Inflation cools to 3% in June, the lowest rate of inflation since the early days of the Obama administration. Is this the beginning of the end of the Fed's rate hike cycle? And what does that mean for the economy and the stock market? Today's episode of the podcast is all about what's going on in the economic world and why it's a good time to be a homeowner. We'll talk about inflation, inflation, and what it means for real estate prices. Subscribe to our new podcast, The Macro Guys, where we break down the latest economic news and discuss what s going on around the world. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code: "UPdates" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse Lacrosse you download our newest free epsiode: Updates on the Upbeat Upbeat Economic Podcast. Upbeat is a podcast by Popular Science. Please don't forget to SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review in Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share this podcast on your favorite streaming platform so we can keep you up to date on all things macroeconomic and financial news! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - Inflation, 3:30 - What's going to happen next? 5:00 - What is the worst thing the Fed will do next? 6:00 | What are we waiting for? 7:30 | What s the worst case scenario? 8: What's the worst worst? 9:00 -- Is the worst possible year for inflation? 11:30 -- Is there a recession coming? 12:30 13: Is the Fed going to stop raising interest rates? 15:00 // 16: Should we have a recession? 16:00-- Is the economy going to get worse? 17:00 Is there any recession coming soon? 18:00 Does the Fed slowing? 19:00 Should we be worried about the Fed still have loose money? 21:00 Are we going to hit 3% or 2:00 ? 22:00 We'll find out what we should be worried? 23:00 Can we have enough money to buy a house? 26: What s going to fall off? 25:00 Do we have it? 27:00 Will we see a recession in 2020? 30:00 What is a recession happen?
00:00:00.000So everyone is in a state of high excitement this morning in the economic sphere because the inflation numbers are in and they are slightly better than expected.
00:00:07.000Down to 3% if you leave aside food and oil prices.
00:00:10.000Of course it's kind of hard to leave aside food because food is clocking in still at a 4.8% rate of inflation.
00:00:20.000However, this is the lowest rate of inflation that's been recorded during the Biden administration, essentially, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:26.000Inflation cooled last month to its slowest pace in more than two years, giving Americans relief from a painful period of rising prices and boosting the chance that the Federal Reserve will stop raising interest rates after an expected increase this month.
00:00:36.000The CPI climbed 3% in June from a year earlier.
00:00:38.000The Labor Department said on Wednesday that it's sharply lower than the recent peak inflation rate of 9.1% in June 2022.
00:00:45.000record average of $5 a gallon, the June rate declined from 4% in May.
00:00:49.000Inflation was last close to 3% in March of 2021.
00:00:52.000Now remember, they're searching for 2% inflation, so 3% is still 50% higher than it normally ought to be.
00:00:58.000With that said, Whenever you have a 3% inflation rate on top of, say, like, a 9% inflation rate, what we're talking about is, since, you know, two years ago, an inflation rate of 12%, which is still way, way, way too high.
00:01:09.000What this is sort of foreshadowing, for those who are watching in the economic sphere, is the idea that the Federal Reserve is going to stop raising those interest rates.
00:01:17.000And, of course, raising the interest rates makes it very difficult for people to access liquidity.
00:01:22.000If they cannot access liquidity, it makes it hard for them to buy things, and therefore, the economy ends up being slowed.
00:01:29.000So if the idea here is that the Federal Reserve is now going to stop increasing the interest rates, then perhaps we escape recession because the jobs market continues to be strong.
00:01:37.000We haven't really seen a fall off in terms of investment as of yet.
00:01:40.000The stock market has not crashed as of yet.
00:01:42.000I am a little bit less sanguine for a wide variety of reasons.
00:01:46.000So one of the reasons I'm a little bit less sanguine than others is because I think that the bite is happening.
00:01:50.000It's just not been really measured yet.
00:01:52.000It's particularly true when it comes to things like mortgages and real estate.
00:01:56.000The situation with regard to mortgages is truly out of control.
00:02:00.000If you look at the mortgage rates right now and the mortgage math, mortgage math right now is absolutely brutal.
00:02:04.000If you're seeking to buy a home, now is an awful time to buy a home.
00:02:08.000Austin Allred, who's co-founder and CEO of BloomTech, points out, the new mortgage math is brutal.
00:02:14.000Say you buy a $1 million house with $200,000 down at a 7% rate.
00:02:18.000Over the first three years, you would pay $193,000, which is 5,300 bucks a month.
00:02:23.000After that, your $800,000 mortgage is still at $700,000.
00:02:26.000So you paid $166,000 in interest and $26,000 in principal.
00:02:32.000So right now you have wildly high rates of interest, plus you have very, very high rates of amortization.
00:02:40.000So what that means is that the generalized mortgage interest rate is really high and most of the money that you're paying back is going to pay off the interest as opposed to paying back the original principal.
00:02:51.000So, it makes it very hard, in other words, for people to buy houses right now, and we haven't really seen that bite yet, but it's going to happen, and the market is going to drop pretty precipitously in real estate.
00:03:00.000People, on a personal level, will ask me about buying a house, and again, don't take this as financial advice, but I've told people, who I'm personally close to, that I'd wait a few months, because I think the prices are really going to dump in a lot of areas.
00:03:12.000Also, underlying inflation still remains double the Fed target right now.
00:03:17.000Financial conditions are as loose, are still looser than in the fall of 2002.
00:03:21.000They did not tighten in 2023, which means there's still a lot of excess capital in the system that is yet to be pushed out at this point.
00:03:28.000So if the Fed, I think, preemptively stops increasing the interest rates, there's still going to be a lot of loose money out there.
00:03:34.000And that sort of loose money out there is going to continue to promote inflation, embedded inflation.
00:03:39.000And you can see how much we've already gotten used to this because we hit a 3% rate everybody celebrates.
00:03:43.000Whereas, you know, three years ago, if you had said to people, we have a 3% interest rate, year on year, everybody would have been a little bit freaked out.
00:03:51.000It's also true that we have seen months before, like in the very recent past, in which the interest rates, in which the inflation rates actually dropped fairly precipitously, and that was not followed by a pattern of inflation rate decreases.
00:04:06.000So for example, if you look back at like March of 2022, The percent change in the consumer price index was 0.3% and that was then followed by another spike.
00:04:16.000The same thing happened in July of 2022.
00:04:18.000The same thing happened in October and November of 2022.
00:04:20.000So you see decreases and then those are followed by increases.
00:04:23.000So until we know what's going to happen in the next month, we're really not going to know whether this is a lasting trend or whether this is just an outlier month.
00:04:31.000So for the Federal Reserve not to increase the interest rates means they're probably leaving too much liquidity in the system.
00:04:35.000Meanwhile, The Biden administration continues to pour money into the system, which makes no sense at all.
00:04:42.000According to the Wall Street Journal and Greg Ip, the U.S.
00:04:46.000government has embarked on the most sweeping foray into industrial policy in generations.
00:04:49.000Congress has enacted hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for semiconductors, renewable energy, and infrastructure.
00:04:54.000President Biden, like President Trump before him, has used tariffs, export controls, and buy American policies to both bolster domestic industries and counter China.
00:05:01.000And that industrial policy is kind of just money that's being helicoptered around.
00:05:04.000There's not like a specific goal for a lot of that money.
00:05:21.000The Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed devoted $18 billion to development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
00:05:27.000And of course, the Biden administration and Bidenomics is entirely predicated on spending more money.
00:05:33.000So the notion that inflation is done or that the economy has escaped recession, I think it's a little bit early for people to jump on that bandwagon at this point.
00:05:42.000I mean, listen, I hope that we avoid recession too.
00:05:46.000However, it seems to me that we have spent a long time assuming the laws of gravity do not exist in the financial sphere, which is why you ended up with 40-year highs in inflation.
00:05:54.000And so what you'll end up with on the other end of this is either economic stagnation, very, very slow growth, or outright recession.
00:06:00.000In just one second, we'll get to the FBI head being grilled by Republicans on the Hill.
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00:07:34.000By the way, a majority of Democrats say that they are either very or somewhat concerned
00:07:39.000about the possibility of cheating affecting the outcome of the 2024 elections.
00:07:42.000To pretend this is a partisan thing, it really isn't a partisan thing.
00:07:45.000There's a bipartisan concern that voting is not going to be reflected in the actual outcome.
00:07:50.000Not a shock, because Democrats spent Five, six years propagandizing to their own followers that Republicans were going to rig the vote in a wide variety of ways, ranging from gerrymandering to preventing black people from voting.
00:08:01.000And meanwhile, Republicans were claiming in the 2020 election that it was outright stolen.
00:08:04.000So of course, most people believe at this point that the election is going to be harmed in some way by voter disreputable activities affecting the vote.
00:08:14.00064% of voters think the FBI has become politically weaponized, including 50% of Democrats and 61% of Independents.
00:08:21.00059% of voters think the media is truly the enemy of the people.
00:08:44.00063% say that our current president enriched himself with a pay-for-play scheme with foreign governments, including apparently 42% of Democrats.
00:08:50.000Now, listen, Rasmussen, it's polling, sometimes it's off, but what this says to me overall is that there's tremendous American distrust in the institutions.
00:08:58.000A lot of that distrust is well-earned.
00:08:59.000I don't think it manifests in ways that are necessarily reflective of the truth.
00:09:02.000I think people have a tendency, just as a general rule, to spot patterns and then use those patterns and attribute too much to the patterns.
00:09:09.000And so what that means is that if they see one person being corrupt, or if they see the media routinely ignoring corruption, that means that this particular iteration of a question must end up demonstrating corruption.
00:09:22.000With that said, the distrust of the FBI is well earned.
00:09:25.000We now have Inspector General Reports talking about how the FBI essentially laundered into public view Hillary Clinton led oppo against Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
00:09:36.000We also know that the FBI was pressuring social media to take down particular posts during the 2020 election.
00:09:41.000All of that has been well substantiated at this point.
00:09:44.000So, yesterday, Chris Wray, who was originally a Donald Trump appointee, He went on the hill and he strongly defended his workforce in testimony before Congress, where he faced hours of combative questioning by Republicans accusing the agency of overzealously targeting their party, namely former President Trump and his supporters, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:10:01.000The appearance was raised first before the House Judiciary Committee since Republicans took control.
00:10:05.000The panel's chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who we like on this program, launched an investigation of what he decried on Wednesday as the weaponization of the government against the American people.
00:10:14.000Ray then pushed back, focusing on the everyday FBI agents.
00:10:16.000Now listen, they do this all the time, and it's true of virtually every major American institution.
00:10:21.000The leadership will do something really bad, and they'll filter it down to their top deputies.
00:10:25.000The stuff with the Hillary Clinton campaign, that was being done by top members of the FBI.
00:10:31.000We're not talking about the low-level agents.
00:10:32.000We're not talking about the guys who are actually working the beat.
00:10:35.000The people who are doing the street interviews with folks.
00:11:52.000American speech is censored, parents are called terrorists, Catholics are called radicals, and I haven't even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president's home.
00:12:04.000But maybe what's more frightening is what happens if you come forward and tell Congress.
00:12:09.000If you're a whistleblower, come tell the legislature, come tell the Congress what's going on.
00:12:24.000By the way, on both sides, I don't think that that is necessarily a Republican talking point.
00:12:28.000Wray, in response, said that it's insane to say that he's biased against conservatives.
00:12:32.000Well, he may not be personally biased against conservatives, but the department certainly has been run in a way that has been biased against conservatives.
00:12:38.000We've had multiple reports of the FBI targeting, for example, particular religious groups. Religious Catholics, for
00:12:45.000example, were targeted at one point. If you're a traditionalist Catholic, it was suggested that you were a
00:12:48.000threat to the republic. Here's Representative Harriet Hageman from Wyoming, who is going
00:13:10.000The idea that I'm biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background.
00:13:20.000Okay, and again, I'm not blaming Chris Wray on a personal level.
00:13:24.000However, there's no question the FBI has pursued particular issues that are way outside of its purview and that are clearly political in nature.
00:13:32.000Not only are Republicans critical, of course, of the FBI movement against Trump during the Trump administration and afterward, they're also very critical of the Hunter Biden plea deal.
00:13:41.000It seems very obvious at this point that Hunter Biden got a sweetheart deal.
00:13:44.000And again, I think that the evidence tends to show that the IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, has a good case to make that the DOJ was basically interfered with by Merrick Garland at the top of the DOJ to prevent a broader prosecution of Hunter Biden.
00:14:00.000Republicans are also very upset at the FBI's use of FISA warrants to target members of the Trump campaign.
00:14:06.000They're also very upset at the FBI's use of social media.
00:14:08.000They're very upset about the discrimination against Catholics.
00:14:12.000So, a lot of these sorts of issues have been creeping for a long time.
00:14:17.000We'll get to more of how Chris Wray responded to those issues in just one second.
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00:15:33.000I mean, this is a real story, considering that a federal judge has now ruled that the FBI and members of the Biden administration should not be doing outreach to social media to try and bully them to take down particular posts.
00:15:45.000We had this explosive, explosive 155-page opinion from a federal court in my home state of Louisiana.
00:15:51.000It explains in detail that the FBI has been directly involved in what the court says is, quote, arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.
00:16:02.000The court ordered the White House, DOJ, and FBI, among others, to immediately cease colluding with and coercing social media companies to suppress American speech.
00:16:12.000Of course, conservative speech in particular.
00:16:16.000You made no mention of this court opinion either in your opening statement today or in this lengthy 14-page report that you prepared on July 12th, which is eight days after the court ruling.
00:16:27.000That is Representative Mike Johnson going after Chris Wray.
00:16:30.000In the middle of all of this, Chris Wray made sort of a shocking admission.
00:16:34.000So he was asked about the idea of particular companies turning over information to the FBI that really they shouldn't be giving to the FBI.
00:16:41.000And Wray said, yeah, you know, Bank of America turns over information to us all the time.
00:16:45.000This is Thomas Massey, the congressman from Kentucky, going after Chris Wray here and Wray responding in a way that should bother all of us.
00:16:53.000There is such a thing as the Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure.
00:16:56.000In the specific instance that you're asking about, my understanding is that that information was shared with field offices for information only, but then recalled to avoid even the appearance of any kind of overreach.
00:17:09.000But my understanding is that that's a fully lawful process.
00:17:26.000Okay, well we've got an email where it says the FBI did give the search queries to Bank of America, and Bank of America responded to the FBI and gave over this information without a search warrant.
00:17:41.000So the thing that he is talking about here, Massey, is apparently the FBI received from Bank of America actual purchase records for gun purchases for anybody that was a Bank of America customer.
00:17:53.000So the question is, why is that stuff being turned over to the federal government?
00:17:56.000Is there a rational basis for that sort of information being even requested by the federal government?
00:18:50.000You all are bringing up FISA every single question.
00:18:54.000You're essentially saying to the American people that you're guardians of personal security and privacy, but the 2020 election Was determined because the FBI didn't let more Americans see a private citizen's non-consensual nudes?
00:19:20.000So that is Eric Swalwell defending the FBI going after social media and attempting to get them to take down the Hunter Biden post in the lead up to the October of the November 2020 election.
00:19:30.000It was in October 2020 they tried to actually stop all of social media from posting that stuff on the basis falsely that it was Russian disinformation.
00:19:38.000All of this, again, the willingness of Democrats to defend the FBI in the face of some of these allegations, you wonder about comedy, you wonder about polarization.
00:19:47.000When the FBI is overtly putting its thumb on the scales and Democrats are cheering for it, that's going to be a real problem for institutional trust in the United States.
00:19:55.000Well, as I said before, this sometimes manifests in ways that are not particularly smart.
00:20:01.000Let's talk about your financial future.
00:20:02.000You need to set yourself up for success.
00:20:04.000One way that you set yourself up for failure is by taking out credit cards and then spending a lot on the credit cards and then you get behind the eight ball with the interest rates.
00:21:05.000As I say, institutional distrust very often earned at this point in American life, and that is a result of the sort of ultra crepedarian nation and nature of the institutions.
00:21:14.000So ultra crepedarianism is a word that just means acting outside of your purview.
00:21:18.000So if you're a mathematician and you suddenly start opining on religion, you are now operating in ultra crepedarian fashion.
00:21:24.000Right, outside your realm of expertise.
00:21:26.000Well, the FBI has now expanded into nearly every arena of American life.
00:21:30.000Just as, quote-unquote, the science has expanded into nearly every area of American life.
00:21:34.000Just like the federal government overall has expanded into nearly every area of American life.
00:21:39.000And it turns out, the more things that agencies try to do, the worse they do them.
00:21:42.000And if they do them badly, people start distrusting them.
00:21:45.000And then in an effort to regain the trust, the institutions try to do even more.
00:21:47.000And now you have this toxic cycle where an institution fails, people distrust the institution, the institution therefore tries to do more things, and then the institution fails.
00:21:55.000And the only way to fix that is to do fewer things better, but the institutions aren't doing that.
00:22:00.000Well, one problematic side effect of all of that is that this very often leads people to believe that everything the institution is doing is corrupt or bad.
00:22:08.000Or that the institution is always lying, when it turns out the institution is only sometimes lying.
00:22:13.000Well, this brings up the case of Ray Epps.
00:22:16.000So, Ray Epps is a theory that he's a person who is a Trump supporter.
00:22:21.000He was originally a former member of the Oath Keepers.
00:22:24.000And Ray Epps became sort of national news in the aftermath of the January 6th riots.
00:22:29.000So, the day before the riots, Ray Epps was caught on camera telling people that they were going to go into the Capitol building.
00:22:36.000In fact, we have video of Epps encouraging people to enter the Capitol.
00:23:11.000Okay, and you can see people around him screaming, no, Fed, Fed, Fed, Fed, Fed, right?
00:23:15.000Like, even at the time, people are screaming at him that he is a federal agent and that he's actually encouraging people to go into the Capitol so they will then be arrested.
00:23:22.000Well, then, of course, people did go into the Capitol and they were arrested.
00:23:26.000Ray Epps was present at January 6th, but he didn't end up being arrested.
00:23:31.000And so this led to a lot of questions among people on the right that maybe he was a Fed,
00:23:35.000that maybe actually January 6th was in part propagated by members of the federal government.
00:23:41.000So Representative Nels yesterday, this was Troy Nels of Texas, he asked Chris Wray yesterday,
00:23:47.000are you, when are you going to arrest Wray Epps? Like, why is it that he wasn't arrested?
00:23:50.000Are you going to arrest Mr. Epps? Yes or no?
00:23:55.000I'm not going to engage here in a discussion about individual people who are or are not.
00:24:49.000And it appears to me you are protecting this guy.
00:24:54.000Okay, so then the Ray Epps issue was brought more fully out by Chris Ray.
00:24:59.000Here's Chris Ray trying to go after Tucker Carlson for propagating all of these theories about Ray Epps.
00:25:06.000I think Tucker Carlson and some of the members' colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said that Ray Epps was a secret government agent helping encourage this crime so as to make the president look bad.
00:25:18.000Do you have any knowledge of Ray Epps being a secret government agent?
00:25:25.000I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women.
00:25:44.000Okay, so again, he's trying to rely on, like, the day-to-day FBI agents doing their job to say that the Ray Epps thing is no big deal and federal agents were not involved with any of this.
00:25:53.000Then Ray was asked if there were confidential human sources on January 6th.
00:25:56.000Confidential human sources would mean, like, informants on January 6th.
00:26:01.000Former Capitol Police Chief Stevenson reportedly has asserted that the protest crowd was filled with federal agents Are you aware of his assertion?
00:26:16.000Would you agree with him that it was filled with federal agents on January 6th?
00:26:22.000I would really have to see more closely exactly what he said and get the full context to be able to evaluate it.
00:26:28.000How many agents or human resources were present at the Capitol Complex and vicinity on January 6th?
00:26:38.000Well, again, it's going to get confusing because it depends on when we deployed and responded to the breach.
00:26:46.000Okay, so he's trying to avoid the question here.
00:26:48.000And you wonder why people are suspicious.
00:26:49.000This is the reason that people are suspicious.
00:26:51.000Because the federal government won't tell you how many people were actually there working for the federal government who are in the crowd.
00:26:57.000And this is why pretty much every time there's any right-wing activity that seems bad, there's now a hue and cry that arises on Twitter suggesting that many of the people who are involved are federal agents.
00:27:06.000Specifically because of the lack of transparency on issues like this.
00:27:10.000And when you combine that with the investigation into the attempted kidnapping
00:27:15.000of the Michigan governor, Richard Whitmer, which involved federal agents
00:27:20.000who are actively inciting people into criminal activity, there are a lot of questions to be asked about all of this.
00:27:26.000Now, does that mean that Ray Epps actually was a federal agent?
00:27:29.000Does it actually mean that Ray Epps was activated by the FBI
00:27:33.000and that's the reason that he didn't end up being prosecuted?
00:27:35.000Not necessarily, and this presumably is why Fox News is now being sued by Ray Epps.
00:27:39.000According to the Washington Post, Ray Epps, the man at the center
00:27:43.000of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on January 6th,
00:27:47.000has now filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Fox News and Tucker Carlson of defamation
00:27:50.000for promoting a quote-unquote fantastical story that Epps was an undercover government agent
00:27:54.000who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump
00:27:59.000Fox News has not issued any sort of response for comment.
00:28:02.000We don't know how much the lawsuit is for.
00:28:04.000He's speaking an unspecified amount in damages.
00:28:07.000Again, this is based on monologues like this one from Tucker way back in the way.
00:28:10.000Here is Tucker going after Ray Epps when he was on Fox News.
00:28:14.000According to the Justice Department, what Ray Epps did on that video is a federal crime.
00:28:20.000In fact, the Biden administration has charged several people with seditious conspiracy for doing precisely what you just saw Ray Epps do, urging others to enter the Capitol complex on January 6th.
00:28:30.000Here, for example, is a quote from a DOJ press release.
00:28:33.000It describes the federal case against five members of the so-called Proud Boys, a group you're supposed to be terrified of.
00:28:38.000Quote, on January 6th, 2021, the Defendants directed, mobilized, and led members of the crowd onto the Capitol grounds and into the Capitol."
00:28:48.000Again, that's what you just saw Ray Epps try to do.
00:29:18.000The question as to whether he actually did the thing that he's accused of doing on January 6th is nothing.
00:29:21.000So we have him on tape January 5th saying, go into the Capitol building.
00:29:24.000Then there was tape that emerged of him whispering to one of the people who essentially then overran the barriers on January 6th.
00:29:32.000So apparently, he was standing directly next to another person, that person's name is Ryan Samsel, and Ryan Samsel then breaches the barriers.
00:29:40.000And so there was a lot of speculation that he was actually telling Ryan Samsel to breach the barriers.
00:29:44.000However, according to the New York Times, Samsel was then questioned by the FBI and then fully corroborated Epps' version of events in which Epps said that he actually told Samsel to calm down.
00:29:55.000Samsel said, quote, he came up to me and he said, dude, relax, the cops are doing their job.
00:30:00.000Epps was able to prove that he had left the Capitol before the violence even began in earnest.
00:30:03.000So he wasn't one of the people who actually breached the Capitol.
00:30:08.000And a couple of days later when his name and face started appearing on the TV, he called up the FBI and offered to help.
00:30:14.000So that is the sort of innocuous reason why presumably he was not prosecuted.
00:30:19.000With that said, again, this all underscores the level of institutional distrust that is now endemic, not only on the right wing, but also in the right wing media.
00:30:28.000Epps, for his part, says he had no contact with the FBI and that he did meet with the FBI after the attacks.
00:31:11.000And one of the things that people tend to do is because, again, I tend to attribute nearly everything to stupidity rather than malice, because I just don't think people are all that competent.
00:31:19.000But when you see the stupidity falling in one direction over and over and over and over,
00:31:24.000people tend to over attribute and everything is very quick to fall into
00:31:28.000an overall broader pattern recognition that we have.
00:31:31.000And so it's not, you can see why people think or would think that Ray Epps was a federal agent,
00:31:36.000specifically not because of, not just because of the tape of Epps the night before
00:31:40.000saying that he wanted to run to the Capitol, but also because of generalized distrust of the FBI,
00:31:43.000an FBI that still will not tell you how many active federal agents they had in the crowd
00:31:49.000Again, just one second, we'll get to the updates on Ukraine first.
00:31:51.000You might have been one of the tens of millions of people who watched Netflix's hit show, Making a Murderer.
00:31:55.000If so, you're gonna love Daily Wire Plus's new exclusive 10-part docuseries with Candace Owens, Convicting a Murderer, that is coming this summer.
00:32:01.000There's no such thing as your truth, there's only the truth.
00:32:03.000While it seems like we're living in a world where the actual truth is pretty hard to come by, Many of us are still pursuing it.
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00:32:16.000The end result is a new series called Convicting a Murderer.
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00:32:31.000See the truth when it finally comes out.
00:32:33.000Meanwhile, confusion reigns over the American position on the Ukraine war.
00:32:37.000So, Vladimir Zelensky was meeting with President Biden yesterday at this NATO summit over in Vilnius, and he issued some nice words for the American public.
00:32:45.000He should, considering that we sent him over $100 billion at this point.
00:33:52.000When they say it's a war for democracy, if they mean that this is a war to simply preserve Kiev from being ruled by Moscow, that's already been done.
00:33:59.000Also, I don't believe that this administration engages in wars for democracy as a general rule, considering they pulled out from Afghanistan and turned a nascent democracy into a full-scale Islamic dictatorship.
00:34:08.000Two, when they say as long as it takes, nobody believes that either.
00:34:11.000Joe Biden is the person who cut and ran from Afghanistan and left billions of dollars in military hardware to the Taliban.
00:34:16.000No one believes as long as it takes because it's not true.
00:34:18.000And finally, when Joe Biden says things like, We will not waver.
00:34:21.000war is won and then he provides no actual metric for what winning looks like.
00:34:50.000Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken.
00:34:52.000We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.
00:35:00.000Okay, so when he keeps saying, as long as it takes, this was the phrase that kept going, as long as it takes.
00:35:04.000First of all, every American foreign policy is four years long.
00:35:08.000It's precisely as long as the president, who's the president of the United States.
00:35:12.000So, it tends to waver just in terms of public support because Americans support wars until they don't.
00:35:18.000Today the members of the G7 are launching a joint declaration of support for Ukraine to make it clear that our support will last long and in the future.
00:35:26.000So everybody knows there's a timeline on all of this.
00:35:28.000Here he was again saying as long as it takes.
00:35:31.000Today, the members of the G7 are launching a joint declaration of support for Ukraine to make it clear
00:35:37.000that our support will last long and in the future.
00:35:41.000This starts a process by which each of our nations and any other nation who wishes to participate
00:35:47.000will negotiate long-term bilateral security commitments with and to Ukraine.
00:35:52.000We're going to help Ukraine build a strong, capable defense across land, air, and sea, from which we'll be a force of stability in the region and deter against any and all threats.
00:36:07.000I want to thank my fellow G7 leaders and President Zelensky for their work to make this happen.
00:36:15.000It's a powerful statement of our commitment to Ukraine as it defends its freedom today and as it rebuilds the future.
00:36:21.000And we're going to be there as long as that takes.
00:36:27.000Okay, he keeps saying as long as it takes and I just I don't know what that means.
00:36:30.000Because no one actually believes that.
00:36:32.000Again, the only offer up here is if Biden and the rest of the EU are actually going to Putin behind closed doors and saying, we know what the deal is, let's cut the deal and be done.
00:36:41.000They're all just saying this sort of stuff to keep the pressure up publicly on Vladimir Putin saying that we're not going to go away and we're going to continue pressing until the deal is done.
00:36:47.000But if there's no back channeling going on, Then I don't understand exactly what they're doing.
00:36:52.000And even in public, I'm not sure why the West continues to suggest that the goal here is going to be set by Zelensky.
00:36:58.000Everybody knows Crimea isn't going to be liberated by Ukraine.
00:37:00.000Everybody knows that all of Donbass is not going to be liberated by Ukraine.
00:37:03.000So continuing to forward that narrative actually does Zelensky no favors because it's setting up an unrealistic expectation for Zelensky and for the Ukrainian people.
00:37:12.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to battle the teleprompter.
00:37:18.000There he was at NATO yesterday, and man, this dude just does not look good.
00:37:25.000Soon NATO will be the 32nd freestanding, have free, 30 free, 32 freestanding members standing together to defend our people and our territory.
00:38:13.000And part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine, and we can predict then if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.
00:38:36.000She's like a horrible second grade teacher.
00:38:38.000Artificial intelligence is, well, it's AI.
00:38:43.000Because that stands for artificial intelligence.
00:39:25.000Page 6 regrets to report that a press dinner to boost RFK's presidential campaign descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting on Tuesday night.
00:39:34.000The White House hopeful attended the affair at Tony's on the Upper East Side, no doubt hoping to impress on the ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate his worthiness to sit at the very same Oval Office desk once occupied by his late uncle.
00:39:43.000But a shouting match over climate change broke out between two boisterous old men, sending the evening down an extremely unfortunate path.
00:39:49.000The gaseous exchange to which Page Six bore reluctant witness began after a guest asked Kennedy, founder of the ecological organization Waterkeeper Alliance, about the environment.
00:39:57.000It seems that the mere inquiry was enough to set off the apparently drunk gossip columnist-turned-flak Doug Deschert, the host of the event, who became enraged and screamed at the top of his lungs, the climate hoax.
00:40:07.000Meanwhile, octogenarian art critic Anthony Hayden Gast, who appeared to have been sleeping happily for most of the dinner, was roused by the abrupt rumpus.
00:40:16.000Hayden Guest suddenly opened his eyes and denounced his longtime pal Deshert, calling him a miserable blob.
00:40:23.000Deshert continued to scream wildly about the climate change scam, while Hayden Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously effing insane and insignificant.
00:40:33.000Here it seems Deshert sensed the need for a new rhetorical tack, and let rip a loud prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point.
00:40:50.000When he farted, it meant he was farting.
00:40:53.000The room, which included a handful of journalists as well as Kennedy's campaign manager, former representative Dennis Kucinich, was stunned, seemingly unsure about whether Deschere was farting at Hayden Guest personally, or at the very notion of global warming.
00:41:10.000Regrettably, we made sure, readers, there was no room left for doubt that the climate changed in the immediate environs of the dinner table.
00:41:15.000The candidate maintained a steady composure in the face of the crisis.
00:41:19.000Sadly, and somewhat inexplicably, another guest brought things back to climate change at a certain point, leading to another round of yelling.
00:41:27.000When asked about his outburst the next day, Deschert said, I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.
00:41:33.000He also asked us to refer to him as either a gallivanting Boulevardier or a beer-fueled sex rocket.
00:41:45.000I mean, this is basically how our culture now works.
00:41:50.000I'm pretty sure that our culture now works like whoever has a dinner event covered by Page Six at which people are averring their opinions through farting, that person automatically wins the presidency.
00:42:04.000I'm pretty sure that according to the Constitution, that's how all of this works.
00:42:34.000Okay, meanwhile, we now have some good statistics from the 2022 election, and they bode somewhat well for Republicans and somewhat ill for Republicans.
00:42:42.000So these statistics are from Pew Research, and what they find is that Republican turnout was way up in 2022 compared to 2020, as opposed to Biden voters.
00:42:50.000So, apparently, 71% of Trump voters voted in 2022.
00:42:57.000For a Republican House candidate, it's only 67% of Biden voters voted in 2022.
00:43:06.000About 7% of Biden voters in 2020 voted Republican in 2022.
00:43:10.000Only 3% of Republican voters in 2020 voted Democrat in 2022.
00:43:14.000So, again, that's not a huge kind of swath of independents in the middle of the country.
00:43:19.000According to that new Pew Research Center analysis of verified voters and non-voters in 2022, 2020, 2018, and 2016, they found partisan differences in turnout account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year.
00:43:31.000Overall, 68% of those who voted in 2020 turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms.
00:43:37.000As in previous elections, party loyalty remained strong in last fall's midterms.
00:43:41.000Democratic 2018 voters were slightly more likely than Republican 2018 voters to defect in 2022.
00:43:46.000That flipped party balance one or two percentage points to the GOP.
00:43:51.000So why exactly did Republicans then underperform in the Senate races?
00:43:55.000The answer is because all the Senate races were fairly close, but a bunch of people split their ticket.
00:44:00.000A bunch of people who voted Republican for House candidates did not vote for the Republican candidate in the Senate.
00:44:29.000Now, again, one part of this 2024 election cycle that's definitely not going to benefit Democrats the same way it did as in 2020 is that people are going to show up more in person to vote than they did in 2020.
00:44:39.000A huge number of people voted by mail-in because of all of the Democratic attempts to get people to vote early, thanks to scare-tacticking about COVID.
00:44:48.000Voting in person on Election Day in 2020 and 2022 increased sharply compared with 2020.
00:44:53.000More voters reported casting ballots in person on Election Day in both parties.
00:44:56.000The share remained much higher among Republican voters, 51%, than among Democratic voters, 34%.
00:45:00.000White voters without college degrees made up a majority, 54% of Republican voters in 2022, compared with just 27% of Democratic voters.
00:45:09.000Hispanic voters did, in fact, move over toward the Republican Party.
00:45:12.000Hispanic voters favored Democrats by a 21-point margin in 2022, but that was a 47-point margin in 2018.
00:45:20.000Black voters continued to support Democrats by overwhelming margins.
00:45:23.00093% voted for Democrats in the midterms, only 5% for Republicans.
00:45:29.000So, you know, what exactly does that mean for Republicans?
00:45:32.000Well, again, it means that they're going to have to count on lower voter turnout for Democrats in order to win the 2024 election if Donald Trump is the candidate.
00:45:41.000Because they're not going to be winning a ton of independents.
00:45:44.000The 2022 election is a good forecast, you would presume, for what's going to happen in 2024.
00:45:52.000Because again, 2020 is even more of an outlier than a typical midterm election.
00:45:55.000Whenever you're trying to forecast what's going to happen in the next, you tend to look at the last presidential.
00:45:59.000I don't think 2020 is a good predicate election for 2024.
00:46:02.000Because of the wildly increased voter turnout, because of the changes in the voting rules, because of the increase in mail-in ballots, and all of the rest.
00:46:10.000I'm not sure that replicates itself in 2024, which is why you're seeing Democrats becoming increasingly nervous.
00:46:15.000With that said, does Donald Trump actually have a plan to win in 2024?
00:46:19.000So he did an interview recently with the Nevada Globe.
00:46:26.000And he was asked specifically about what he would do about all of the problems that they had in 2024, in 2020 rather, and how exactly he meant to collect himself and win in 2024.
00:46:40.000My question, what is he going to change between 2020 and 2024 to prevent the election from being stolen if you believe the election was stolen, President Trump?
00:47:35.000Okay, you may have noticed that the question was, how do you plan to overcome the systemic obstacles to your victory in 2024?
00:47:41.000And he did not have a single sentence dedicated to that answer.
00:47:43.000This is the part that scares me about Trump's candidacy more than anything else.
00:47:47.000If it's poorly organized, if it's a close election and it's poorly organized, then even if you believe Trump that the election was stolen from him, he has no plan to actually reverse that result.
00:47:57.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:48:01.000So, Brian Cox is the best thing on the show Succession on HBO.
00:48:05.000He played Logan Roy, who's supposed to be sort of a stand-in for Rupert Murdoch.
00:48:09.000He was on with Piers Morgan, and he went after woke culture, and I appreciate this, particularly from somebody in Hollywood.
00:48:16.000Are things worse now, or is our perception of life worse because of things like social media inflaming everything?
00:48:23.000Well, I don't think social media helps.
00:48:28.000It hinders rather than helps, and I think it points up Two readily inadequacies that we can actually... And the whole woke... Well, we've talked about this before.
00:48:38.000The whole woke culture, I think, is truly awful.
00:49:00.000And you're starting to see this from some of the older actors, right?
00:49:02.000Tom Hanks recently was quoted suggesting that he is tired of this notion that actors can't play people who aren't like the actor in real life.
00:49:11.000You've seen Steven Spielberg say some of the same stuff, that he's upset that he acquiesced to political correctness and he took the shot of a person with a gun out of E.T.
00:49:20.000So you're starting to see some of the old Hollywood types recognize that all the wokeness is absolutely going to destroy their industry and they need to push back against it.
00:49:26.000It's one of the reasons, by the way, the big box office hits of recent vintage are all basically just straight Americana without any sort of politically correct attempts.
00:49:35.000A lot of these, a lot of the new movie, the new Mission Impossible movie is going to make bank.
00:49:39.000It's going to make bank because there are no sucker punches.
00:50:15.000Speaking of political correctness, I gotta say, I'm amazed at the Hollywood continued worship of the Obamas.
00:50:22.000Not really amazed because obviously when you have an idol and it's a golden calf, you continue to worship the golden calf until, you know, until you don't.
00:50:28.000But the fact that Barack Obama has won a Grammy He won a Grammy for reading his book.
00:50:34.000And now that he and Michelle Obama have been nominated for an Emmy for working what we do all day.
00:50:57.000And then, because Hollywood continues to worship at the altar of the Obamas, they give them Emmy nominations, which means they crowded out somebody more deserving, because literally anyone, I would imagine, would be more deserving.
00:51:06.000Working comes from the former president and first lady Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which struck a content deal with Netflix in 2018 to produce films and television series for the streaming giant.
00:51:18.000What exactly earned the Emmy nomination on that?
00:51:20.000She did an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
00:52:48.000Those aren't called crop tops when straight dudes do it.
00:52:51.000It's just, you're too fat for your shirt when straight dudes do it.
00:52:55.000And indeed, every picture from this story is about a gay dude who's burying his belly.
00:52:59.000So first of all, let me just say, just as a fashion matter, no one wants to see the midriff of another man.
00:53:04.000Just as a general, I'm not gonna speak for gay men.
00:53:06.000Women, I don't think, are interested, and neither are straight men.
00:53:10.000Like, this is just generally not an attractive thing, as they rule.
00:53:14.000But all that is female must become male, apparently.
00:53:18.000According to Emma Grillo, it is often the case that as summer rolls around and temperatures rise, so do hemlines.
00:53:23.000As men have embraced shorter shorts over the past few years, some have also started to wear shorter shirts, specifically crop tops.
00:53:29.000Loner men have been known to wear stomach-bearing garments when they exercise or go to the beach.
00:53:32.000Lately, crop tops can be seen on guys at stores and bars.
00:53:35.000More modest styles hit right at the waistline.
00:53:37.000Many are cropped short enough to expose a navel.
00:53:39.000Some wearers are making theirs by taking scissors to hold t-shirts.
00:53:42.000Others buy them off the rack, often from stores' women's sections.
00:53:46.000David Mendoza, 29, an operations manager in New York, owns crop tops of varying lengths.
00:53:50.000Deciding which to wear, he said, often comes down to the occasion.
00:53:53.000At first, Mr. Mendoza would cut shirts himself, but as he started to wear more crop tops, he discovered stores including H&M and Rainbow sold women's styles with his preferred fit.
00:54:02.000Rainbow, he said, has sexier, more open crop tops that are cut even shorter.
00:54:07.000Mr. Mendoza started wearing crop tops two years ago, he said, after noticing male fitness influencers followed on Instagram wore them to exercise.
00:54:44.000Apparently, there are some men who are straight who are doing it.
00:54:47.000Or they found the... Let me put that another way.
00:54:49.000They found the one man who is straight who is doing this.
00:54:51.000Cody James, 27, who works in advertising in New York, said he grew up watching movies and TV shows from the 80s and 90s.
00:54:56.000He started wearing crop tops about a year ago, he said, and was influenced in part by styles he saw on screen when he was younger.
00:55:01.000He said 70% of the shirts he owns are cropped.
00:55:04.000Most, he said, hit below the navel, though a few are short enough to show it.
00:55:07.000My girlfriend always makes fun of me, because sometimes she wants to wear a shirt to bed, but they're all crop tops.
00:55:12.000She should make fun of you, and also she should run for the hills.
00:55:16.000One professor said, men wearing crop tops comes at a time of shifting dynamics of gender and an openness in masculine fashion to truly embrace a variety of aesthetics.