The Ben Shapiro Show - Americans Are Officially Getting Dumber

00:00:00.000 Okay, so Donald Trump's grand jury is back in session on Thursday.

00:00:03.000 We're going to bring you all the kind of shocking and breaking news from that particular area momentarily.

00:00:08.000 First, the kind of most important story of the day, and we tend to cover a lot of what's happening like right in the news, right this second.

00:00:14.000 We're going to do a lot of that in just one second because there is a lot of stuff happening today.

00:00:17.000 But The kind of broader trend lines in American society are the things that ripple under the surface and they tend to have the biggest impact.

00:00:24.000 So there is a big story that has been kind of buried because, again, in news we tend to follow the urgent rather than the necessary.

00:00:31.000 And the story should be somewhat troubling to everyone.

00:00:34.000 The story is that IQ scores in the United States are actually beginning to drop.

00:00:39.000 Now, the United States is not unique in this respect.

00:00:41.000 You've seen IQ scores in a lot of westernized countries increase gradually over the course of the last century, and then kind of stagnate, and then finally start to drop a little.

00:00:48.000 Actually, you've seen this in places like Norway as early as 2018.

00:00:51.000 But now, for the first time, this is happening in the United States.

00:00:54.000 According to Northwestern, IQ scores have substantially increased from 1932 through the 20th century, with differences ranging from 3 to 5 IQ points per decade, according to a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect.

00:01:04.000 The Flynn effect is the gradual increase in IQ over time.

00:01:08.000 And there are a lot of explanations for why that happened.

00:01:10.000 Maybe it's nutrition, maybe it's education, right?

00:01:12.000 As we become a richer, better educated society, people overall tend to have higher IQs.

00:01:17.000 Although at the very top end of the spectrum, people who have high IQs basically have kind of the same IQs they've always had.

00:01:22.000 But there's a new study from Northwestern and it's found evidence of a reverse Flynn effect.

00:01:26.000 in a large U.S.

00:01:27.000 sample between 2006 and 2018 in every category except for one.

00:01:31.000 For the reverse Flynn effect, there are consistent negative slopes for three out of four cognitive domains.

00:01:36.000 So what this means is that ability scores for verbal reasoning, that'd be logic and vocabulary, matrix reasoning, which would be visual problem solving and analogies, letter and number series, that'd be computational and mathematical, dropped during the study period.

00:01:46.000 The only area in which the IQs apparently got better is scores of 3D rotation, spatial reasoning.

00:01:52.000 Which would suggest that people are spending an awful lot of time on their cell phones.

00:01:56.000 Compositability scores, which are sort of like your overall IQ scores, are also lower for more recent samples and the differences in scores are present regardless of age, education, or gender.

00:02:06.000 So, something is happening in American society and it is actually driving the IQ scores down.

00:02:10.000 Now, there are a bunch of theories as to why that is happening.

00:02:12.000 None of them are particularly encouraging because they're all systemic.

00:02:16.000 So the first one is the idea that education itself is beginning to fail.

00:02:19.000 That you have over the course of the last century, and again true in all westernized countries, as more people get educated, as more people go to school, as more people go to high school, and then to college, overall IQ scores tend to rise.

00:02:30.000 That as there are educational effects, IQ scores, particularly at the lower end of the spectrum, where people are undereducated, tend to rise.

00:02:35.000 So for example, right now, Ashkenazic Jewish IQs are famously higher than average.

00:02:41.000 But in the early 20th century, Ashkenazic Jewish IQs were actually lower than average because many of the people who were coming over from Europe were not actually educated.

00:02:48.000 They were fifth grade graduates and they spoke Yiddish.

00:02:51.000 And then over time, as they grew more and more educated, the IQ scores started to go up because the tests only measure what the tests measure.

00:02:58.000 That's happened with entire populations.

00:03:00.000 As the populations grow more educated, and as you focus in on a meritocracy, you're essentially incentivizing better IQ performance.

00:03:08.000 So, it's possible that education has now petered out.

00:03:10.000 And you can see this in higher education, where we have stopped focusing on exactly the sorts of skills that you would need in order to score high on IQ.

00:03:17.000 We've stopped focusing on how verbally dexterous you are.

00:03:20.000 We've stopped focusing in on your ability to use reason.

00:03:24.000 Mathematical computation.

00:03:25.000 All that has gone completely by the wayside and education in favor of other priorities like the sort of victimhood mentality and how well you can play the system.

00:03:33.000 So when it comes to our IQ for playing the system, our IQ for playing the system, our incentive structures have totally changed in education over the course of the last 20 years.

00:03:39.000 That certainly cannot be helping.

00:03:41.000 Then there's the problem of demographics.

00:03:44.000 When I talk about demographics, I'm not talking about racial demographics.

00:03:46.000 Here, I'm talking about the simple fact that over time, higher IQ people tend to earn more money.

00:03:51.000 People who earn more money tend to have fewer children.

00:03:54.000 People who earn less money tend to have more children.

00:03:56.000 And so what that means is that if you are having fewer people at the top of the IQ spectrum, and IQ is largely genetic, if you start to see people at the top of the IQ spectrum having fewer kids and people at the bottom of the IQ spectrum having more kids, then you end up with the sort of prophecy of idiocracy in which the people with the lower IQ tend to predominate.

00:04:14.000 Now, again, that's changed over time because people who are low income earning, over time, when there was discrimination, that didn't correlate with IQ.

00:04:21.000 A lot of people who didn't earn a high income 50 years ago, it's because the system actively was discriminating against them or because they were brand new immigrants, they'd not been assimilated.

00:04:29.000 But as we are a very assimilative society, and as all of the restrictions have gone away on particular ethnic groups, for example, in the United States, what you're starting to see is the possibility of IQ breakdown.

00:04:39.000 You've seen this happen again, not just in the United States, but also in Europe.

00:04:42.000 So the demographic crisis that is about to break on Western shores, namely people not having enough kids, is going to have particularly market effect when it turns out that many of the people who are really not having kids are the people who are also the most likely to be at the top end of the IQ spectrum.

00:04:55.000 Again, because income earning and IQ tend to have a very high overlap in free societies.

00:05:00.000 And then there's the final theory here, which is that we are all addicted to our smartphones.

00:05:04.000 We are all addicted to our computers. 0.99

00:05:06.000 Chat GPT is going to make us dumber. 1.00

00:05:08.000 That our reliance on machines makes us stupider. 0.99

00:05:11.000 All of which suggests that America has a rough ride in store for it, and so does the rest of the West. 0.97

00:05:15.000 Because the notion of continual progress relies, again, on continual human betterment.

00:05:20.000 And that, in turn, relies on a set of incentives that actually is going to incentivize people to make good decisions and to create a better society.

00:05:29.000 When all those incentive structures and all of those categories go away, you end up with a real problem on your hands.

00:05:34.000 We'll talk about that in just one second.

00:05:36.000 First, let's talk about the predations of Big Tech.

00:05:37.000 So we'll get to more on Big Tech actually preying on your mind in just one second.

00:05:41.000 But the fact of the matter is, Big Tech also monetizes you.

00:05:44.000 Big Tech is there to ensure that you are taken advantage of in terms of your data.

00:05:49.000 You think you're getting this stuff for free?

00:05:50.000 They're taking all your data.

00:05:50.000 You're not.

00:05:51.000 They're wrapping it up.

00:05:52.000 They're selling it.

00:05:53.000 They're giving it to the government.

00:05:54.000 They're doing all sorts of stuff with your data.

00:05:55.000 This is why I have a VPN.

00:05:56.000 It's why you should have a VPN.

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00:06:39.000 Let's talk about some of those individual factors. 0.95

00:06:41.000 So when it comes to the use of technology, we're deliberately making ourselves and our kids stupider through our use of technology.

00:06:48.000 Our attention spans have now been reduced to essentially pea-sized attention spans. 0.51

00:06:52.000 You literally cannot watch a YouTube show that does not cut every five seconds.

00:06:57.000 And when you are watching, YouTube has essentially become a substitute for TV.

00:07:00.000 So even sort of watching things for long periods of time, very, very difficult for people.

00:07:04.000 If you look at the average amount of time that is spent on say Netflix or YouTube or TikTok, you can see that people like on an average day are spending two, three hours a day on these services.

00:07:17.000 Is that going to generate any sort of any sort of serious skill set?

00:07:22.000 Is that going to raise your IQ?

00:07:23.000 Are people being made smarter by these apps?

00:07:25.000 The answer obviously is going to be no.

00:07:27.000 Americans are currently spending, according to Statista from 2020 to 2024, Americans are spending something like 45 minutes a day on TikTok and 45 minutes a day on YouTube and they're spending over 60 minutes a day on Netflix.

00:07:41.000 And that doesn't include all the other apps that people are spending their time on.

00:07:43.000 They're scrolling through Twitter or scrolling through Facebook.

00:07:46.000 We are playing games with our brains that we just don't understand. 0.99

00:07:50.000 And, you know, again, as somebody who tends to be sort of a technological optimist, I will say that hooking your brain into a machine that allows it to do all the work for you is going to make you dumber. 0.62

00:08:03.000 The fact is that if you ask kids today to do sort of basic mathematical calculations, very few of them can do it.

00:08:09.000 And one of the reasons that that is the case is because all you have to do is pull out your cell phone and the phone will do all the work for you.

00:08:14.000 Now, does that excess brain power go toward growing in another area?

00:08:18.000 Probably not.

00:08:19.000 It probably just withers.

00:08:20.000 But you have to practice these skills in order to be smarter. 0.99

00:08:23.000 So there's no question that all this stuff is making us stupider. 0.97

00:08:25.000 By the way, you know who knows this? 0.99

00:08:26.000 It's China. 0.90

00:08:27.000 Which is one of the reasons why China actually puts out a different version of TikTok in the United States than it puts out in China.

00:08:32.000 The version of TikTok in China actually teaches kids math.

00:08:35.000 The version of TikTok in the United States teaches kids to be trans.

00:08:39.000 In fact, yesterday it came out that there was a TikTok employee named Bruce Sapp, he's a content manager, admitting that this algorithm is actually very good for China, the one that's been distributed in the United States. 0.94

00:08:49.000 Uh, there's a lot of shit I don't agree with that happens, but... Like what? 0.82

00:08:55.000 Thank you. 0.98

00:08:56.000 There's a lot of, um... I'm trying to think of, like, the most legal way to say it.

00:09:03.000 Not that I don't trust you, but in case it does come back out.

00:09:06.000 Okay.

00:09:07.000 You can be open with me.

00:09:09.000 Like, people in our government want to ban TikTok off of government officials' devices.

00:09:14.000 Right.

00:09:15.000 Why is that?

00:09:15.000 If I had to guess, it's because I'm sure a lot of that coding is still very beneficial to China.

00:09:24.000 And because of the whole China-America relationship, I'm sure it's something to do with those.

00:09:30.000 TikTok, by the way, is now meeting on the Hill with a bunch of members of Congress.

00:09:34.000 They're attempting to lobby the Biden administration.

00:09:37.000 The United States right now is threatening to ban TikTok.

00:09:40.000 The TikTok CEO is testifying before Congress for the very first time today.

00:09:43.000 According to CNN, U.S.

00:09:44.000 lawmakers are set to grill TikTok's chief executive on Thursday in a wide-ranging hearing that could not come at a more consequential moment for the embattled social media platform.

00:09:51.000 TikTok CEO Xiao Chu will face the House Energy and Commerce Committee during his first appearance before Congress.

00:09:56.000 That hearing kicks off at 10 a.m.

00:09:58.000 Eastern.

00:09:58.000 Chu is from Singapore.

00:09:59.000 He'll testify on TikTok's consumer privacy and data security practices.

00:10:04.000 Platform's impact on kids is the biggest one.

00:10:07.000 TikTok supposedly has restrictions on the amount of time that kids can spend on TikTok, but with a couple of clicks, kids can move right on past that.

00:10:14.000 And, you know, the reality is that because the eyeballs are on TikTok, everybody is on TikTok.

00:10:17.000 The incentive structures are not stacked up in favor of the American consumer.

00:10:21.000 I mean, it's why even members of the government who theoretically should be talking about banning TikTok are still using TikTok.

00:10:26.000 In fact, yesterday, John Kirby, who's the national security spokesperson for the Biden administration, he was asked about the fact that right now there are serious considerations as to whether TikTok is a national security threat and Joe Biden continues to use it.

00:10:37.000 I wanted to follow up on TikTok.

00:10:39.000 Obviously, you've expressed again today the national security concerns with the app.

00:10:43.000 Why then did the President agree to appear in TikTok videos as recently as, I think, St.

00:10:49.000 Patrick's Day?

00:10:50.000 Again, we have not changed our national security concerns about the app.

00:10:56.000 It's not for use on government devices, and I don't have anything more for you on that.

00:11:03.000 We have been very consistent about our concerns over TikTok.

00:11:11.000 There's a CFIUS review underway.

00:11:13.000 I know you want me to tell you more about this, but I'm just not going to get ahead of that.

00:11:18.000 So, you know, great.

00:11:19.000 I mean, our government is obviously not doing its job nor protect American citizens.

00:11:23.000 Now, again, if you are a business like we here at Daily Wire, we put stuff on TikTok specifically because that is where the eyeballs are.

00:11:29.000 So you either abandon the platform entirely to the world's worst actors or you try to get on there.

00:11:33.000 But this is why the government actually should be stepping in with regard to TikTok.

00:11:36.000 The problem is that if you're a politician, the way that you're cool with the kids is by basically incentivizing them to continue using mental crack, which is why you have representative Jamal Bowman of New York saying that the reason the Republicans want to ban TikTok is because they quote unquote ain't got no swag.

00:11:50.000 You know, Robert, I just realized something.

00:11:53.000 Republicans ain't got no swag.

00:11:55.000 That's why they want to ban TikTok.

00:11:57.000 Republicans ain't got no swag.

00:11:59.000 That's the problem.

00:12:01.000 Oh, is that the problem?

00:12:02.000 Is that they ain't got no swag?

00:12:04.000 Genius level stuff from our elected Congress people.

00:12:06.000 So, one of the factors in the decline of the American IQ certainly is the addiction to social media.

00:12:11.000 Another one of those factors is the educational system, which is geared toward, again, paying off particular constituencies.

00:12:17.000 It is not geared at educating Our children will get to that in a moment.

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00:13:24.000 Alrighty, so...

00:13:25.000 The failure to properly treat and control social media is a huge one.

00:13:30.000 This is particularly true for kids.

00:13:31.000 Kids' brains are still forming.

00:13:33.000 And you can see that the people who develop the apps, they're really good at this, right?

00:13:36.000 My three-year-old can control YouTube.

00:13:39.000 They are developed for ease of use, and that also means addictiveness, and that does actually have an impact on the formation of kids' brains.

00:13:46.000 We are playing games with kids' brains that we really should not be playing with kids' brains, which is why my kids are not going to have internet access for a very long time.

00:13:52.000 It's also why they're not allowed to watch TV.

00:13:54.000 If you want your kids' brains to develop properly, then you should be cutting them off from a lot of the social media upon which they've become reliant.

00:14:00.000 You have an educational system, particularly the public school educational system, which is not geared toward the interests of your children.

00:14:06.000 It's a major, major issue.

00:14:07.000 Perfect example.

00:14:08.000 So right now, LAUSD, which is where I went to junior high.

00:14:12.000 I went to junior high at Walter Reed Middle School in LAUSD.

00:14:14.000 LAUSD is the second biggest school district in America.

00:14:17.000 It is also a giant failure, LAUSD.

00:14:19.000 It is a big bag of union-based failure.

00:14:22.000 And now you have the SEIU that has shut down the schooling in LAUSD for two, three days.

00:14:29.000 And they're doing so because they are striking and they are dancing in the rain in order to demonstrate how righteous their cause are.

00:14:34.000 Here's some tape of the SEIU local dancing.

00:14:36.000 I'm so glad that they're out there dancing in the rain.

00:14:49.000 Very, very important stuff.

00:14:50.000 They're not teaching the kids, but they are out there dancing.

00:14:54.000 Exciting, exciting stuff.

00:14:56.000 Well, the biggest problem is that LAUSD is a gigantic failure.

00:15:00.000 If you look at every performance metric placed for LAUSD, they fail along pretty much every single performance metric.

00:15:05.000 They've been failing for literally years.

00:15:07.000 And that is not because of a failure to spend money.

00:15:09.000 The fact is that LAUSD spends approximately $24,000 per student.

00:15:14.000 $24,000 per student.

00:15:16.000 Now, if you send your kids to a pretty good private school, it's going to cost you less than $24,000 per student.

00:15:23.000 That is a more than $8,000 increase over the last five years.

00:15:26.000 That's at the same time that LAUSD enrollment has declined 8% in the past two years.

00:15:31.000 And the district has lost, get ready for this, 58% of all students since the 2000s.

00:15:35.000 50, this is according to the center square.

00:15:38.000 58% of its students have been lost since the 2000s.

00:15:40.000 Okay, so they've lost over half their student population.

00:15:44.000 They're charging $24,000 to taxpayers per student, and now they're striking.

00:15:49.000 Now, why?

00:15:50.000 Well, it turns out the janitors are in fact underpaid at LAUSD.

00:15:53.000 But it's all being eaten up by administrative costs because you have a bunch of DEI and inclusion officials at these schools who are well overpaid.

00:16:00.000 By the way, only 40% of LAUSD students are currently reading at grade level.

00:16:03.000 Only 28.5% were on grade level in math.

00:16:08.000 The reason, by the way, that so many families are leaving LAUSD is because people are not sending their kids to pre-k or kindergarten knowing that it's a giant waste of time.

00:16:18.000 Instead, they are homeschooling or they are moving out of the city entirely. 0.60

00:16:21.000 One of the reasons they're doing that is because the public schools kind of suck.

00:16:25.000 The public schools have not been doing their jobs for a very long time because, again, the public schools are directed at payoffs to public sector unions.

00:16:31.000 They're not directed toward educating your children.

00:16:34.000 Even what the union is striking for right now has very little to do with student services.

00:16:40.000 It's about wages for various school custodians, or cafeteria workers, or bus drivers, or other support staff.

00:16:46.000 They stopped classes for more than a half million students in the nation's second largest school system in order to strike for all of this.

00:16:52.000 By the way, you know what they've already been offered by the LAUSD school district?

00:16:55.000 A 23% recurring pay increase plus 3% cash-in-hand bonus, a $20 an hour minimum wage, and full healthcare benefits for those working at least four hours a day.

00:17:05.000 Those are the latest offers, and the SEIU is still out on strike.

00:17:09.000 Does this sound like it's in the interest of students?

00:17:12.000 It really, really does not.

00:17:14.000 Karen Bass, who's the new mayor of Los Angeles, she opened up City Hall on Wednesday to host contract negotiations that had been stalled for weeks. 1.00

00:17:20.000 And this will end, of course, with more concessions by taxpayer representatives to the unions.

00:17:25.000 It's not going to end with the with the LAUSD students actually getting better performance out of any of this. 0.98

00:17:31.000 So the combination of deliberately making our kids dumber by hooking them into the mind poison that is the internet very often, the failures of our education system, which have been constructed on public school level in order to please public sector unions on the one hand, and then to indoctrinate them in foolish theories on the other, is making our kids a lot dumber. 0.97

00:17:49.000 And you combine that with the fact that we now have an entire society that is directing people not to have children, and what you end up with is overall a dumber society. 0.96

00:17:57.000 Now, what is that going to mean for the future?

00:17:58.000 Well, it's going to mean greater dependence on technology, but it also is going to mean less innovation in the technological space.

00:18:04.000 It's going to mean that the progress that we have seen in terms of innovation is going to slow.

00:18:10.000 If you sort of hit stasis point in terms of IQ, then what you end up with is again stasis in terms of innovation.

00:18:19.000 If we're going to focus on the future, what we should be focusing on is increasing educational benefit for kids, which means presumably giving parents greater choice because competition in the marketplace is going to allow them to send their kids to better schools, too.

00:18:30.000 Really incentivizing parents to shut off the phone for their kids and get their kids out there in the real world and performing mental tasks that, yes, a calculator could do, but that your brain should also be able to do.

00:18:40.000 And finally, we should be incentivizing people of all stripes to actually be having children.

00:18:44.000 And that means re-inculcating in them a sense that it is a communal responsibility for you to have kids.

00:18:49.000 The radical individualism that is predominated in the West has had some salutary effects in terms of freeing people from the stringencies of the state economically.

00:19:00.000 However, it's had some really negative effects in terms of liberating people from the social groups that originally created A culture of childbearing and childrearing in healthy ways.

00:19:12.000 And we haven't even felt the beginning of the impacts of any of that yet.

00:19:15.000 Okay, meanwhile, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, the grand jury has now been brought back on.

00:19:21.000 It was called off on Wednesday for Donald Trump.

00:19:23.000 We'll bring you the latest on the grand jury in just one second.

00:19:25.000 First, I like to think the people who watch this show are some of the people with the highest IQs, some of the people who are best and brightest in the nation.

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00:20:27.000 Alrighty, so the grand jury is going to come back and meet on Thursday.

00:20:33.000 It is unclear exactly what's going to be happening behind those closed doors.

00:20:36.000 Because again, it is a closed door situation.

00:20:38.000 However, there is some bad news that appears to have emerged for the possible prosecution in this Trump indictment in Manhattan.

00:20:47.000 Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, who's thinking about bringing this frivolous indictment, what appears to be a frivolous indictment.

00:20:52.000 He said that his office couldn't comment on grand jury matters.

00:20:54.000 But on Wednesday, they were supposed to meet.

00:20:56.000 They did not meet on Wednesday.

00:20:58.000 And one of the crucial issues is that it appears that there is a resurfacing of a letter that Michael Cohen, who's the chief witness against Trump in this particular case, wrote in 2018, according to the UK Daily Mail.

00:21:09.000 In that letter, Michael Cohen claimed that he was not reimbursed by Donald Trump or his organization for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

00:21:17.000 That 2018 letter to the federal authorities contradicts his recent grand jury testimony, which is sworn testimony.

00:21:23.000 The bombshell document was exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com and it could throw a wrench in the works for prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Trump over the payments.

00:21:30.000 Cohen claims that Trump got him to pay $130,000 to Daniels to keep her quiet about the alleged affair right before the 2016 election.

00:21:37.000 And this is supposedly a campaign contribution that was essentially laundered.

00:21:42.000 And he says Trump reimbursed him with personal funds and then later pled guilty to violating federal campaign finance law over the hush money.

00:21:48.000 But now there's a letter from 2018 and that letter literally says that Michael Cohen did not actually get reimbursed by the Trump organization or the Trump campaign.

00:22:00.000 Quote, neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms.

00:22:04.000 Clifford.

00:22:05.000 That would be Stormy Daniels.

00:22:10.000 Neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.

00:22:13.000 Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, which are entirely speculative, neither Mr. Cohen nor a central consultant's LLC made any in-kind contributions to Donald J. Trump for a president.

00:22:21.000 Again, that letter was written in response to an FEC probe that was launched after complaints of campaign finance violation.

00:22:28.000 So, you know, that is that is indirect contradiction to the testimony that he is currently giving, which may be the reason why the grand jury got canceled yesterday.

00:22:36.000 It also may mean new witnesses in the grand jury.

00:22:39.000 So we are awaiting sort of more information on the grand jury.

00:22:43.000 But, you know, everything is sort of up in the air.

00:22:47.000 With regard to that, meanwhile, again, there are other cases that are militating against Donald Trump in the legal system.

00:22:52.000 Apparently, a federal judge has now concluded that Trump likely misled his own lawyers on classified documents.

00:22:58.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, a federal judge found that special counsel Jack Smith's team presented convincing evidence that Trump misled his own lawyers about the retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, which meant that he doesn't have attorney-client privilege.

00:23:10.000 If you mislead your own attorney, then attorney-client privilege allows for the bypassing of it.

00:23:15.000 Judge Beryl Howell made that finding Friday in a sealed decision siding with federal prosecutors in their bid to bypass attorney-client privilege claims.

00:23:22.000 Raised by one of Trump's lawyers to compel him to provide more testimony.

00:23:26.000 So it is possible that classified documents case, which should be dead, given the fact that, again, Joe Biden had a bunch of classified documents sitting around his house, sitting around his offices.

00:23:35.000 And these classified documents cases can now be brought apparently against nearly every American public official.

00:23:39.000 That case should be dead, but that one's not dead either.

00:23:41.000 There are a lot of these issues that are just sort of like lurking out there.

00:23:44.000 And here is the weird math that is now cropped up in this Republican primary 2024.

00:23:49.000 Every time Trump is unjustly attacked, there's a rally around the Trump effect.

00:23:53.000 All the Republicans come out of the woodwork and they say, we don't like that he is being specifically targeted, which is right.

00:23:59.000 We're talking about frivolous charges in pretty much all of these cases.

00:24:03.000 The Democrats have been trying to say that he's dead to rights since literally 2016.

00:24:06.000 And they've yet to get him.

00:24:10.000 It's all scooby-doo kind of stuff for them.

00:24:13.000 Well, with that said, Does that mean that that's going to somehow help him in general, right?

00:24:18.000 Here's the weird math that's happening.

00:24:19.000 The more Trump is in the headlines, the better he does in the Republican primaries and the worse he does in general election.

00:24:25.000 So that's a real bad math for Republicans.

00:24:26.000 Republicans are going to have to decide whether to use their head or their heart in the 2024 primary.

00:24:30.000 Again, I understand the reaction to attacks on Trump.

00:24:33.000 People saying, okay, we got to rally around Trump.

00:24:35.000 That's because he's a threat to them.

00:24:35.000 They hate him so much.

00:24:38.000 I get it. 0.96

00:24:39.000 I also understand that the left is not fully stupid, and one of the things that they would like more than anything is to make sure that the person they think is most vulnerable is the guy who ends up as the Republican nominee. 0.84

00:24:49.000 Which is precisely why, presumably, you have people like former U.S. 0.93

00:24:54.000 Representative David Jolly, who is a former Republican who is now part of the sort of Lincoln Project club.

00:25:04.000 Promoting all of the left-wing attacks on Ron DeSantis and also promoting Trump's attacks on DeSantis.

00:25:10.000 I mean, I'm noticing a wide variety of reporters who supposedly think that Donald Trump is Hitler resonating to his attacks on DeSantis because they would rather have Trump than DeSantis, not because they love Trump, but because they think Trump is more defeatable in 2024 than they think DeSantis is.

00:25:24.000 Trump, for his part, is just attacking DeSantis endlessly.

00:25:29.000 And this I find astonishing.

00:25:31.000 Just, if you're a Republican, And you are sympathetic to Donald Trump and you're sympathetic to the fact that he's being attacked frivolously by a bunch of legal authorities who are overreaching their boundaries.

00:25:41.000 Then wouldn't you want Trump to fight back against them?

00:25:44.000 Wouldn't you want Trump to be focusing all of his ire not on fellow Republican candidates, but on, say, Alvin Bragg?

00:25:50.000 But that's not what Trump is doing.

00:25:52.000 Trump is taking this opportunity to swivel the sympathy for him into an attack on his Republican opponents 2024, which does not suggest that he has the best interest of the Republican Party in mind or the best interest of the right in general in attacking the left on his mind.

00:26:06.000 It suggests that everything is an opportunity for Donald Trump.

00:26:08.000 And that if he has the opportunity to swivel and just club Ron DeSantis in the moment where he has a little bit of momentum, then he will.

00:26:15.000 Which is really kind of hideous.

00:26:17.000 Because here is the thing.

00:26:18.000 If the people who you think are the real danger to the American Republic are rogue prosecutors like Alvin Bragg going after Republicans for no reason other than they are Republicans and he wants to get his face on the cover of Time magazine.

00:26:29.000 If that's the real threat, then why are you up for Donald Trump attacking fellow Republican candidates in the middle of that?

00:26:35.000 His ire should be on the prosecutors, but that's not where he's spending his ire.

00:26:38.000 He's spending his ire on Ron DeSantis.

00:26:39.000 And again, this galaxy brain take started last week.

00:26:42.000 As soon as Trump started talking about the indictment, there was an immediate call from Republican commentators who were very Trumpy.

00:26:48.000 Saying, where's Ron DeSantis?

00:26:50.000 Where's Ron DeSantis on this?

00:26:51.000 It was very reminiscent of the Taylor Swift silence is deafening.

00:26:55.000 What does Ron DeSantis have to do with any of this?

00:26:57.000 If you're talking about a list of people responsible for Donald Trump's possible indictment in New York, the list goes something like this.

00:27:02.000 Alvin Bragg, the rogue Manhattan DA.

00:27:05.000 Stormy Daniels.

00:27:07.000 Michael Cohen.

00:27:09.000 Donald Trump, for shooping everything in sight in 2006 apparently.

00:27:13.000 Is Ron DeSantis even on that list?

00:27:14.000 And yet Ron DeSantis is somehow at the center of the indictment story.

00:27:17.000 The only reason is because Donald Trump decided to drag him into the center of that indictment story in order to attack him, which does not speak particularly well of the former president of the United States or his intentions with regard to the campaign.

00:27:30.000 And you see that breaking out into public yesterday.

00:27:32.000 So Ron DeSantis decided not again to attack Alvin Bragg, the guy who was trying to put him in jail.

00:27:37.000 That is not where he's actually placing his ire.

00:27:38.000 Instead, he's putting out statements like this, quote, Now that Ron DeSanctimonious is finally admitting he's in the race by beginning to fight back, and now that his polls have crashed so he has no other choice, let me explain the facts.

00:27:49.000 He is, for a Republican, an average governor. 0.93

00:27:52.000 Trump is about to unleash one of the dumber attacks on DeSantis. 1.00

00:27:56.000 So far, all of his attacks on DeSantis, frankly, have been quite stupid. 1.00

00:27:59.000 His attacks on DeSantis have been that he's a George Soros plant. 1.00

00:28:01.000 I'm sorry, that's just silly. 0.98

00:28:02.000 It's silly on its face. 0.99

00:28:03.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

00:28:04.000 George Soros is a wild leftist. 0.99

00:28:06.000 By the way, you want to talk about Soros plants?

00:28:07.000 How about the guy who's trying to prosecute you in New York, Mr. President?

00:28:10.000 That guy's an actual Soros plant.

00:28:10.000 How about that guy?

00:28:12.000 Meaning that Soros actually backed him with his money.

00:28:15.000 Pretending that Ron DeSantis is backed by George Soros is absurd.

00:28:19.000 It's absurd. 0.92

00:28:20.000 By the way, his other accusations so far have also been repeating a crap story that is entirely debunked about Ron DeSantis hitting on high school students back when he was like a 23-year-old high school teacher. 0.94

00:28:33.000 And then implying without any evidence whatsoever that maybe he was hitting on males.

00:28:37.000 So far, that has been the extent of Donald Trump's attacks on Ron DeSantis.

00:28:40.000 Now he's going to get into just down the line.

00:28:42.000 I mean, these attacks are so bad that Nikki Freed, who's the head of the Florida Democratic Party, was retweeting Donald Trump and saying, oh, it's all true. 1.00

00:28:50.000 Nikki Freed's a moron. 1.00

00:28:51.000 Not only is she a moron, she's a corrupt moron. 1.00

00:28:53.000 And yet she and Donald Trump are on the same page. 1.00

00:28:57.000 That's not a great time.

00:28:59.000 So Trump said, DeSantis is, for a Republican, an average governor.

00:29:03.000 He got 1.2 million less votes in Florida than me.

00:29:05.000 Oh, you mean that typically gubernatorial candidates get fewer votes than actual presidential candidates?

00:29:12.000 Well, yeah.

00:29:13.000 I mean, like in an off year?

00:29:15.000 I noticed that 2022 was an off election year.

00:29:15.000 An off election year?

00:29:18.000 He said he fought for massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

00:29:21.000 Well, no, actually, that's not what he did.

00:29:23.000 He wanted Social Security minimum age to be raised to 70 years old or more.

00:29:26.000 So these are all left-wing attacks on DeSantis.

00:29:28.000 Because everyone knows, by the way, that Social Security is bankrupt and that there will have to be changes to it.

00:29:32.000 He's not talking about his congressional record.

00:29:33.000 By the way, Donald Trump was negotiating with Paul Ryan.

00:29:36.000 It was Donald Trump who backed Paul Ryan for the speakership, lest we forget.

00:29:39.000 Donald Trump was not an anti-Paul Ryan guy.

00:29:42.000 He became an anti-Paul Ryan guy when it became convenient to become an anti-Paul Ryan guy.

00:29:45.000 So that's why he says he's a disciple of Paul Ryan and did whatever Ryan told him to do.

00:29:49.000 So what are all those pictures of President Donald Trump signing bills next to Paul Ryan?

00:29:52.000 Like, I'm sorry, this dog ain't gonna hunt.

00:29:54.000 Ron was a big lockdown governor?

00:29:55.000 You were chiding Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia in the middle of the pandemic, dude.

00:29:58.000 You made Anthony Fauci a thing.

00:29:59.000 big lockdown governor on the China virus.

00:30:02.000 Like I'm sorry, this dog ain't gonna hunt.

00:30:04.000 Ron was a big lockdown governor.

00:30:07.000 You were chiding Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia in the middle of the pandemic, dude.

00:30:11.000 You made Anthony Fauci a thing.

00:30:13.000 You made Anthony Fauci famous and you kept him in place.

00:30:16.000 Sealing all beaches and everything else No, by late April, he was already unlocking all that stuff.

00:30:21.000 And overriding counties in doing so.

00:30:23.000 Was third worst in the nation for COVID-19 deaths, supposedly.

00:30:27.000 Third worst for total number of cases.

00:30:29.000 Other Republican governors did much better than Ron, and because I allowed them this freedom, never closed their states.

00:30:33.000 Okay, I'm gonna need him to name names.

00:30:35.000 And who are the Republicans who quote-unquote never closed their states?

00:30:38.000 And this notion that Donald Trump never closed anything.

00:30:41.000 Anthony Fauci was a Donald Trump elevation.

00:30:43.000 Deborah Birx is in the news because Donald Trump elevated her to a position of public.

00:30:48.000 I'm sorry.

00:30:49.000 Pretending that he's an outsider is absurd.

00:30:50.000 He's not an outsider.

00:30:51.000 He was the president during all of this.

00:30:54.000 Remember, I left that decision up to the governor, says Donald Trump.

00:30:57.000 For COVID death rates per state, Ron as governor of Florida did worse than New York.

00:31:01.000 No, he didn't.

00:31:03.000 No, he did not.

00:31:04.000 That is a lie.

00:31:06.000 It's a lie because you have to age adjust all that stuff.

00:31:09.000 Florida is a super old state.

00:31:10.000 In education, Florida ranks among the worst in the country.

00:31:12.000 On crime statistics, Florida ranked third worst in murder, third worst in rape, third worst in aggravated assault.

00:31:16.000 For 2022, Jacksonville ranked as one of the top 25 major crime cities in the country, with Tampa and Orlando not doing much better.

00:31:22.000 On education, Florida ranks number 39 in health and safety in the country, number 50 in affordability, number 30 in education and childcare.

00:31:27.000 Hardly greatness there.

00:31:28.000 The fact is, Ron is an average governor, but the best by far in the country in one category, public relations.

00:31:33.000 Or he easily ranks number one.

00:31:34.000 But it is all a mirage.

00:31:35.000 Just look at the facts and figures.

00:31:36.000 They don't lie.

00:31:37.000 And we don't want Ron as our president.

00:31:39.000 So Donald Trump taking the opportunity of being almost indicted to apparently attack a fellow Republican.

00:31:45.000 Guys, if this is the strategy that you choose to win in election, good luck to Republicans.

00:31:50.000 Seriously.

00:31:51.000 Good luck.

00:31:53.000 Democrats, of course, are immediately jumping on this train, enjoying it.

00:31:56.000 By the way, none of this is right.

00:31:58.000 Florida is middle of the pack on affordability, as Giancarlo Sopo points out correctly.

00:32:01.000 Florida ranks third in education.

00:32:03.000 Florida's age-adjusted COVID death rate per capita is below the national average.

00:32:06.000 Florida's gun deaths per capita are below the national average.

00:32:08.000 Florida currently has a 50-year low in its crime rate.

00:32:12.000 Florida had insurance spikes because it had the third costliest hurricane in history in 2022. 0.99

00:32:18.000 So again, Trump is just putting out a bunch of garbage. 0.94

00:32:22.000 And I guess if this is what you want, this is what you're going to get. 0.98

00:32:26.000 And this very irritating notion that Donald Trump can basically run this election by hitting people in the back of the head with a hammer randomly, and everybody else is supposed to just never engage.

00:32:36.000 And that if you do engage, it's a sign of disloyalty to the party.

00:32:40.000 If Trump is the party, he's going to win the nomination.

00:32:41.000 That's going to be it.

00:32:42.000 I mean, that's all.

00:32:43.000 If this nomination process turns into a loyalty test about Donald Trump, of course Trump is going to win the nomination.

00:32:47.000 Of course he is.

00:32:49.000 But if Republicans are going to think about who they believe is most likely to win the 2024 presidential race, not who they are most sympathetic to because he's being attacked wrongfully, I agree with that.

00:32:57.000 But if they are talking about who is most likely to win a presidential race, question, is it the guy who is likely to be under even false charges of indictment?

00:33:06.000 Is it the guy who's likely to be embroiled in 2020 issues and legal battles from 2006?

00:33:11.000 And the person who is just kind of ranting and spewing stuff into the ether on Truth Social?

00:33:17.000 Or is the person who's meticulously attacking Joe Biden on an issue-by-issue basis?

00:33:21.000 By the way, we already have some answers to this question.

00:33:23.000 Because in 2022, Ron DeSantis is great in Florida.

00:33:26.000 He won independence by 18%.

00:33:27.000 In 2020, we already had Donald Trump run against Joe Biden.

00:33:31.000 And he didn't do amazing, guys.

00:33:33.000 He just didn't.

00:33:35.000 Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the situation with the Federal Reserve, which is likely to sink the economy.

00:33:40.000 Again, the opportunities for Republicans here, in terms of electoral opportunities, are nearly endless, but never... Republicans apparently never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

00:33:50.000 Okay, first, many of us have lost faith in the government, media, and the schools.

00:33:52.000 The good news is there is something you can do to help get the country back on track.

00:33:55.000 PragerU is an educational nonprofit that is fighting with us to save the future of the country.

00:34:00.000 Daily Wire is basically sister companies with PragerU.

00:34:02.000 We've worked with them for a very, very long time.

00:34:04.000 Dennis Prager is a good friend of mine, good friend of Jeremy Boring's.

00:34:06.000 I've known Dennis for pretty much my whole life, actually.

00:34:09.000 PragerU is doing amazing work.

00:34:11.000 They're watched 5 million times a day.

00:34:12.000 Their videos spread messages of liberty, economic freedom, and Judeo-Christian values to the next generation.

00:34:16.000 There truly is hope for America, but only if we reach more young people. 1.00

00:34:19.000 PragerU does need your help today.

00:34:20.000 Head on over to PragerU.com.

00:34:23.000 Make a tax-deductible donation.

00:34:24.000 Whatever you give right now will be matched and have triple the impact.

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00:34:29.000 Give 50 bucks, wait for it, it becomes 150.

00:34:31.000 Yes, you can still do those basic calculations because probably you went to PragerU.

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00:34:35.000 Go to PragerU.com, make a tax-deductible donation.

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00:34:47.000 Go to PragerU.com, make your tax-deductible donation today, and once again, whatever you give will be tripled.

00:34:53.000 A lot of people would say science and religion are not linked.

00:34:56.000 If you paid attention to history, however, you would know that this is a lie.

00:34:59.000 Science and religion are in fact deeply linked.

00:35:01.000 Watch Jordan Peterson explain how the pursuit of science began in religious institutions in his special Logos and Literacy.

00:35:07.000 Well, one thing that's quite striking about modern rational culture is this insistence that the religious tradition of the West and the scientific tradition are somehow at fundamental odds.

00:35:18.000 I mean, I used to believe that, I think, when I was young, at least to some degree.

00:35:22.000 Although now I'm very curious about where that idea came from.

00:35:25.000 Because it's absolutely clear, first of all, that the universities themselves emerged out of the monasteries.

00:35:30.000 That's just completely unquestionable.

00:35:32.000 Oxford and Cambridge are monasteries for all intents and purposes.

00:35:37.000 The whole university idea emerged out of the church, and then the notion that the universe is in fact intelligible and that the pursuit of truth would be redemptive.

00:35:45.000 That's a fundamentally religious idea.

00:35:47.000 And then the scientific endeavor itself, given figures like Newton, for example, was embedded inside that religious tradition.

00:35:53.000 Jordan is bringing unparalleled wisdom to a lot of people.

00:35:57.000 Now, this is the part where I'd normally tell you Logos & Literacy is only available for DailyWirePlus members.

00:36:01.000 We are making it available for free for everyone right now at DailyWirePlus.com only for a limited time.

00:36:05.000 So, watch Logos & Literacy today at DailyWirePlus.

00:36:10.000 Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve caught between a rock and a hard place.

00:36:13.000 They decided yesterday to attempt to walk that tightrope between inflation and bank turmoil by gradually raising those interest rates.

00:36:19.000 They're raising them again, 25 basis points.

00:36:23.000 Now, again, the reason that they're not raising it more than that is not because they think inflation is going away, but it's because they believe that if they raise it more than that, it will reverse the sense that inflation is going away.

00:36:31.000 People will panic.

00:36:32.000 There'll be a problem in the stock market.

00:36:34.000 They're also signaling they might taper out completely, that they're afraid that if they continue to raise those interest rates, it's going to sink the bond markets.

00:36:40.000 If it sinks the bond markets, then a bunch of banks that have been buying bonds for the past several years are going to see their asset base decrease.

00:36:45.000 They won't be able to go liquid in case there's a run on the bank.

00:36:47.000 This is the untold story of SVB.

00:36:50.000 The reason that Silicon Valley Bank essentially went bankrupt is because there's a run on the bank.

00:36:53.000 At the same time, they couldn't liquidate their assets because all of their bond holdings had been decreased in value by the increase in subsequent interest rates.

00:37:00.000 And as in one sentence, essentially what happened with SVB, it's going to happen with a lot of institutions if the interest rates keep going up in order to fight inflation.

00:37:07.000 But if the Federal Reserve allows inflation to keep going up, the economy is going to continue to tank.

00:37:10.000 So the Federal Reserve took that middle road yesterday.

00:37:14.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the Fed recognized that something was breaking.

00:37:18.000 Recent data had pointed to economic growth accelerating and underlying inflation remaining stubbornly high.

00:37:22.000 Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated to Congress earlier this month that trends likely would require rates to rise above 5.25 percent, perhaps by a lot.

00:37:29.000 The projections released on Wednesday show that Powell and his colleagues have abandoned those plans.

00:37:32.000 Now they say that they think that the target range is going to end up at 5 to 5.25 percent.

00:37:37.000 So they are tapering out.

00:37:38.000 But they're tapering out too early, which means inflation is now going to be endemic.

00:37:42.000 Which is one of the reasons why you're seeing the stock market begin to tumble a little bit.

00:37:48.000 As Market Watch points out, the yield curve inversion has likely peaked, which is usually bad news for stocks.

00:37:54.000 People are going to start investing presumably in bonds again, thinking that the interest rates are not going to go up any further, which means that the stock market is going to go down.

00:38:02.000 Money is going to be a lot more expensive.

00:38:05.000 And so, again, They created this mess for themselves.

00:38:09.000 They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

00:38:10.000 They really need to raise those interest rates higher in order to quash the inflation.

00:38:13.000 Inflation is going to remain stubbornly high.

00:38:15.000 The interest rates are going to remain stubbornly high.

00:38:17.000 But if they go any higher, then they're really undercutting themselves.

00:38:20.000 Here's Jay Powell yesterday at the Federal Reserve announcing that 25 basis point increase.

00:38:24.000 We are highly attentive to the risks that high inflation poses to both sides of our mandate, and we are strongly committed to returning inflation to our 2% objective.

00:38:34.000 At today's meeting, the committee raised the target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point, bringing the target range to four and three quarters to five percent.

00:38:44.000 Now, Powell was trying to make clear to everybody that more spending isn't going to hurt the problem, but more spending, of course, is going to be a real problem.

00:38:52.000 He said runaway spending is not driving the story on inflation, which is weird because it seems like runaway spending is entirely driving the story on inflation, or at least in large part.

00:39:01.000 The spending that's happened is working against what you are doing, right?

00:39:03.000 So it's prolonging inflation.

00:39:06.000 You know, if you have to look at at the impulse from spending, because spending was, of course, tremendously high during the pandemic.

00:39:14.000 And then as the pandemic programs rolled off, spending actually came down.

00:39:19.000 So the sort of fiscal impulse is actually not what's driving inflation right now.

00:39:25.000 It was it was at the beginning, perhaps part of what was driving inflation.

00:39:27.000 But that's not really the story now.

00:39:29.000 OK, but the decrease in the in the funding.

00:39:32.000 has still retained a level of funding that is extraordinarily high.

00:39:36.000 And when you inject extraordinary liquidity into the system by basically backstopping all FDIC deposits, and not only FDIC deposits, but unsecured deposits, well, that's a whole bag of liquidity that you're injecting into the system.

00:39:49.000 Now, he says, quote, we're looking at what's happening among the banks and asking, is there going to be some tightening in credit conditions in a way that substitutes for rate hikes?

00:39:55.000 But why would there be a tightening in credit conditions when you're explicitly saying that you're going to backstop any bank that goes bankrupt? 0.99

00:40:03.000 It's foolish.

00:40:04.000 So you're going to end up with this lukewarm policy that is neither going to quash inflation, nor is it going to actually prevent the impacts of a higher interest rate. 0.97

00:40:12.000 It's sort of the worst of both worlds.

00:40:14.000 Meanwhile, again, you have all of these federal appointees like Janet Yellen over at the Treasury Department who refuses to acknowledge that if we just keep spending money, it's a problem.

00:40:24.000 What debt as a percentage of our GDP is too much?

00:40:29.000 So it depends on what interest rates are.

00:40:33.000 And real interest rates have been extremely low.

00:40:38.000 This budget and previous budgets have projected that they would move up toward more normal levels over time.

00:40:49.000 Certainly not the levels that we saw several decades ago.

00:40:55.000 Could you just answer my question, Madam Secretary?

00:40:58.000 What percentage of our debt of our GDP is too much?

00:41:07.000 Well, this budget has debt held by the public moving up to around 109% of GDP.

00:41:20.000 And that's not too much, in your opinion.

00:41:23.000 And she says, not really.

00:41:24.000 I mean, not really, is her answer.

00:41:26.000 Because there is no answer.

00:41:28.000 And the bottom line is that all the same people who brought you 40-year inflation are still in power.

00:41:32.000 And by the way, they're angry that the interest rates are increasing.

00:41:35.000 So Elizabeth Warren, after suggesting that money is free, right, she bought into the modern monetary theory lie that you can just continue to blow out the debt with no consequences whatsoever, that spending will never have any impact, that inflation will never hit home.

00:41:45.000 Now she's calling for Jerome Powell's ouster, not because he's been too loose with the money, but because he's too tight with the money.

00:41:50.000 By increasing those interest rates.

00:41:51.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren, who's been wrong on every single topic for the last several years.

00:41:55.000 Have you ever directly told President Biden that you think he should fire the chair, fire Jerome Powell?

00:42:03.000 And who would you like to see replace him?

00:42:06.000 So I'm not going to talk about private conversations.

00:42:09.000 But what I will say is I've made it very clear as publicly as humanly possible that I didn't think that he should be reconfirmed as chair of the Fed.

00:42:22.000 And I think he's doing a really terrible job.

00:42:25.000 Okay, why does she think that he's doing a really terrible job?

00:42:27.000 Because, of course, he's being too hawkish, according to Elizabeth Warren.

00:42:30.000 And this is going to be the going take among Democrats, is that if the economy goes down, it's because the Federal Reserve got too hawkish.

00:42:35.000 They should have continued the inflationary policy.

00:42:38.000 Anyway, they used to say this pretty openly.

00:42:39.000 Ezra Klein once said that one of the sad things about the inflation spiral is that it was killing his dream of basically inflating the economy at the bottom rungs.

00:42:47.000 He said that was supposed to be part of the plan.

00:42:49.000 Meanwhile, the Biden administration trying to walk its way through the dark here.

00:42:52.000 Karine Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary, says, guys, don't worry, the economy is super strong because of Joe Biden.

00:42:58.000 On the economy, does the President still have the same level of confidence that he's had that the U.S.

00:43:02.000 will get through this banking crisis, get through this high inflation, without going into a recession?

00:43:07.000 The President has complete confidence in the process, in his economic policy, if you think about it.

00:43:16.000 When we look at how strong the economy is, it's because of the President's work, what he's been able to do, building an economy from the bottom up, middle out.

00:43:25.000 Bottom up, middle out.

00:43:26.000 Again, just keep repeating the Nostrums, man.

00:43:28.000 Just keep repeating it.

00:43:29.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues his wild incompetence. 0.85

00:43:32.000 The man cannot speak English.

00:43:33.000 Yesterday, again, Joe Biden versus the teleprompter.

00:43:35.000 Latest episode.

00:43:37.000 Yesterday, he tried to talk about Joe Biden.

00:43:40.000 and it went very, very poorly.

00:44:04.000 you We're all just laughing at the old man now.

00:44:08.000 By the way, he also told a weird story about how Jill puts messages on his mirror while he is shaving.

00:44:12.000 So first of all, congratulations to the President of the United States on being able to shave himself.

00:44:18.000 That's an exciting new development in his life.

00:44:20.000 Second of all, they're weird messages.

00:44:24.000 We were talking inside.

00:44:25.000 Jill has, and I think I've told Nancy this before, Jill puts messages on my mirror while I'm shaving, so I make sure I see them.

00:44:35.000 And one that was put in about a year ago was, stop trying to make me love you.

00:44:40.000 I don't even know what that means.

00:44:45.000 Is that like, leave me alone, old man?

00:44:48.000 Stop trying to make me love you.

00:44:49.000 I have a feeling the messages are more like, your name is Joe Biden and you are President of the United States.

00:44:55.000 On the mirror every morning to make sure that he still knows.

00:44:58.000 Meanwhile, we are told by the media that Joe Biden is doing an excellent job.

00:45:01.000 His approval rating has started to rise.

00:45:02.000 He talked about it yesterday.

00:45:03.000 Well, now it's dipping again.

00:45:04.000 He's back down to 38%.

00:45:05.000 This is a target-rich environment for Republicans.

00:45:07.000 Look at his administration.

00:45:08.000 It's a disaster area.

00:45:10.000 Yesterday, Xavier Becerra, who is the head of the Health and Human Services Department, He admitted that he literally has no idea how many HHS employees actually even go to work.

00:45:18.000 That's an amazing thing.

00:45:19.000 You're the head of a major American department.

00:45:22.000 Shouldn't you know how many people, like what percentage, go to work on a daily basis?

00:45:25.000 Like at all?

00:45:27.000 Can you give a breakdown of how many full-time employees are at their desk in one of these buildings every day?

00:45:37.000 Senator, when you take a look at the workforce at HHS and we're close to 90,000, throughout the country, and working in various parts of the country, some here in headquarters.

00:45:50.000 By the way, headquarters, we have an underground... I got limited time, so this may be misleading.

00:45:56.000 So tell me, of what percent of the employees are at their desk, full-time employees are at the desk on any given day?

00:46:01.000 And I don't mean to be rude, it's just so limited time.

00:46:03.000 No, and I appreciate that.

00:46:05.000 And our folks are working full-time.

00:46:07.000 No, but how many are at their desk as opposed to being at home or someplace else?

00:46:11.000 A coffee shop or whatever.

00:46:12.000 What we make sure we care about is that they're performing and they're delivering and that's why... Well, that's not really answering my question.

00:46:19.000 Well, not only is it not answering the question, they're not performing and delivering.

00:46:22.000 According to the New York Times, the vast breach of the American southern border by illegal immigrants and the bringing across of small children via smugglers The HHS is actually designated the task of following up on kids who are released to adults.

00:46:39.000 So under the current law, kids can be released to adult caretakers once they get over the borders, they're not being held in custody.

00:46:46.000 But according to the New York Times, as more and more children have arrived, the Biden White House has ramped up demands on staffers to move children quickly out of shelters and release them to adults.

00:46:53.000 Caseworkers say they rushed through vetting sponsors.

00:46:55.000 While HHS checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors, data obtained by the Times showed That over the last two years alone, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children.

00:47:06.000 The HHS literally lost 85,000 child migrants.

00:47:10.000 Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with one third of migrant children.

00:47:14.000 Great job protecting the kiddos right there. 0.95

00:47:15.000 Just really solid job there.

00:47:17.000 Xavier Becerra was asked about this.

00:47:18.000 He's like, I don't know.

00:47:19.000 Probably all the people working from coffee shops are doing an amazing job.

00:47:23.000 Every week I get briefed by my team sometimes two or three times a week on this situation with the unaccompanied migrant kids and where we stand.

00:47:32.000 I've never heard that number of 85,000.

00:47:34.000 I don't know where it comes from and so I can't attest.

00:47:38.000 I would say it doesn't sound at all to be realistic and what we do is we try to follow up as best we can with these kids.

00:47:47.000 Congress has given us certain authorities.

00:47:49.000 Our authorities essentially And the moment we have found a suitable sponsor to place that child with, we try to do some follow-up, but neither the child or the sponsor is actually obligated to follow up with us.

00:48:02.000 Oh, okay.

00:48:04.000 Well, you know where the number came from is the New York Times.

00:48:06.000 So that's where it came from.

00:48:07.000 Again, they're doing an amazing job over there.

00:48:10.000 The State Department also doing an extraordinary job handing over the Middle East to China, not really facilitating any sort of serious discussion in Ukraine.

00:48:18.000 They're just doing an incredible job.

00:48:19.000 The good news is that the State Department is in fact being modernized because they are now including diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:48:25.000 This follows hard on Sean Kirby explaining yesterday that LGBTQIA plus minus divided by sign issues are the tip of America's foreign policy spear.

00:48:34.000 Here is a Tony Blinken explaining that the State Department is being modernized by injecting equity principles The budget will advance our efforts to modernize the State Department, including by expanding our training flow, updating our technology, carrying out diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, including to make our overseas missions more accessible.

00:48:54.000 I'm grateful for the progress we've already made together, including Congress's support in updating the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act and Accountability Review Board to give us some of the flexibility that we need to open new missions and better manage the risks that we face.

00:49:09.000 Great, I'm so glad that we're doing all those things while the world enters into meltdown mode.

00:49:13.000 It's all going amazing.

00:49:14.000 But I think the most important news of the day, however, is that Merrick Garland, our current Attorney General, when he's not targeting the police departments across the country and or school parents, he is also a huge Taylor Swift fan, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:49:27.000 That is really exciting.

00:49:28.000 Apparently at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, senators grilled Merrick Garland on the DOJ's investigation into Ticketmaster.

00:49:34.000 And Garland started just name-dropping titles of Taylor Swift songs, because there's nothing quite as charming as a man of Merica Garland's age and reputation.

00:49:44.000 He is approximately 70 years old.

00:49:47.000 Citing Taylor Swift songs.

00:49:48.000 He's in with the kiddies, is Merrick Garland.

00:49:50.000 Just exciting stuff from our nation's best.

00:49:52.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:49:55.000 So, things that I like today.

00:49:56.000 So, Anna Kasparian, of course, has been a guest on the Sunday special.

00:49:59.000 And she is, you know, she and I disagree on a lot, but she is rational enough to recognize when the insane woke left has gone too far.

00:50:07.000 So, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the other day, she literally referred to women as people who menstruate. 0.98

00:50:15.000 And Anna tweeted out, I'm a woman.

00:50:17.000 Please don't ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person, or a person who menstruates.

00:50:21.000 How do people not realize how degrading this is?

00:50:23.000 You can support the transgender community without doing this bleep. 1.00

00:50:26.000 Naturally, the world caved in on her.

00:50:27.000 She's not allowed to say that.

00:50:28.000 You know, being a woman and all, she's not allowed to point that out. 1.00

00:50:31.000 And so this drove tweets like this one from Alejandra Caraballo, who is in fact a biological man, saying, Cole, oh, F off with this stupid made up BS. 1.00

00:50:39.000 Trans folks are having their existence criminalized in state after state, and you want to whine about this bleep? 1.00

00:50:44.000 Well that seems like a lot of male aggression there being taken out by Alejandra Caraballo on Anna Kasparian. 0.99

00:50:50.000 Again, you must not go against the Borg.

00:50:54.000 Good for Anna for saying the truth.

00:50:56.000 And I'm pleased that Anna has done this a few times.

00:51:01.000 She's on my show talking about the fact that the homelessness crisis in California is very real, the crime crisis in California is very real, and that it is not anti-liberal or even anti-leftist, to point that out.

00:51:11.000 She's been ripped up and down by the left for doing all of that now for the simple fact that she has said that women exist and that they are not, in fact, just birthing persons or persons with uteruses. 1.00

00:51:19.000 And now she's getting ripped up and down by the left. 0.77

00:51:21.000 Good for Anna for taking the incoming on that. 1.00

00:51:23.000 By the way, you know, one quick point here.

00:51:26.000 There's an argument made by people like AOC.

00:51:27.000 Well, you know, you say, you say that women, biological women exist, but I tell you that there are certain that you say that men can't give birth.

00:51:35.000 Well, there are certain women who can't give birth. 1.00

00:51:37.000 There's a commentator online who made an excellent point about this.

00:51:40.000 When you tell a biological woman that she cannot give birth, this is the most devastating day of her life for the vast majority of women who hear that.

00:51:46.000 And they tell her that she's infertile. 0.95

00:51:47.000 That is a devastating day.

00:51:48.000 When you tell a man that he's infertile, that's called a normal day. 1.00

00:51:52.000 Because men, in terms of not being able to bear children, that is perfectly obvious to everyone. 0.90

00:51:57.000 There is a difference in kind.

00:51:58.000 Okay, this leads us to some things that I hate.

00:52:05.000 So the movement to trans the children continues apace.

00:52:08.000 Billy Porter, who has apparently become a celebrity for some reason that I honestly cannot define or explain.

00:52:15.000 I do not know why.

00:52:16.000 This is a famous person.

00:52:17.000 He does not seem supremely talented to me.

00:52:19.000 I've never seen him in anything where I thought, man, that guy is good at things.

00:52:23.000 But he was on The View.

00:52:25.000 And, uh, dressed like a lady because this is what Billy Porter does in order to break barriers and such. 0.93

00:52:31.000 And in the middle of this, he started ranting about how children need to be exposed to drag queens.

00:52:36.000 It's very important for children to be exposed to the drag queens. 0.98

00:52:40.000 So, uh, here he was explaining this on The View.

00:52:43.000 Florida Governor DeSantis had just filed a complaint against a bar called The R House that holds drag shows.

00:52:52.000 Eight months later, things have only escalated.

00:52:54.000 As we talk about it, you know, it's constant aggravation with this.

00:52:59.000 What do you make of the fact that we're still talking about this?

00:53:02.000 Why are they doing it?

00:53:04.000 For power.

00:53:05.000 Yeah.

00:53:06.000 Everything is about power, and you could always trace it back to the money.

00:53:09.000 You say that all the time.

00:53:10.000 Yeah.

00:53:11.000 Follow the money.

00:53:12.000 Follow the money.

00:53:13.000 Follow the power.

00:53:15.000 Power at any cost. 0.98

00:53:16.000 It's very hypocritical. 0.98

00:53:18.000 You know, the leading cause of death in children are guns! 0.99

00:53:24.000 Yes.

00:53:24.000 Yeah.

00:53:25.000 They're guns!

00:53:27.000 I'm going to do the Jon Stewart nonsense here.

00:53:30.000 It's guns!

00:53:31.000 OK, so I just have a question.

00:53:34.000 Even, let's assume that you were right on gun control, which you're not.

00:53:36.000 Let's assume that's the case.

00:53:38.000 Why does that justify exposing small children to drag?

00:53:41.000 Why?

00:53:42.000 What is the great necessity?

00:53:43.000 What is the great cultural necessity to exposing small children to men dressed as women and dancing in sexualized fashion?

00:53:48.000 Why?

00:53:48.000 Why is that so exciting to you?

00:53:50.000 Why is this such a priority to you?

00:53:52.000 And I'm getting very, very tired of people making this a priority, and then when we notice and we say no, you say, well, why are you even noticing?

00:53:58.000 Why is this even an issue to you?

00:53:59.000 Guns!

00:54:01.000 How about this?

00:54:02.000 How about if you want to have the guns conversation, and the defense conversation, we have that conversation, and then we also have a conversation about why it seems so important to a bunch of grown-ass men to expose themselves to small children.

00:54:12.000 Why does that seem so important to you?

00:54:13.000 Why is it so important that you expose cross-dressing to kids?

00:54:16.000 I have a feeling it has nothing to do with the kids and everything to do with you. 0.98

00:54:19.000 It also has to do with a class of parents who are much more interested in the clicks and giggles of a bunch of morons online than they are in the well-being of their own children in order to facilitate this. 0.98

00:54:29.000 So one of those people is apparently Maren Morris. 0.96

00:54:31.000 So I will admit to not knowing who Maren Morris was, but Maren Morris is apparently some sort of country singer. 0.94

00:54:38.000 And she was doing a speech at an LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, happy face emoji, sad face emoji, poop emoji festival. 0.70

00:54:45.000 And she explained that she had brought her toddler to meet a bunch of drag queens. 1.00

00:54:50.000 And this makes her a virtuous person.

00:54:52.000 See, normally you would think that it's your job to protect the innocence of your children.

00:54:54.000 Wrong.

00:54:55.000 It is your job to expose your children to men in sexualized garb dressed as women. 0.97

00:55:00.000 Very, very important.

00:55:01.000 Makes you a good, good parent.

00:55:03.000 It's for the good of the children.

00:55:04.000 Now you can't explain how it is for the good of the children.

00:55:06.000 Without also presumably having to explain that gender fluidity is good for kids, that lack of standards is good for kids, that confusion is good for kids.

00:55:15.000 Now you can't explain any of that in rational fashion, so it's just a cult.

00:55:17.000 But here she is explaining, you know, if I'm in Tennessee and they're going to prosecute me, well then go for it.

00:55:21.000 Go for it.

00:55:21.000 First of all, that's not what Tennessee law says.

00:55:23.000 What it says, Tennessee law and Florida law and laws that are like it say, that the person who is exposing drag, the people who are performing the drag shows for the children are the ones who would be prosecutable, not the parents.

00:55:35.000 But put that aside, here she is virtue signaling. 0.99

00:55:38.000 And then when the kid gets screwed up, it'll be like, oh, how did this happen? 0.93

00:55:41.000 Must be genetics.

00:55:42.000 It's just the genes. 0.97

00:55:45.000 And yes, I introduced my son to some drag queens today, so Tennessee, f***ing arrest me. 1.00

00:55:53.000 Oh, such heroism. 0.97

00:55:54.000 You introduced your two-year-old son to a bunch of drag queens. 0.51

00:55:56.000 And of course, you're looking for the cheers, that's why you say this.

00:56:01.000 And apparently this woman said, quote, I brought my son here earlier today for soundcheck.

00:56:04.000 He's turning three this week.

00:56:05.000 We got to go in the room where all the queens were getting ready and doing their makeup. 1.00

00:56:07.000 He freaked out when he went in there because it's just magic what the drag queens do. 1.00

00:56:11.000 There's wigs everywhere.

00:56:11.000 The smell of hairspray and wig glue.

00:56:13.000 There's glitter.

00:56:13.000 Everyone's in a good mood.

00:56:14.000 It's just a room of love.

00:56:16.000 Went back to my dressing room.

00:56:16.000 My son is like, I need the queens.

00:56:18.000 I'm like, you're looking at her?

00:56:19.000 The singer said.

00:56:20.000 Ah, so much.

00:56:21.000 Just the heroism.

00:56:22.000 I have a question.

00:56:23.000 Where's dad?

00:56:25.000 Where's dad?

00:56:26.000 Seriously.

00:56:27.000 I don't know how any father would allow this to happen to their child, but that is some terrible parenting as per our usual arrangement.

00:56:34.000 The good news, however, is that the wages of this sort of silliness are being felt all over the country.

00:56:39.000 So apparently, a trans athlete, 46, just won the women's New York City cycling race and says she feels like a superhero.

00:56:46.000 Isn't that exciting stuff?

00:56:47.000 Tiffany Thomas, 46, was born male.

00:56:49.000 ended the Randalls Island Crit Cycling Race atop the podium, blowing the competition out of the water to snatch first place.

00:56:55.000 Despite only taking up cycling in 2018, Tiffany quickly found success and has dominated competitions in the years since.

00:57:02.000 She recently landed a place on top cycling team LA Sweat, where her oldest teammate is just 32 years old.

00:57:06.000 You mean the giant man won?

00:57:09.000 No, no, that's shocking.

00:57:11.000 Wow.

00:57:15.000 Men are so good at being women. 0.99

00:57:16.000 They race for like five seconds and they're beating all the women. 1.00

00:57:18.000 Just incredible.

00:57:19.000 The good news is, of course, that Pentagon doctors are in agreement with all of this, according to Fox News.

00:57:24.000 Health providers at U.S.

00:57:25.000 military bases blasted the idea of waiting before injecting kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria with puberty blockers and hormones.

00:57:31.000 The DoD provider said in the March edition of the American Journal of Public Health, the only pathway for children of military members who present with gender dysphoria is to immediately move toward gender-affirming health care such as puberty suppression and affirming hormones.

00:57:41.000 This is coming from the health providers of U.S.

00:57:43.000 military bases.

00:57:44.000 So the entire vertically integrated system of propagandistic nonsense is on the march.

00:57:50.000 But you're not allowed to notice.

00:57:52.000 You're not allowed to notice.

00:57:53.000 Everything is perfectly fine and our society is in perfectly good shape.

00:57:57.000 Probably we should focus in on Ron DeSantis or something.

00:57:59.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:58:01.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:58:02.000 We'll be taking your phone calls.

00:58:03.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:58:04.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:58:05.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 23, 2023

Americans Are Officially Getting Dumber

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