54.000You have to start thinking, well, maybe they are achieving the results that they want.
00:33:59.000The lie of American politics over the course of the last 20 years is that we all want the same thing.
00:34:04.000This is when I was growing up, this was the line.
00:34:05.000When I was growing up, the idea was we all wanted a prosperous America that was stronger in the world, that protected its citizenry, and provided you every pathway to opportunity, right?
00:34:13.000We all wanted that thing, we just disagreed about how to get there.
00:34:15.000Well, that doesn't seem like that's the case anymore.
00:34:16.000Certainly, it's not the case on illegal immigration, where the left has facilitated an all-time record in terms of border crossings.
00:34:23.000It doesn't seem like it's the same thing with the economy either.
00:34:26.000So, there is a balance to be drawn, obviously, between environmental policy and economic growth in certain areas.
00:34:32.000There's certainly cases in which there's a tragedy of the commons, where you could theoretically allow, for example, a corporation to pollute a river, but that would really be bad for everybody downriver, and it would be bad for the environment generally, and so you don't let the corporation do it, even if it's profitable.
00:34:46.000But when you have the Biden administration actively stopping
00:34:50.000basic industrial development from happening, because of really attenuated environmental damage.
00:34:58.000Environmental damage they can't really even name the extent of.
00:35:03.000You have to start thinking, well, maybe they actually don't want the economic development.
00:35:07.000Maybe the Biden administration sees economic development in certain areas of the country as a completely tertiary priority.
00:35:13.000It's just something that doesn't matter to them.
00:35:14.000Economic development matters in Silicon Valley, where all their donors are, or New York, where all their donors are.
00:35:18.000But economic development, you know, in the boonies, where people are doing fracking, or mining, or people do heavy industry, we don't care about those people.
00:35:48.000He began his questioning by saying, I want to come back to this trade-off between energy security and the radical climate change agenda you've endorsed.
00:35:53.000And then he pointed out, you know, you seem to suggest that we should not be mining for things like lithium ion battery materials, but it's China that's producing that stuff.
00:36:03.000And it turns out that the global environment is indeed global in nature.
00:36:07.000And so if there's pollution in China, that still affects everybody in the United States as well.
00:36:11.000Like the globe is all a sphere, as we have learned.
00:36:16.000Here's the exchange in Howley and Halland.
00:36:18.000Yes, near the Boundary Waters, which is an iconic place and, of course, a very valuable ecological system to many plants, animals, species.
00:37:53.000That's just something that we are all supposed to go along with because the environmental agenda, the global agenda of this administration is very clear.
00:38:01.000There are certain types of economic growth, certain types of economic prosperity that Joe Biden is fine with, namely his friends in the banking industry.
00:38:08.000There are certain types that he's not so okay with.
00:38:10.000That would be like people in the mining industry, people in the natural gas.
00:38:13.000What would be the difference between those two groups of people?
00:38:15.000Could it be the political orientation of the people at the banks?
00:38:17.000And that many of those people are working hand-in-glove with the government in a way that natural gas and mining producers are not?
00:38:23.000Then maybe the people who are most in the pockets of the Democratic Party are the people who Joe Biden is most likely to help?
00:38:29.000I mean, right now, there is the consolidation in the banking industry that is happening as a direct result, a direct result of the inflationary policy followed by the interest rate increases of the Biden administration is leading to mass bank consolidation under the auspices of major organizations that tend to work very, very well with Democrats in power.
00:38:47.000According to CNBC, yesterday, regional bank stocks fell sharply.
00:38:51.000Shares of PacWest fell nearly 28% on Tuesday.
00:38:54.000It was on track for its fourth straight negative session.
00:38:55.000The stock was halted for volatility multiple times.
00:38:59.000The California-based bank was not the only regional lender under pressure.
00:39:01.000Shares of Western Alliance dropped 15%.
00:39:07.000Now, remember, the JPMorgan Chase purchase of First Republic that was facilitated by the federal government, it was supposed to end all these sorts of runs on the banks.
00:39:14.000It's not doing any of that sort of stuff because everybody instead is saying, wait a second.
00:39:18.000I've noticed that the federal government is only filling in the big players.
00:39:21.000So if you're a smaller player, the federal government will not fill you in.
00:39:47.000By inflating the currency, they got to pretend that the economy was going great guns, even though it was actually stagnating under their watch.
00:40:20.000Well, if you stop raising the rates, then the inflation runs away.
00:40:23.000They've put themselves in a box of their own making, but it does achieve certain long-term goals for them, namely consolidation of industry in fewer and fewer hands that you can then use government to help facilitate and manipulate.
00:40:38.000And it leads to, again, more government control of the currency, which of course is the goal.
00:40:56.000They are going to cause unemployment as a result of what they're doing, an increase
00:41:00.000in unemployment for which they have no real response.
00:41:04.000So I believe a pause here is appropriate.
00:41:06.000We still, as we've been reminded today, don't know the full extent of the banking crisis.
00:41:12.000So I think a pause would be a wise decision.
00:41:15.000We do not want to have a mistake of going so extreme in the rate hikes that we end up bringing about a recession that is completely unnecessary.
00:41:26.000So, again, it's all about the control.
00:41:28.000Speaking of the control, you know one thing the Biden administration could do to bring down inflation?
00:41:33.000You know one thing they could stop spending?
00:41:35.000They could cut a deal to lower the amount of spending that they are injecting in the American economy that would help bring down inflation.
00:41:41.000They won't even negotiate over the debt ceiling.
00:41:43.000So yesterday, Joe Biden came out and he said, he'll talk about the budget with Republicans, but he's not going to negotiate over the debt ceiling.
00:41:48.000According to Reuters, Biden will not negotiate over the debt ceiling during his meeting with four top congressional leaders on May 9th.
00:41:53.000He will discuss starting a separate budget process to start talking about spending priorities.
00:41:57.000So in other words, I'm going to demand that you increase the debt ceiling today, and then I'm going to pretend that we will talk about lowering the budget, but I'm not lowering the budget.
00:42:05.000Biden on Monday summoned the four Senate and House representative leaders to the White House next week after the U.S.
00:42:09.000Treasury warned the government could run short of cash to pay its bills as soon as June 1st.
00:42:13.000And then White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, she said the only practical path forward is to suspend the debt limit unconditionally, which again means really forever is what they would like.
00:42:22.000They don't want to have this fight over and over.
00:42:24.000They just want to be able to spend whatever they want to spend without ever having to go to Congress for permission to borrow more money.
00:42:30.000It is Congress's constitutional duty to prevent default.
00:42:34.000This is not an issue that we will negotiate on.
00:42:38.000The debt limit was increased three times under President Trump.
00:42:44.000Given the limited time Congress now has, it is clear that the only practical path to avoid default is for Congress to suspend the debt limit without conditions.
00:43:00.000So in the middle of an inflationary spiral, and you will not even negotiate on the possibility of lowering spending in exchange for a debt ceiling increase.
00:43:07.000And then they have the gall, by the way, to tell us that this is about not being deadbeat.
00:43:10.000You keep taking out further credit cards just because you have the ability to keep taking out further credit cards does not mean that anyone thinks that the United States is creditworthy in 30 years.
00:43:20.000And all that's going to happen here is that we'll keep taking out credit and credit and credit and credit until we hit a cliff.
00:43:24.000It's happened with pretty much every country that runs up their credit card too high, whether you're talking about Greece, whether you're talking about Spain.
00:43:30.000It's going to happen in the United States, too.
00:43:43.000Heather, there have been cases in the past when Biden was a senator that spending reduction reforms were enacted by Congress that were bipartisan, they were attached to legislation that raised the debt ceiling, and Senator Biden voted for that four times himself.
00:44:24.000So speaking of the debt limit, the fact is that Congress is given the power of the purse and they are supposed to control how much debt the United States can take out, but the Biden...
00:44:33.000Administration, they are now considering the possibility of simply saying that the debt limit itself is unconstitutional.
00:44:38.000According to the New York Times, a standoff between House Republicans and President Biden over raising the nation's borrowing limit has administration officials debating what to do if the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, including one option that previous administrations had deemed unthinkable.
00:44:50.000That option is effectively a constitutional challenge to the debt limit.
00:44:53.000Under the theory, the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees, and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X date.
00:45:03.000That theory rests on the 14th Amendment Clause stating, the validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection and rebellion, shall not be questioned.
00:45:14.000Well, what that meant is that the states could not question the validity of national debts incurred and then refuse to commit and then refuse to remit taxes to the federal government.
00:45:32.000Top economic and legal officials at the White House, Treasury Department, and Justice Department have made that theory a subject of intense and unresolved debate in recent months.
00:45:38.000So, if it comes right down to it, we'll do what we always do in this country, and the President will just do whatever the hell that he wants.
00:46:05.000According to Politico, McCarthy has put forward a few proposals that could peel off a few Democrats.
00:46:09.000One of those would be an attempt to streamline permitting rules on energy, which obviously would be aimed at lawmakers in places like Michigan or Pennsylvania or West Virginia.
00:46:20.000Also, the House Republicans have put in their debt ceiling bill work requirements on food assistance programs.
00:46:27.000There are certain people like Joe Manchin who are warm on this.
00:46:29.000When it comes to spending caps, The House Debt Limit Bill would cap spending at $1.47 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year, rolling back the clock by two years on federal funding levels, and then, for a decade, funding would be allowed to grow by 1% every year.
00:46:42.000A slew of moderate Democrats keep pretending that they're for fiscal restraint, this would actually call them on it, and they would end student loan relief.
00:46:48.000Manchin, for example, is a supporter of ending the student loan relief, but There is no solution in the Senate, according to Politico.
00:46:57.000Apparently, congressional leaders are digging in ahead of next week's White House meeting on the debt limit.
00:47:01.000House Democrats are prepping a Hail Mary.
00:47:03.000Republicans wait on Joe Biden to meet them at the table.
00:47:06.000House Democrats are apparently going to attempt an end-around.
00:47:10.000Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, told his caucus in a Tuesday letter he's pursuing a so-called discharge petition on a standalone debt limit hike.
00:47:18.000That petition allows any bill to come to the House floor with the signatures of a simple majority of members.
00:47:22.000That would mean that Republicans would have to defect.
00:47:45.000Are the American public going to blame the Republicans for saying we wish to lower the spending by this much?
00:47:49.000Or are they going to blame the Democrats for saying we can't lower the spending at all in the middle of an inflationary spiral?
00:47:54.000So, I think this is one of those rare times where if Republicans who have put forward what seems to be a fairly realistic bill in the House, if Republicans hold to their guns and they say, listen, We need you to cut something.
00:48:05.000Like your position that you will not negotiate at all is unreasonable.
00:48:25.000This bill will not end up being what Republicans want it to be, but Democrats are very likely to end up at the negotiating table because, again, if Joe Biden's position is, I'm not negotiating at all, nada, I think the American people blame him.
00:49:16.000It has to have the support of the Speaker, and I'm behind the Speaker.
00:49:22.000So the reason McConnell is saying that is because, of course, he knows that the blame is going to rest with the Democrats for failing to negotiate at all.
00:49:28.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to wander around the world, not knowing where he is.
00:49:32.000Yesterday, for some odd reason, he told a White House guest to hush up, boy.
00:49:35.000I don't know why he would do this, but neither does he, so that puts us in the same boat.
00:50:41.000The Politico story, despite its attempts to make Jill Biden into the heroine of this story, reads a lot more like the latter.
00:50:46.000Quote, Four years ago, Jill Biden was hesitant about her husband making a White House run, fearing the toll it could take on him and the family.
00:50:52.000In the months before Joe Biden formally announced he'd make a re-election bid, she had no such reservations.
00:50:56.000Privately, the first lady encouraged her husband to run again, while giving him the space he needed to process the decision in the way he traditionally does, with extensive deliberations, consideration of the burden it would place on his family, and a classic bit of Biden hemming and hawing.
00:51:08.000She was involved in all high-level discussions around the decision, giving counsel when she felt it was necessary.
00:51:14.000She's usually in the room when senior campaign staff are presenting strategy to her husband.
00:51:17.000She will ask questions, but she never weighs in on the decisions, said a former senior Biden advisor.
00:51:22.000Her gentle encouragement of her husband's re-election run comes as she's relishing her role, hanging out at the Super Bowl and the Women's Final Four, actively posting on social media.
00:51:30.000There is nothing secret about the role she's playing!
00:51:32.000Yeah, I noticed, because she's actually the president at this point.
00:51:35.000Joe Biden is not capable of going to the bathroom alone.
00:51:38.000Now Hunter Biden, he put in his parental support documents, he's trying to ditch his four-year-old daughter, the one he had with the stripper.
00:51:45.000He's trying to pretend that she doesn't exist, and he's trying to cut down on his child support payments.
00:51:48.000And he's claiming that while he was in Ireland, he slept in a cot in a room with his dad.
00:51:53.000Either he couldn't afford a room for himself, or the Biden family is putting somebody in the room with daddy because daddy can't handle himself.
00:53:23.000Ducklow is on the cusp of officially re-entering Biden world in a senior communications role on his re-election campaign.
00:53:28.000More than two years after he resigned under pressure, after he abused a then-Politico reporter, many of his former colleagues are rallying around him.
00:53:34.000They praise him as a loyal, talented operative who's paid for his mistake.
00:53:39.000Michael La Rosa, former press secretary for first lady Joe Biden said,
00:53:42.000it's hard to believe that in the post-MeToo anti-bullying world we live in,
00:53:45.000the president's team would be this tone deaf.
00:53:47.000If true, represents a stunning lack of judgment by those whom he entrusted to
00:53:50.000responsibly staff his re-election campaign.
00:53:52.000But of course, it's not shocking at all coming from Joe Biden.
00:53:56.000The simple fact of the matter is that all the standards that Joe Biden purports to uphold with regard to gentility and decency, he is willing to ditch at the first available opportunity, and T.J.
00:54:04.000Ducklow is just the latest example of this.
00:54:09.000So, again, I root for reality, and reality is now setting in in San Francisco, where Nordstrom is planning to close both of its downtown San Francisco stores.
00:54:17.000It's not renewing its lease obligations in Westfield Mall.
00:54:20.000It's also going to close a second nearby downtown Nordstrom Rack, as according to the San Francisco Standard.
00:54:24.000The retailer confirmed the closures on Tuesday.
00:55:38.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:55:44.000So the rule when it comes to protest these days, or riots, you might call it, or trespass, or insurrection.
00:55:50.000If you're a leftist, engage in an insurrection, by which I mean a storming of a state capitol building in violation of the law.
00:55:56.000If you are one of those people, then you are a hero of the republic.
00:55:59.000So trans activists have now made it their business to essentially occupy pretty much every state capitol in which legislators are attempting to stop the genital and hormonal mutilation of children.
00:56:08.000Trans activists did this most lately at the Texas state capitol.
00:56:55.000According to Yahoo News, a transgender state lawmaker in Minnesota introduced a measure that would remove language from the state's Human Rights Act that currently declares pedophiles are not included in protections based on sexual orientation.
00:57:08.000The proposed language has shocked and bewildered Republicans.
00:57:10.000The bill's author says this doesn't weaken pedophilia laws.
00:57:12.000It's something called the Take Pride Act.
00:57:14.000It was introduced earlier this year by State Representative Leigh Fink, a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party and the first transgender legislator in Minnesota House history.
00:57:21.000The bill would amend Minnesota's Human Rights Act, which is described by the state as one of the strongest civil rights acts in the country.
00:57:27.000The current Human Rights Act protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation,
00:57:31.000defined as, quote, having or being perceived as having an emotional, physical, or sexual
00:57:35.000attachment to another person without regard to the sex of that person, or having or being perceived
00:57:38.000as having an orientation for such attachment, or having or being perceived as having a self-image
00:57:42.000or identity not traditionally associated with one's biological maleness or femaleness.
00:57:47.000And then there's a specific carve-out saying, sexual orientation does not include a physical
00:57:51.000or sexual attachment to children by an adult. Finke wants to remove that.
00:57:56.000So now, presumably, sexual orientation could cover physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.