The Ben Shapiro Show - August 28, 2023


Will Bernie Run?


Episode Stats

Length

59 minutes

Words per Minute

211.86092

Word Count

12,694

Sentence Count

897

Misogynist Sentences

9

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) returns to New Hampshire to deliver a speech at the St. Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics. CNN reports that Bernie Sanders is back in the state, and it s sparking some speculation about whether or not he s running for President in 2020. But what does that mean for Joe Biden s chances of winning the Democratic nomination? And what does it mean for the rest of the Democratic primary field if he doesn t run for president in 2020? And what will happen if Joe Biden doesn t decide to run for re-election? And if he does run, who will he pick up the pieces when Donald Trump wins the nomination? And who will replace him if he s defeated by Trump in the primary? And how will he do it if he's not the next president of the United States? And why is he back in New Hampshire after spending the past 30 days on vacation in Washington, D.C. and why should he be in the first place in the early primary states of the country that could potentially elect a Democratic presidential candidate? except for New Hampshire? What s going to happen if Bernie s back in N.H. and Joe Biden isn t running for president next year? And is it possible that he s actually running again? or is he going to be the next President of the U.S. in 2020, or not? after all, after all? Is he really running for the White House? this time? Or is he running for something other than a third place finish in the Democratic Party primary? in 2020 or not even a shot at the nomination at the 2020 Democratic primary at all of the other candidates? and is it really even a race at all ? at least a chance at the next presidential election at all? And will he even be the third party contender? is that even a thing at all, really a thing, or is there a chance? a real shot at running for anything at all at all that s a serious shot at being the next Mr. thing at anything? at this point? other than Hillary Clinton or not at any chance at all at a serious chance at winning the nomination in 2020 or not at all he s even running at all the races at all?? and what s the difference between him and Hillary Clinton is there any chance he s really even running for any of that?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Joe Biden is playing a very, very dangerous game.
00:00:02.000 I don't just mean with regard to his presidential run against the presumptive Republican nominee right now, Donald Trump.
00:00:08.000 I mean with regard to his own party.
00:00:10.000 So Joe Biden is non-existent as just a human being.
00:00:13.000 According to the Republican National Committee, Joe Biden has spent 23 of the past 30 days on vacation.
00:00:20.000 Later this week, he's going back to Rehoboth Beach for more.
00:00:23.000 His entire strategy as a president of the United States is now apparently the same strategy he used in getting to the presidency, which is hide in a basement in Delaware and just stay there.
00:00:34.000 Every so often, they open the coffin and they roll Joe on out.
00:00:38.000 And then they machinate his mouth for him.
00:00:41.000 And then they move him back into his coffin.
00:00:43.000 And then the door shuts and click.
00:00:45.000 But here is the problem.
00:00:46.000 There are a lot of Democrats who aren't particularly satisfied with all of this, particularly because the person who is backing up Joe Biden is also wildly unpopular in Kamala Harris.
00:00:54.000 Republicans are not just going to run against Joe Biden, they're also going to run against the person who presumptively will pick up the pieces when, God forbid, something happens to the current president of the United States.
00:01:03.000 This is why, presumably, you have Bernie Sanders back in New Hampshire over the weekend.
00:01:09.000 So Bernie has no business in New Hampshire.
00:01:10.000 The only reason for Bernie to be in New Hampshire is because he thinks, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden ain't going to be around if it's time to run for president again.
00:01:18.000 And everybody has talked about the Gavin Newsom's of the world.
00:01:21.000 We'll get to him in a moment.
00:01:22.000 Everybody talks about Kamala Harris.
00:01:23.000 People forget that the person who won Iowa and New Hampshire in the last Democratic primary season was neither of those two characters.
00:01:30.000 Kamala Harris dropped out before we even hit California.
00:01:32.000 The person who won was Bernie.
00:01:33.000 And if it had not been for the entire Democratic Party infrastructure coming together to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination, they literally all got together and then they all endorsed Joe Biden simultaneously.
00:01:43.000 If that doesn't happen, Bernie Sanders is the nominee for the Democratic Party.
00:01:46.000 And there is every belief that Donald Trump wins re-election over Bernie Sanders.
00:01:50.000 Well, Bernie is getting active again.
00:01:53.000 And I gotta tell you, communism must be amazing for your blood, because apparently being a complete leech on other people for your entire life, which is Bernie Sanders' story, one of the most useless people in all of American history.
00:02:05.000 Bernie Sanders' entire life has been built around uselessness, taking American public dollars, and all the rest.
00:02:11.000 He is just the worst.
00:02:12.000 And Bernie is back in New Hampshire over the weekend.
00:02:16.000 He delivered a speech entitled The Agenda America Needs at St.
00:02:19.000 Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
00:02:22.000 He said this will lay out a concrete agenda which speaks to the needs of the long-neglected working class.
00:02:28.000 And he put out a statement saying, All of this is sparking some speculation.
00:02:30.000 CNN did an interview with Bernie over the weekend.
00:02:32.000 discussed it at the growing levels of income and wealth inequality in our
00:02:34.000 country and the rampant corporate greed we are seeing. All of this is a sparking
00:02:39.000 some speculation. CNN did an interview with Bernie over the weekend here's what
00:02:42.000 he had to say. You said if we're going to defeat the creeping authoritarianism and
00:02:48.000 right-wing extremism there has to be an ideological change of course.
00:02:53.000 Can you explain what you mean by that?
00:02:58.000 Well, what I mean by that, Dana, is that the President has a right to be very proud of many of the accomplishments that we've achieved in the last three years.
00:03:07.000 Unemployment very, very low.
00:03:09.000 We've brought inflation down.
00:03:10.000 We're investing in clean energy.
00:03:12.000 We're rebuilding our infrastructure.
00:03:15.000 We have made real progress in a number of areas.
00:03:19.000 The reality is that today, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.
00:03:25.000 We have massive levels of income and wealth inequality.
00:03:28.000 Three people are more wealth than the bottom half of America.
00:03:34.000 Okay, so Bernie, this is the language of a person who wants to campaign.
00:03:39.000 As New Hampshire Institute of Politics Executive Director Neil Vesk told the Christian Science Monitor, he said, we invited him, but he is coming here for a reason.
00:03:45.000 I think it opens the door for a lot of other sorts of thoughts about whether or not Biden is going to be the nominee, whether or not Biden is going to be running in next year's presidential election.
00:03:53.000 Now, Biden, Bernie has said over and over and over he's going to back Biden.
00:03:56.000 But again, it seems as though there is now the door is now open to Democrats openly talking about what happens if Joe Biden doesn't survive.
00:04:04.000 And this has been sort of verboten, right?
00:04:06.000 There's been a kind of ixnay on the talking about Joe Biden's elf hay.
00:04:10.000 Just don't talk about it and it'll go away.
00:04:12.000 But now it is perfectly obvious to everyone that Joe Biden is ailing.
00:04:15.000 And so even Bernie Sanders, by the way, is older than Joe Biden.
00:04:17.000 Bernie Sanders is 81 years old.
00:04:20.000 Bernie is not just going to give up the ghost right here.
00:04:22.000 He looks at that field and he says, well, I have more of a support base nationally than Gavin Newsom.
00:04:27.000 And so the possibility that Bernie could theoretically be waiting in the wings for Joe, I don't think any of these people are going to jump in directly against Joe Biden unless Joe Biden has some sort of serious health scare.
00:04:36.000 But honest to God, I mean, it seems like day to day, the possibility of Joe Biden having a serious health scare is like 50 percent.
00:04:43.000 Every time that man has a press conference, you're waiting for him, for God forbid, something to happen to the current president of the United States.
00:04:48.000 You don't want anything bad to happen to anybody for health reasons.
00:04:51.000 But if you're a Democrat waiting in the wings right now and you look at Joe Biden and they are hiding him on a beach by himself, trying to stop the old man from getting COVID or something, you have to be thinking, well, who's backing him up?
00:05:01.000 And no one is happy with Kamala Harris, despite the attempt by Politico to sort of revive the enthusiasm that never existed around Kamala Harris.
00:05:10.000 So Bernie may be back in the ballgame.
00:05:13.000 Meanwhile, everybody is pretty...
00:05:16.000 Pretty clear on the fact that Gavin Newsom is waiting in the wings as well.
00:05:19.000 Gavin Newsom has been running a shadow campaign.
00:05:21.000 It's why he's been running against Ron DeSantis.
00:05:23.000 According to NBC News, Newsom is increasingly being viewed as a nuisance by some of President Joe Biden's political advisors, according to four people familiar with the matter.
00:05:30.000 The Biden's camp no longer sees Newsom as a wannabe challenger.
00:05:33.000 Newsom's plan to debate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on TV carries more risk than potential reward, according to those people.
00:05:38.000 This has caused consternation within Biden's operation, and particularly among Vice President Kamala Harris's allies.
00:05:42.000 It should cause consternation with Kamala Harris.
00:05:44.000 The notion that if Kamala Harris were the heir apparent to Joe Biden, no one would challenge her is nonsense.
00:05:48.000 Everyone would challenge her.
00:05:49.000 The number of people in the race if Kamala Harris is the presumptive heir to Joe Biden is insane.
00:05:55.000 That place is going to be more crowded than the U.S.
00:05:58.000 Open this weekend.
00:05:58.000 I mean, it's totally crazy.
00:06:01.000 Some Biden advisors have complained privately.
00:06:02.000 The planned debate could make voters think Newsom is running a shadow 2024 campaign at a time when most Democrats say they'd prefer a different candidate at the top of the ticket.
00:06:10.000 They also argue it could elevate DeSantis, whom White House advisers initially perceived as a greater threat to Biden's re-election hopes, than the GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.
00:06:19.000 Harris' allies take particularly umbrage at what they see as Newsom's attempt to position himself for the 2028 Democratic presidential primarily at her expense.
00:06:26.000 So, again, there are a lot of Democrats and they are champing at the bit to go after Joe Biden, and at least after the people who would come after Joe Biden.
00:06:35.000 There's a reason Joe Biden's team is hiding him away.
00:06:38.000 In just one second, we'll get to the continued controversies swirling around Joe Biden.
00:06:42.000 Makes him incredibly vulnerable even inside his own party.
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00:07:49.000 Okay, so.
00:07:51.000 The controversy continues to swirl over the failures of the Biden administration.
00:07:56.000 All of the investigations surrounding legality of what Joe Biden has been doing, those are not simply going to go away.
00:08:02.000 In fact, there's an article in the New York Post over the weekend that's pretty dicey with regard to Jack Smith.
00:08:06.000 Jack Smith is, of course, the special counsel who's appointed to go after Donald Trump in multiple cases.
00:08:10.000 He's got the Florida case over Donald Trump's mishandling, allegedly, of classified documents.
00:08:14.000 And he's got the January 6th case up in Washington, D.C.
00:08:16.000 Well, now, according to the New York Post, it turns out The White House Counsel's Office met with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he brought charges against former President Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts aimed at President Biden's likely opponent in 2024.
00:08:32.000 Jay Bratt, who joined the Special Counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, the Deputy Chief of Staff for the White House Counsel's Office, according to White House visitor logs.
00:08:46.000 They were joined in the 10 a.m.
00:08:47.000 meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office.
00:08:50.000 Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith's office on June 8th, 2023.
00:08:54.000 Brad, who is 63, also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump was mired in negotiations with the National Archives.
00:09:03.000 Brad had a third meeting in the White House September 2021, this with Katherine Riley, an advisor to the White House's Chief of Staff office.
00:09:09.000 It's not clear what exactly was discussed, but critics and legal experts are questioning why Bratt was taking meetings at all with the White House Counsel's Office while part of an active investigation into President Biden's likely 2024 Republican opponent.
00:09:21.000 Obviously, Rudy Giuliani is fighting mad about it.
00:09:22.000 He says there's no legitimate purpose for a DOJ guy to be meeting with the White House, except if it's coordinated at the highest levels.
00:09:29.000 Giuliani said that he believes that obviously this is some sort of coordination.
00:09:34.000 George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said that the meeting was particularly troublesome and raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after Brad began his work with the special counsel.
00:09:43.000 He said there's no reason why the DOJ should not be able to confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter.
00:09:49.000 Now, theoretically, it could concern some other matter.
00:09:51.000 But the fact is that when you have meetings between the people who are prosecuting Donald Trump and members of the White House staff, That is not something that a special counsel's office should be doing, quite obviously.
00:10:03.000 Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, the congressional investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden continue.
00:10:10.000 Kevin McCarthy over the weekend, Speaker of the House, he was asked about shutting down investigations into Hunter or Joe Biden.
00:10:14.000 He said, of course, I'm not doing that.
00:10:17.000 Walk us through your scenarios that you expect.
00:10:19.000 Do you think we'll see a short term continuing resolution while you finish the appropriations process?
00:10:25.000 Well, one of our goals is to change Washington.
00:10:27.000 We're tired of these omnibus bills where Congress doesn't do their work like their appropriations.
00:10:31.000 So in the debt ceiling, we put a provision in there, if you didn't do your job, there was a 1% cut across the board.
00:10:36.000 It made a lot of members mad, but they're actually doing their work.
00:10:40.000 I don't believe we'll have enough time to pass all the appropriation bills by September 30th, so I would actually like to have a short-term CR, only to make our arguments stronger.
00:10:52.000 Because, Maria, if we shut down, all the government shuts it down.
00:10:56.000 Investigation and everything else.
00:10:57.000 It hurts the American public.
00:10:58.000 But, if we're able to pass our appropriation bills, we're in a stronger position to remove those Pelosi policies that are locked into law right now.
00:11:09.000 Okay, so the investigation into Hunter is going to be ongoing from Congress as well.
00:11:13.000 It should be.
00:11:14.000 Viktor Shokin, who's at the center of a lot of this controversy, you remember Viktor Shokin, he was the former top Ukraine prosecutor who was targeted by Joe Biden as well as by Burisma.
00:11:22.000 Now, Joe Biden's claim is that the reason he got Shokin fired in Ukraine is because there was international consternation over Viktor Shokin having the power that he did, that he was corrupt, and that's the reason that Joe Biden was doing all of that.
00:11:31.000 Burisma was at the same time lobbying for Shokin to be gone because he was investigating Burisma.
00:11:36.000 His claim is the reason that Joe Biden did it is because he was investigating Burisma.
00:11:40.000 Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma and Joe Biden suddenly took a magical interest in his particular job.
00:11:45.000 Over the weekend, he did an interview with Brian Kilmeade in which he talked about why he thinks he was fired Victor Shokin.
00:11:52.000 Why were you fired from your position by President Poroshenko?
00:11:58.000 I have said repeatedly in my previous interviews that Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma.
00:12:11.000 So did President Poroshenko tell you that?
00:12:14.000 That he wanted you to stay on the job, but there was pressure from Vice President Biden?
00:12:24.000 You understood me correctly.
00:12:25.000 This is how it was.
00:12:27.000 There were no complaints whatsoever, no problems with how I was performing at my job.
00:12:33.000 But because pressure was repeatedly put on President Poroshenko, that is what ended up in him firing me.
00:12:45.000 He says the reason I oversaw the Burisma case was because I was Prosecutor General.
00:12:49.000 Burisma was an ordinary case.
00:12:50.000 There was nothing particularly different about it.
00:12:51.000 He said the reason I was handling it is because it deserved a special mention.
00:12:54.000 It was on a list of cases to merit special attention because Hunter Biden was involved with Burisma and of course his father, the Vice President Biden at the time, oversaw Ukraine affairs for the White House.
00:13:02.000 This is why.
00:13:02.000 He also added he had no doubt Burisma was engaged in illegal activities and said it would half a day to explain them all.
00:13:07.000 Among the allegations, he said that Burisma illegally produced, sold, and utilized natural gas supplies.
00:13:11.000 This is according to Fox News.
00:13:12.000 He says, I have no doubt there were illegal activities engaged in by Burisma.
00:13:15.000 As a matter of fact, the criminal case had been started before me.
00:13:18.000 It continued to explain, and Slavchevsky, who at the time held the post of minister and was the founder and CEO of Burisma, started bringing in people who could provide protection for him.
00:13:25.000 Hunter Biden was among them.
00:13:26.000 The corruption network expanded as a result.
00:13:28.000 So yes, to answer your question, there is no doubt in my mind Burisma was engaged in illegal activities.
00:13:33.000 Now, as Fox News points out, it is pretty obvious that Hunter called DC to work on Shoken.
00:13:39.000 House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said, quote, when Burisma's owner was facing pressure from the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company for corruption, Devin Archer, who is Hunter Biden's former business partner, testified that Burisma executives asked Hunter to call DC after a Burisma board meeting in Dubai.
00:13:54.000 And Fox News Digital reported that on November 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadim Pazarsky emailed Hunter Biden, Archer, and fellow Hunter associate Eric Schwerin about a revised proposal, contract, and initial invoice for Burisma holding from lobbying from Blue Star Strategies.
00:14:07.000 Hunter reportedly connected Burisma with Blue Star Strategies to help the energy firm fight corruption charges levied against Zlovchevsky, the company's owner.
00:14:15.000 And Pazarsky emphasized in that email the ultimate purpose of the agreement was to shut down any cases or pursuits against Nikolai in Ukraine.
00:14:21.000 That would be Zlovchevsky.
00:14:25.000 Shoken also went on, he accused the Bidens of actually taking bribes.
00:14:28.000 He said, had I continued to oversee the Burisma investigation, we would have found the facts
00:14:32.000 about the corrupt activities they were engaging in that included both Hunter Biden and Devin Archer
00:14:35.000 and others. He said, I don't want to deal in unproven facts.
00:14:37.000 My firm personal conviction is, yes, this was the case. They were being bribed. The fact
00:14:41.000 that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for buying this missile, my firing
00:14:45.000 alone, isn't that a case of corruption?
00:14:46.000 Well, I mean, the answer is yes. I mean, the only question there is whether Joe Biden is able to
00:14:51.000 hide his motivation, which may have been over Burisma by saying that everybody wanted Chokin
00:14:55.000 fired anyway.
00:14:56.000 But two things can be true at once.
00:14:57.000 Everybody wanted Shokin fired.
00:14:58.000 And the real reason that Joe Biden was interested in Shokin to the point where he was calling up the president of Ukraine And actually sending emails from a secret account to Biden and to Hunter over Ukraine.
00:15:09.000 The reason maybe he took like a special interest, maybe it's because of the fact that his son was working for Burisma at the time.
00:15:15.000 All of this is not dead.
00:15:16.000 Not by a long shot.
00:15:17.000 Other Democrats know it.
00:15:18.000 This is why there's a little bit of blood in the water with regard to the current president of the United States.
00:15:22.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more on this race in just one second, particularly with regard to the economy, which it is very unclear which way the economy is going to go.
00:15:30.000 I have my doubts.
00:15:31.000 First, We have a wonderful dog.
00:15:33.000 His name is Happy.
00:15:34.000 Yesterday, he had a wonderful time.
00:15:36.000 We took him out.
00:15:36.000 He was meeting all of the other dogs.
00:15:38.000 He's being extremely cute.
00:15:39.000 My kids love him, which is why we want him to live a long and happy life.
00:15:42.000 This is why we give him rough greens every morning.
00:15:44.000 The dog food you've been giving your dog?
00:15:46.000 Well, it's dead food.
00:15:47.000 It doesn't have that much nutritional value.
00:15:48.000 Look at it.
00:15:49.000 That brown food doesn't exactly scream nutritional, but green food does.
00:15:52.000 Rough greens boosts happy's food back to life.
00:15:53.000 It can do the same for your dog as well.
00:15:55.000 You don't have to go out and buy new dog food.
00:15:56.000 Just sprinkle some rough greens on their food.
00:15:58.000 Every single day contains all the necessary vitamins and minerals your dog is not getting
00:16:02.000 from their regular dog food.
00:16:03.000 Rough greens is the only supplement your dog will ask for by name.
00:16:06.000 Rough greens, you get it?
00:16:07.000 It's like, it's a pun about rough.
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00:16:13.000 He's offering my listeners a free Jumpstart Trial Bag.
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00:16:36.000 Meanwhile, the economy continues to be on sort of the edge here.
00:16:40.000 So Jerome Powell gave a speech in Jackson Hole over the weekend.
00:16:43.000 He's the head of the Federal Reserve.
00:16:44.000 And I will say it once again, the fact that our entire economy is run by a small cabal of human beings who preside over massive, enormous Global economy breaking power with regard to central banking is despicable.
00:16:57.000 It really is despicable.
00:16:59.000 The gold standard used to take this directly out of the hands of bureaucratic quote-unquote experts.
00:17:05.000 I'm not saying these people are uniquely bad.
00:17:06.000 What I am saying is the system of incentives is uniquely bad.
00:17:09.000 The fact the Federal Reserve has been tasked with simultaneously keeping inflation low and keeping employment high, it used to be that that was the job of, you know, legislatures.
00:17:17.000 That was the job.
00:17:18.000 And now when you hand it off to the Federal Reserve, basically their job is to continue to backfill all the bad legislation coming out of Washington, D.C.
00:17:24.000 Fiscal responsibility can only happen when you don't have a bunch of central bankers who are manipulating the switches behind the scenes.
00:17:32.000 In any case, Jerome Powell, who everybody now watches like you watch a papal conclave after trying to pick a new pope, just waiting for the smoke to emerge.
00:17:40.000 That's how we now watch these economic events, which is insane.
00:17:43.000 So Jerome Powell in a room in Jackson Hole.
00:17:46.000 Wyoming, because this is how, again, our macroeconomics is now done.
00:17:49.000 He gave a speech talking about inflation and the interest rates.
00:17:53.000 A lot of people are worried particularly that the Federal Reserve and the central banks across the world are going to continue to raise those interest rates in an effort to quell inflation.
00:18:00.000 And in doing so, they're basically going to clamp down on the ability of lenders to lend.
00:18:05.000 They're going to increase standards for lenders because the money ain't going to be quite as easy to recoup.
00:18:11.000 And they're afraid that will tip us over into a recession.
00:18:13.000 Here was Jerome Powell over the weekend.
00:18:16.000 2% is and will remain our inflation target.
00:18:20.000 We are committed to achieving and sustaining a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down to that level over time.
00:18:30.000 It is challenging, of course, to know in real time when such a stance has been achieved.
00:18:37.000 OK, meanwhile, he says, is he going to give any guidance?
00:18:40.000 I mean, we all know that he wants to bring inflation down to 2%.
00:18:42.000 That's always the target rate for the Federal Reserve, which, by the way, is in and of itself immoral.
00:18:47.000 Let me just point out that a 2% inflation rate over the course of 50 years is a 100% inflation rate.
00:18:52.000 Which is why everything is way more expensive in just pure dollar terms than it used to be.
00:18:57.000 The fact that we deliberately inflate the currency in order to artificially jog consumer spending in this country is what we would call a nidashanda.
00:19:03.000 It is something that is shameful.
00:19:05.000 We should not be doing this.
00:19:06.000 We are actively degrading people's savings in order to jog Fake consumer spending.
00:19:11.000 Which does not actually generate innovation, by the way.
00:19:13.000 What generates innovation is investment.
00:19:15.000 What generates innovation is R&D.
00:19:18.000 What generates innovation is not you buying an additional hamburger today.
00:19:22.000 That doesn't generate the new products and services that make the world a better place.
00:19:26.000 In any case, Jerome Powell then gave very little guidance.
00:19:29.000 He basically just kind of said, well, you know, we don't know.
00:19:32.000 You don't know.
00:19:32.000 Nobody knows.
00:19:35.000 As is often the case, we are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.
00:19:39.000 In such circumstances, risk management considerations are critical.
00:19:44.000 At upcoming meetings, we will assess our progress based on the totality of the data and the evolving outlook and risks.
00:19:52.000 Based on this assessment, we will proceed carefully as we decide whether to tighten further or instead to hold the policy rate constant and await further data.
00:20:03.000 Okay, well that's, um, that is very edifying.
00:20:05.000 In just one second, we'll get to what that means for the economy.
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00:21:07.000 Get that special Okay, so what does all this mean for the economy?
00:21:15.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Powell's message wasn't terribly different from his previous comments.
00:21:19.000 Analysts and investors said it wasn't music to the ears of many of the portfolio managers who have been crossing their fingers the fastest rate cycle in decades is finally at an end.
00:21:27.000 Stocks rose Friday afternoon, a rare advance in an August slog for U.S.
00:21:30.000 indices, but futures markets showed a greater expectation rates could stay higher for longer.
00:21:34.000 They will, okay?
00:21:35.000 These rates are not going anywhere for a bit.
00:21:37.000 At what point does the bond market provide competition to the stock market in the eyes of investors?
00:21:41.000 Said David D'Nabedian, the Chief Investment Officer of CIBC Private Wealth U.S.
00:21:46.000 The idea would be that the stock market right now is still inflated a little bit.
00:21:49.000 Although U.S.
00:21:50.000 indices remain in the green for the year, this month has been difficult for investors in riskier assets, signs of continued strength in the U.S.
00:21:56.000 economy, a flood of treasury debt sales, expectations the Fed could keep higher rates higher for longer.
00:22:01.000 Lifted government bond yields to decade-plus highs.
00:22:03.000 Traders on Friday assigned a 54% probability to the central bank lifting rates again by the end of the year.
00:22:08.000 That's up from 32% that they estimated a week earlier.
00:22:10.000 Again, the fact that everybody is now sitting around and reading chicken entrails as to what a bunch of central bankers are going to do with the rates is absurd.
00:22:16.000 There is a natural rate of inflation.
00:22:18.000 The natural rate of inflation occurs based on products and services and productivity.
00:22:24.000 There's a natural rate to lending.
00:22:27.000 Natural interest rates exist.
00:22:29.000 They are different from economy to economy.
00:22:31.000 They are not consistent.
00:22:32.000 They should not be set by any central point.
00:22:34.000 It is amazing that many of the same free market economic thinkers who understand that no one cadre of people is capable of setting prices in literally any other area of the American economy believes that there is a cadre of people who should be setting the price of debt.
00:22:49.000 That's totally insane.
00:22:52.000 It's not just people like me who believe this.
00:22:53.000 Mohamed El-Erian of Allianz, he wrote a book a long time ago.
00:22:57.000 Well, they ain't going to be able to save.
00:23:04.000 This creates such a set of perverse incentives.
00:23:06.000 The perverse incentive is, if you're a member of the legislature, you just spend endlessly hoping the Federal Reserve is going to come in like mommy and kiss the boo-boo.
00:23:13.000 And it's basically Jerome's Powell job.
00:23:15.000 The problem is that means that everybody else out here who's trying to invest, we don't have an idea what Jerome Powell is going to do tomorrow.
00:23:21.000 You're sitting around waiting for this guy to figure out exactly what the plan is for all the rest of our lives.
00:23:26.000 And you don't even have a say in it because it's not an elected position.
00:23:30.000 The fact that there is not more hue and cry about the outsized powers of the Federal Reserve is absolutely beyond me.
00:23:37.000 Especially because it's not as though central bankers know what the hell they're doing.
00:23:40.000 Again, whenever you have a small cadre of experts who say that they know exactly what they are doing, that is almost never the case.
00:23:45.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, central bankers from around the world are finally getting the inflation slowdown they've been expecting, but they worry it won't last.
00:23:51.000 That apprehension explained the uneasy optimism underlying their discussions here in the Wyoming mountains this weekend about whether interest rates have reached a summit.
00:23:58.000 Federal Reserve officials are grappling with new economic cross-currents.
00:24:01.000 U.S.
00:24:01.000 consumer spending has grown faster than they expected in recent months, buoyed by higher inflation-adjusted wages.
00:24:06.000 Stronger demand prompted concerns it might prevent inflation from falling further.
00:24:09.000 But a recent surge in long-term government bond yields combined with weakening growth abroad could help touch off a U.S.
00:24:14.000 economic slowdown Fed officials have been trying to engineer by raising rates aggressively over the past 18 months.
00:24:19.000 The problem is, once you tip over that cliff, you don't know how far down it is.
00:24:24.000 Meanwhile, China, they've destroyed their own economy.
00:24:27.000 They've been doing that over the course of the last few decades.
00:24:28.000 They've been hiding it with fake growth numbers based largely on borrowing extraordinary sums of money and then spending it on empty cities.
00:24:34.000 Well, now, according to the Wall Street Journal, ideology is driving China's economic policy to a degree not seen since the country's opening to the West nearly half a century ago, deterring its leaders from taking steps to spur the sputtering economy.
00:24:44.000 So it used to be that when China got in trouble, they might try a little free market stuff.
00:24:48.000 Not anymore.
00:24:49.000 Economists and investors have been calling on Beijing to make bolder efforts to boost output, especially by promoting consumer spending if necessary by offering cash handouts, as the U.S.
00:24:56.000 did during the pandemic.
00:24:58.000 But top leader Xi Jinping has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth people familiar with decision-making in Beijing say.
00:25:06.000 Xi sees such growth as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse.
00:25:11.000 Now, the way that China could theoretically do that is, you know, open up.
00:25:14.000 But they're not going to open up.
00:25:16.000 Instead, they're just going to follow this corporatist path.
00:25:19.000 What's amazing is that the same corporate path that China follows is one Democrats in the United States wish to follow.
00:25:24.000 It's China that takes hundreds of billions of dollars and just shovels it into particular industries in the belief that this will somehow magically fix their ailing economy.
00:25:32.000 Joe Biden wants to do the same thing here.
00:25:33.000 He calls it Bidenomics, the communist Chinese.
00:25:35.000 Call it communism, but it isn't either.
00:25:37.000 What it really is is corporatism.
00:25:39.000 It really is the government picking and choosing particular business sectors or businesses that they think are the most important business sectors or businesses and taking money away from the most efficient to give to these particular sectors.
00:25:49.000 It exists on both the left and the right, by the way.
00:25:51.000 And all it really is is favoritism combined with political ideology, which is not the way that free market economics is supposed to work.
00:25:58.000 It does not generate the most efficient levels of growth.
00:26:00.000 It does not generate the best outcomes for the vast majority of the population.
00:26:04.000 The fact that the West wishes to copy China as China falls directly into the pit is absolutely insane.
00:26:08.000 But again, the illusion of control is such a, it is so just desirous for so many people in positions of power.
00:26:17.000 The illusion that they alone can control, they alone can fix.
00:26:20.000 Give me enough power and I'll fix the American economy.
00:26:22.000 Now the answer, whenever you hear a president of either party say he has created jobs, it is a lie.
00:26:27.000 The president of the United States does not create jobs, neither do congresspeople.
00:26:30.000 You create the jobs in your business.
00:26:32.000 I create the jobs in my business.
00:26:35.000 We create the job, I know, because we sign the paychecks over here.
00:26:38.000 The fact that the federal government pretends that it creates jobs, the federal government can take away jobs by destroying the baseline preconditions for economic growth.
00:26:46.000 And that is one of the things that happens when you participate in the economic favoritism and the corporatism that both parties engage in here in the United States and that is engaged in by some of the most economically fascist countries on the planet.
00:26:58.000 By the way, all of this is having pretty dire effects, not just on the world economy, but more specifically, on the lower end of the world economy.
00:27:05.000 You're starting to see a bunch of countries absolutely collapse in terms of emerging markets.
00:27:10.000 Emerging markets are especially sensitive to Fed policy, according to the Wall Street Journal, because higher U.S.
00:27:14.000 rates make riskier assets less attractive to investors.
00:27:17.000 You're not going to invest in Nigerian bonds if the money is just not as easy.
00:27:21.000 So, get ready.
00:27:23.000 For all those people who believe that the markets are on solid footing, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale at the moment.
00:27:30.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the Republican side of the aisle, Joe Biden is incredibly vulnerable.
00:27:35.000 Even Democrats are noticing this, which is presumably why you have Bernie Sanders traveling to New Hampshire.
00:27:39.000 Republicans are steaming toward a Donald Trump nomination.
00:27:41.000 There's just no two ways about it.
00:27:43.000 Right now, the 2024 presidential nomination, the update in the RealClearPolitics polling average has Donald Trump up 40 points over the rest of the field.
00:27:51.000 There's been some sign that Vivek Ramaswamy is starting to recede back to the field, that Nikki Haley is starting to pick up a little bit of ground.
00:27:58.000 The solid No.
00:27:59.000 2 continues to be Ron DeSantis.
00:28:00.000 By pretty much all the available polling data right now, he continues to be No.
00:28:04.000 2.
00:28:05.000 Pence is picking up a little bit of ground in some of the latest polls.
00:28:07.000 By a little, I mean he's up to 5 or 6% in some of the latest polls.
00:28:11.000 Nobody is within shouting distance of Donald Trump.
00:28:15.000 After Donald Trump's pick was took at the Georgia courthouse, at the Fulton County Courthouse, it wasn't the courthouse, the jail, at the Fulton County Jail, he raised more money on that day alone than he had the entirety of the campaign, which is both I would say encouraging in the sense that Republicans are very, very motivated and a little bit discouraging in the fact that if you want Donald Trump to be president, probably you shouldn't want him to be president just because he took a mugshot.
00:28:42.000 Now, as I said, the mugshot is an amazing, amazing marketing opportunity for Donald Trump.
00:28:46.000 I talked about it on Friday.
00:28:48.000 It's a great mugshot.
00:28:49.000 If there is such a thing, it is a great mugshot.
00:28:50.000 And there are.
00:28:51.000 I mean, Frank Sinatra's, most famously.
00:28:53.000 Like, there are great and iconic mugshots.
00:28:55.000 This is an iconic mugshot.
00:28:56.000 Well, Trump turned that Georgia mugshot into gold.
00:28:59.000 According to Politico, Trump raised $7.1 million since he was booked at an Atlanta jail on Thursday evening, according to figures provided first to Politico by his campaign.
00:29:07.000 On Friday alone, Trump raised $4.18 million.
00:29:10.000 That is the single highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals.
00:29:16.000 The campaign's fundraising has been powered by merch.
00:29:19.000 It's been selling through the online store, which again, makes sense.
00:29:21.000 It's all people signaling to each other that they also wish to throw the establishment the giant orange middle finger.
00:29:27.000 The campaign has also been prodding online donors with emails and text messages as well.
00:29:32.000 Trump's campaign says it has raised nearly $20 million in the last three weeks based on the repeated charges against him.
00:29:38.000 Now, as I said last week, the polling does not demonstrate that Donald Trump is likely to win an election based on this.
00:29:44.000 It demonstrates that he is likely to win the nomination based on the charges against him.
00:29:50.000 But the fact is that most Americans, unfortunately, still believe that Trump should stand trial before the 2024 election.
00:29:56.000 He has a court date in Georgia today.
00:29:58.000 He has another one in D.C.
00:29:58.000 today.
00:29:59.000 All this is going to be about setting the timeline.
00:30:01.000 The court date in D.C.
00:30:02.000 is all about setting the Jack Smith January 6th case.
00:30:04.000 Is that going to be before the election or after?
00:30:06.000 His team is trying to argue he shouldn't be tried there until 2026, actually, which I think is unlikely.
00:30:10.000 Meanwhile, in Georgia, it's not really about Trump, but there is a legal case against Mark Meadows that is ongoing there.
00:30:15.000 Mark Meadows is trying to have that court move his case to federal court, and he's then going to claim that basically the supremacy clause prevents him from being tried in state court, that whatever crimes he supposedly committed, he committed as a federal official, as chief of staff to Donald Trump, and therefore he should be tried in federal court, not in state court.
00:30:30.000 If Trump tried the same thing, that would at least foreclose the possibility that he would be tried and convicted in a state court, and then he'd be on the ballot, and then you have a real mess, a constitutional mess, because The president can't pardon himself of a non-federal offense.
00:30:43.000 But, again, the polling does not show that the general public overall is incredibly warm toward Donald Trump's legal troubles.
00:30:50.000 There are some people who are more warm than they otherwise would have been, but they were kind of lukewarm to begin with.
00:30:55.000 Like, I'm more animated on behalf of Trump because of the trials than I otherwise would have been, but I voted for Trump in 2020, so I can't vote for him twice.
00:31:02.000 You look at the polling data from Politico and what it shows, is that 61% of Americans believe that Trump's election trials should take place before the election.
00:31:13.000 Meanwhile, 51% believe that Trump is guilty of alleged crimes in the federal 2020 election subversion election case against 26% who say no.
00:31:22.000 Those are not great numbers.
00:31:25.000 Meanwhile, a plurality of respondents to Politico said a conviction in the case, 44%, would have no impact on their likelihood of supporting Trump, which makes sense.
00:31:32.000 Again, you figure half of those people are pro, half of those people are against.
00:31:34.000 But among people who said that the result would inform their vote, nearly one-third of respondents, 32%, said a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump.
00:31:42.000 That includes one-third of independents.
00:31:44.000 Only 13% of respondents total said a conviction would make them more likely to support Trump.
00:31:48.000 That figure was more likely Republicans than not.
00:31:52.000 And by the way, the numbers could go down because as the case drags on and as sort of the shock of Trump being indicted drags on, it becomes less shocking and more normal.
00:32:01.000 And then this becomes baked into the cake.
00:32:05.000 By the way, if you look at who is considered a villain in this particular case, Here's the polling data.
00:32:12.000 Again, Politico Magazine, Ipsos Poll.
00:32:13.000 You have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the action, statements, and behavior of the following people regarding the cases against Trump.
00:32:19.000 58% unfavorable, 27% favorable.
00:32:21.000 Joe Biden, 45% unfavorable, 36% favorable.
00:32:26.000 That is a nine-point gap, negative for Biden.
00:32:28.000 That is a 29% gap for Donald Trump, right there.
00:32:32.000 Jack Smith, to this point, still has more favorables than unfavorables, and so does the DOJ.
00:32:36.000 So, if the hope here is that Donald Trump's legal cases are going to spur him to the presidency, again, I think there's a high possibility they spur him to the nomination, but I think that there's a much lower chance that they actually have the sort of countervailing effect that a lot of people have said about impeachment.
00:32:50.000 I've never bought the argument, by the way, that impeaching somebody actually helps them electorally.
00:32:54.000 I still have yet to see the evidence of that.
00:32:56.000 Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998.
00:32:59.000 Maybe it helped Democrats a little bit in sort of the midterm elections.
00:33:02.000 It didn't help Al Gore in 2000.
00:33:05.000 And obviously impeaching Trump twice didn't really make a difference on behalf of Trump in the 2020 election either.
00:33:11.000 Meanwhile, there is a case afoot to now truly... You want to talk about election interference?
00:33:16.000 This would be true election interference against Trump.
00:33:18.000 We'll get to that in just one second first.
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00:35:21.000 Okay meanwhile. Now when Donald Trump talks about election interference and he talks about these
00:35:24.000 cases, yeah they are a form of election interference for sure. No question.
00:35:28.000 But here's like some actual direct election interference, and it's coming from inside the House.
00:35:32.000 According to Byron York, some of Donald Trump's enemies are now attempting to have him removed from state primary ballots.
00:35:38.000 According to York, he says that even though conviction does not legally bar Trump from running and winning, the hope is there is no way a convicted Trump could regain the presidency from the left.
00:35:47.000 But there are some of Trump's opponents who are going further.
00:35:49.000 They're now exploring the possibility that Trump is already disqualified from running for office.
00:35:54.000 State election boards or secretaries of state, they say, can and should simply remove his name from the ballot in their states.
00:35:59.000 No need for a hearing, a trial, legal ruling, legislation, or any of the other stuff.
00:36:04.000 Now, how would this magical silliness work?
00:36:06.000 The magical result occurs, proponents say, by way of the 14th Amendment.
00:36:09.000 Section 3 of the amendment prohibits anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof from ever holding public office.
00:36:19.000 Section 3 was intended to apply to former Confederate officials.
00:36:22.000 It hasn't played any significant role in American governance since 1872, and it was basically a dead letter.
00:36:30.000 Now some people are saying they should use it against Trump.
00:36:31.000 Now, what's hilarious about that is that the entire claim against Trump for all the bad stuff that he did between November and January of 2021...
00:36:39.000 The claim is there is no legal basis for Mike Pence to simply throw out state-certified electoral votes based on, like, nothing in the Constitution.
00:36:47.000 You can't just make that judgment.
00:36:48.000 There has to be, like, an actual reason that you are doing it.
00:36:51.000 But now Trump's opponents are attempting to do precisely that against him on these state ballots.
00:36:57.000 It's absurd.
00:36:57.000 It's not going to happen.
00:36:58.000 If it were to happen, it would be a complete disaster area for both the Republican Party and the country.
00:37:02.000 You can't just take people off the ballot without, like, an actual legal reason to take them off the ballot.
00:37:07.000 Totally crazy.
00:37:08.000 Okay, meanwhile, Ron DeSantis has paused his campaign because there are a bunch of issues in the state of Florida, particularly this giant storm that is bearing down on the Gulf Coast.
00:37:17.000 According to Politico, he canceled campaign events this week as a major storm bears down on the state and also in the aftermath of this horrific racist shooting in Jacksonville, which we'll get to momentarily.
00:37:26.000 DeSantis said, During a Sunday news conference, he's going to remain in Florida in the coming days because Tropical Storm Idalia is expected to become a hurricane and make landfall along the Gulf Coast later this week.
00:37:36.000 He says, we're locked in on this.
00:37:37.000 We're going to get the job done.
00:37:38.000 I'm here.
00:37:39.000 He was slated to campaign in South Carolina on Monday.
00:37:43.000 Probably, I assume Casey will be taking his place at some of those events.
00:37:46.000 DeSantis also went to a vigil on Sunday night for a shooting that left three people dead in Jacksonville on Saturday before the gunman killed himself.
00:37:53.000 DeSantis began a Sunday news conference by condemning the shooting here was Ron DeSantis showing up at a vigil over the weekend and a bunch of idiots started shouting at him because supposedly what the governor of the state is not supposed to show up in solidarity with communities that are afflicted by white supremacist mass killings. I'm so confused why you would shout at
00:38:14.000 somebody over this. In any case, here was DeSantis. And the hero of this particular story is
00:38:19.000 a Democrat council member named Jokobi Pittman, who steps in here and basically tells the
00:38:23.000 protesters, shut up. We're all on the same side of this one. We are not going to allow these
00:38:28.000 institutions to be targeted by people.
00:38:31.000 Okay, listen, let me Let me tell you, we finna put parties aside.
00:38:43.000 Cause it ain't about parties today.
00:38:47.000 A bullet don't know a party.
00:38:49.000 So don't get me started.
00:38:52.000 Okay, this is one of the beautiful things I will say about living in Florida, and this is why there are DeSantis Democrats as well in the state of Florida, is that in Florida, when it comes to times of actual crisis, everybody is on the same side.
00:39:02.000 By the way, that is the nature of what a community should be, is when there's a crisis, all this stuff goes to the wayside.
00:39:07.000 The fact that there are people who are protesting when this sort of stuff happens, and DeSantis is not responsible in any way for this.
00:39:13.000 His response has not been lackluster.
00:39:15.000 It's not as though he went, no comment, and then went for a week on the beach while all this sort of stuff happened.
00:39:20.000 This was absolutely apolitical.
00:39:22.000 Good for this city councilwoman for doing that.
00:39:25.000 Believe it or not, there are members of Trump's campaign who are cheering on all of this nonsense.
00:39:30.000 The people who are protesting.
00:39:32.000 Laura Loomer, predictably enough, who is desperate to be Donald Trump's press secretary, which for entertainment value would be very, very high, I will say.
00:39:39.000 She, of course, was celebrating people yelling at Ron DeSantis for being terrible enough to show up at this particular event.
00:39:49.000 She said, I'm glad he was booed.
00:39:50.000 He is disingenuous.
00:39:52.000 Just an absurdity, obviously.
00:39:55.000 She said, while Governor DeSantis was heckled at a vigil for the victims of a shooting in Jacksonville, Florida Dollar General today comments he made back in July about Floridas are coming back to bite him in the ass.
00:40:03.000 Come on.
00:40:04.000 Like, seriously, come on.
00:40:07.000 Ridiculous kind of stuff.
00:40:07.000 But DeSantis is doing what he's supposed to do.
00:40:10.000 He's the governor of Florida.
00:40:11.000 He's back in the state.
00:40:12.000 And he is going to be there overseeing whatever happens with regard to this Florida hurricane.
00:40:18.000 Meanwhile, it is worthwhile noting here that, again, in the state of Florida, Florida is a fascinating and complex state.
00:40:27.000 I know because I now live here, I'm a resident.
00:40:29.000 And this particular shooting is obviously, it was motivated by white supremacy.
00:40:34.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, authorities in Jacksonville, Florida identified a local 21-year-old Sunday as a white gunman who shot and killed three black victims at a Dollar General store before killing himself, an attack local and federal officials said was racially motivated.
00:40:47.000 The gunman then shot himself, Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred.
00:40:51.000 I urge us all not to look for sense in a senseless act of violence.
00:40:53.000 marked on it. According to the police, the Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said this
00:40:57.000 was pretty obviously motivated by hatred of black people.
00:41:00.000 Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred. I urge us all not
00:41:06.000 to look for sense in a senseless act of violence. There's no reason or explanation that we'll
00:41:10.000 ever account for the shooter's decisions and actions. His sickening ideology is not representative
00:41:17.000 of the values of this Jacksonville community that we all love so much.
00:41:21.000 We are not a community of hate.
00:41:23.000 We stand united with the good and decent people of this city.
00:41:26.000 We reject this inexcusable violence.
00:41:29.000 And this agency will not rest until this investigation is complete and every available avenue of accountability has been exhausted.
00:41:37.000 Okay, it is perfectly worthwhile to talk about the ideology of the shooter.
00:41:40.000 The shooter did not have a criminal history, but in 2016 was named in a domestic disturbance call.
00:41:44.000 In 2017, had to be put on a 72-hour hold for a mental health evaluation.
00:41:50.000 I will point out at this point that whenever there is a white supremacist shooting, we know the motives, like, right away.
00:41:55.000 And whenever there is a pretty obviously motivated anti-Christian shooting, say in Nashville, Tennessee, just to take a quick example, we still don't have the manifesto of that shooter.
00:42:04.000 And it has been how many months?
00:42:06.000 Since all of that happened, which seems bizarre to me at the very, very least.
00:42:12.000 The shooting obviously was condemned by everyone, ranging from President Biden, who said we must refuse to live in a country where black families going to the store or black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin, which of course is true.
00:42:21.000 Governor DeSantis said something similar.
00:42:23.000 He called the shooting horrific and said that the state was offering support to the local authorities.
00:42:27.000 But as I say, Florida is a fascinating and complex place.
00:42:30.000 Here was Governor DeSantis speaking about the shooting.
00:42:33.000 Florida, the state and its people condemn the horrific racially motivated murders perpetrated by a deranged scumbag in Jacksonville at the Dollar General store.
00:42:45.000 Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida.
00:42:54.000 Casey and I extend condolences to the victims and their families on behalf of the entire state of Florida.
00:43:04.000 So, that was his statement.
00:43:05.000 Meanwhile, the sheriff over here, again, a man named TK Waters, he says, you know, you want to try to blame the guns?
00:43:10.000 It's not about the guns.
00:43:11.000 It's about the person who's wielding the guns.
00:43:15.000 The story is always about guns.
00:43:17.000 The people are bad.
00:43:18.000 This guy's a bad guy.
00:43:20.000 If I could take my gun off right now and I lay it on this counter, nothing will happen.
00:43:25.000 It'll sit there.
00:43:26.000 But as soon as a wicked person grabs ahold of that handgun and starts shooting people with it, there's the problem.
00:43:31.000 The problem is the individual.
00:43:33.000 Okay, so that is the part of the press conference the mainstream media will never show you.
00:43:36.000 They'll show you him talking about the white supremacy.
00:43:38.000 They'll never tell you that what he's saying is that, yes, it was the shooter who pulled the trigger.
00:43:43.000 And there are a lot of black Americans, by the way, who are very, very pro-gun, and it's something that the left wishes to obscure.
00:43:49.000 Meanwhile, the rest of the Republican field is trying to figure out a way to pry away some of DeSantis' support, and all of them are way the hell behind Trump, obviously.
00:43:58.000 Nikki Haley, who picked up some ground after her last good debate performance, and by the polling, she did have probably the best night of anyone in terms of the amount of movement that her candidacy actually experienced.
00:44:07.000 She was asked about President Trump and him leading in the polls.
00:44:09.000 She said, why would I drop out from Trump?
00:44:29.000 And I'm not going to stop until we save her.
00:44:31.000 I think that we look at the fact that we're $32 trillion in debt.
00:44:35.000 You've got crime that's up.
00:44:36.000 You've got a lack of transparency in the classroom.
00:44:39.000 You've got an open border.
00:44:41.000 And we have threats facing us around the world.
00:44:43.000 And I think that we need a new generational leader.
00:44:46.000 We have some serious problems.
00:44:48.000 We need new solutions.
00:44:51.000 Okay, so she's not going anywhere.
00:44:53.000 Now, the problem is that, of course, the field can fragment six ways.
00:44:55.000 So you've got Nikki Haley, who presumably, if she continues to show some sort of credibility in the race, I assume Tim Scott at some point is going to drop out because he really has no support other than from some money people.
00:45:06.000 If he drops out, some of that support, I assume, will move over to Haley, which makes her more competitive in South Carolina, which ironically makes Donald Trump a lot more competitive in South Carolina, because if the South Carolina primary splits Trump-DeSantis-Haley, Trump probably walks away with the nomination fairly easily, even if this race gets a lot tighter.
00:45:22.000 Meanwhile, Chris Christie continues to double down on the never-Trump lane, thinking this is going to win him New Hampshire.
00:45:27.000 Here he was over the weekend.
00:45:30.000 And the truth is that, you know, we can't have a convicted felon as our nominee for president and expect we're going to win.
00:45:38.000 And it was really the most amazing part of the debate to me was the idea that, you know, the majority of my competitors believe that you can have a convicted felon as our nominee for president and that they'd support that and that he could win.
00:45:53.000 I think that's an impossibility.
00:45:58.000 Okay, so, I mean, that is not what they were saying on the stage.
00:46:01.000 They were saying, if he's the nominee against Biden, I'll vote for him.
00:46:02.000 That's not quite the same thing as, uh, we think that he is likely to win.
00:46:05.000 If all those people on stage thought he was likely to win, they wouldn't be running, I assume.
00:46:09.000 Meanwhile, the person who's sort of running still as Donald Trump's shadow is Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:46:13.000 Uh, Vivek, in the polling data, has taken some hits since the debate.
00:46:17.000 But of course, he wanted to be a lightning rod, he is a lightning rod, and his real campaign isn't for the presidency, so I'm not sure that he cares.
00:46:23.000 I think the idea that he's getting all sorts of outsized attention means that he's pretty well set up for, say, an Ohio Senate run.
00:46:29.000 Ohio is his place of residence.
00:46:30.000 Or for being a Donald Trump cabinet pick.
00:46:32.000 Or for a VP.
00:46:34.000 Well, he is now, in an attempt to bend over backwards for Trump, shifted his opinion completely on Donald Trump's behavior after January 6th.
00:46:40.000 So if you look at one of his books, one of his latest books, he talks specifically about January 6th, and he says that, you know, when you lose an election, you should just admit you lost an election.
00:46:50.000 He has now changed his opinion radically.
00:46:52.000 He was not asked during the debate.
00:46:54.000 A lot of other candidates were asked during the debate about Mike Pence's behavior on January 6th.
00:46:57.000 Did he do the right thing in certifying the election?
00:46:59.000 The answer, by the way, is yes.
00:47:00.000 Unequivocally, yes, there is no legal basis for Mike Pence to overturn state-certified election results.
00:47:06.000 I'm sorry if that hurts feelings.
00:47:07.000 That's just the way that it is.
00:47:08.000 But Vivek has tried to, he's trying to square the circle here and come up with a way of pleasing Donald Trump and ripping Mike Pence, even though he knows perfectly well that Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6th.
00:47:19.000 Here he was saying a thing that makes no sense at all.
00:47:21.000 And again, Vivek is too smart for this.
00:47:24.000 The candidates on stage Wednesday night said Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6th.
00:47:29.000 Do you agree?
00:47:32.000 I would have done it very differently.
00:47:34.000 I think that there was a historic opportunity that he missed to reunite this country in that window.
00:47:39.000 What I would have said is this is a moment for a true national consensus, where there's two elements of what's required for a functioning democracy in America.
00:47:48.000 One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power.
00:47:52.000 When those things come into conflict, that's an opportunity for heroism.
00:47:56.000 Here's what I would have said.
00:47:57.000 We need single day voting on election day.
00:48:00.000 We need paper ballots and we need government issued ID matching the voter file.
00:48:04.000 And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity.
00:48:10.000 So what would you have done with Mike Pence?
00:48:12.000 You would have not certified the election?
00:48:15.000 In my capacity as President of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the President, President Trump, then to sign that into law, and on January 7th declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election.
00:48:32.000 I think that was a missed opportunity, but that's the kind of spirit we're going to need to unite this country rather than sweeping those concerns under the rug.
00:48:40.000 So just to get this straight, his solution was that on January 6th, after Donald Trump had spent two months lying that Mike Pence could unilaterally overturn the election, that on January 6th, he would have not certified the election on the condition that they pass a law doing all the things that I like.
00:48:54.000 I like those things also, but that's not what the president of the Senate actually does.
00:48:56.000 He doesn't initiate legislation.
00:48:58.000 He's a deciding vote.
00:48:59.000 He's not a senator.
00:49:00.000 Okay, but according to Vivek, he should, you know, go outside his constitutional duty, he should start proposing legislation, Mike Pence, not certify the election in defiance of his actual job as the president pro tem of the Senate.
00:49:12.000 And then he should, at that point, certify the election the next day, and this would heal America's conflicts?
00:49:20.000 Yeah, Donald Trump definitely would've been happy with that.
00:49:21.000 Probably Donald Trump would've said, okay, now that you've fixed the next election, I'm really, really happy with the results of this one.
00:49:26.000 Probably everything would've gone away.
00:49:28.000 What is he even talking about?
00:49:29.000 I mean, like... Vivek is a very smart guy, okay?
00:49:32.000 I know Vivek.
00:49:32.000 He's a super high IQ dude.
00:49:34.000 He knows way better than this.
00:49:35.000 And this is part of my frustration with his candidacy, is when he gained this much credibility this quickly, when he gained this much attention this quickly, it seems to me that you have sort of a duty to say honest things.
00:49:43.000 And again, his entire campaign is truth.
00:49:45.000 He wouldn't have done that.
00:49:46.000 He knows he wouldn't have done that.
00:49:47.000 Come on.
00:49:48.000 He knows he wouldn't have done that because he literally didn't do that, okay?
00:49:51.000 I've spoken with Vivek after January 6th.
00:49:54.000 Between January... That's when I actually spend the most time with Vivek.
00:49:56.000 It was between January 6th and, like, now.
00:49:59.000 And Vivek has never talked this way.
00:50:01.000 I mean, he literally talked the opposite in his book.
00:50:04.000 Okay, but this is...
00:50:07.000 You know, for people to shift with the prevailing winds bothers me.
00:50:11.000 And again, I feel like we're talking about blown opportunities.
00:50:15.000 Vivek has an opportunity.
00:50:16.000 This is a dude from the outside who's extraordinarily wealthy, really, really bright, and has the opportunity to shift the debate in a lot of really fascinating and interesting directions.
00:50:24.000 And instead, he's saying things that he knows are not actually viable or true, I think.
00:50:29.000 Because again, I don't think that what he's saying is coherent.
00:50:32.000 And I think he's a coherent guy.
00:50:34.000 So for example, he has a piece in the American Conservative today about his foreign policy.
00:50:38.000 And in it, he says, I will lead our nation from the bloody follies of neoconservatism and liberal internationalism abroad toward a strategy that affirmatively defends our homeland.
00:50:45.000 We will be Uncle Sucker no more.
00:50:47.000 Rather than spending billions projecting power into global vacuums where our allies will not spend to maintain it themselves, we'll put America first again, as George Washington urged, as we recalibrate and consider our true interests.
00:50:55.000 So first of all, let me just point out, every Republican candidate, and most Democratic candidates, campaigned on exactly the same language.
00:51:01.000 Virtually no one campaigns on the language of unlimited spending on foreign policy and interventionism everywhere.
00:51:07.000 Barack Obama didn't campaign on that in 2008.
00:51:09.000 George W. Bush didn't campaign on that in 2000.
00:51:11.000 The only candidate I can think of who actually campaigned sort of like that was McCain in 2008.
00:51:16.000 But every other candidate of my lifetime has campaigned in exactly the way that Vivek is now talking about.
00:51:21.000 So I don't have a problem with any of this.
00:51:23.000 The problem that I have with this is that he seems to believe that like just random things happen in foreign policy.
00:51:29.000 So for example, here's his solution to Ukraine.
00:51:31.000 Now, here's my position on Ukraine.
00:51:33.000 My position on Ukraine is that the United States should be taking the leadership position in negotiations with the Russians.
00:51:37.000 We should basically be saying to the Russians, we are willing to allow you to maintain occupancy of Crimea and part of the Donbass region.
00:51:44.000 In return, we are going to give security guarantees but not NATO membership to the Ukrainians.
00:51:49.000 And that's going to be the end of the war.
00:51:50.000 Vivek wants to go one step further in a way that I don't think is even plausible.
00:51:54.000 Hey, here's what he says.
00:51:56.000 He says, I will go to Moscow in 2025.
00:51:57.000 I will deliver peace in Ukraine only under the terms that should matter to us, terms that put American interests first.
00:52:02.000 The Biden administration has foolishly tried to get Xi to dump Putin, right?
00:52:05.000 China to dump Russia.
00:52:06.000 In reality, we should get Putin to dump Xi.
00:52:09.000 OK, now.
00:52:11.000 Uh, no.
00:52:13.000 I'm just going to put that out.
00:52:14.000 Nope.
00:52:15.000 Russia is a giant gas station with nuclear weapons.
00:52:17.000 That is its entire economy.
00:52:19.000 You think they're going to dump China?
00:52:22.000 That is not a thing that is going to happen.
00:52:24.000 It is a weak state with no international ties.
00:52:28.000 Signing a peace agreement with Russia is not going to restore those international ties to the extent necessary that Russia would suddenly magically decide to dump China.
00:52:35.000 Quote, a good deal requires all parties to get something out of it.
00:52:37.000 To that end, I'll accept Russian control of the occupied territories and pledge to block Ukraine's candidacy for NATO in exchange for Russia exiting its military alliance with China.
00:52:44.000 You know what Russia's gonna do?
00:52:45.000 Not that.
00:52:46.000 They're not gonna exit their military alliance with China.
00:52:48.000 Why the hell would they?
00:52:49.000 China's the only competitive power on the world stage to the United States.
00:52:54.000 And then meanwhile, he says, for example, That he is going to declare economic independence from China, which is fine.
00:53:01.000 And then he says that he is going to be clearer with regard to Taiwan.
00:53:05.000 So his take on Taiwan is he says that we have operated in strategic ambiguity with regard to
00:53:11.000 Taiwan for far too long. I'll move to strategic clarity by which I mean that China must understand
00:53:15.000 I will defend American interests in Taiwan. If Taiwan wants any partnership in their defense,
00:53:19.000 they will need to raise their defense spending and military readiness to acceptable levels.
00:53:22.000 Meanwhile, I will commit to making sure Taiwan has the weapons they need for that defense, but from a seaborne invasion, and in the future, for long-term insurgency against any occupying foreign force, if needed.
00:53:31.000 Okay, now, there's only one problem with that.
00:53:33.000 That is our current policy.
00:53:35.000 That is exactly our current policy.
00:53:37.000 That is strategic ambiguity, by the way.
00:53:39.000 That we will arm them, but we're not... Did I miss the part in that paragraph where he says whether we will actually, like, actively defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion?
00:53:46.000 I did not.
00:53:48.000 Yeah, this kind of stuff from Vivek, it's the reason why his surge was based on the idea that he was a free radical.
00:53:54.000 He could say whatever he wanted.
00:53:55.000 And then it appears that he's now saying things.
00:53:57.000 He's got a little bit of audience capture.
00:53:59.000 It seems like he's saying things that he wants people to think he believes, but it seems unlikely that he actually believes those things.
00:54:07.000 And I think that's one of the things that came off on the stage the other night for Vivek.
00:54:10.000 So my recommendation to him in this campaign, if he actually wants to take it, you know, as a presidential candidate, is stop trying to please President Trump personally, and start actively saying the things that people need to hear, because I think he has the strength of character to do all those things.
00:54:25.000 Okay, meanwhile, let's do some things I like and some things that I hate.
00:54:29.000 So, things that I like.
00:54:30.000 Over the weekend, I read a, you know, my sort of brain relaxation is sports.
00:54:35.000 I'm a big basketball fan.
00:54:37.000 Rich Cohen, who's one of my favorite writers, wrote a great sports book called When the Game Was War.
00:54:42.000 It comes out this week.
00:54:43.000 It really is fantastic.
00:54:45.000 So this is like my early childhood.
00:54:48.000 So it's about the 87-88 season.
00:54:49.000 I was only three or four years old.
00:54:51.000 But I remember all of these players because they all continued to play until the early 90s.
00:54:54.000 This is like Bird, Magic Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, Charles Barkley, and all the rest.
00:54:58.000 And the book is just a fun, fun read because Rich is a terrific writer.
00:55:01.000 It moves really fast.
00:55:03.000 And it reminds you of a time when basketball was less about the pretty and much more about the gritty.
00:55:10.000 It's a lot of fun.
00:55:12.000 Again, highly recommended.
00:55:13.000 When the Game Was War by Rich Cohen.
00:55:15.000 Okay, another thing that I like.
00:55:16.000 So environmentalists, they think that somehow they're going to gain support for their cause by being incredibly annoying.
00:55:21.000 Like super duper annoying.
00:55:22.000 What if I glue myself to this Van Gogh painting?
00:55:24.000 And everybody's like, I hope that they just dump you into the river.
00:55:27.000 And they'll be like, well, what if I just, you know, take this road and shut it down?
00:55:31.000 Everybody's like, what if we just, you know, let people run you over because you're annoying.
00:55:35.000 You're very, very annoying.
00:55:36.000 Nobody wants anyone to die, but like, come on, get off the road.
00:55:38.000 In any case, these idiots in Nevada decided to shut down a road in Nevada with signs like abolish capitalism.
00:55:46.000 Well, capitalism, unfortunately for them, was not abolished.
00:55:49.000 And instead they were abolished.
00:55:50.000 So basically tribal rangers were like, nah, you know what?
00:55:53.000 You're holding up the line and here's what occurred.
00:55:56.000 Yeah!
00:55:56.000 Get off the highway. This is a state route.
00:55:59.000 Everybody will be arrested if not.
00:56:02.000 30 seconds. Send your leader to my vehicle. Let's talk. Get off the road.
00:56:07.000 Yeah!
00:56:15.000 Yeah, that's the good stuff right there.
00:56:19.000 They're coming back around.
00:56:26.000 Oh, shit!
00:56:28.000 Better move.
00:56:29.000 Here I come.
00:56:32.000 Get out now!
00:56:33.000 Get out!
00:56:34.000 On the ground!
00:56:36.000 All of you on the ground now!
00:56:38.000 Get on the ground!
00:56:43.000 Get on the ground!
00:56:44.000 Don't move!
00:56:45.000 Okay, so all these people got arrested.
00:56:51.000 As well they should be.
00:56:54.000 And good for the tribal rangers.
00:56:55.000 By the way, did you see that line of cars?
00:56:57.000 Stupid jackass.
00:56:59.000 Blocking like... First of all, whenever this sort of stuff happens, people shutting down traffic, and it doesn't matter to the country, it doesn't matter to the timing, stop shutting down traffic.
00:57:06.000 It's obnoxious.
00:57:07.000 Not only is it obnoxious because other people have lives, you're not the only person with a life, but also it sometimes creates like medical hazards because sometimes there's like an ambulance on the way to somewhere.
00:57:17.000 Stupid idiots.
00:57:18.000 My only regret here is that they didn't do it earlier.
00:57:21.000 But good for them.
00:57:23.000 Alrighty.
00:57:24.000 We'll do a quick thing that I hate.
00:57:29.000 Jen Psaki has been maintaining that no one is in favor of late-term abortion, which is weird because you all want late-term abortion, I noticed.
00:57:35.000 So she tweeted out on MSNBC, she tweeted out via X, no one supports abortion up until birth.
00:57:42.000 To which I tweeted, excellent!
00:57:43.000 Please name the legislation you would provide in order to prevent abortion up until birth.
00:57:49.000 She did not answer that question because she doesn't have an answer.
00:57:51.000 So here she was trying to explain herself, Jen Psaki.
00:57:54.000 No one supports abortion up until birth.
00:57:57.000 I wrote that because there is a pervasive and misleading talking point that is used by a number of right-wing leaders, including presidential candidates on the stage, suggesting that Democrats are advocating for, and even rooting for, late-term abortions of babies who could live outside the womb.
00:58:14.000 Just take a listen to some of the answers in the debate on Wednesday night.
00:58:18.000 We're better than what the Democrats are selling.
00:58:21.000 We are not going to allow abortion all the way up till birth, and we will hold them accountable for their extremism.
00:58:27.000 We cannot let states like California, New York, and Illinois have abortions on demand up until the day of birth.
00:58:38.000 I would love for someone to ask Biden and Kamala Harris, are they for 38 weeks?
00:58:41.000 Are they for 39 weeks?
00:58:42.000 Are they for 40 weeks?
00:58:45.000 This wasn't just some throwaway line for applause on the debate stage.
00:58:49.000 This is a talking point Republican presidential candidates use repeatedly on the trail.
00:58:56.000 Okay, um, because it's true!
00:58:58.000 Nowhere in this segment does she actually rebut the idea that she would support legislation legalizing abortion until birth.
00:59:05.000 Instead, she just goes with like, well, it doesn't happen all that often.
00:59:07.000 That's not the question.
00:59:08.000 The question is not whether abortion happens all that often, close to birth.
00:59:11.000 The question is, should it happen at all?
00:59:13.000 And at what point should it become illegal?
00:59:15.000 And she won't answer those questions.
00:59:17.000 And neither will any other Democrat, because the Democratic Party position is there shall be no legislation that restricts abortion at any point up until birth.
00:59:24.000 That is the Democratic Party position.
00:59:27.000 And yet she just denies it.
00:59:28.000 Outright.
00:59:28.000 It's an amazing thing.
00:59:29.000 It must be fun to have your cake and eat it too that way.
00:59:32.000 Where you clearly oppose any restrictions on abortion, and then when you're called on it, you're like, yeah, but I don't like it.
00:59:38.000 Well, I don't care whether you personally like it.
00:59:40.000 I care whether you wish to make it illegal or not.
00:59:42.000 We are in the business of public policy, are we not?
00:59:45.000 It's so dishonest, but you know, she used to work for Biden, so there you have it.
00:59:48.000 All right, you guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
00:59:50.000 You're not going to want to miss it.
00:59:51.000 We'll be getting into the mailbag.
00:59:52.000 If you're not a member, become a member.
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