The Ben Shapiro Show - Biden’s Recession Is Coming, And He’s Ready To Blame Republicans | Ep. 1656

00:00:00.000 As the economy slowly slides into recession, the Biden administration prepares to blame Republicans.

00:00:05.000 The media cry cheer as Facebook reinstates Donald Trump, and we must all respect the pronouns of alleged rapists who now say they are female.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.

00:00:25.000 economy grew at a solid 2.9% annual rate last quarter, but entered this year with less momentum as rising interest rates and still high inflation weighed on demand.

00:00:33.000 growth in the fourth quarter was down slightly from a 3.2% annualized rate in the third quarter, according to the Commerce Department.

00:00:33.000 U.S.

00:00:38.000 Consumer spending helped drive the fourth quarter gain.

00:00:40.000 Obviously, it's holiday season.

00:00:41.000 A lot of people are out there spending.

00:00:43.000 The housing market did weaken.

00:00:44.000 Businesses cut back their spending on equipment as well, presumably in expectation that things are about to get Very slow in the American economy.

00:00:51.000 The October to December period capped a year of economic slowdown with growth of 1% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with a year earlier and down sharply from the 5.7% growth in 2021.

00:01:02.000 So we are certainly sliding into something.

00:01:04.000 Many people are saying that recession is about to happen.

00:01:06.000 The slowdown in part reflected a return to a more normal pace of growth after output surged mid-business reopenings, fiscal stimulus, and a waning pandemic in 2021.

00:01:14.000 So as inflation begins to wane and as those interest rates increase, The economy is going to go into a certain level of stagnation.

00:01:21.000 It may be recession followed by stagnation, or it just may be plain stagnation.

00:01:24.000 Whatever it is, the future of the American economy for at least the next couple of years is not going to be particularly strong.

00:01:29.000 According to Kathy Bostjanczyk, the chief economist at Nationwide, outside of the labor market, we're releasing a broad-based slowing in economic activity.

00:01:36.000 It's not going to be a soft landing.

00:01:38.000 Now, many people in the media are, of course, trying to pitch the idea that a soft landing is imminent.

00:01:44.000 A soft landing would be where the Federal Reserve somehow achieves the signal feat of increasing the interest rates to slow inflation without the country actually sliding into full-on economic recession.

00:01:54.000 And so some excuse is going to have to be come up with if recession does in fact hit.

00:01:58.000 And again, recession looks like it is on the way.

00:02:01.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, there have now been severe corporate layoffs beyond high-growth tech giants.

00:02:07.000 Dow International Business Machine Corporation, SAP, SE, joined the string of companies outlining plans to cut thousands of jobs to prepare for a darkening economic outlook even as the nation's labor market remains tight.

00:02:17.000 The headline-grabbing expansion of layoffs beyond high-growth tech companies stands in contrast to historically low levels of jobless claims and news that places like Chipotle and Airbus are adding jobs.

00:02:26.000 It makes sense, again, that Chipotle and Airbus are adding jobs.

00:02:29.000 As people go back into the marketplace, as they begin to spend again on things like restaurants, you'd imagine that Chipotle is going to hire up.

00:02:35.000 And again, people were not traveling and now they are traveling.

00:02:37.000 And so a lot of people got laid off and now they're going to be put back into the travel market again.

00:02:41.000 But overall, the economy is certainly slowing.

00:02:44.000 And there was a lot of talk that maybe this was going to be restricted to the tech stocks, specifically because when you have a lot of money that's sort of In circulation, a lot of that money ends up going to the more high return areas of the economy, namely tech.

00:02:58.000 When the money comes out of the economy, that is the place where the tide rushes out the fastest.

00:03:02.000 However, it's now bleeding over into sort of more mainstream industrial industries.

00:03:06.000 This week, four companies trimmed more than 10,000 jobs.

00:03:10.000 Still, the decisions mark a shift in sentiments inside executive suites, where many leaders have been holding on to workers after struggling to hire and retain them in recent years when the pandemic disrupted workplaces.

00:03:18.000 Unlike Microsoft and Alphabet, which announced larger layoffs this month, these companies haven't expanded their workforces dramatically during the pandemic.

00:03:24.000 Instead, the leaders of these global giants said they were shrinking to adjust to slowing growth or responding to weaker demand for their products.

00:03:30.000 So this is obviously the beginning of something that looks like a serious economic slowdown.

00:03:37.000 Recession fears are growing, according to the Washington Post.

00:03:41.000 Despite the U.S. 0.72

00:03:42.000 economy growing overall in 2022 at 2.1%, that was wildly outpaced by inflation, and the recession fears continue.

00:03:49.000 They say that the figure was a cool-down over the last quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

00:03:53.000 The latest figures point to a resilient but slowing economy that has been tempered by the Federal Reserve's aggressive efforts to control inflation.

00:03:58.000 Although economic growth in the most recent quarter came in stronger than many had expected, analysts say it will have little impact on the Fed's next move.

00:04:04.000 So, this means, again, that somebody has to come up with a plan.

00:04:08.000 The plan is going to be to blame Republicans.

00:04:09.000 This plan is going to be largely reliant on the debt ceiling fight.

00:04:13.000 So, the timing is coincidental, obviously.

00:04:15.000 We are about to hit the debt ceiling in the next couple of weeks.

00:04:18.000 That does not mean that the United States government will shut down.

00:04:20.000 We have enough runway that the government will continue to run at current run rate for the next several months until things would actually start to go offline until the national parks If Barack Obama were president, but it is a Biden, so he'll try to do the same sort of thing.

00:04:32.000 The national parks would close or something like that.

00:04:33.000 You'd still get your social security check.

00:04:35.000 You'd still get your Medicare.

00:04:36.000 All that stuff would still end up being processed because there are still mandatory checks that would go out under American law.

00:04:42.000 With that said, the debt ceiling fight is now going to be blamed if the economy goes south.

00:04:46.000 So Republicans had better be very careful here.

00:04:48.000 When the Democrats were in charge of all three branches of the elected government, When they ran the House, the Senate, and the presidency.

00:04:53.000 When the economy goes into the tank, it's Democrats who get blamed.

00:04:56.000 When Republicans are in charge of the House, the media look for somebody else to blame.

00:05:00.000 And that's precisely what is happening right here.

00:05:01.000 That is what is going to happen over the debt ceiling.

00:05:03.000 CNN's Christine Romans, who is a business reporter for CNN, she... 0.98

00:05:08.000 Again, it's starting to lead off this narrative.

00:05:10.000 Watch for it.

00:05:10.000 It's going to be the popular narrative in the Democratic left circles, in the media.

00:05:14.000 The narrative is going to be that a soft landing was about to happen, and then the Republicans took over Congress, and lo and behold, the economy slowed.

00:05:20.000 Now, it's not true.

00:05:21.000 We've been seeing the economy slowing significantly over the course of the last year.

00:05:25.000 We've seen the inflation rates running out of control.

00:05:26.000 That was all Democratic policymaking, plus the Federal Reserve.

00:05:29.000 However, Democrats will use any convenient excuse that they can.

00:05:32.000 The convenient excuse now is that Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans just took over the House.

00:05:36.000 Here at CNN's Christine Roman is doing this routine. 1.00

00:05:39.000 How does this data support that?

00:05:41.000 This data fits right in with that picture, quite honestly.

00:05:43.000 I mean, this shows you that the economy is strong, but slowing a little bit from the quarter before.

00:05:48.000 It shows the job market is still strong.

00:05:50.000 Maybe, I'm guessing, early this year, it's going to start to show less strength than it used to.

00:05:55.000 And that's what the Fed wants to see.

00:05:57.000 Right, that's what they'll want.

00:05:58.000 But I think, I mean, what I've been getting from my sources all morning is this all feeds into the soft landing camp.

00:06:03.000 The most recent data all fits in the camp of people who think a soft landing is possible if Washington doesn't screw it up with the debt ceiling.

00:06:10.000 And notice that last part, right?

00:06:11.000 That's the last part that matters, right?

00:06:13.000 If Washington doesn't screw it up with the debt ceiling.

00:06:15.000 But they'll probably screw it up with the debt ceiling, and then we can blame all of the Republicans for what is obviously bad economic policy on the part of the Democrats.

00:06:23.000 We had this thing handled, and then in came Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and they ruined everything.

00:06:28.000 And so you're going to see the media play up the debt ceiling debate to extraordinary heights.

00:06:33.000 They always claim whenever there's a government shutdown that the end of the world is nigh.

00:06:36.000 It never is.

00:06:37.000 There's never a zombie apocalypse with the dead wandering the streets trying to eat brains or anything like that.

00:06:43.000 Everything seems to sort of work normally, at least for a pretty significant period of time.

00:06:48.000 But this is going to be a completely different thing.

00:06:50.000 It's not just going to be that the zombie apocalypse is about to arrive.

00:06:53.000 The economic catastrophe is going to be the fault of the Republicans for not increasing the debt ceiling if they don't do so.

00:06:58.000 In time.

00:06:59.000 You can see Politico setting up this narrative as well.

00:07:00.000 They have an entire piece by Adam Cankrin and Eugene Daniels titled, Veterans of the Obama Era Debt Ceiling Standoff on the Current One.

00:07:06.000 We may be doomed.

00:07:08.000 Quote, The last time the U.S.

00:07:09.000 found itself on the verge of a debt ceiling disaster, David Kamen had a front row seat to all the action.

00:07:13.000 An economic advisor in the Obama White House, Kamen was among those charged with solving the 2011 standoff that rattled global markets, dented the economy, and led to an embarrassing downgrade of America's credit rating.

00:07:22.000 The government narrowly averted a catastrophic default that year, striking a deal with just days to spare.

00:07:27.000 But more than a decade later, with the nation deadlocked again over the debt ceiling, he fears the outcome this time could be far worse.

00:07:33.000 Ah, the doom-mongering, the scare-mongering.

00:07:35.000 We're all going to die.

00:07:36.000 The economy is going to collapse, and it's going to be the fault of these guys who've been in power for approximately 32 seconds.

00:07:41.000 Came in and said, there's a potential for it to be very bad.

00:07:43.000 By the way, I love that they're quoting a top Biden staffer, because this guy did act as a top Biden economic staffer before returning to academia last year.

00:07:51.000 So they're literally just quoting spokespeople for the Biden administration to the effect that if things go south, it's the Republicans' fault.

00:07:56.000 Quote, we're back here.

00:07:57.000 There's a real risk to the economy on the line.

00:08:00.000 Kamen isn't the only one struck by a foreboding sense of deja vu.

00:08:02.000 From the White House to Wall Street, a growing number of veterans of the 2011 debt crisis are again watching a story of bluster and brinksmanship play out and are terrified this will be the time it ends with the country in financial ruin.

00:08:13.000 David Vandeveer, who was a senior Treasury official during the 2011 negotiations and of course an Obama staffer, says, quote, it feels like there's a desire to get closer and closer to the brink.

00:08:21.000 At a certain point, you don't know where the line is.

00:08:23.000 The parallels to the Obama-era stalemate are clear, as House Republican leaders vow to place restraints on a Democratic administration while also trying to manage their troublesome conservative wing.

00:08:31.000 But unlike in 2011, Republicans are preparing to stare down the White House with no clear consensus on what they want in exchange for keeping the U.S.

00:08:37.000 financial system afloat.

00:08:38.000 Now again, that is a tremendous rewriting of history if you remember back to 2010-2011 when we did this debt ceiling debate.

00:08:43.000 The Republicans didn't know what they wanted, the Democrats didn't know what they wanted, and that is why they came up with sequestration.

00:08:48.000 Sequestration was a deal between Republicans and Democrats that would essentially kick in one year from the date of the deal that was made.

00:08:55.000 And it said, we will try to find some erstwhile deals, cut spending here and cut spending there.

00:08:59.000 And if that doesn't happen, cuts of a particular size will go into place and half of them will come from defense.

00:09:04.000 And the idea there from Obama was the cuts will never go into place because Republicans will not want to cut defense.

00:09:08.000 And the idea from Republicans was the cuts will never go into place because Obama doesn't want to cut.

00:09:12.000 And instead, you had essentially a prisoner's dilemma in which both sides defaulted.

00:09:16.000 And what you ended up with was sequestration, a massive cut to military spending and a cut to the future rate of growth of other sorts of spending.

00:09:24.000 So, everybody seems to be lying to you, right?

00:09:26.000 They're suggesting that 2010, 2011, it was all hunky-dory back then.

00:09:29.000 Now, the debt ceiling thing is gonna hit, and that's what's gonna sink the economy.

00:09:32.000 All of that is untrue.

00:09:33.000 Are you sick of hearing things that are untrue?

00:09:34.000 Are you sick of people telling you lies?

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00:10:36.000 So it wasn't as though things were, like, amazingly well negotiated in 2010-2011.

00:10:40.000 This time around, obviously, Kevin McCarthy's dealing with a very fractious caucus.

00:10:44.000 He has not yet come out with some sort of full list of the things he wants restructured.

00:10:47.000 Some of the Republicans are saying that they want full-on entitlement restructuring.

00:10:51.000 They want restructuring of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.

00:10:53.000 That is not going to happen.

00:10:55.000 You have a Democrat-controlled Senate.

00:10:56.000 You have a Democrat president.

00:10:57.000 It's not going to happen.

00:10:58.000 Pick 10 things you guys think should get cut, 10 things the American people agree with you on, and then go after those 10 things.

00:11:03.000 If you go for entitlement reform with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President, that's political malpractice.

00:11:08.000 I agree with you.

00:11:08.000 It needs to be done.

00:11:10.000 Also, it is running directly into a chainsaw.

00:11:12.000 It is political malfeasance.

00:11:14.000 However, again, the media are going to play this up because the worse this gets, the more they're going to be able to blame Republicans going into 2024.

00:11:21.000 Dan Pfeiffer, a senior Obama aide during the 2011 showdown, said that of his entire time in the administration, he was never more scared than in the final days of the debt ceiling fight because it was very possible we were going over the cliff.

00:11:31.000 And he says, the similarities to now are obvious.

00:11:33.000 A Democratic president unsure if the leader of the opposing party has the clout to get his conference on the same page.

00:11:38.000 The White House at the time felt Boehner understood and took seriously the dangers of default.

00:11:41.000 Pfeiffer says, Now remember, this is all revisionist history.

00:11:44.000 They hated John Boehner at the time. 0.96

00:11:46.000 They were saying the exact same crap about John Boehner. 0.97

00:11:47.000 This is the mode of the left? 0.94

00:11:49.000 that McCarthy cares, that McCarthy would value the full faith and credit of the United States over his own job. Now remember, this is all revisionist history. They hated John Boehner at the time. They were saying the exact same crap about John Boehner. This is the mode of the left.

00:12:00.000 The mode of the left is, the last Republican was amazing.

00:12:02.000 The new guy, man, he's scary.

00:12:04.000 He's super bad.

00:12:05.000 And this is true in presidential politics.

00:12:07.000 It's true in speakers of the House.

00:12:08.000 It's true in former senators.

00:12:10.000 All of them are horrible up until the point they leave office, at which point they become amazing in comparison with the current guy. 0.59

00:12:15.000 The current guy is just the worst.

00:12:17.000 Okay, so realistically speaking, some deal will get cut.

00:12:21.000 When it comes to the debt ceiling.

00:12:22.000 And Republicans should look for a deal to cut when it comes to the debt ceiling.

00:12:26.000 I say this again.

00:12:27.000 Not because I want the increase in debt.

00:12:30.000 I don't.

00:12:30.000 It is because you're not going to get what you want with this political alignment as it currently is.

00:12:36.000 And what you are going to do is you're going to hand an argument to the Democrats that a bad economy is not their fault despite the fact that they control the elected branches of government except for the House.

00:12:44.000 That it's instead the fault of these fractious Republicans who wanted to restructure entitlements which you don't even want in the first place.

00:12:50.000 So I am pleased to see that at the very least, Senator Joe Manchin is meeting with Speaker McCarthy to urge the House Republican leaders to negotiate with Biden.

00:12:57.000 Not because I'm on Manchin's side, but because if any deal is going to get cut here, Manchin's going to have to be a part of it.

00:13:02.000 Democrats right now control the Senate.

00:13:04.000 That means that if you are going to cut some sort of deal with the Senate to get past the debt ceiling, what you're going to have to do is go to Manchin and Sinema, presumably, and have them pressure the rest of the left to accept some sort of concessions.

00:13:15.000 A source familiar with the meeting said Manchin encouraged McCarthy to negotiate with Biden to find a path forward that would avoid harming the American people.

00:13:21.000 The source described the interaction as good and said no commitments were made.

00:13:24.000 Manchin on Sunday called on the White House to negotiate with House Republicans over raising the debt limit, arguing it would be a mistake to expect Congress to authorize new federal borrowing authority without bipartisan talks.

00:13:33.000 And Manchin is exactly right on this, by the way.

00:13:35.000 He's also politically savvy by Manchin.

00:13:37.000 He signed off on the bottom line of that giant boondoggle $1.7 trillion bill at the end of last year.

00:13:42.000 Now he's going to have to run for re-election in West Virginia, a super Republican state, as a Democrat.

00:13:47.000 Manchin's incentive structure is that he has to broker some sort of deal here.

00:13:51.000 He is a Democrat in a very red state.

00:13:53.000 There's even been talk of him switching parties.

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00:14:59.000 Manchin said on State of the Union, on CNN, quote, we have to negotiate. This is the democracy we have. We have a two-party system. We should be able to talk and find out what our differences are. This happens to be correct.

00:15:08.000 So, going to Manchin and having him broker something here would probably be the smartest political move.

00:15:12.000 And it's fun, I understand it's fun for a lot of people in the commentary to talk about, stand on principle, shut down the government.

00:15:18.000 I'm just telling you, the predictable result of this is going to be that Democrats will vote with some Republicans to raise the debt ceiling, and then Joe Biden will blame all Republicans for the failure of the economy.

00:15:27.000 This is what they are planning to do.

00:15:28.000 I mean, Joe Biden is being obvious about this.

00:15:31.000 Joe Biden is saying this openly.

00:15:34.000 Giving Democrats what they want is usually a bad strategy.

00:15:36.000 According to the New York Times, quote, Biden hammers Republicans on the economy with an eye on 2024.

00:15:42.000 The president has found a welcome foil in a new conservative House majority and its tax and spending plans sharpening a potential reelection message.

00:15:49.000 Biden on Thursday assailed House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to popular retirement programs ahead of what is likely to be a run for re-election.

00:15:56.000 By the way, if you want to talk about the political genius of Donald Trump, this actually was one area where Trump understood the tea leaves better than a lot of Republican leaders.

00:16:03.000 Republican leaders, quite properly, are focused on the problem of entitlements.

00:16:06.000 Donald Trump was like, I'm not dealing with that.

00:16:08.000 He said, I understand the American people.

00:16:10.000 They say they want to lower spending, but they don't actually want to restructure entitlements.

00:16:13.000 So I'm just not going to touch it.

00:16:14.000 He happens to be politically correct about that.

00:16:16.000 Not PC politically correct.

00:16:18.000 He happens to be right on the merits that the politics of touching entitlements are very scary for Republicans.

00:16:23.000 And the problem for Trump, obviously, is that once he was president, he should have used that power in order to restructure entitlements.

00:16:29.000 When he was running for president, it made a lot of sense not to actually talk about restructuring entitlements.

00:16:33.000 Americans don't like to hear about that sort of stuff.

00:16:35.000 In a speech in Springfield, Virginia, Biden sought to reframe the economic narrative away from the rapid price increases that have dogged much of his first two years in office and toward his stewardship of an economy that has churned out steady growth and strong job gains.

00:16:46.000 Biden said, quote, at the time I was sworn in, pandemic was raging and the economy was reeling.

00:16:51.000 And then he talks about how much money he spent and how he is building the economy again.

00:16:55.000 Now, the economy is going to a weak place, which means the Republicans have a lot to run on come 2024.

00:17:00.000 Stagnation is going to set in.

00:17:02.000 The inflation rate, despite all of the happy talk, is still riding at well above 6% at this point.

00:17:07.000 So it's not as though things have gone back to normal.

00:17:09.000 And it's not as though even when they do go back to normal, we're going to have a booming economy.

00:17:12.000 So Republicans will be able to run against Biden on the economy, unless they hand him a bat to hit them with.

00:17:18.000 So Biden says that he is going to attack Republicans on curbing safety net spending and risking a government default by refusing to raise the federal borrowing limit without deep spending cuts.

00:17:29.000 Why, he asks, would Americans give up the progress we've made for the chaos they are suggesting?

00:17:33.000 He said, I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip Which is, of course, hilarious.

00:17:38.000 The whole point that Republicans are making is that the future of the full faith and credit of the United States is reliant on us not having a $31 trillion national debt.

00:17:46.000 By the way, it ain't gonna be $31 trillion for long.

00:17:48.000 We'll be at $40 trillion pretty soon.

00:17:50.000 Our debt-to-GDP ratio will be extraordinary.

00:17:52.000 We'll spend a significant chunk of the American budget every single year, from here to the end of time, paying off our national debt.

00:17:58.000 Just on the debt servicing.

00:18:00.000 So when he says that he's for fiscal sanity, of course, that's not true.

00:18:03.000 But he does have the entire media on his side.

00:18:06.000 And if Republicans shut this thing down without any hope of an actual victory, it's going to be a fairly large scale mistake.

00:18:13.000 Now, meanwhile, Democrats are reacting, I would say, rather interestingly to Donald Trump's reinstatement on Facebook.

00:18:20.000 They're doing something that I would call cry cheering.

00:18:23.000 By cry cheering, what I mean is they're pretending that they're very upset about it, but they're actually super happy about it.

00:18:28.000 They're cry cheering.

00:18:30.000 I was like, oh, I can't believe this is happening.

00:18:32.000 I can't.

00:18:32.000 It's just terrible.

00:18:33.000 It's just...

00:18:35.000 They're cry cheering about it.

00:18:36.000 The reason they're cry cheering about it is because when they look at the polls, what they see is that Donald Trump runs fairly even with Joe Biden.

00:18:43.000 There are a few sporadic polls that will show him beating Joe Biden, but overall, he tends to run weaker than Joe Biden.

00:18:48.000 Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis in Florida seems to be running better than Joe Biden.

00:18:51.000 He's a much more disciplined candidate.

00:18:52.000 He doesn't tweet odd things on Truth Social.

00:18:55.000 He doesn't go out there and say things that provide fodder for the opposition.

00:18:59.000 He didn't lose to a dead man in his basement, for example.

00:19:02.000 And so a lot of Democrats are starting to play the same game they played in 2015-2016.

00:19:06.000 Now, they may be wrong, right?

00:19:08.000 They may get exactly what they bargained for in 2015-2016.

00:19:09.000 You recall that in 2015-2016, the left really elevated Trump.

00:19:15.000 They really spent like billions of dollars worth of media time on Donald Trump, trying to elevate him in the primaries, thinking that Hillary would then defeat him.

00:19:23.000 And of course, that turned out to be a horrible strategy.

00:19:26.000 However, in the 2022 cycle, they actually did that again, and it worked.

00:19:29.000 They elevated Donald Paul Duck in New Hampshire.

00:19:31.000 They spent a bunch of money on him in New Hampshire.

00:19:33.000 They elevated Hershel Walker in Georgia.

00:19:35.000 They elevated like a bunch of actual Republican candidates they thought were Trumpier in significant races, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, they did this in order to try to facilitate Democratic wins in those states and it actually worked out for them.

00:19:48.000 So now they are attempting to do the same thing with Donald Trump and they've discovered the secret sauce.

00:19:52.000 The secret sauce is the more they attack Trump, the more Republicans come to Trump's defense.

00:19:56.000 Which, I understand.

00:19:57.000 I've done it too, right?

00:19:58.000 I get it. 0.71

00:19:59.000 When the media attacks somebody, your initial response immediately is, the media's garbage, so that guy must be awesome. 0.59

00:20:04.000 Now, two things can be true at once. 0.93

00:20:05.000 The media can be garbage, and their attacks on Trump can be unfair, and also he might not be the strongest candidate for President of the United States come 2024. 0.64

00:20:13.000 But the reason that Democrats are cry-cheering over Trump's reinstatement to Facebook is twofold. 0.97

00:20:17.000 One, they would like to see Trump be the nominee.

00:20:19.000 Two, they make a boatload of money off of Donald Trump.

00:20:23.000 The Washington Post, since Donald Trump left office, has lost 500,000 subscribers.

00:20:27.000 That is because the news is far less interesting without Donald Trump in it.

00:20:30.000 It's because Donald Trump sells newspapers.

00:20:33.000 Say whatever he will about the guy, he moves product.

00:20:35.000 And the media are in the product moving business.

00:20:37.000 All of the talk about how principled they are.

00:20:39.000 They are not principled.

00:20:39.000 They are not objective.

00:20:40.000 They are far left activists who every so often like to keep their jobs.

00:20:44.000 And so here, both of those things cross streams Ghostbusters style.

00:20:47.000 One, it'd be great for them.

00:20:49.000 They think they may be wrong and they might be totally wrong.

00:20:51.000 They think it is better for them if Trump is elevated as the nominee.

00:20:54.000 And two, they get to make a lot of money off Donald Trump running either way.

00:20:57.000 And so you've seen this sort of cry cheering attitude from the Democrats.

00:21:00.000 And you're seeing them ramp it up because there are new polls showing That Trump is very vulnerable to DeSantis.

00:21:06.000 For example, there's a 2024 New Hampshire Republican primary poll.

00:21:09.000 It's super early.

00:21:10.000 DeSantis has not yet even declared for the presidency.

00:21:13.000 If he's going to, it will probably be somewhere before he does.

00:21:15.000 This new poll shows DeSantis up 42-30 over Trump in New Hampshire.

00:21:19.000 If Trump loses New Hampshire, he's not winning the nomination.

00:21:22.000 He won New Hampshire going away in 2016.

00:21:24.000 In 2016, he won by 19 points in New Hampshire.

00:21:26.000 It was one of his best states.

00:21:28.000 So, this means that Democrats have to mobilize, and they are beginning to mobilize with the cry cheering.

00:21:33.000 They understand that if they attack Trump enough, then maybe it will generate support for him.

00:21:37.000 So, you can look at the media reaction to Donald Trump being re-allowed on Facebook.

00:21:42.000 They're pretending now they're so upset.

00:21:43.000 They're, oh, we're so upset that Trump's back on Facebook.

00:21:45.000 They're so upset.

00:21:46.000 They're really mad.

00:21:46.000 They're really upset about Trump being, they are so happy about Trump being back on Facebook.

00:21:50.000 I cannot even express to you how happy they are.

00:21:52.000 The media are cry cheering over Donald Trump being readmitted to Facebook.

00:21:55.000 They're cry cheering because they're actually very, very happy that Donald Trump is going to be more in the public eye.

00:22:00.000 It gives them something to talk about, it allows them to get ratings, and all the rest.

00:22:04.000 Frankly, they're embarrassing.

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00:23:15.000 It's MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhl.

00:23:16.000 She was talking about the reinstatement of Donald Trump on Facebook and saying, well, they're after the dollars.

00:23:20.000 That's what they want.

00:23:20.000 They want the dollars.

00:23:21.000 Guys, you've talked about Donald Trump incessantly since 2015.

00:23:24.000 It is now 2023.

00:23:26.000 For the last eight years, you've been talking about Donald Trump and raking it in because of it.

00:23:30.000 Now you're going to say that Facebook is in it for the bucks?

00:23:33.000 All right.

00:23:34.000 Facebook's looking for ways to get creative in their business, because let's be honest, as far as new users are going, they're getting their clocks cleaned by TikTok.

00:23:43.000 So Facebook looking to say, yep, this is for democracy.

00:23:46.000 We're going to put Donald Trump back on.

00:23:48.000 It's going to drum up a lot of energy, a lot of focus, and hopefully for them, a lot of ad dollars.

00:23:53.000 So make no mistake when they're talking about, well, this is about content moderation.

00:23:57.000 Maybe it's the right thing to do.

00:23:58.000 The almighty dollar is why both sides are keen for this.

00:24:03.000 They are so excited at MSNBC.

00:24:05.000 Don't let them fool you.

00:24:06.000 They love every second of this.

00:24:07.000 This is the thing they want more than anything in life.

00:24:10.000 Mika Brzezinski is doing this routine.

00:24:12.000 Now, you'll recall that Mika and Joe joked their way through the primary process with Donald Trump in 2016.

00:24:16.000 I mean, they had him on like every day.

00:24:18.000 And they made him palatable to even some members of the left.

00:24:22.000 They were really nice to him.

00:24:23.000 And then they had kind of a fake fight.

00:24:24.000 And then they got back together in December of 2016. 0.96

00:24:26.000 And then after the election, Donald Trump was too crazy for them. 0.66

00:24:29.000 They started ripping on him again.

00:24:30.000 It's been a whole kind of interpersonal saga with Mika and Joe.

00:24:34.000 Now Mika's saying, there's no accountability.

00:24:36.000 This is all about money.

00:24:36.000 That's the only reason he's back on Facebook.

00:24:38.000 You guys, we can see it.

00:24:40.000 We can see how happy you are.

00:24:41.000 We can see how you want to make money off of Trump.

00:24:43.000 Trump is a money... He was right.

00:24:44.000 Trump said this about you guys.

00:24:46.000 He was like, I make money for you.

00:24:47.000 You need me.

00:24:48.000 Correct.

00:24:49.000 He's absolutely right about that.

00:24:51.000 We think the risk to public safety has materially and significantly receded.

00:24:57.000 But that is also the reason why we are introducing those additional guardrails to discourage him from breaking our rules going forward if he chooses to use Facebook and Instagram again.

00:25:09.000 I don't see any sign the risk has gone down.

00:25:12.000 In fact, some of his posts on Truth Social are disgusting. 0.98

00:25:17.000 Racist. 0.99

00:25:19.000 There's no change. 0.97

00:25:20.000 So, this is just about money.

00:25:22.000 And also, the fact that there's no accountability.

00:25:25.000 There's no accountability.

00:25:26.000 You guys gave him like a billion dollars in free media coverage in 2015, 2016.

00:25:30.000 You're still on the air complaining about it.

00:25:32.000 Yeah, man.

00:25:33.000 Media, they are ecstatic about us.

00:25:35.000 Mara Gay of the Washington Post says, I have a lot of concerns.

00:25:38.000 You guys don't have concerns.

00:25:39.000 You're full of it.

00:25:40.000 It's kind of a win-win for you.

00:25:41.000 You get to complain about Donald Trump being back, and then you get to cover Donald Trump being back, which makes you as happy as pie.

00:25:48.000 Ultimately, these social media platforms don't, they're just not held to the same standards that news organizations are.

00:25:55.000 And that is the central conflict, that is the central tension.

00:25:58.000 I don't think that has gone away.

00:26:00.000 I continue to believe.

00:26:03.000 I have a lot of concerns about that.

00:26:06.000 And, you know, look, Donald Trump's reaction was to mock them anyway.

00:26:10.000 Okay, so, you know, this is going to be fun to watch for the media.

00:26:14.000 They will make more money off of this.

00:26:15.000 Meanwhile, the person who they're really scared of is DeSantis, pretty obviously speaking.

00:26:20.000 In sort of a fascinating development, Ron DeSantis has now called for a change at the RNC one day before the re-election vote for Ronna Romney McDaniel, who has now presided over three consecutive election losses for Republicans.

00:26:30.000 She did poorly in 2018, in 2020, and in 2022. 0.84

00:26:34.000 She is trying to run for re-election again.

00:26:36.000 She's running against Harmeet Dhillon.

00:26:38.000 Full disclosure, Harmeet Dhillon was our lawyer in our case that we filed against the Biden administration, suing them to remove the OSHA VAX mandate.

00:26:44.000 So, I like Harmeet.

00:26:46.000 I think Harmeet would make an excellent Head of the RNC?

00:26:49.000 Apparently so does DeSantis.

00:26:50.000 According to NBC News, in an interview with a conservative-leaning outlet in his home state, Florida's Voice, DeSantis spoke positively about McDaniel's top challenger, Harmeet Dhillon.

00:26:58.000 He said, I think we need to change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC.

00:27:01.000 I like what Harmeet has said about getting the RNC out of DC. We need some fresh thinking.

00:27:05.000 McDaniel has honed the RNC since the beginning of Trump's term in the White House.

00:27:08.000 While he endorsed her previous elections, this time Trump has stayed out of the race, telling Breitbart last year, The incumbent is favored to win another term chairing the RNC, and there are a lot of questions about how much McDaniel is in, for example, Trump's corner.

00:27:20.000 Is she going to bias the RNC process in favor of Donald Trump, considering that he was a big backer of her the first time around?

00:27:26.000 McDaniel is currently touting the endorsements of more than 100 members ahead of Friday's vote.

00:27:30.000 She needs support from 85 on a secret ballot to win another term. 1.00

00:27:33.000 Dillon right now has public support from at least 32 members of the committee.

00:27:36.000 As I've said before, I don't think you get to lose this many elections consecutively and retain your job.

00:27:40.000 It is sort of fascinating, however, to see the internal politics of the RNC.

00:27:44.000 According to the New York Times, there has been some movement away from Donald Trump even within the RNC, even among those who back Ronna Romney McDaniel.

00:27:51.000 The 168 members of the RNC are gathering in Southern California to select their own leader on Friday.

00:27:56.000 Interviews this week with 59 of them, more than one-third of the committee's membership, found few eager to crown Trump their nominee for a third term.

00:28:01.000 While they praised his policies and accomplishments as president, many expressed deep concerns about his age—he's 76—temperament, and ability to win a general election, often in unusually blunt terms.

00:28:10.000 Mac Brown, chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky, said this isn't 2016.

00:28:14.000 People have moved on.

00:28:15.000 Jonathan Barnett, RNC member from Arkansas who claims to have been the first member of the committee to endorse Trump's 2016 campaign, said the party would benefit from its nominee being forced to navigate a crowded primary field.

00:28:24.000 Barnett said, Well, Nikki Haley has been talking about running for president, and of course, Ron DeSantis is probably going to throw his hat into the ring.

00:28:35.000 And Democrats are freaking out about this because it could spell the death of the Biden administration.

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00:29:40.000 Obviously, Trump is hoping to crowd out the field.

00:29:42.000 That is very unlikely to happen.

00:29:44.000 Already Nikki Haley has made some pretty strong signals that she would like to run for president of the United States. 1.00

00:29:49.000 Again, she was his UN ambassador and she was a two-term governor of South Carolina, so she would be a strong candidate.

00:29:54.000 Ron DeSantis is very likely to throw his hat into the ring.

00:29:56.000 He's termed out as governor of Florida.

00:29:58.000 He's done an excellent job there.

00:29:59.000 He's extraordinarily popular in his home state, which is a swing state.

00:30:02.000 He's very popular nationally as well.

00:30:04.000 And you can see the media They're ratcheting up the panic with regard to DeSantis in particular, because DeSantis is the one who's polling the best against Trump right now.

00:30:13.000 So for example, Don Lemon is turning that spinal tap speaker all the way up to 11.

00:30:18.000 Here he was yesterday suggesting that Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republicans across the nation, they're trying to ban books. 0.94

00:30:25.000 It's like the 1950s again, said the gay black man on national television. 0.58

00:30:30.000 Another challenge brought up by one of the school board members, the definition of age appropriate. 0.90

00:30:35.000 How do you define what is age appropriate in this vetting process?

00:30:39.000 I reached out to the governor's office as well as the Department of Education with that very question and we have not received a response.

00:30:47.000 I feel like we're going back... I feel like I'm watching a bad version of, like, Pleasantville, where you're... I don't get what's happening.

00:30:55.000 It feels like the 1950s all over again, with, like, book banning.

00:30:59.000 This is cancel culture from people who are... I guess they just want our kids to be ignorant and to control the teachers. 0.96

00:31:10.000 I love this stuff. 0.95

00:31:10.000 I love it so much. 0.95

00:31:11.000 So Don Lemon is a gay black man on national television complaining that we now live back in the 1950s. 0.98

00:31:17.000 I've noticed that he's, for the third time, a gay black man on national television. 0.84

00:31:22.000 If this were the 1950s, I have a feeling that would not be a thing that is happening right now.

00:31:25.000 Also, he seems pathologically incapable of understanding that you actually get to control what happens in the classroom because free speech is not the chief issue in the classroom.

00:31:33.000 What's taught to your kids is the chief issue in the classroom.

00:31:35.000 That school libraries are not, in fact, free speech zones.

00:31:38.000 You don't get to view pornography in the school library, for example.

00:31:42.000 Don Lemon seems incapable of actually understanding any of that.

00:31:45.000 But it's the panic level that really is the great indicator.

00:31:48.000 So if people on the right are looking at who are the media actually panicked by, the answer is they're absolutely panicked over Ron DeSantis.

00:31:55.000 And the reason for that is because DeSantis has been extraordinarily effective as governor of Florida.

00:31:59.000 I can't stress it enough.

00:32:00.000 I moved to Florida away from California.

00:32:02.000 One of the reasons is politics.

00:32:04.000 California has become a blue hellhole.

00:32:07.000 Ron DeSantis' Florida is red as blood at this point.

00:32:10.000 He won by 20 points.

00:32:11.000 There's a super majority of Republicans in the legislature.

00:32:13.000 The entire Democratic Party in the state is in complete disarray, and he is winning battles one day at a time, is Governor DeSantis.

00:32:20.000 By the way, the latest battle that he's winning right now is his plan.

00:32:23.000 On Monday, he put out a plan to pass a teacher's bill of rights and spend an extra $200 million on teacher pay in the coming school year.

00:32:29.000 So it's a two-pronged attack.

00:32:31.000 One, he's going to break the teachers' unions, and two, he's going to pay the teachers more.

00:32:34.000 That is just, it's good policymaking.

00:32:37.000 If you want to draw good teachers, you pay them more.

00:32:39.000 If you want to break the teachers unions, you offer people the possibility of good pay for good work.

00:32:44.000 That's what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida right now, and the left does not know how to counter.

00:32:47.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the funds will bring the total the state has spent on teacher salaries to more than $3 billion from 2020 to 2024.

00:32:53.000 They're also lifting the minimum salary to more than $48,000, eighth highest among states according to the NEA.

00:33:00.000 Addressing a classroom in a Jacksonville school, the governor said the money would help ward off a teacher shortage.

00:33:04.000 The nationwide average, she said, is three vacancies for every school.

00:33:06.000 She said Florida has kept the average openings to about half of that level.

00:33:10.000 The plan devotes just as much attention to making sure teachers get the full benefit of their pay raise.

00:33:14.000 It proposes a policy known as Paycheck Protection, which blocks the school from extracting members' dues on unions' behalf.

00:33:22.000 So, he's giving teachers back more money at the same time that he's fighting the teachers unions.

00:33:26.000 And, he's actually forcing teachers to teach curricula that parents would like to see them teach.

00:33:30.000 This has all been having a real impact on how teachers are actually teaching in the state of Florida.

00:33:34.000 according to the Washington Post, quote, teachers are changing their lessons amid increasing scrutiny from parents and a raft of state laws and school policies that circumscribe lessons on race and gender, according to one of the first nationally representative studies of the subject. 0.98

00:33:46.000 To which I say, good, you're doing a crap job.

00:33:50.000 It's time for you to actually re-examine what you are teaching students in the classroom. 1.00

00:33:53.000 I don't want your woke TikTok garbage. 0.92

00:33:56.000 Being taught to small students. 0.98

00:33:57.000 How about this?

00:33:58.000 How about you actually consider what you're teaching and whether it is worthwhile being taught to students?

00:34:02.000 It's so funny.

00:34:02.000 You hear people on the left like, do you want teachers to be fearful in the classroom of saying things that might get them fired?

00:34:07.000 Yes, that is exactly what I want.

00:34:09.000 Everyone else is.

00:34:10.000 It seems to me that when you are teaching the most vulnerable members of society, you should everyday fear that you're going to teach them something that is wrong and incorrect.

00:34:17.000 You should be the most careful people.

00:34:19.000 Shouldn't be that the least careful people are in charge of classrooms.

00:34:21.000 Of course you should feel like parents are looking over your shoulder.

00:34:24.000 Of course you should!

00:34:25.000 The parents are delegating their power to raise their child to you for this time in the day.

00:34:29.000 That does not mean that you have irrevocable power.

00:34:32.000 It does not mean that you get to throw overboard whatever you think.

00:34:36.000 The parents believe.

00:34:37.000 That's not how any of that works.

00:34:38.000 I'm so glad this is happening.

00:34:40.000 Teachers should have in the back of their mind, am I violating the law?

00:34:44.000 For example, the findings draw on data gathered during the latest American Instructional Resources Survey, which RAND has administered each spring since 2019.

00:34:52.000 In the last iteration, RAND surveyed 8,000 educators on teaching English, math, and science, and analyzed 1,500 open-ended responses from teachers.

00:34:59.000 The report says, Good.

00:34:59.000 Good.

00:34:59.000 Data suggests that limitations placed on how teachers can address contentious topics may be leading to consequences for teachers' working conditions and for student learning.

00:35:07.000 Teachers described working in conditions filled with worry, anxiety, and even fear.

00:35:11.000 Good.

00:35:12.000 Good.

00:35:13.000 I want you to be anxious.

00:35:15.000 Before you put up the Black Lives Matter and the Pride Progress flag in your third grade classroom, I would like for you to think twice about that.

00:35:19.000 I would like for you to be nervous about that.

00:35:22.000 What I don't like is when my kid is nervous and anxious because they don't know what left-wing gobbledygook is going to be stuffed into their head by you.

00:35:29.000 You're an authority figure, but that authority is absolutely removable.

00:35:34.000 It is amazing to me that there are so many people who believe that the comfort of the teachers comes before the education of the students.

00:35:40.000 The new report comes during intense political, cultural, and legislative battles over what students should learn about race, racism, U.S.

00:35:45.000 history, gender, and sexual orientation at schools.

00:35:47.000 A Washington Post analysis found that as of late 2022, legislators in 45 states have passed 64 laws across the past three years restricting what teachers can say and children can do at school.

00:35:57.000 Laws limiting instruction on race, racism, and history made up 28% of the total.

00:36:01.000 14 such pieces of legislation have passed in at least 18 states.

00:36:07.000 Laws circumscribing instruction on gender identity, sexuality, and LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues accounted for 23% of the total, with 15 such laws having been passed in 8 states.

00:36:18.000 At the same time, individual school districts have begun passing policies restricting education on similar topics, barring books, buy-in about LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, happy face emoji, sad face emoji, crying, laughing emoji, individuals and people of color, and increasing parental and administrative oversight of the titles chosen for public school libraries.

00:36:34.000 Meanwhile, U.S.

00:36:35.000 adults are losing their confidence in the public school system.

00:36:37.000 Well, yes, that is why these restrictions are happening, and the restrictions are good.

00:36:42.000 And it's been Ron DeSantis leading the way on that.

00:36:45.000 Renaissance is also leading the way in another contentious area.

00:36:47.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:36:49.000 Well, folks, on my last Sunday Special, I sat down with Fr.

00:36:51.000 Frank Pavone, a priest and pro-life activist who was recently dismissed by the Catholic Church for persistent disobedience.

00:36:56.000 In our conversation, Fr.

00:36:57.000 Frank describes a noticeable ideological shift amongst the clergy and how Pope Francis himself has intentionally sowed confusion around long-held church teachings regarding gay marriage, abortion, and others in order to placate a progressive agenda.

00:37:08.000 It seems almost everywhere you turn in the world wants to make you more woke, but not my friend Dennis Prager.

00:37:13.000 Dennis wants to make you wise.

00:37:15.000 My good friend and the founder of PragerU is going to do just that with a brand new series.

00:37:18.000 We're really excited about this.

00:37:19.000 It's exclusive on DailyWare Plus.

00:37:21.000 It is called The Master's Program.

00:37:23.000 The Master's Program takes decades of wisdom and experience I'm one of the most influential conservative thinkers in America today and distills it all the way down in a way that is relevant and accessible.

00:37:31.000 That's Dennis' specialty.

00:37:33.000 It's amazing stuff.

00:37:34.000 When you watch it, you'll come away better equipped to navigate the world through a lens of truth and virtue and to counter woke ideology and all of its lies and deception.

00:37:40.000 Dennis has been a source of wisdom in not only my life, but in my parents' life.

00:37:44.000 My parents listened to Dennis when I was but a small child, and it really shaped how they thought about the world, morality, religion, and now Dennis is distilling a lot of that wisdom for you.

00:37:51.000 The first two episodes of PragerU Master's Program are available to stream right now, only on DailyWirePlus.

00:37:56.000 So, head on over to DailyWirePlus.com, become a member, watch PragerU Master's Program, and more.

00:38:01.000 That's DailyWirePlus.com today.

00:38:04.000 Okay, meanwhile, As I have suggested, there is one other area where Governor DeSantis is wading into contentious waters and doing so, I think, in excellent fashion.

00:38:15.000 Apparently people on the left are very angry at Ron DeSantis for one reason, and that reason, apparently, is that he would like to lower the standard for the death penalty in Florida to a non-unanimous vote.

00:38:27.000 So you'll recall that the The perpetrator in the Parkland massacre, school massacre, was not given the death penalty in Florida because three out of the 12 jurors voted against the death penalty in that case.

00:38:38.000 A lot of people were very angry about that.

00:38:39.000 I was one of those people.

00:38:40.000 It turns out that when you massacre school children, you don't deserve to be breathing the same air as the rest of us. 1.00

00:38:44.000 You should, in fact, be put to death.

00:38:46.000 Well, now Governor DeSantis has broached the possibility of changing state law to allow juries to impose the death penalty without unanimous agreement, suggesting that perhaps only two-thirds of 12 jurors need to vote in favor.

00:38:57.000 We should put the number at 8.

00:38:58.000 DeSantis in a speech to the Florida Sheriff's Association on Monday expressed disappointment in the Parkland school shooter being given life in prison.

00:39:04.000 He said maybe 8 out of 12 have to agree or something.

00:39:06.000 We can't be in a situation where one person can just derail this.

00:39:10.000 His comments came as part of a discussion about what lawmakers may look at in the upcoming legislative session beginning March 7th.

00:39:15.000 Now, remember, it would still take a unanimous verdict to find somebody guilty.

00:39:18.000 You're just talking about the penalty that would be applied after the person is found guilty.

00:39:22.000 So you find somebody guilty for murdering and raping a child, and now there's a separate hearing as to what the sentence should be.

00:39:28.000 Should the sentence be death or should the sentence be life in prison?

00:39:30.000 If you have one activist on the jury, the person ends up on the taxpayer dole for the rest of their life watching TV and eating McDonald's.

00:39:38.000 And DeSantis is saying, no, that's not the way that it should work.

00:39:40.000 This isn't a question of whether they're guilty or not.

00:39:42.000 We've already established their guilt. 0.99

00:39:43.000 Now the only question is whether they should die or not.

00:39:46.000 And so he wants to lower the standard.

00:39:47.000 Apparently a lot of people on the left are very upset about all of this.

00:39:50.000 I have trouble, I think, explaining why they are so upset about all of this.

00:39:55.000 Florida's requirement for unanimous agreement on the death penalty is relatively recent.

00:39:58.000 A 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and a subsequent Florida Supreme Court ruling triggered Florida's move to a unanimous jury system before Florida only required a majority and judges had the power to override a jury's decision. So it wasn't as though it was unchecked.

00:40:10.000 If a jury came to a decision for the death penalty, a judge could still step in and say no.

00:40:14.000 The U.S.

00:40:14.000 Supreme Court said Florida's capital sentencing gave too much power to judges over juries.

00:40:18.000 So following that ruling, legislators in 2016 passed a bill requiring a 10-2 jury majority.

00:40:23.000 The state Supreme Court said it was in violation of the state constitution because it was non-unanimous.

00:40:27.000 The next year, legislators passed a bill requiring unanimous jury recommendations.

00:40:31.000 That seemingly put the issue to rest until 2020, and that is when the Florida Supreme Court reversed that ruling from four years earlier and said unanimity was not in fact necessary, and that they had misinterpreted the earlier Supreme Court ruling.

00:40:41.000 The court said a jury only had to be unanimous in agreement somebody was eligible for the death penalty, not whether they should be sentenced to death or not.

00:40:48.000 So, again, a lot of people on the left are apparently mad about this.

00:40:51.000 I have a hard time seeing why.

00:40:53.000 When somebody commits a crime so egregious that 8 out of 12 people on a jury believe that you should die for it, all 12 agree that you're guilty, and now 8 out of the 12 say you should die for it, it seems to me that a couple of activists on the jury should not be enough to overturn that particular verdict.

00:41:06.000 Okay, meanwhile, controversy continues to percolate regarding the House Republicans attempting to boot Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.

00:41:19.000 As Mark Thiessen writes over at the Washington Post, McCarthy is 100% right to make this move.

00:41:25.000 He says, Omar is an anti-Semite who has no business serving on a committee that helps set policy toward Israel.

00:41:29.000 Schiff and Swallow are conspiracy theorists who abused their positions on the Intel Committee to falsely claim that they had seen secret evidence that President Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election, and that was a lie.

00:41:39.000 Neither deserves access to our nation's secrets.

00:41:41.000 That's putting aside the fact that Swallow was apparently nailing a Chinese spy.

00:41:45.000 In September 2021, Omar and her anti-Israel allies used a potential government shutdown to force Nancy Pelosi to remove a billion dollars in funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system from an emergency spending bill.

00:41:55.000 The Iron Dome is purely defensive, which means that Omar basically just wanted to cut the ability of Israel to defend itself against missiles falling in civilian areas, which, by the way, is happening again right now.

00:42:05.000 Israel, the other day, had to go into Jenin, which is a terrorist hotbed.

00:42:08.000 They killed a bunch of terrorists.

00:42:10.000 The world screamed and shouted.

00:42:11.000 And now, a bunch of missiles are apparently flying again into the center of Israel.

00:42:16.000 Thank God for Iron Dome. 1.00

00:42:18.000 Omar tried to defund that.

00:42:20.000 That's just Ohan Omar.

00:42:21.000 Then, there's Schiff and Swalwell.

00:42:22.000 Schiff repeatedly claimed that his intel committee had unearthed plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy.

00:42:27.000 He went on to meet the press and said, quote, I can't go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence.

00:42:32.000 He assured ABC News that Trump's Russia conspiracy is, quote, of a size and scope probably beyond Watergate, which of course was a lie.

00:42:38.000 Swalwell was even worse.

00:42:39.000 In an interview with MSNBC, he was asked by Chris Matthews, that's what he was saying.

00:42:43.000 Matthews said, do you believe the president right now has been an agent of the Russians?

00:42:47.000 And Swallow said, yes, I think there's more evidence that he is.

00:42:50.000 And Swallow, again, said yes.

00:42:53.000 So him being deprived of a committee assignment makes perfect sense.

00:42:56.000 Adam Schiff responded to the news that he might be removed from the Intel Committee by going on the Chinese spy service TikTok to fundraise, which is a weird way to say that you want to be on the Intel Committee.

00:43:08.000 Here is Adam Schiff.

00:43:10.000 Hello, I'm Congressman Adam Schiff with some troubling news.

00:43:13.000 Today, Kevin McCarthy removed me from the House Intelligence Committee, all for doing my job, for holding Trump accountable and standing up to the extreme MAGA Republicans.

00:43:23.000 We knew it would be bad when the Republicans took over, but it's far worse than we expected.

00:43:28.000 But I can promise you this, this is not the end of my fight for our democracy.

00:43:33.000 This is just the beginning.

00:43:34.000 Please join us and contribute today.

00:43:38.000 Thank you.

00:43:39.000 So he went on the Chinese spy service TikTok and tried to fundraise over all of that.

00:43:43.000 By the way, he also linked this to a Senate campaign.

00:43:46.000 Yes, there's only failing upwards in American politics.

00:43:48.000 No one ever fails out of American politics.

00:43:50.000 They just go away for a little while and then they return ready to run for office again.

00:43:54.000 Adam Schiff.

00:43:54.000 According to the Washington Post, he has now announced that he is running for the Senate in 2024, joining a growing field of Democrats who are seeking to replace Dianne Feinstein.

00:44:02.000 She has not explicitly said she would run for re-election.

00:44:04.000 That is because she is one million years old and no longer sentient, according to pretty much all sources.

00:44:08.000 Schiff said, quote, we're in the fight of our lives for the future of this country.

00:44:12.000 And so he announced that he is going to run for the Senate again.

00:44:16.000 In his campaign announcement, he said, Schiff has been elected to Congress in 2000.

00:44:18.000 and working families as part of the same struggle if our democracy isn't delivering for Americans that look for alternatives, like a dangerous demagogue who promises that he alone can fix it.

00:44:26.000 Schiff has been elected to Congress in 2000. He represented a large swath of the greater Los Angeles area, including the San Gabriel Valley. And of course, he led the impeachment effort against Trump and lied to the press repeatedly about what he had and had not seen.

00:44:41.000 Schiff joins Representative Katie Porter, 49, who, of course, announced her run this month.

00:44:46.000 She is the person with the whiteboard who writes a bunch of stuff and then people get super excited because she has a whiteboard.

00:44:50.000 She has yet to write anything super intelligent on the whiteboard, but it's okay.

00:44:53.000 The whiteboard is really the thing.

00:44:54.000 Barbara Lee also wants to run for the Senate seat as well. 1.00

00:44:57.000 She is 76 years old.

00:44:58.000 So she is more in line with the age that we expect of our nation's top leaders.

00:45:02.000 Barbara Lee, of course, was considered a possible VP candidate for Joe Biden, mainly because Joe Biden said that he wanted a black woman, and Barbara Lee is, in fact, a black woman. 1.00

00:45:11.000 So that's her real claim to fame.

00:45:13.000 Otherwise, she's just been a very long-time representative in Congress.

00:45:18.000 That's pretty much her big thing.

00:45:20.000 So it's going to be a crowded field in California.

00:45:23.000 One of these people will be elected to the Senate because it is a universally Democrat state. 0.96

00:45:28.000 It'll be fascinating to see which one of these dullards emerges from this race. 1.00

00:45:32.000 All three of those candidates are terrible, by the way. 0.99

00:45:34.000 Katie Porter is a bad candidate. 1.00

00:45:36.000 Adam Schiff is a significantly worse candidate.

00:45:37.000 Barbara Lee is probably the worst candidate of the three, just in terms of electability. 1.00

00:45:41.000 In terms of radicalism, all three of them are incredibly radical, because California is an incredibly radical state.

00:45:46.000 So, I guess California has that to look forward to.

00:45:48.000 Once again, I am very glad I no longer live in California.

00:45:52.000 Meanwhile, I do have to mention the funniest story of the day.

00:45:54.000 The AP Stylebook has sounded off again on American Language.

00:45:57.000 It's always exciting when they do this.

00:45:59.000 So, it used to be that they would sound off on, like, the Oxford comma, which is the comma before and in a lot of sentences.

00:46:04.000 Now, they actually have broader comments that implicate politics.

00:46:07.000 Here's what they tweeted today.

00:46:08.000 You ready?

00:46:10.000 We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing THE labels, such as THE POOR, THE MENTALLY ILL, THE FRENCH, THE DISABLED, THE COLLEGE EDUCATED.

00:46:18.000 Instead, use wordings such as PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES, and use these descriptions only when clearly relevant.

00:46:24.000 So first of all, I totally agree.

00:46:25.000 THE FRENCH is a dehumanizing label.

00:46:27.000 You should totally never say that someone is the French.

00:46:29.000 It's a terrible thing to say about somebody.

00:46:31.000 Also, I agree that we should use the term people with mental illnesses to describe today's college-educated. 0.63

00:46:36.000 That also feels correct to me.

00:46:39.000 But I'm also just wondering what the alternatives are.

00:46:41.000 Is it people suffering from Frenchness? 0.98

00:46:43.000 Is it people who have experienced cheese-eating surrender-monkeyness?

00:46:49.000 If you can't call them the French, what exactly do you call them?

00:46:53.000 Beret-wearing, wine-swilling, surrender monkeys? 1.00

00:46:57.000 I just, I'm running out of terms.

00:46:59.000 I'm not sure.

00:47:01.000 You're also not supposed to say, the poor.

00:47:03.000 So I guess you're supposed to say people experiencing poverty, as though it has just sort of collapsed on them like a building or something.

00:47:10.000 Always.

00:47:10.000 And sometimes that's true, sometimes it is not.

00:47:13.000 And you're not supposed to say the college-educated. 0.98

00:47:14.000 Instead you should say, again, people with mental illnesses.

00:47:17.000 So it's exciting to see the Associated Press sounding off on this sort of stuff. 1.00

00:47:21.000 Yes, life is getting increasingly stupid and restrictive. 0.99

00:47:24.000 But, you know, that's alright. 0.99

00:47:26.000 Because after all, Joe Biden is going to lead us to a bright and glorious future.

00:47:30.000 Alrighty, guys.

00:47:30.000 The rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:47:31.000 You're not going to want to miss it. 0.99

00:47:32.000 We'll be getting into a trans male rapist, meaning a dude who raped some women, allegedly. 0.99

00:47:38.000 I guess he's in jail for it now. 0.99

00:47:40.000 But now he calls himself a woman, so we all have to use his preferred pronouns. 0.96

00:47:42.000 It's really important to respect the pronouns of the rapist, who apparently is now a very rapey woman. 0.63

00:47:49.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:47:50.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 27, 2023

Biden’s Recession Is Coming, And He’s Ready To Blame Republicans | Ep. 1656

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