The Ben Shapiro Show - A Nation Led By The Elderly

00:00:00.000 So we now live in a gerontocracy.

00:00:02.000 Our entire leadership class is really, really old.

00:00:04.000 And not only are they really old, they're not even good at their jobs.

00:00:07.000 It's one thing to say that the old man on the mountain, well, you know, at least he's good at his job.

00:00:11.000 But if he's bad at his job and he is borderline senile, or he is already erratic and he's just growing more erratic with age, the question becomes, why as a population do we keep nominating these people?

00:00:22.000 Why do we keep doing this?

00:00:23.000 I mean, there are a few reasons why it might be A reality that we keep putting up in positions of power, really old people. 1.00

00:00:29.000 One could just be the power of inertia that the person is in power.

00:00:33.000 We just keep electing them because it's more comfortable to go with the devil we know than the devil that we don't.

00:00:38.000 And that would be true for somebody like Joe Biden, who, of course, is a devil that we know since he was 31 years old, where he burst onto the American public scene when he ran for Senate at the age of 30.

00:00:47.000 And he has now 80.

00:00:48.000 So he's been in the public eye for half a century.

00:00:51.000 And so maybe the idea is, well, you know, we're comfortable with him, we know him, we know everything there is to know about him, and sure, he's a little senile, but that's better than that new guy down the block.

00:00:57.000 What that really betrays is a lack of trust in the future of the United States.

00:01:01.000 If the people that you keep nominating to high office are people who have been in the public eye for 50 years, and the idea is that these are the people who are best poised to lead the country forward, what you're really saying is, we don't know which direction the country is going, so we may as well just give it to this old guy who's basically dead.

00:01:14.000 And this is true across our- I think that really is the rationale for why so many people seem comfortable with voting for people who are no longer with us.

00:01:21.000 Joe Biden is clearly no longer with us.

00:01:23.000 Mitch McConnell is apparently no longer with us.

00:01:25.000 Dianne Feinstein is no longer with us.

00:01:27.000 It's not just, by the way, elderly people.

00:01:28.000 It's also people who are just stand-ins for general political parties.

00:01:31.000 John Fetterman is clearly not with us, and he's sitting in the Senate of the United States right now.

00:01:36.000 Okay, that makes three senators out of 100 who literally do not have full brain function.

00:01:42.000 That's just a matter of course.

00:01:44.000 And two of those people are in significant positions of leadership, right?

00:01:48.000 Dianne Feinstein sits on some of the most important committees in the Senate.

00:01:52.000 Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader, and that's leaving aside Chuck Schumer, who's well into his 70s at this point.

00:01:57.000 Meanwhile, you have the current president of the United States who's wandering around wobbling into trees, and everybody's just like, well, I guess that's totally fine.

00:02:04.000 And the leader of the opposition party is 78 years old, was erratic when he was young, and has grown more erratic the older that he gets.

00:02:11.000 So again, I come back to the question.

00:02:13.000 Why is it that we, the American people, keep putting these people in a position?

00:02:16.000 It's a question for us, not a question for them.

00:02:18.000 I understand why old people want power. 1.00

00:02:20.000 Old people want power for the same reason everybody else wants power. 1.00

00:02:22.000 Power is great.

00:02:23.000 Power allows us to pursue the things that we wish to pursue or to maintain our importance throughout our lifespan.

00:02:31.000 I even understand the idea that, you know, there are certain older people who are still fully functional.

00:02:36.000 There are people who are well into their 80s who are doing just fine.

00:02:39.000 Mick Jagger right now looks a lot better than the current president of the United States, which shows that a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll actually apparently is very good for you.

00:02:46.000 It's sort of a formaldehyde that preserves you forever.

00:02:48.000 But when you look at the gerontocracy that now rules the country, what that really speaks to is the beginning of the end of the republic.

00:02:56.000 Because again, if you can't trust the people who are 45, 50 to lead the country, If there's no vitality to the leadership class, what exactly are we doing?

00:03:05.000 It's just a holding pattern and everybody knows it.

00:03:07.000 Joe Biden holding pattern is so much more attractive, apparently, to a majority of the American people than anybody who is 50, that he is going to run for re-election not being there.

00:03:17.000 So yesterday, again, he was, you know, he exited the crypt in Delaware for just a moment, the door popped open.

00:03:25.000 And then he walked into public view and said, where am I?

00:03:28.000 Where am I going?

00:03:28.000 I don't know.

00:03:30.000 And then he is going back to Delaware is the answer for the weekend.

00:03:32.000 He's going back to Delaware again so he can sit on the beach shirtless.

00:03:36.000 Apparently, he has a weird habit of bathing in the nude, which, man, Secret Service, those people have a job.

00:03:40.000 In any case, carrying around extra suits for the president in case he poops one and then making sure that the naked old man is protected from the various assassins in the trade.

00:03:50.000 That's a job.

00:03:50.000 Anyway, here was Joe Biden yesterday at FEMA headquarters.

00:03:54.000 I am going to Florida.

00:03:56.000 I am going to Florida on a Saturday morning.

00:04:00.000 All right, thanks everybody.

00:04:02.000 Thank you.

00:04:03.000 Where am I going?

00:04:04.000 Right this way.

00:04:05.000 Secretary, right this way.

00:04:06.000 Where am I going?

00:04:07.000 This way?

00:04:08.000 I don't know.

00:04:09.000 How many different videos do we have of the President of the United States not knowing where he is going?

00:04:13.000 So, you have to assume one of two things.

00:04:14.000 Either the advance teamwork is unbelievably crappy around the President of the United States, or the President of the United States literally doesn't know where he's going at least 70% of the time.

00:04:22.000 That seems to be the case.

00:04:24.000 Unless you think that I'm just ripping on Biden.

00:04:26.000 I'll get to Mitch McConnell in just one second.

00:04:28.000 Now, the media have a stake in just covering for this guy.

00:04:31.000 Because, again, in a fully reactionary era, which is what we live in, it is totally reactionary, the normal American is not reactionary.

00:04:37.000 The normal American just wants to be left alone.

00:04:38.000 The normal American wants a predictable set of laws that they know the rules of the road, and then they want to be able to, you know, raise their family, go to their job, go to church, pay their taxes, and be left alone.

00:04:49.000 That's really what most Americans want.

00:04:50.000 They just want a predictable And so this means that you must protect the precious.

00:04:53.000 Meanwhile, you have the people at the highest echelons of politics who are either utopian

00:04:58.000 or destructive and they're bouncing off of one another in a variety of combinations.

00:05:03.000 And so this means that you must protect the precious.

00:05:04.000 I mean, if Joe Biden is clearly not with us, you've got the entire left saying the precious

00:05:08.000 must be protected.

00:05:09.000 So, for example, Glenn Kessler, who's supposed to be a fact, he's literally called the fact

00:05:13.000 checker over at the Washington Post, has an entire piece called Biden loves to retell

00:05:17.000 Some aren't credible.

00:05:19.000 Now, normally what Glenn Kessler does, he takes a simple, a simple claim, and then he rates it on a scale of one to four Pinocchios.

00:05:25.000 Is it true or is it not true?

00:05:27.000 He doesn't do that with Joe Biden.

00:05:28.000 Instead, he just puts all of his Dumb false stories together in one story and then he's like, well, you know, he is really like a genial old man, but it turns out that a lot of his stories just aren't true.

00:05:37.000 So I guess I guess we're done here.

00:05:38.000 No Pinocchio ratings on any of these things.

00:05:40.000 This is what the media do with Joe Biden.

00:05:43.000 Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, he said a minority leader, Mitch McConnell, he's obviously suffering from something.

00:05:48.000 He's had two massive freeze ups in front of the media inside the last month.

00:05:51.000 And let's be clear, Mitch McConnell is the single most effective Republican leader in the country for the last 20 years.

00:05:58.000 I mean, there's no, there's just no real competition for that.

00:06:01.000 I mean, in terms of, if you like Donald Trump's Supreme Court picks, you can thank Mitch McConnell.

00:06:06.000 It was Mitch McConnell who made that happen.

00:06:07.000 That's the reality of the situation.

00:06:08.000 There are a lot of problems with Mitch McConnell.

00:06:10.000 You can say that he hasn't stood up for principle as much as he should have, or that he should have pushed harder when he had a Republican Congress.

00:06:16.000 But in terms of just pure Machiavellian politics, Mitch McConnell was great at it.

00:06:20.000 Also, he's too old now.

00:06:21.000 I'm sorry he is.

00:06:23.000 He is not mentally... He is not mentally capable of holding down the Senate Minority Leader position, and he should hand off the position to somebody else as soon as possible.

00:06:31.000 Sanjay Gupta, the doctor over at CNN, he says, well, you know, he's kind of freezing up, and then he's not freezing up, his freezing is... We should not be analyzing the people who lead the republic as though they are Alzheimer patients.

00:06:40.000 We should not be doing that.

00:06:41.000 It is bad for America.

00:06:43.000 There should be a bipartisan coalition saying this, by the way, but no one's going to say it.

00:06:46.000 And the reason no one's going to say it is because for Republicans, must defend Trump, who's 78, and McConnell, who's 81.

00:06:51.000 And for Democrats, must defend Joe Biden, who's 80.

00:06:53.000 It used to be that there's broad spectrum agreement on things like, hey, maybe we ought to, you know, transition the leadership to a generation that is not independent.

00:07:02.000 But no, we're all going to just go back to go back to our various corners.

00:07:05.000 Here's Sanjay Gupta analyzing the health of the Senate minority leader.

00:07:09.000 What did you see?

00:07:10.000 What did you make of what happened?

00:07:13.000 Well, first of all, let me just say that what Scott is describing is really important to know, because whatever this is, it comes and goes, and it seems to come and go quickly, and in the world of, you know, when you're looking at the brain, that's an important sort of clue.

00:07:29.000 What I saw, and this is, I think, an appropriate term here, is the term freezing.

00:07:35.000 That does that does sort of describe this freezing of his body freezing of his speech Freezing of his face his hands were very clenched to the side of the lectern Okay, I mean, well, no problem.

00:07:49.000 I mean, after all, we have many non-functional members of our top level of government.

00:07:54.000 In just one second, we'll get to, you know, the people who theoretically could take over for people like Mitch McConnell.

00:07:59.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:08:01.000 And we'll get to more corruption in the Biden administration because Joe Biden is not... The argument against Joe Biden, by the way, is not that he's senile.

00:08:06.000 The problem with Joe Biden is that he's been corrupt for 50 years.

00:08:08.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

00:08:10.000 Well, that is not a shock.

00:08:10.000 As the world becomes less global, as countries move away from the influence of the United States, they're going to break away from the U.S.

00:08:14.000 dollar.

00:08:14.000 of South Africa formally agreed to use local currencies in trade instead of the U.S. dollar.

00:08:19.000 Well, that is not a shock. As the world becomes less global, as countries move away from the

00:08:25.000 influence of the United States, they're going to break away from the U.S. dollar. How do you

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00:09:12.000 Okay, so, there are people who are waiting in the wings for Mitch McConnell to step down.

00:09:17.000 And contrary to popular opinion, even if McConnell steps down, Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, can't actually just appoint a Democrat.

00:09:23.000 Beshear's a Democrat, but they changed the law in the state of Kentucky so that Beshear has to choose from the same party as the person who stepped down, probably in anticipation of all of this, and he has to choose one of three people nominated by the state Republican Party.

00:09:34.000 So, That means that even if McConnell were to step down completely from the Senate, he would be replaced by a Republican.

00:09:41.000 The same thing, by the way, is true of Dianne Feinstein.

00:09:42.000 And this is the part when I get to the irritation that I have for the allegiance that people are having to these old fuddy-duddies. 1.00

00:09:49.000 What it really comes down to is no one wants to establish a precedent that you should get rid of an elderly person in a position of power just because they're senile because there are too many senile people in their own party they want to maintain. 0.55

00:09:59.000 And that's particularly true at the top of the ticket.

00:10:01.000 If you get rid of Dianne Feinstein for not being fully functional, what's the argument for keeping Biden?

00:10:04.000 He's got a Democrat backing him up in Kamala Harris. 0.87

00:10:06.000 I understand that you'd rather have the dead old white man running for president than you would have the very, very unpopular black woman running for president. 0.99

00:10:12.000 But is that really an excuse given that Joe Biden is not functional and everyone can see it? 0.74

00:10:17.000 If they get rid of Dianne Feinstein, who legitimately cannot write her own name at this point, What happens if they get rid of John Fetterman?

00:10:25.000 Now, all those people get replaced by Democrats, by the way.

00:10:27.000 But this is how perverse and venal our politics has become.

00:10:31.000 We're going to keep those people in place.

00:10:33.000 We're gonna keep those people in mind.

00:10:34.000 So the very idea that the leadership class even matters has kind of exploded.

00:10:38.000 All that matters right now is the binary, the party binary.

00:10:41.000 You're the Republican or you're Democrat and it doesn't matter who you are, apparently.

00:10:46.000 Because we can just plug somebody else in. 0.99

00:10:47.000 Or we can just leave you there being a dead person. 0.98

00:10:50.000 We can manipulate your hands like you're some sort of weird marionette. 0.91

00:10:53.000 And apparently we'll achieve the same exact result.

00:10:56.000 Some of the people, by the way, who theoretically could just replace McConnell today are John Thune of South Dakota.

00:11:00.000 He is 62.

00:11:01.000 He is also the number two Senate Republican.

00:11:02.000 He's the whip.

00:11:03.000 You got John Cornyn of Texas, who is 71.

00:11:05.000 Again, at this point, that makes him a spring chicken among our leadership class.

00:11:08.000 You got John Barrasso, also 71.

00:11:09.000 So the younger generation is 70.

00:11:13.000 And then you have people like Joni Ernst in Iowa, who is 53, who's the number four as chair of the Republican Policy Committee.

00:11:21.000 The fact that our leadership class in general has become so old is totally insane to me.

00:11:25.000 Like, totally insane.

00:11:26.000 Ronald Reagan, when he ran for office in 1980, was considered by many people too old.

00:11:31.000 Okay, and Ronald Reagan in 1980?

00:11:35.000 He was 72 in 1980.

00:11:40.000 So, it's pretty amazing.

00:11:42.000 When he was inaugurated the second time, he was 77.

00:11:45.000 Which makes him currently younger than both of our presidential candidates.

00:11:49.000 So, things are going great.

00:11:51.000 It's all good. 0.98

00:11:51.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to be as venal and corrupt as he ever was, apparently. 0.98

00:11:56.000 We now have news that Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm traded more than 1,000 emails with Joe Biden's office while he was vice president.

00:12:03.000 Hundreds of those remain hidden because of executive privileges sorted by the White House, documents released by the National Archives show.

00:12:08.000 That is according to the New York Post.

00:12:10.000 The 861 emails that reference Rosamond Seneca were sent or received by the office of the vice president between January 2011 and December 2013, according to America First Legal, which obtained the messages from the National Archives and Record Administration and released them on Wednesday.

00:12:23.000 The White House is refusing to allow the release of 200 emails referencing Hunter Biden's firm, citing executive privilege.

00:12:30.000 Nara said, quote, release would disclose confidential advice between the president and his advisors or between such advisors.

00:12:37.000 Uh, well, that seems super corrupt.

00:12:39.000 So they're now asserting executive privilege to protect communications between Rose Monsonica, which is Hunter Biden's firm, and the Office of the Vice President.

00:12:47.000 While Rose Monsonica was working with Hunter, who was working with Burisma, Andrew Biden was in charge of Ukraine policy.

00:12:53.000 Hunter Biden and his business associates frequently use their direct line of communications with the Office of the VP to leverage access to the Obama White House.

00:13:00.000 White House guest list, seating assignments, biographies of guests for various official events, including the 2012 UK State Dinner, the 2013 Turkey State Luncheon, and the 2014 France State Dinner were shared with Rosemont Seneca employees.

00:13:11.000 Apparently, one email contains an invite forwarded to the White House for then-VP Joe Biden to attend an event at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.

00:13:18.000 Another invites then-Second Lady Joe Biden to participate in a World Food Program campaign.

00:13:24.000 In one frantic 2013 email, lobbyist Doug Davenport begs Hunter Biden's former business partner Eric Schwerin for tickets on short notice to the White House Christmas tour, indicating that Rose Montenegro's level of access to the executive mansion was well-known.

00:13:35.000 But apparently, executive privilege is supposedly going to cover all of this.

00:13:39.000 This should be litigated, by the way.

00:13:40.000 This should end up in a court of law.

00:13:42.000 Why would executive privilege cover supposedly benign emails regarding lobbying firms, including your son?

00:13:49.000 It's totally wild.

00:13:51.000 Meanwhile, apparently, GOP investigators are looking for a Boston connection in the Joe Biden pseudonym mystery.

00:13:57.000 This is according to TheDailyWire.com.

00:13:58.000 A pair of Senate Republicans want to know if nine boxes of materials retrieved from the Boston office of a personal attorney to Joe Biden contain any pseudonyms or personal email addresses.

00:14:07.000 Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent a letter this week to NARA asking whether the agency had reviewed the contents of the boxes obtained earlier this year from Patrick Moore's law firm in Boston after allegedly being moved from Biden's former think tank in Washington, D.C.

00:14:20.000 And then they asked if any of those boxes included pseudonyms and email addresses used by Vice President Joe Biden.

00:14:26.000 So, again, there are a lot more shoes that are going to drop here.

00:14:30.000 It is also true, as Kimberly Strassel writes today in the Wall Street Journal, That there will be more shoes to drop with regard to the Merrick Garland DOJ cutting its sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden.

00:14:41.000 According to Kimberly Strassel, Merrick Garland is working hard to present David Weiss, who is the lawyer who cut the deal, he's the prosecutor who cut the deal with Hunter Biden's legal team, as operating independently, but the record is showing nearly every piece of justice, its political appointees, its tax division, senior officials, the FBI, had fingers in the Weiss probe.

00:14:56.000 Should anyone have confidence this will change now that Garland has given Weiss the honorific of special counsel?

00:15:01.000 The answer there, of course not.

00:15:02.000 Joe Biden was asked about all of this yesterday, and he laughed, because why not?

00:15:06.000 I mean, he is a carefree elderly gentleman.

00:15:09.000 Do you have any concerns about his ability to do his job?

00:15:12.000 Do you have any concerns about his ability?

00:15:14.000 I don't.

00:15:15.000 Do you want to talk to me about it?

00:15:18.000 Do you want to?

00:15:20.000 Let's talk about why I'm here.

00:15:26.000 Let's talk about what I mean.

00:15:27.000 Well, will you ever talk about this?

00:15:28.000 The answer, of course, is no, because then he might say something that would implicate him or his son in corruption.

00:15:33.000 In just one second, we'll get to the fallout from Joe Biden's border policy, his economy.

00:15:39.000 It turns out the leadership class in the United States, in general, it's really bad.

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00:16:45.000 Okay, so...

00:16:47.000 Meanwhile, the effect of Joe Biden's economy are only now beginning to be felt.

00:16:54.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, rates are up and we are just starting to feel the heat.

00:16:57.000 I mean, you can see this in the mortgage markets, by the way.

00:16:59.000 The mortgage rates right now are astounding.

00:17:01.000 We're talking like 7%, 8%.

00:17:01.000 It's going to be nearly impossible for anybody to buy a house in the near future.

00:17:06.000 People right now are holding on to the houses and they're trying to keep the prices up.

00:17:10.000 But eventually, that dam is going to break and the real estate prices are going to have to come down because there just is no liquidity in the market.

00:17:17.000 Taxpayers are exposed, according to the Wall Street Journal, public debt held by the public rocketed from 35% of gross domestic product at the end of 2007 to 93% in the first quarter of this year, as Uncle Sam borrowed first to bail out banks, then to prop up growth, then to cut taxes, then to cushion the economy from the pandemic, and now to support manufacturing.

00:17:34.000 So the burden of the debt was relatively low because the interest rates were low.

00:17:37.000 But now, a lot of those interest rates are not low.

00:17:40.000 67% of the debt matures within five years.

00:17:42.000 TD estimates that the U.S.

00:17:44.000 pays an average rate of 3.4% on that debt, well below current interest rates.

00:17:47.000 But that's not going to last for long.

00:17:49.000 When we take out more debt, it's not going to be taken out at 3%.

00:17:51.000 It's going to be taken out at 6%.

00:17:54.000 In the private sector, banks have been the first casualty.

00:17:56.000 Three regional lenders collapsed earlier this year, squeezed between the falling market value of loans they made and bonds they bought when rates were lower, and depositors fleeing to higher-yielding investment alternatives in American corporations could be next, according to David Maracle, chief U.S.

00:18:09.000 economist at Goldman Sachs, in 2020.

00:18:11.000 We had very unique circumstances where companies didn't know if the economy would be shut down for another year or how long the Fed's intervention in the corporate debt market would last.

00:18:17.000 They showed a huge amount of debt.

00:18:19.000 This has insulated them from the need to refinance as rates have risen in the past year, but that's going to change.

00:18:23.000 Because as the debt is refinanced, corporate interest expenses will rise, and that means they're not going to have as much liquidity available for hiring and research and all the rest of it.

00:18:31.000 Meanwhile, your rates on your credit cards have been rising as well.

00:18:34.000 So eventually, as I've been saying a lot, what goes up is going to come down.

00:18:38.000 You're already starting to see annual sales of existing homes in the U.S.

00:18:41.000 dropping fairly precipitously.

00:18:43.000 It's going to get a lot worse.

00:18:44.000 That market is going to go down.

00:18:46.000 Meanwhile, corporate borrowers are going to be in serious trouble because it turns out that people are just not lending at the same rate that they were able to lend a couple of years ago because of the easy money policies of the Fed.

00:18:56.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, with market conditions where they are in higher rates ahead, you basically have to refinance now because one month from now could be even worse.

00:19:06.000 Meanwhile, retirees living on a fixed income are in serious trouble because of course they're on a fixed income and their dollars are worth less now than they were before.

00:19:11.000 So thank you to Joe Biden for his bang-up economy.

00:19:15.000 I'm so glad that we decided to bet on the elderly generation because they obviously have done us great. 0.97

00:19:20.000 Part of the problem here, by the way, is that because America is an aging country and because nobody had any kids for like a generation and a half, The largest voting bloc in the United States is above the age of 45 by far.

00:19:31.000 It's not even close.

00:19:32.000 Above the ages of 65, by the way, is right now the second largest voting bloc.

00:19:37.000 In 2022, 37 million people voted who are above the age of 65.

00:19:38.000 37 million people voted who are above the age of 65.

00:19:42.000 Between the ages of 45 and 64, about 43.6 million people voted.

00:19:46.000 Which means that if you're above the age of 60 or 55, you are now in sort of the plurality of the voting bloc.

00:19:52.000 Now, as people age out of the population, that may change.

00:19:56.000 However, the upside-down pyramid of our demographics is going to have a continued impact on how exactly people vote in terms of our elderly gerontocracy.

00:20:04.000 Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the effects of Joe Biden's Rule.

00:20:09.000 With regard to immigration, it continues to be very bad. 1.00

00:20:11.000 First, the Ben Shapiro Show is supported by Grand Canyon University.

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00:20:51.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:20:52.000 Bad story of the week.

00:20:54.000 According to the Washington Examiner, the driver of a Honda Odyssey, who forced a school bus carrying elementary school children off the road and down an embankment in Ohio, killing one child and injuring 26 others, was caught illegally crossing the southern border and then released into the country by President Joe Biden in 2022.

00:21:09.000 Hermano Joseph of Haiti was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide yesterday in Clark County Municipal Court for the incident, which happened as the children were being bused to their first day of school.

00:21:18.000 Joseph was arrested while illegally crossing the southern border on August 22, according to reports.

00:21:22.000 He was not returned to Mexico, where he came from, or to Haiti.

00:21:25.000 Instead, he was given a notice to appear, and then he was released into the general public.

00:21:29.000 And then he showed up again.

00:21:31.000 He gave everybody his Mexican driver's license, which is great. 0.52

00:21:35.000 So he was living comfortably in Mexico, apparently, had an ID, and then decided to just pop over the border and apparently kill a child and injure 26 other children.

00:21:44.000 Our border policies are a disaster, of course, but according to the Biden administration, all is well.

00:21:48.000 Here is Karine Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary, pretending that Joe Biden has done a great job securing the border. 0.78

00:21:53.000 The president has done more to secure the border and to deal with this issue of immigration than anybody else.

00:21:59.000 He really has.

00:22:00.000 June saw the single largest month-to-month drop in unlawful border crossing because of the policies this president put in place.

00:22:09.000 Okay, so, as Bill Malugan, the Fox reporter, points out, there were more than 7,000 migrants apprehended by Border Patrol on Tuesday alone, after they crossed illegally.

00:22:18.000 There was a brief lull in the weeks after the end of Title 42 in May, but illegal crossings are surging once again, so they're just lying about it, obviously.

00:22:26.000 Meanwhile, Corinne Jean-Pierre says that Joe Biden won't even meet with Kathy Hochul, who is the governor of New York.

00:22:31.000 She's been talking about the disaster of mass migration into New York, illegal immigrants descending on the state en masse. 0.53

00:22:37.000 And she's like, no, Joe Biden doesn't have time for that.

00:22:38.000 Dude's on vacation to Hoboth Beach.

00:22:41.000 But when the governor of New York came by to discuss a very urgent matter in the state of New York and across the country, a lot of big cities, He did not meet with her.

00:22:49.000 Why not?

00:22:50.000 Well, look, as you just stated, there's a lot going on, and his Chief of Staff was part of that meeting.

00:22:57.000 I believe Secretary Mario Arcas was part of that meeting.

00:23:01.000 Some of his very high-level senior staff participated in the meeting with the Governor, which is, as you said, a very important meeting to have.

00:23:08.000 He has a very good relationship with the Governor.

00:23:10.000 We've been every time we're in New York.

00:23:12.000 The president, practically every time, engages with the governors.

00:23:17.000 They have a very good relationship.

00:23:18.000 Look, the president has a lot on his plate.

00:23:23.000 Yeah, he has so much on his plate, which is why he's been on vacation for nearly the past six weeks with minor breaks to visit Maui and tell stories about a kitchen fire that he once had.

00:23:32.000 So everything is going great.

00:23:33.000 Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, we're preparing for the Donald Trump trial in Georgia.

00:23:38.000 Apparently, according to a Fulton County judge on Thursday, Judge Scott McAfee, he says that all court proceedings in the election interference case against Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants will be live streamed and televised.

00:23:49.000 Which is going to be amazing for the country.

00:23:51.000 Now listen, I'll be real about this.

00:23:53.000 I'm not against this.

00:23:54.000 I think the fact that we should have more transparency.

00:23:56.000 If we don't trust our institutions, watching the institutions work would be the only way to restore trust in our institutions.

00:24:01.000 So I'm all for more sunlight and more transparency.

00:24:03.000 My guess, honestly, is that Team Trump I'm not sure how against the television they are, because the prospect of watching these people go after Trump in the dock may not be bad for Donald Trump in, say, the primaries.

00:24:15.000 In an order issued on Thursday, McAfee said members of the media would be allowed to use computers and cell phones inside the courtroom for non-recording purposes during court proceedings.

00:24:22.000 There will be pool coverage for television, radio, and still photography as well.

00:24:26.000 So we're all going to get to watch the trial on TV.

00:24:30.000 Is this something that they would contemplate if this were a Democrat in the dock?

00:24:33.000 I have serious doubts about that.

00:24:35.000 But for those who are hoping that Donald Trump is running a well-calibrated campaign that's taking advantage of all of this, some bad news.

00:24:43.000 Apparently, his super PAC is almost broke.

00:24:46.000 They've raised about $157 million and they've spent nearly all of it on legal costs.

00:24:50.000 According to USA Today, Donald Trump is running out of other people's money to spend on his legal bills.

00:24:54.000 His key fund has spent nearly all of the more than $150 million it raised and is sitting on less than $4 million.

00:25:00.000 He's already dug into his fund for 2024 ads and borrowed money to post bail in Georgia.

00:25:03.000 Some of his allies are begging for a donation, saying that he is not paying their legal bills.

00:25:08.000 They're saying that his legal bills will total millions of dollars, if not tens of millions of dollars.

00:25:13.000 But that's blowing through an awful lot of money.

00:25:15.000 I mean, $150 million that he has blown through at this point.

00:25:19.000 And what are you spending on?

00:25:20.000 Have you seen any Donald Trump ads?

00:25:22.000 Donald Trump has been running this campaign on the basis of he's the most famous person on earth and has been for half a century.

00:25:27.000 But it is amazing.

00:25:29.000 I mean, they've spent almost $155 million since the 2020 election.

00:25:34.000 And they spent $60 million making transfers to Trump's 2024 campaign super PAC, Make America Great Again.

00:25:39.000 But that super PAC refunded $12.3 million to Save America in May and June.

00:25:45.000 Otherwise, Save America would have been in debt.

00:25:48.000 Apparently, during the same time period, May and June, Save America spent $21.6 million on legal expenses.

00:25:56.000 This is a lot of money.

00:25:58.000 This is a lot of money.

00:25:59.000 Which, by the way, is not an amazing way to run a campaign.

00:26:02.000 Once again, Donald Trump is a billionaire.

00:26:05.000 If you're giving money to Trump's campaign, you should really want him to spend that on, you know, targeting Joe Biden.

00:26:10.000 But that's not where the money is being spent.

00:26:11.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump is trying to go after Governor Brian Kemp in Georgia.

00:26:15.000 He's suggesting that Brian Kemp should start impeachment proceedings against Fannie Willis, who's the DA in Georgia.

00:26:21.000 There is no ground.

00:26:22.000 There's no legal ground for impeaching Fannie Willis. 1.00

00:26:24.000 Now, you can say, okay, well, there's no legal ground for her going after Donald Trump either, but it's not up to, it's not up to Brian Kemp.

00:26:31.000 The state legislature is not going to do it, which means it's not going to get done.

00:26:35.000 And it's just going to be a bunch of political posturing and theater.

00:26:39.000 And so Brian Kemp, honestly, to his credit, is like, you know what?

00:26:42.000 I'm busy running a state here.

00:26:46.000 Somebody has to be an adult in the room.

00:26:47.000 I mean, at some point.

00:26:48.000 Here's Brian Kemp.

00:26:51.000 The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia, as long as I'm governor, we're going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically.

00:27:03.000 Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that.

00:27:10.000 But I can assure you, I have not.

00:27:13.000 And in Georgia, we will not be engaging in political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment.

00:27:20.000 We will do what is right.

00:27:22.000 We will uphold our oaths as public servants.

00:27:26.000 And it's my belief that our state will be better off for it.

00:27:31.000 He says we have a law in the state of Georgia that clearly outlines legal steps that can be taken if constituents believe their local prosecutors are violating their oath by engaging in unethical or illegal behavior.

00:27:39.000 Up to this point, I've not seen evidence that DA Willis's actions or lack thereof warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission.

00:27:45.000 Okay, like, again, a bad prosecution doesn't necessarily mean that Brian Kemp has the power or the ability, or should use that ability, to do this.

00:27:52.000 Now, again, I totally get the reactionary sentiment, which is, Fannie Willis is doing something wrong, so violate whatever laws you have to in order to get rid of her, since she's violating whatever laws she has to in order to go after Donald Trump. 0.99

00:28:04.000 The problem is that in the state of Georgia, the reason that Brian Kemp, the predictable result of this, like no one has any second order thinking ever, ever.

00:28:11.000 Okay, so let's assume that Brian Kemp did what you want him to do.

00:28:13.000 Let's assume that Brian Kemp and the state legislature in Georgia, which is a very purple state now, thanks to the administrations of people like Donald Trump, let's say that they went ahead and they moved for the impeachment of Fannie Willis.

00:28:23.000 And let's say that they got it.

00:28:24.000 Let's say they achieved the impeachment of Fannie Willis.

00:28:25.000 How do you think Republicans are going to do in the election after that?

00:28:28.000 Is he gonna go great for them?

00:28:30.000 Or do you think that they might run into some issues?

00:28:31.000 Brian Kemp stood up to the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

00:28:37.000 And then he won an overwhelming victory against Stacey Abrams.

00:28:41.000 Stacey Abrams, lest we forget, was such an amazing goddess, according to the left, that they made her the empress of all the universe on Star Trek. 0.96

00:28:48.000 That's who Stacey Abrams was.

00:28:50.000 And she was defeated solidly by Brian Kemp.

00:28:52.000 Meanwhile, in that same exact race, Hershel Walker, Donald Trump's chosen pick for Senate, lost to Raphael Warnock.

00:28:58.000 So, instead of fighting Pyrrhic victories that end up actually undermining the ability to win elections in the future, maybe we ought to use a little bit of political smarts here.

00:29:08.000 But I guess that's the question.

00:29:10.000 Are we in the business of Pyrrhic victories?

00:29:12.000 Or Pyrrhic losses, is the case maybe?

00:29:13.000 Because you may not even get what you want.

00:29:15.000 Or are you in the business of, you know, long-term building in order to stop the left's agenda?

00:29:19.000 And it seems like everybody is a short-term thinker.

00:29:20.000 This is one of the other reasons why, as to get back to the first topic we discussed, one of the reasons why you have 80-year-olds at the head of government is because you can only, it's like buying a short-term bond.

00:29:31.000 Right?

00:29:31.000 The expiration date on the thing is very, very soon.

00:29:33.000 And so, we are so uneasy about the long-term future.

00:29:36.000 We don't build movements anymore.

00:29:38.000 We make short-term plays in the hope that the other side will make a bad short-term play.

00:29:42.000 Which means, effectively, you're just waiting for the other side to do something truly egregious, or you're waiting for some sort of ground shift to happen.

00:29:49.000 Some deus ex machina.

00:29:51.000 Now, the reality is, the deus ex machina in politics rarely arrives.

00:29:54.000 What you should be doing is building long-term movements.

00:29:56.000 That would be the thing that we should be doing.

00:29:58.000 Is that something that either side is doing?

00:30:00.000 Well, the left did it for 50 years.

00:30:01.000 Now it seems like they're stuck in a rut.

00:30:03.000 The right did it with regard to Roe vs. Wade, and they achieved victory in getting the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

00:30:09.000 But it seems like movement building is a lot of hard work.

00:30:11.000 It's a lot of incremental work.

00:30:12.000 It's not rewarding.

00:30:13.000 And, you know, it's a lot easier to shout at the moon.

00:30:15.000 That's the thing that is a lot easier.

00:30:17.000 Meanwhile, on the 2024 Republican side of the aisle, the polls continue to show Donald Trump with a massive and durable lead.

00:30:24.000 He continues to be leading in the RealClearPolitics poll average by about 40 points.

00:30:28.000 The latest Economist YouGov poll has him at 52% nationally and Ron DeSantis at 16%.

00:30:32.000 Again, the lineup is the same.

00:30:33.000 It's been the same for months at this point.

00:30:36.000 It goes Trump, DeSantis, and then way behind the rest of the pack, you'll have a variety of Ramaswamy, Haley, Pence, and Christie.

00:30:44.000 Those are the only candidates who are even on the stage, and all of them are running way the hell behind Donald Trump at this point in time.

00:30:52.000 Now, in Iowa, it's possible that someone could score an upset victory.

00:30:55.000 If you're looking at the polling in Iowa right now, Trump is up, but he's up by about 20 points, about half his national lead in Iowa.

00:31:01.000 And as Henry Olson points out, Donald Trump has made a risky move in Iowa by pissing off a lot of the main leaders in Iowa.

00:31:08.000 Henry Olson at the Washington Post says, It would be easy to conclude from the polls that Trump will cruise to victory in Iowa's caucuses in January, spend a week in the state, it becomes far less certain the former president will start off primary season with an early victory because Iowa's evangelical Christian community is not yet sold on him.

00:31:21.000 He says, I talked to Iowa evangelical pastors and grassroots leaders who understand the nuances of their community better than any pollster.

00:31:26.000 Their message was surprisingly uniform.

00:31:28.000 Iowa's evangelicals have not made up their minds as of yet.

00:31:31.000 Now, could Trump lose Iowa and still win the primary?

00:31:34.000 Sure.

00:31:35.000 I mean, he absolutely could.

00:31:37.000 The real question is whether the field is going to consolidate and whether it's going to consolidate behind one alternative candidate.

00:31:41.000 Even then, Trump still has the upper hand according to current polling, unless something dramatic changes.

00:31:46.000 We'll get to more on that in just one second.

00:31:47.000 First, have you ever craved a nice barbecue meal with the family?

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00:31:52.000 I'm out there grilling because I need my protein.

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00:32:38.000 It's really nice for me that I'm not gonna have to worry about the propane running out in the middle of a family barbecue ever again.

00:32:43.000 I use Cinch.

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00:32:50.000 Also, remember a few months ago, a certain chocolate company sold themselves out to the wokes? 1.00

00:32:54.000 Seriously, they tried out a dude who said he's a lady to be the spokeswoman on International Women's Day. 0.98

00:32:59.000 Ridiculous and nonsensical. 0.88

00:33:00.000 This is why Jeremy Boring decided to start producing Jeremy's Chocolate. 0.91

00:33:04.000 The campaign was a huge success.

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00:33:07.000 Then we got more in stock.

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00:33:38.000 Also this week, I got the chance to sit down with Chris Rufo for an episode of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.

00:33:42.000 In this episode, we discuss how to create a free society through duty and responsibility, and how leftist ideology has evolved and planted itself into our social institutions.

00:33:49.000 Plus, we delve into how Chris transitioned from a young leftist to a force for good in the conservative movement.

00:33:54.000 It's a great conversation.

00:33:55.000 Everybody should hear it.

00:33:56.000 Here's a little bit of the trailer.

00:33:57.000 I just started looking at the people around me and these kind of left-wing, radical student groups and political movements.

00:34:05.000 And what I found is that these were people who were the sons and daughters of the most elite people from around the globe.

00:34:12.000 These are people who are using this vocabulary cynically to establish their own status, to establish their own power.

00:34:18.000 And then after a couple of years of wearing the keffiyeh, are going to go on and take over their father's company. 0.79

00:34:23.000 And that was really the question.

00:34:25.000 If these people are utterly amoral frauds, maybe there's something wrong with these ideas.

00:34:35.000 Make sure you check out the latest episode of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special this Sunday on Daily Wire Plus YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

00:34:41.000 Meanwhile, you need to look at the other Republican candidates.

00:34:44.000 Nobody seems to be gaining a ton of momentum.

00:34:46.000 So Ron DeSantis handled the latest hurricane in Florida quite well.

00:34:49.000 Everybody sort of understands that, except for, of course, President Trump, who's ripping on him consistently throughout the handling of the hurricane, because this is the way we do our politics now.

00:34:58.000 DeSantis handled it pretty well, according to Politico.

00:35:01.000 It showed why he's a darling of conservatives in the donor class.

00:35:03.000 It also exposes his vulnerability.

00:35:06.000 Why exactly?

00:35:07.000 Well, because no reason. 0.93

00:35:09.000 I mean, they can't really explain why he did a bad job, but they're saying that it exposes vulnerability mainly because in our stupid politics, if you're good at a job, that doesn't help you at all, apparently. 0.78

00:35:18.000 The biggest thing is that other people can attack you with regard to your performance. 0.90

00:35:23.000 Better not to be in office so you can attack everybody than to be in office trying to do the thing.

00:35:27.000 So, there is that.

00:35:29.000 Meanwhile, Never Back Down, which is Ron DeSantis' super PAC, they are shifting their resources to the early states, recognizing that they're going to need to win the early states early if they wish to carry on the campaign beyond that, right?

00:35:40.000 Here's the simple math in the Republican primaries.

00:35:42.000 It goes Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.

00:35:45.000 DeSantis basically has to win all three.

00:35:47.000 If he wins Iowa and he loses New Hampshire to Trump, Trump is going to walk away with it.

00:35:50.000 If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire and Trump wins South Carolina handily because the field splits, Trump is probably going to sweep.

00:35:57.000 This is the math for DeSantis.

00:35:58.000 So he's shifting all of his resources into the early states.

00:36:01.000 He should have done that earlier, is the truth.

00:36:03.000 They've ended their door knocking in Nevada and the Super Tuesday.

00:36:06.000 Some people are saying this is a sign of DeSantis campaign's weakness.

00:36:09.000 Maybe.

00:36:09.000 It may also be a sign of just Trump's strength in a lot of these states.

00:36:12.000 You can't diversify your forces.

00:36:13.000 You have to concentrate them where you think Trump is most vulnerable.

00:36:16.000 You got to knock him out of the box right out of the gate.

00:36:18.000 That basically is the only way to win these primaries.

00:36:22.000 Nikki Haley is starting to gain some credibility.

00:36:24.000 It looks right now as though the rest of the fight, the rest of the field may consolidate down to DeSantis versus Haley, which would not be particularly shocking.

00:36:32.000 Ramaswamy is running a self-funded campaign.

00:36:35.000 He also is, I would say, the darling of a sort of elite in the Twitterverse, but he

00:36:42.000 doesn't have tremendous grassroots support.

00:36:45.000 He's not really building a grassroots organization.

00:36:46.000 He's getting a lot of earned media.

00:36:48.000 And that earned media is not necessarily translating into heightened poll numbers, especially because

00:36:51.000 he's catering to a particular subset of people who are on Twitter by saying sort of things

00:36:57.000 that I think he knows are not true, and then he's sort of nuancing them afterward.

00:37:02.000 So, do I think that Vivek is a sort of durable candidate going forward in the Republican Party?

00:37:09.000 Maybe next time around.

00:37:10.000 I don't think this time around he's going to be one of the top three candidates.

00:37:12.000 It seems like right now the field seems to be consolidating around Trump-DeSantis-Haley.

00:37:17.000 That's Trump by like a huge margin and then DeSantis and Haley after that.

00:37:22.000 Mike Pence does not seem to be gaining any sort of momentum.

00:37:25.000 He's still speaking to small crowds in Iowa.

00:37:28.000 Again, the question as to why Pence is running remains at the tip of everybody's tongue.

00:37:32.000 The truth is it probably is just a way to button up his legacy.

00:37:35.000 Because the reality is that Trump is still very popular inside the Republican Party.

00:37:38.000 Pence defending his own actions in January of 2021, I think is well worthwhile.

00:37:43.000 Whether that has to happen in a presidential campaign, I am not certain.

00:37:47.000 Meanwhile, in other political news, the White House is begging Congress to pass a short-term spending deal

00:37:53.000 and boost food aid, according to the Washington Post.

00:37:55.000 They're urging Congress to adopt a short-term measure to fund the federal government, a movement to buy time for lawmakers to craft a broader spending deal and avert another shutdown at the end of September.

00:38:02.000 So here is the math.

00:38:03.000 Okay, for everybody who, we do the shutdown routine like every six months in this country.

00:38:07.000 Here's the math.

00:38:08.000 If Republicans control the House, but not the Senate or the presidency, they're not going to get everything they want.

00:38:12.000 End of story.

00:38:14.000 That's, that's all.

00:38:16.000 And if there is a massive government shutdown in which things just don't move forward, the people who are likely to bear the burden of that over time, it's just the way the political math works, are the people who are not signing the checks.

00:38:28.000 So, Joe Biden wrong-footed himself last time in the showdown.

00:38:32.000 He said, I'm not going to negotiate at all.

00:38:33.000 He said, no negotiations.

00:38:34.000 That was a huge mistake by him because it allowed McCarthy to come forward and say, okay, well, we are going to negotiate, right?

00:38:40.000 Well, here's our opening position.

00:38:41.000 Let's negotiate.

00:38:42.000 And Biden was like, I'm not negotiating.

00:38:43.000 It made Biden look like the bad guy. 0.90

00:38:44.000 Well, This is the way our stupid political math— Now, the way— Listen, in an idealistically pure world, the way that it would work is Republicans would say, here are the various departments funded as departments, right? 0.98

00:38:57.000 That'd be what we call regular order. 0.99

00:38:58.000 It hasn't obtained in Washington, D.C.

00:39:00.000 for at least a couple of decades.

00:39:02.000 We'll fund the Defense Department, then we'll fund the Education Department, then we'll fund the Commerce Department.

00:39:06.000 That hasn't happened.

00:39:07.000 We've been doing omnibuses for the last several decades in the United States.

00:39:10.000 Okay, so, the normal way that would work is that they would then negotiate over each one of those bills.

00:39:15.000 And that hasn't happened, because there's too much backscratching, and there's too much pork barrel rolling, and there's too much negotiation with the other branches of government and the other party.

00:39:23.000 Okay, with that said, if Republicans take the up-front position, we are not negotiating whatsoever, they're gonna bear the political brunt if something does not go forward.

00:39:32.000 You gotta get the best that you can get.

00:39:34.000 It's my job to point out where that strays from principle, but it's the job of people in Congress to get the best that they can get, right?

00:39:39.000 It's all a negotiation.

00:39:41.000 So, when Joe Biden demands a short-term spending bill, should he be given a short-term spending bill?

00:39:45.000 No, he should not.

00:39:46.000 But Republicans should lay out a couple of key concessions they wish to win in the next spending battle, and then they should fight for those concessions.

00:39:52.000 And they should say, listen, we're willing to give up a lot of stuff that we don't want to give up, but you got to give something too.

00:39:57.000 That is the way that you win a government shutdown fight.

00:39:59.000 Contrary to kind of talk radio opinion, the way that you win a government shutdown fight is not typically to shut down the government for prolonged periods of time.

00:40:05.000 It doesn't seem to redound to the benefit of the party perceived as being more intransigent.

00:40:10.000 Now, as I say, the Democrats can fall into the trap, right?

00:40:12.000 The Democrats can say, we won't negotiate at all.

00:40:14.000 We're going to be intransigent.

00:40:15.000 Then they will pay the political price for their intransigence.

00:40:19.000 The GOP demands mark a sharp break with the deal.

00:40:21.000 Party leaders, including House Speaker McCarthy, worked out with the president this spring to raise the nation's debt limit.

00:40:25.000 It was supposed to prevent another stalemate over spending this fall.

00:40:28.000 Now the Biden administration is explicitly asking Congress to adopt what is known as a CR that's continuing resolution at this point.

00:40:35.000 So, you know, we're going to have that battle next week.

00:40:38.000 Earlier this month, McCarthy and Chuck Schumer each signaled early support for a continuing resolution that might offer lawmakers more time to craft a full-year spending deal.

00:40:47.000 But Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday, it's a pretty big mess.

00:40:50.000 He predicted that lawmakers would adopt a short-term deal into December while they struggle to figure out exactly what the government spending level is going to be.

00:40:57.000 The reason that I say that the split government works, that the split government between Republicans and Democrats means that Republicans are not going to get what they want out of the deal is because they won't.

00:41:05.000 Joe Biden's just going to veto it.

00:41:07.000 It's sort of like the quixotic quest, idealistically pure.

00:41:10.000 But politically counterproductive attempt by Ted Cruz in like 2014 to defund the federal government to get Barack Obama to repeal Obamacare.

00:41:20.000 It was not going to happen.

00:41:21.000 Barack Obama was not going to repeal Obamacare.

00:41:24.000 There are certain things that may help individual politicians because it makes them look purer to the base that don't actually achieve the thing.

00:41:30.000 But there's a difference between that and actively stumping for things that you think you can achieve in a negotiation, right?

00:41:36.000 Chip Roy did that last time around.

00:41:38.000 He did that with regard to the budgeting process, and he also did that with regard to, for example, Kevin McCarthy's speakership itself, and he won some important concessions.

00:41:46.000 So that should be something that is on the table.

00:41:49.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden trying to lock up the youth vote by giving them weed, apparently.

00:41:52.000 According to Politico, the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services is recommending that the DEA significantly loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, stop short of advising it should be entirely removed from the Controlled Substances Act.

00:42:02.000 The health agency wants the drug moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 under the CSA.

00:42:06.000 That is potentially the biggest change in federal drug policy in decades.

00:42:08.000 So we already have a huge percentage of American youngsters who are toking and making nothing of their lives.

00:42:14.000 So, first of all, we have now debunked in very thorough fashion The scientific community has debunked the idea that marijuana is non-addictive.

00:42:22.000 That is not true.

00:42:23.000 It is just not true.

00:42:24.000 First of all, it's significantly more potent than when you work it.

00:42:27.000 Second of all, it is actually quite addictive for a large percentage of people who take it.

00:42:33.000 The idea that it is completely benign, particularly for young people, is a complete lie.

00:42:37.000 I don't know how culturally we got to the point where tobacco products are considered the great root of all evil, because you might die of lung cancer when you're 60, but marijuana, which makes you useless if you use it on the regular, is somehow considered, what, some sort of societal good?

00:42:52.000 I mean, I know people, personally, who have serious problems with marijuana addiction, and it is a massive issue. 0.99

00:42:58.000 And meanwhile, the Biden administration, seeking apparently to make everybody fat, stupid, and useless, is going to move toward more decriminalization on marijuana. 0.99

00:43:07.000 Now, you can make the case the federal government is bad at the war on drugs. 0.99

00:43:10.000 That's a case that I'm actually somewhat warm to.

00:43:13.000 But that's not a case that Joe Biden has ever made.

00:43:15.000 He's doing this on ideological grounds.

00:43:18.000 So the HHS letter is part of an official review process initiated by Biden last October.

00:43:22.000 The FDA conducts the review.

00:43:23.000 It's sent to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the HHS.

00:43:26.000 The HHS transmits a letter of recommendation to the DEA.

00:43:29.000 The White House is refusing to comment on the review process.

00:43:33.000 So this will lead to a federal-state conflict because the federal law has failed to keep up with massive changes over the past decades in state cannabis laws.

00:43:40.000 By the way, it's worked out beautifully for California and for states like Colorado, where Denver is now basically an open-air drug market.

00:43:46.000 So things are just working out absolutely beautifully.

00:43:49.000 Decriminalization of marijuana, it might have been an idea that was humorable for a time, but the effects of it have been pretty, pretty bad.

00:43:57.000 Meanwhile, Democrats continue to use climate change as their excuse for pretty much everything.

00:44:02.000 So the governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, he was asked about whether Hawaii's electric company had been responsible for the complete destruction of Lahaina, which is one of the great tragedies of modern American history.

00:44:12.000 It really is quite horrifying.

00:44:15.000 And it's pretty obvious that probably Hawaii Electric should have shut down the electric substations, and they didn't, and it probably led to this fire in the middle of this giant, giant windstorm.

00:44:22.000 And he was like, Well, I'm not going to say anything about the power company, but the sun.

00:44:27.000 Global warming.

00:44:30.000 How much responsibility do you think the power company bears here for the fire?

00:44:37.000 It's a very good question.

00:44:38.000 Two days in, which was on the 10th, I asked my attorney general, instructed her to do a comprehensive investigation.

00:44:45.000 So she's doing that right now.

00:44:47.000 She's brought an outside investigator in from the mainland that has fire expertise.

00:44:52.000 She's going to find out exactly how much.

00:44:53.000 We do know that that early fire was sparked, as Hiko said.

00:44:58.000 I don't want to jump to conclusions just because I don't think it's fair for me to do that, but we will hold everyone accountable 100% and we'll be very transparent about it.

00:45:06.000 We'll release all the reports.

00:45:08.000 I think that at the end of the day, we all have to acknowledge that this is a global problem.

00:45:13.000 It was a very, very hot, dry, terrible storm.

00:45:17.000 We are dealing with global warming here.

00:45:19.000 We had six total fire emergencies from 1953 to 2003, and then we had six in the first two weeks of this month.

00:45:29.000 Okay, so it's the get-out-of-jail-free card for bad governance.

00:45:32.000 It turns out that human beings have been dealing with environmental disasters for literally all of human history.

00:45:37.000 How you handle that is a good measure of are you good at your job or not.

00:45:41.000 And he handled this about as badly as you can handle it, so global warming is the problem, of course.

00:45:46.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden doing the same exact routine.

00:45:47.000 It's such a get-out-of-jail-free card.

00:45:48.000 Climate change is now basically the excuse for everything.

00:45:51.000 We handled the disaster badly in Lahaina.

00:45:53.000 Well, it was climate change.

00:45:55.000 The economy is having problems.

00:45:56.000 Well, that's probably because of climate change.

00:45:59.000 The war is breaking out in the middle.

00:46:00.000 It's climate change.

00:46:01.000 Everything is climate change.

00:46:02.000 It's the ultimate political get-out-of-jail-free card.

00:46:06.000 There's still some deniers out there in terms of whether or not climate change has anything to do with any of this.

00:46:14.000 And we're going to need a whole hell of a lot more money to deal with emergency appropriations, to deal with all you're taking care of.

00:46:23.000 Oh, so the answer is a lot more money.

00:46:26.000 I didn't see that coming.

00:46:27.000 Joe Biden calling for more spending on things?

00:46:28.000 No, no.

00:46:29.000 By the way, the notion that hurricanes are dramatically created by the global warming issue, that data is not particularly clear.

00:46:37.000 As Bjorn Wallenberg points out, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent.

00:46:41.000 The frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental United States has declined slightly since 1900.

00:46:46.000 Airplanes and satellites have dramatically increased the number of storms scientists can spot at sea, which is why the frequency of landfall hurricanes, reliably documented back to 1900, is better stat than the total number of Atlantic hurricanes.

00:46:56.000 There aren't more powerful hurricanes either.

00:46:57.000 The frequency of Cat 3 and above hurricanes making landfall since 1900 is trending slightly down.

00:47:02.000 You hear a lot about hurricanes getting stronger.

00:47:04.000 A study in the Journal of Nature found that the increases are not part of a century-scale increase, but a recovery from a deep minimum in the 60s through the 80s.

00:47:12.000 So, yeah.

00:47:14.000 Once again, it comes down to governance and ability to govern.

00:47:17.000 Okay, time for some things I like and some things that I hate. 0.97

00:47:19.000 So, today I begin with a thing that I hate because this is legitimately one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard in my entire life. 0.81

00:47:28.000 Here it is. 0.98

00:47:29.000 It comes courtesy of Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times.

00:47:33.000 No, that's not what they did.

00:47:35.000 Apparently, they just didn't take enough precautions to prevent people from stealing their vehicles.

00:47:39.000 I'm not kidding.

00:47:39.000 a crime wave. They should pay for it. Wait, you ask, are Kia and Hyundai hiring gangs of criminals

00:47:45.000 to steal each other's vehicles? No, that's not what they did. Apparently, they just didn't take

00:47:49.000 enough precautions to prevent people from stealing their vehicles. I'm not kidding. This is his case.

00:47:53.000 In a recent analysis of data from 37 American cities, the Council on Criminal Justice,

00:47:58.000 a nonpartisan think tank, suggested a hopeful trend.

00:48:00.000 The pandemic-era spike in crime may have peaked.

00:48:02.000 The homicide rate has dropped significantly over the last year based on data from 30 American cities.

00:48:07.000 But there's a glaring exception.

00:48:08.000 Auto thefts.

00:48:09.000 According to the Council on Criminal Justice, the number of vehicle thefts during the first half of 2023

00:48:13.000 was 33.5% higher on average than during the same period in 2022,

00:48:17.000 representing 23,974 more vehicle thefts in the cities that reported data.

00:48:22.000 That would be Philly, Washington DC, Chicago, New Orleans, Buffalo, and Durham, North Carolina.

00:48:26.000 Motor vehicle thefts this year have more than doubled relative to last year, according to stats collected by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst.

00:48:33.000 Why are so many cars getting stolen?

00:48:35.000 Police departments and city officials point to this.

00:48:37.000 Millions of Kias and Hyundais are ridiculously easy to steal. 1.00

00:48:41.000 Oh, that, oh, so it's, oh, so it's the fault of the car, you see.

00:48:48.000 The car basically wanted it.

00:48:49.000 Its skirt was too short. 0.99

00:48:51.000 It needed to be stolen.

00:48:53.000 That's the way that this works.

00:48:54.000 It's not the criminal, the car's just sitting there, and the criminal was not a criminal, it was just you.

00:49:00.000 You were just walking down the street like a normal human, never having stolen a car in your life, and there you saw it, in the pure summer sunshine, a Kia Ultima.

00:49:09.000 And you were like, ah, let's do this thing.

00:49:12.000 The time has come.

00:49:13.000 That is the easiest car to steal.

00:49:15.000 And so you, drawn like a moth to the flame, walked over to the Kia.

00:49:20.000 And you said, sure, that's not a very nice car.

00:49:22.000 Sure, I don't really want a Kia.

00:49:24.000 I wasn't like desperate.

00:49:26.000 For any of Kia's brands, their EV6 wasn't my bag, their Telluride wasn't my thing, but now that I see it, now that I see it gleaming in the summer sunshine and I know it's super easy to steal, I, a lifelong law-abiding citizen, have decided to steal this Kia.

00:49:43.000 That's exactly how it went.

00:49:45.000 Probably.

00:49:45.000 According to Farhad Manjoo, for years now, most automakers have equipped most of the cars they

00:49:49.000 sell in the US with electronic immobilizers, devices that prevent cars from starting unless

00:49:53.000 they detect a radio ID code associated with the car's rightful key. But Hyundai and Kia,

00:49:57.000 which come under the same South Korean conglomerate, did not install this basic device in

00:50:01.000 somewhere around 9 million cars sold between 2011 and 2022.

00:50:04.000 A couple of years ago, videos showing how to hotwire the vulnerable cars began to pop up

00:50:08.000 online. Without going into details, the hack involves jamming a small object into the car

00:50:11.000 starter and turning it as if it were a key.

00:50:13.000 One perfectly shaped tool for the job is readily available.

00:50:16.000 A USB plug.

00:50:17.000 I'm glad that Farhad Manjoo is now explaining to people how to steal a car.

00:50:19.000 This is great.

00:50:21.000 The resulting crime wave has clobbered American cities.

00:50:23.000 We're hitting close to 6,000 cars that have been stolen this year alone, said Adrian Diaz, Seattle's police chief.

00:50:28.000 More than a third of the cars stolen were Hyundais and Kias.

00:50:31.000 And then there are the follow-on accidents.

00:50:32.000 Stolen Kias and Hyundais have been involved in numerous deadly crashes, armed robbery sprees, and other crimes around the country. 0.99

00:50:38.000 Whoa, I didn't expect that from the Kias and Hyundais. 1.00

00:50:41.000 That's crazy.

00:50:42.000 So basically the Kias on their own were stolen. 0.72

00:50:46.000 No one's to blame for this.

00:50:47.000 It was their own fault because they're easy to steal.

00:50:49.000 And then the Kia robbed a bank and went on an armed robbery spree, or shall we say a wheeled robbery spree all by itself.

00:50:57.000 Amazing stuff from the Kia.

00:50:59.000 Wow, I can't believe they programmed these cars to perform armed robbery.

00:51:02.000 Wild.

00:51:02.000 Well, Seattle is one of several cities suing Kia and Hyundai.

00:51:06.000 They make a compelling case, says Farhad Manjoo.

00:51:08.000 The car makers should have known they were creating unsafe products.

00:51:11.000 Guys, did you know that if you create a product and it is stolen, it is your fault it was stolen and you created an unsafe product?

00:51:16.000 Because you knew it was probably going to be stolen?

00:51:19.000 The costs of their decision have had far-reaching effects on public safety and city resources.

00:51:22.000 There's no telling when thefts might abate.

00:51:25.000 Um, that is amazing.

00:51:28.000 Firehand Manager laments, he says, it's difficult for cities to prove that the rise in thefts

00:51:31.000 is primarily Kia and Hyundai's fault.

00:51:33.000 Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist who's one of the authors on the Council on Criminal Justice

00:51:37.000 Analysis, told me motor vehicle theft is an under-researched phenomenon. But stats released

00:51:42.000 by some of the worst affected cities strongly suggest thefts of Kias and Hyundais are a major

00:51:46.000 part of the recent spike. There's a chance Kia and Hyundai will escape some of the blame for

00:51:51.000 There's a juicier target for politicians to go after, social media platforms, where the how-to videos have been circulating.

00:51:57.000 This strikes me as a bizarre blame shifting.

00:51:58.000 It's Kia and Hyundai, not TikTok, that sold theft-prone cars.

00:52:01.000 Wait, why are we blaming TikTok?

00:52:03.000 How about you blame criminals?

00:52:04.000 I don't understand.

00:52:05.000 There's like a third party here doing all the criming.

00:52:07.000 It isn't TikTok.

00:52:08.000 It isn't Hyundai.

00:52:09.000 It isn't Kia.

00:52:10.000 It's the criminals. 1.00

00:52:11.000 Like, these people are so stupid. 1.00

00:52:12.000 This is like the stupidest thing I've ever heard. 1.00

00:52:15.000 Well, there was the knife. 1.00

00:52:15.000 It was sitting there in plain sight, and you were just drawn to it. 1.00

00:52:17.000 You couldn't stop yourself, and so you stabbed your friend in the eyeball.

00:52:21.000 Probably we should sue the knife manufacturer, or alternatively, the YouTube video where we learned that knives stab things. 1.00

00:52:27.000 This is how dumb we have become. 0.96

00:52:29.000 How about like some basic level of personal responsibility? 0.98

00:52:31.000 Well, he can't say that because you know what this might require?

00:52:33.000 More police!

00:52:35.000 More active policing!

00:52:36.000 More throwing criminals in the jail and leaving them in the jail! 1.00

00:52:39.000 I know, this is like super basic stuff, but not apparently to these morons. 1.00

00:52:43.000 So, uh, slow clap for that genius take there. 0.99

00:52:46.000 That is some strong stuff.

00:52:47.000 Okay, meanwhile, let's get to a thing that I like.

00:52:49.000 So, things that I like today.

00:52:52.000 Joe Rogan, head on Oliver Anthony.

00:52:54.000 He's the guy from Richmond, north of Richmond, who's become sort of a national phenomenon.

00:52:58.000 His song led off the first Republican debate.

00:53:00.000 He says he's not a political figure, which is perfectly fine.

00:53:03.000 I think like most Americans, he really doesn't follow politics all that closely.

00:53:06.000 But his generalized annoyance at an elite class that seeks to control the lives of Americans and use its power to redistribute, as he says, from sort of the productive to the unproductive, That is inherently political, even if he doesn't wish it to be a partisan issue.

00:53:21.000 Well, it was fascinating to watch him on Rogan because as a sort of blue-collar dude, he was able to say some things to Joe that a lot of people need to hear.

00:53:31.000 Now, you know, I've quoted the Bible to my friend Joe Rogan before.

00:53:36.000 It has, I think, a different impact when it comes from Oliver Anthony.

00:53:38.000 Here's Oliver Anthony on with Joe Rogan yesterday.

00:53:40.000 You know, like, there's things it says, like, and I'll be very brief with this, I promise, but, like, one thing.

00:53:46.000 Ironically, it's Proverbs 420, which I thought you would like, so if there's anything better.

00:53:52.000 Perfect.

00:53:53.000 Read it.

00:53:54.000 Preach.

00:53:55.000 My son, pay attention to what I say.

00:53:57.000 Turn your ear to my words.

00:53:59.000 Do not let them out of your sight.

00:54:01.000 Keep them within your heart.

00:54:03.000 for they are life to those who find them and health the one's whole body.

00:54:06.000 Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

00:54:10.000 Keep your mouth free from perversity. Keep corrupt. Talk far from your lips. 0.94

00:54:15.000 Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you.

00:54:19.000 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your

00:54:23.000 ways. Do not turn to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil.

00:54:28.000 But um, that's pretty profound.

00:54:31.000 But the whole book of Proverbs is like that.

00:54:33.000 It's not preachy.

00:54:36.000 It's not what you think.

00:54:39.000 It's good guidance.

00:54:40.000 It's like good guidance that you would want a father to give to his son.

00:54:44.000 Good for Oliver Anthony.

00:54:45.000 Again, this is the part of American life, and he tells this story, by the way, and his story is really fascinating, because he basically says that he was involved in drug use, and he was involved in alcohol use, and he was basically falling apart in near suicide, and then he discovered religion, and just like a lot of other people who have discovered religion over the course of religious history, He then found inspiration there, and within six months, he was writing songs that people wanted to hear.

00:55:08.000 And basically, his song is a plea for leave me alone and personal responsibility.

00:55:11.000 That's really what it is.

00:55:12.000 Like, let these people not bother me and let me live my life in consonance with walking in the ways of God.

00:55:17.000 This is the way that America used to work.

00:55:21.000 And the fact that it is kind of incredible how basic message is.

00:55:26.000 Like, the book of Proverbs is kind of an old book.

00:55:29.000 And it's familiar to many of us.

00:55:31.000 I mean, it's Mishle in Hebrew.

00:55:33.000 Like, it's been around for several thousand years.

00:55:35.000 And the fact that it used to be, like, the sentences that Oliver Anthony is reading there, these used to be the kinds of sentences that pretty much everybody in America had at the tip of their tongue.

00:55:43.000 You could basically quote the book of Deuteronomy, and it would be a common point of reference, in the same way that in Britain, you could quote Shakespeare, and it was a common point of reference.

00:55:51.000 The Bible was the text that everybody used for literally centuries.

00:55:56.000 The text that was, for many people, the only text they knew was the Bible.

00:56:01.000 There is a reason why the most printed book in human history is the Bible.

00:56:05.000 And now, if you speak to like a regular person on the street and you quote the Bible, they don't know a damn thing about it. 0.55

00:56:09.000 And that's a real problem.

00:56:11.000 Because the Bible does carry with it a set of values.

00:56:13.000 It is not just a bunch of vague standards that are unimplementable in your daily life.

00:56:19.000 As it says in the book of Deuteronomy, it is not far from you, it is close to you, in your mouth, right?

00:56:24.000 I mean like this...

00:56:26.000 The basic notion that the morality of the Bible is available to everyone and that it's actually fairly understandable and fairly clear and that provides a basic guide to life.

00:56:35.000 Like this was the thing that fell away in favor of this notion that you can define your own value system and that just follow your stars, follow what you feel in your heart, follow that is not.

00:56:45.000 What the Bible is saying.

00:56:46.000 That's not what Proverbs is saying.

00:56:48.000 And Oliver Anthony, when he moved from living in one way to a biblical way of living, improved his life fairly dramatically.

00:56:55.000 The Bible is still the greatest self-help book ever written because it isn't about you.

00:56:59.000 The whole point of self-help is that it really isn't about you.

00:57:01.000 It's about you orienting outside yourself.

00:57:03.000 You can't help yourself if you're oriented toward yourself.

00:57:05.000 You're the problem.

00:57:07.000 We live in a society where you're not allowed to say to people that they are the problem with their own life. 0.92

00:57:11.000 But the truth is, 95% of the problems in your life are you problems.

00:57:13.000 I mean, they're problems that you can solve or that you have to handle.

00:57:17.000 And that in handling, your life gets better.

00:57:20.000 That doesn't mean that horrible things don't happen to people financially, health-wise.

00:57:23.000 Of course horrible things happen to people.

00:57:25.000 But the only way that you can solve those kind of problems in your life, I don't mean fixing the external circumstance, is by how you approach that problem.

00:57:32.000 This is a point that Viktor Frankl makes even with regard to the Holocaust.

00:57:34.000 He says, even when you are put in literally the worst situation that a human being can put into, it is your measure of autonomy in dealing with that situation that makes you a human being.

00:57:43.000 That's what biblical values used to teach, and it used to be ingrained from the time that you were very, very young.

00:57:48.000 There are some people who lead that sort of life instinctively.

00:57:50.000 Like, Joe is not a biblical liver, but Joe is the kind of person who approaches life that way.

00:57:54.000 Like, if you actually know Joe, I'm friends with Joe, the way that Joe approaches his own life is in this way.

00:57:58.000 He's like, how can I help myself?

00:58:00.000 How do I solve the problem?

00:58:01.000 Not, how do I blame somebody else who then comes and solves the problem for me?

00:58:05.000 One of the big problems with our politics is just that.

00:58:07.000 Everybody's waiting for the deus ex machina.

00:58:09.000 Everybody's waiting for somebody to come along and solve all their problems for them.

00:58:12.000 And the politicians who are the most popular are the Pied Pipers who say this kind of stuff. 1.00

00:58:16.000 Well, I will solve your problems.

00:58:17.000 I will come in with the power of government.

00:58:19.000 I will fix everything.

00:58:20.000 But that's not possible.

00:58:23.000 They can't do that.

00:58:24.000 Everybody's looking, as I said on Twitter today, everybody's looking for the deus ex machina, meaning the god outside the machine.

00:58:29.000 There used to be something in Greek theater where basically the writer would run into a problem of his own making that he couldn't fix and suddenly a god would arrive from like the rafters, like Apollo would just show up and boom, fix the problem.

00:58:39.000 That was deus ex machina, right?

00:58:40.000 It was the god outside the machine that was going to fix everything.

00:58:45.000 Well, instead of looking, but now we've basically attributed those kind of powers to our elite, and then we're surprised when they can't fulfill it.

00:58:51.000 How about instead of looking for a deus ex machina to fix everything, or a miracle to fix everything, how about we actually look to, you know, the set of values that built the civilization that we have garnered all benefit from while giving very little back?

00:59:04.000 How about that?

00:59:05.000 That would be the thing that actually makes a big difference.

00:59:08.000 It was a pretty fascinating appearance.

00:59:09.000 Rogan also, during this appearance, went after Rainn Wilson.

00:59:12.000 Rainn Wilson had gone after Oliver Anthony.

00:59:14.000 And here was Joe going after Rainn Wilson in return.

00:59:17.000 It's a subject of discussion.

00:59:19.000 So, like, everybody is getting involved.

00:59:22.000 And somehow or another it became cultural.

00:59:24.000 And then there was Dwight from The Office.

00:59:26.000 Oh yeah.

00:59:27.000 He chimed in.

00:59:29.000 If he was going to write a cultural anthem, what did he say?

00:59:31.000 Something like he wouldn't write about overweight people on welfare, he would write about billionaires and their taxes. 0.95

00:59:39.000 There is nothing funnier than millionaires talking s*** about billionaires.

00:59:44.000 There is nothing funnier about millionaires pretending these billionaires are out of touch. 0.61

00:59:52.000 Take Dwight from the office down to West Virginia.

00:59:55.000 Take him through those coal mining countries. 1.00

00:59:58.000 Take him through those places in Appalachia where people have extreme poverty and pills have ravished those areas.

01:00:06.000 Take him through there.

01:00:08.000 He's not wrong about any of that.

01:00:10.000 But the key there is that if you don't want to talk down to people who, if you're Rainn Wilson, you don't want to talk down to people who are living in Appalachia in poverty, then don't talk down to them.

01:00:19.000 Meaning, they are human beings with equal worth and equal merit in God's view.

01:00:24.000 As just human beings, you know, they're gonna have to earn, they're gonna have to earn, you know, their good in front of God, but the idea that they are of equal godly worth, that of course is basically biblical value, which also means they have equal responsibility.

01:00:39.000 It's responsibility that has fallen away here.

01:00:41.000 The Oliver Anthony appearance on Rogan is definitely worth the watch.

01:00:44.000 You should spend some time with it.

01:00:45.000 It's really good.

01:00:46.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

01:00:48.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

01:00:48.000 We'll be speaking with Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University.

01:00:51.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:00:53.000 Use code Shapiro.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - September 01, 2023

A Nation Led By The Elderly

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