As the economy slowly slides into recession, the Biden administration prepares to blame Republicans, the media cackles as the media cheer as Facebook reinstates Donald Trump, and we must all respect the pronouns of alleged rapists who now say they are female. I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is The Ben Shapiro Show, where I talk about the economic slowdown that's hitting the U.S. economy and what it means for the rest of the world. Today's episode is a mashup of the latest economic data and commentary from the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and the New York Times, with a special guest, Ben Shapiro of The Weekly Standard. Subscribe to the show to get notified when I deconstruct the latest headlines and discuss what's going on in the world of economics, politics, and pop culture. Tweet me and let me know what you thought of today's episode! if you have any thoughts or opinions on any of the topics covered in the show. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What is a recession? 2:30 - Is there a recession on the horizon? 3:15 - Is a recession coming soon? 4:20 - Will a recession be bad? 5:10 - How bad is it going to get worse? 6:40 - Is it already here? 7:00 8:15 9:00 | What are we going to do about it? 11:15 | What is the worst case scenario? 12:30 | What will the economy? 13:30 14:10 | What s the worst thing we can do? 15:40 | 15:00 // 15: What s going to happen? 16:30 // 16:40 17:40 // 17:10 18:20 | Is it a recession in 2020? 19:20 21:00 / 16:50 | Does it have a silver lining ? 22:10 // 17, Is it worse than a recession a real recession ? ? 21 - What s a recession happening? Or is it a soft landing? 26: Is it just a recession about to be a soft-landing? 27: Is the economy going to be worse than we think it s about to get better? or is it getting worse than it s getting worse ? 35:00/16:30 / 17:00 +
00:00:00.000As the economy slowly slides into recession, the Biden administration prepares to blame Republicans.
00:00:05.000The media cry cheer as Facebook reinstates Donald Trump, and we must all respect the pronouns of alleged rapists who now say they are female.
00:00:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.
00:00:25.000economy 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.
00:00:33.000growth in the fourth quarter was down slightly from a 3.2% annualized rate in the third quarter, according to the Commerce Department.
00:00:44.000Businesses cut back their spending on equipment as well, presumably in expectation that things are about to get Very slow in the American economy.
00:00:51.000The 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.
00:01:02.000So we are certainly sliding into something.
00:01:04.000Many people are saying that recession is about to happen.
00:01:06.000The 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.
00:01:14.000So as inflation begins to wane and as those interest rates increase, The economy is going to go into a certain level of stagnation.
00:01:21.000It may be recession followed by stagnation, or it just may be plain stagnation.
00:01:24.000Whatever it is, the future of the American economy for at least the next couple of years is not going to be particularly strong.
00:01:29.000According to Kathy Bostjanczyk, the chief economist at Nationwide, outside of the labor market, we're releasing a broad-based slowing in economic activity.
00:01:38.000Now, many people in the media are, of course, trying to pitch the idea that a soft landing is imminent.
00:01:44.000A 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.
00:01:54.000And so some excuse is going to have to be come up with if recession does in fact hit.
00:01:58.000And again, recession looks like it is on the way.
00:02:01.000According to the Wall Street Journal, there have now been severe corporate layoffs beyond high-growth tech giants.
00:02:07.000Dow 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.
00:02:17.000The 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.
00:02:26.000It makes sense, again, that Chipotle and Airbus are adding jobs.
00:02:29.000As 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.
00:02:35.000And again, people were not traveling and now they are traveling.
00:02:37.000And so a lot of people got laid off and now they're going to be put back into the travel market again.
00:02:41.000But overall, the economy is certainly slowing.
00:02:44.000And 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.
00:02:58.000When the money comes out of the economy, that is the place where the tide rushes out the fastest.
00:03:02.000However, it's now bleeding over into sort of more mainstream industrial industries.
00:03:06.000This week, four companies trimmed more than 10,000 jobs.
00:03:10.000Still, 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.
00:03:18.000Unlike Microsoft and Alphabet, which announced larger layoffs this month, these companies haven't expanded their workforces dramatically during the pandemic.
00:03:24.000Instead, the leaders of these global giants said they were shrinking to adjust to slowing growth or responding to weaker demand for their products.
00:03:30.000So this is obviously the beginning of something that looks like a serious economic slowdown.
00:03:37.000Recession fears are growing, according to the Washington Post.
00:03:42.000economy growing overall in 2022 at 2.1%, that was wildly outpaced by inflation, and the recession fears continue.
00:03:49.000They say that the figure was a cool-down over the last quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
00:03:53.000The latest figures point to a resilient but slowing economy that has been tempered by the Federal Reserve's aggressive efforts to control inflation.
00:03:58.000Although 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.
00:04:04.000So, this means, again, that somebody has to come up with a plan.
00:04:08.000The plan is going to be to blame Republicans.
00:04:09.000This plan is going to be largely reliant on the debt ceiling fight.
00:04:13.000So, the timing is coincidental, obviously.
00:04:15.000We are about to hit the debt ceiling in the next couple of weeks.
00:04:18.000That does not mean that the United States government will shut down.
00:04:20.000We 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.
00:04:32.000The national parks would close or something like that.
00:04:33.000You'd still get your social security check.
00:04:36.000All that stuff would still end up being processed because there are still mandatory checks that would go out under American law.
00:04:42.000With that said, the debt ceiling fight is now going to be blamed if the economy goes south.
00:04:46.000So Republicans had better be very careful here.
00:04:48.000When the Democrats were in charge of all three branches of the elected government, When they ran the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
00:04:53.000When the economy goes into the tank, it's Democrats who get blamed.
00:04:56.000When Republicans are in charge of the House, the media look for somebody else to blame.
00:05:00.000And that's precisely what is happening right here.
00:05:01.000That is what is going to happen over the debt ceiling.
00:05:03.000CNN's Christine Romans, who is a business reporter for CNN, she...
00:05:08.000Again, it's starting to lead off this narrative.
00:05:10.000It's going to be the popular narrative in the Democratic left circles, in the media.
00:05:14.000The 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.
00:05:58.000But I think, I mean, what I've been getting from my sources all morning is this all feeds into the soft landing camp.
00:06:03.000The 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.
00:06:11.000That's the last part that matters, right?
00:06:13.000If Washington doesn't screw it up with the debt ceiling.
00:06:15.000But 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.
00:06:23.000We had this thing handled, and then in came Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and they ruined everything.
00:06:28.000And so you're going to see the media play up the debt ceiling debate to extraordinary heights.
00:06:33.000They always claim whenever there's a government shutdown that the end of the world is nigh.
00:07:09.000found itself on the verge of a debt ceiling disaster, David Kamen had a front row seat to all the action.
00:07:13.000An 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.
00:07:22.000The government narrowly averted a catastrophic default that year, striking a deal with just days to spare.
00:07:27.000But more than a decade later, with the nation deadlocked again over the debt ceiling, he fears the outcome this time could be far worse.
00:07:33.000Ah, the doom-mongering, the scare-mongering.
00:07:36.000The 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.
00:07:41.000Came in and said, there's a potential for it to be very bad.
00:07:43.000By 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.
00:07:51.000So they're literally just quoting spokespeople for the Biden administration to the effect that if things go south, it's the Republicans' fault.
00:07:57.000There's a real risk to the economy on the line.
00:08:00.000Kamen isn't the only one struck by a foreboding sense of deja vu.
00:08:02.000From 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.
00:08:13.000David 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.
00:08:21.000At a certain point, you don't know where the line is.
00:08:23.000The 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.
00:08:31.000But 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.
00:08:38.000Now again, that is a tremendous rewriting of history if you remember back to 2010-2011 when we did this debt ceiling debate.
00:08:43.000The Republicans didn't know what they wanted, the Democrats didn't know what they wanted, and that is why they came up with sequestration.
00:08:48.000Sequestration was a deal between Republicans and Democrats that would essentially kick in one year from the date of the deal that was made.
00:08:55.000And it said, we will try to find some erstwhile deals, cut spending here and cut spending there.
00:08:59.000And if that doesn't happen, cuts of a particular size will go into place and half of them will come from defense.
00:09:04.000And the idea there from Obama was the cuts will never go into place because Republicans will not want to cut defense.
00:09:08.000And the idea from Republicans was the cuts will never go into place because Obama doesn't want to cut.
00:09:12.000And instead, you had essentially a prisoner's dilemma in which both sides defaulted.
00:09:16.000And 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.
00:09:24.000So, everybody seems to be lying to you, right?
00:09:26.000They're suggesting that 2010, 2011, it was all hunky-dory back then.
00:09:29.000Now, the debt ceiling thing is gonna hit, and that's what's gonna sink the economy.
00:11:14.000However, 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.
00:11:21.000Dan 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.
00:11:31.000And he says, the similarities to now are obvious.
00:11:33.000A Democratic president unsure if the leader of the opposing party has the clout to get his conference on the same page.
00:11:38.000The White House at the time felt Boehner understood and took seriously the dangers of default.
00:11:41.000Pfeiffer says, Now remember, this is all revisionist history.
00:11:49.000that 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.
00:12:00.000The mode of the left is, the last Republican was amazing.
00:12:30.000It is because you're not going to get what you want with this political alignment as it currently is.
00:12:36.000And 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.
00:12:44.000That it's instead the fault of these fractious Republicans who wanted to restructure entitlements which you don't even want in the first place.
00:12:50.000So 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.
00:12:57.000Not 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.
00:13:02.000Democrats right now control the Senate.
00:13:04.000That 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.
00:13:15.000A 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.
00:13:21.000The source described the interaction as good and said no commitments were made.
00:13:24.000Manchin 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.
00:13:33.000And Manchin is exactly right on this, by the way.
00:13:35.000He's also politically savvy by Manchin.
00:13:37.000He signed off on the bottom line of that giant boondoggle $1.7 trillion bill at the end of last year.
00:13:42.000Now he's going to have to run for re-election in West Virginia, a super Republican state, as a Democrat.
00:13:47.000Manchin's incentive structure is that he has to broker some sort of deal here.
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00:14:59.000Manchin 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.
00:15:08.000So, going to Manchin and having him broker something here would probably be the smartest political move.
00:15:12.000And 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.
00:15:18.000I'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.
00:15:34.000Giving Democrats what they want is usually a bad strategy.
00:15:36.000According to the New York Times, quote, Biden hammers Republicans on the economy with an eye on 2024.
00:15:42.000The president has found a welcome foil in a new conservative House majority and its tax and spending plans sharpening a potential reelection message.
00:15:49.000Biden 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.
00:15:56.000By 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.
00:16:03.000Republican leaders, quite properly, are focused on the problem of entitlements.
00:16:06.000Donald Trump was like, I'm not dealing with that.
00:16:08.000He said, I understand the American people.
00:16:10.000They say they want to lower spending, but they don't actually want to restructure entitlements.
00:16:18.000He happens to be right on the merits that the politics of touching entitlements are very scary for Republicans.
00:16:23.000And the problem for Trump, obviously, is that once he was president, he should have used that power in order to restructure entitlements.
00:16:29.000When he was running for president, it made a lot of sense not to actually talk about restructuring entitlements.
00:16:33.000Americans don't like to hear about that sort of stuff.
00:16:35.000In 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.
00:16:46.000Biden said, quote, at the time I was sworn in, pandemic was raging and the economy was reeling.
00:16:51.000And then he talks about how much money he spent and how he is building the economy again.
00:16:55.000Now, the economy is going to a weak place, which means the Republicans have a lot to run on come 2024.
00:17:02.000The inflation rate, despite all of the happy talk, is still riding at well above 6% at this point.
00:17:07.000So it's not as though things have gone back to normal.
00:17:09.000And it's not as though even when they do go back to normal, we're going to have a booming economy.
00:17:12.000So Republicans will be able to run against Biden on the economy, unless they hand him a bat to hit them with.
00:17:18.000So 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.
00:17:29.000Why, he asks, would Americans give up the progress we've made for the chaos they are suggesting?
00:17:33.000He 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.
00:17:38.000The 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.
00:17:46.000By the way, it ain't gonna be $31 trillion for long.
00:18:36.000The 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.
00:18:43.000There are a few sporadic polls that will show him beating Joe Biden, but overall, he tends to run weaker than Joe Biden.
00:18:48.000Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis in Florida seems to be running better than Joe Biden.
00:18:51.000He's a much more disciplined candidate.
00:18:52.000He doesn't tweet odd things on Truth Social.
00:18:55.000He doesn't go out there and say things that provide fodder for the opposition.
00:18:59.000He didn't lose to a dead man in his basement, for example.
00:19:02.000And so a lot of Democrats are starting to play the same game they played in 2015-2016.
00:19:08.000They may get exactly what they bargained for in 2015-2016.
00:19:09.000You recall that in 2015-2016, the left really elevated Trump.
00:19:15.000They 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.
00:19:23.000And of course, that turned out to be a horrible strategy.
00:19:26.000However, in the 2022 cycle, they actually did that again, and it worked.
00:19:29.000They elevated Donald Paul Duck in New Hampshire.
00:19:31.000They spent a bunch of money on him in New Hampshire.
00:19:33.000They elevated Hershel Walker in Georgia.
00:19:35.000They 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.
00:19:48.000So now they are attempting to do the same thing with Donald Trump and they've discovered the secret sauce.
00:19:52.000The secret sauce is the more they attack Trump, the more Republicans come to Trump's defense.
00:20:05.000The 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.
00:20:13.000But the reason that Democrats are cry-cheering over Trump's reinstatement to Facebook is twofold.
00:20:17.000One, they would like to see Trump be the nominee.
00:20:19.000Two, they make a boatload of money off of Donald Trump.
00:20:23.000The Washington Post, since Donald Trump left office, has lost 500,000 subscribers.
00:20:27.000That is because the news is far less interesting without Donald Trump in it.
00:20:30.000It's because Donald Trump sells newspapers.
00:20:33.000Say whatever he will about the guy, he moves product.
00:20:35.000And the media are in the product moving business.
00:20:37.000All of the talk about how principled they are.
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00:23:34.000Facebook'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.
00:23:43.000So Facebook looking to say, yep, this is for democracy.
00:23:46.000We're going to put Donald Trump back on.
00:23:48.000It's going to drum up a lot of energy, a lot of focus, and hopefully for them, a lot of ad dollars.
00:23:53.000So make no mistake when they're talking about, well, this is about content moderation.
00:24:51.000We think the risk to public safety has materially and significantly receded.
00:24:57.000But 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.
00:25:09.000I don't see any sign the risk has gone down.
00:25:12.000In fact, some of his posts on Truth Social are disgusting.
00:26:06.000And, you know, look, Donald Trump's reaction was to mock them anyway.
00:26:10.000Okay, so, you know, this is going to be fun to watch for the media.
00:26:14.000They will make more money off of this.
00:26:15.000Meanwhile, the person who they're really scared of is DeSantis, pretty obviously speaking.
00:26:20.000In 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.
00:26:30.000She did poorly in 2018, in 2020, and in 2022.
00:26:34.000She is trying to run for re-election again.
00:26:36.000She's running against Harmeet Dhillon.
00:26:38.000Full disclosure, Harmeet Dhillon was our lawyer in our case that we filed against the Biden administration, suing them to remove the OSHA VAX mandate.
00:26:50.000According 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.
00:26:58.000He said, I think we need to change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC.
00:27:01.000I like what Harmeet has said about getting the RNC out of DC. We need some fresh thinking.
00:27:05.000McDaniel has honed the RNC since the beginning of Trump's term in the White House.
00:27:08.000While 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.
00:27:20.000Is 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?
00:27:26.000McDaniel is currently touting the endorsements of more than 100 members ahead of Friday's vote.
00:27:30.000She needs support from 85 on a secret ballot to win another term.
00:27:33.000Dillon right now has public support from at least 32 members of the committee.
00:27:36.000As I've said before, I don't think you get to lose this many elections consecutively and retain your job.
00:27:40.000It is sort of fascinating, however, to see the internal politics of the RNC.
00:27:44.000According 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.
00:27:51.000The 168 members of the RNC are gathering in Southern California to select their own leader on Friday.
00:27:56.000Interviews 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.
00:28:01.000While 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.
00:28:10.000Mac Brown, chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky, said this isn't 2016.
00:28:15.000Jonathan 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.
00:28:24.000Barnett 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.
00:28:35.000And Democrats are freaking out about this because it could spell the death of the Biden administration.
00:28:39.000Now, speaking of death, you should have a will.
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00:29:03.000I can't stress how important it is to get this done.
00:30:04.000And 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.
00:30:13.000So for example, Don Lemon is turning that spinal tap speaker all the way up to 11.
00:30:18.000Here he was yesterday suggesting that Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republicans across the nation, they're trying to ban books.
00:30:25.000It's like the 1950s again, said the gay black man on national television.
00:30:30.000Another challenge brought up by one of the school board members, the definition of age appropriate.
00:30:35.000How do you define what is age appropriate in this vetting process?
00:30:39.000I 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.
00:30:47.000I 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.
00:30:55.000It feels like the 1950s all over again, with, like, book banning.
00:30:59.000This is cancel culture from people who are... I guess they just want our kids to be ignorant and to control the teachers.
00:31:11.000So Don Lemon is a gay black man on national television complaining that we now live back in the 1950s.
00:31:17.000I've noticed that he's, for the third time, a gay black man on national television.
00:31:22.000If this were the 1950s, I have a feeling that would not be a thing that is happening right now.
00:31:25.000Also, 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.
00:31:33.000What's taught to your kids is the chief issue in the classroom.
00:31:35.000That school libraries are not, in fact, free speech zones.
00:31:38.000You don't get to view pornography in the school library, for example.
00:31:42.000Don Lemon seems incapable of actually understanding any of that.
00:31:45.000But it's the panic level that really is the great indicator.
00:31:48.000So 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.
00:31:55.000And the reason for that is because DeSantis has been extraordinarily effective as governor of Florida.
00:32:37.000If you want to draw good teachers, you pay them more.
00:32:39.000If you want to break the teachers unions, you offer people the possibility of good pay for good work.
00:32:44.000That's what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida right now, and the left does not know how to counter.
00:32:47.000According 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.
00:32:53.000They're also lifting the minimum salary to more than $48,000, eighth highest among states according to the NEA.
00:33:00.000Addressing a classroom in a Jacksonville school, the governor said the money would help ward off a teacher shortage.
00:33:04.000The nationwide average, she said, is three vacancies for every school.
00:33:06.000She said Florida has kept the average openings to about half of that level.
00:33:10.000The plan devotes just as much attention to making sure teachers get the full benefit of their pay raise.
00:33:14.000It proposes a policy known as Paycheck Protection, which blocks the school from extracting members' dues on unions' behalf.
00:33:22.000So, he's giving teachers back more money at the same time that he's fighting the teachers unions.
00:33:26.000And, he's actually forcing teachers to teach curricula that parents would like to see them teach.
00:33:30.000This has all been having a real impact on how teachers are actually teaching in the state of Florida.
00:33:34.000according 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.
00:33:46.000To which I say, good, you're doing a crap job.
00:33:50.000It's time for you to actually re-examine what you are teaching students in the classroom.
00:33:53.000I don't want your woke TikTok garbage.
00:34:10.000It 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.
00:34:17.000You should be the most careful people.
00:34:19.000Shouldn't be that the least careful people are in charge of classrooms.
00:34:21.000Of course you should feel like parents are looking over your shoulder.
00:34:40.000Teachers should have in the back of their mind, am I violating the law?
00:34:44.000For example, the findings draw on data gathered during the latest American Instructional Resources Survey, which RAND has administered each spring since 2019.
00:34:52.000In the last iteration, RAND surveyed 8,000 educators on teaching English, math, and science, and analyzed 1,500 open-ended responses from teachers.
00:34:59.000Data suggests that limitations placed on how teachers can address contentious topics may be leading to consequences for teachers' working conditions and for student learning.
00:35:07.000Teachers described working in conditions filled with worry, anxiety, and even fear.
00:35:15.000Before 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.
00:35:19.000I would like for you to be nervous about that.
00:35:22.000What 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.
00:35:29.000You're an authority figure, but that authority is absolutely removable.
00:35:34.000It 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.
00:35:40.000The new report comes during intense political, cultural, and legislative battles over what students should learn about race, racism, U.S.
00:35:45.000history, gender, and sexual orientation at schools.
00:35:47.000A 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.
00:35:57.000Laws limiting instruction on race, racism, and history made up 28% of the total.
00:36:01.00014 such pieces of legislation have passed in at least 18 states.
00:36:07.000Laws 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.
00:36:18.000At 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.
00:36:57.000Frank 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.
00:37:08.000It seems almost everywhere you turn in the world wants to make you more woke, but not my friend Dennis Prager.
00:37:23.000The 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.
00:37:34.000When 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.
00:37:40.000Dennis has been a source of wisdom in not only my life, but in my parents' life.
00:37:44.000My 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.
00:37:51.000The first two episodes of PragerU Master's Program are available to stream right now, only on DailyWirePlus.
00:37:56.000So, head on over to DailyWirePlus.com, become a member, watch PragerU Master's Program, and more.
00:38:04.000Okay, 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.
00:38:15.000Apparently 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.
00:38:27.000So 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.
00:38:38.000A lot of people were very angry about that.
00:38:46.000Well, 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.
00:38:58.000DeSantis in a speech to the Florida Sheriff's Association on Monday expressed disappointment in the Parkland school shooter being given life in prison.
00:39:04.000He said maybe 8 out of 12 have to agree or something.
00:39:06.000We can't be in a situation where one person can just derail this.
00:39:10.000His comments came as part of a discussion about what lawmakers may look at in the upcoming legislative session beginning March 7th.
00:39:15.000Now, remember, it would still take a unanimous verdict to find somebody guilty.
00:39:18.000You're just talking about the penalty that would be applied after the person is found guilty.
00:39:22.000So you find somebody guilty for murdering and raping a child, and now there's a separate hearing as to what the sentence should be.
00:39:28.000Should the sentence be death or should the sentence be life in prison?
00:39:30.000If 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.
00:39:38.000And DeSantis is saying, no, that's not the way that it should work.
00:39:40.000This isn't a question of whether they're guilty or not.
00:39:42.000We've already established their guilt.
00:39:43.000Now the only question is whether they should die or not.
00:39:46.000And so he wants to lower the standard.
00:39:47.000Apparently a lot of people on the left are very upset about all of this.
00:39:50.000I have trouble, I think, explaining why they are so upset about all of this.
00:39:55.000Florida's requirement for unanimous agreement on the death penalty is relatively recent.
00:39:58.000A 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.
00:40:10.000If a jury came to a decision for the death penalty, a judge could still step in and say no.
00:40:14.000Supreme Court said Florida's capital sentencing gave too much power to judges over juries.
00:40:18.000So following that ruling, legislators in 2016 passed a bill requiring a 10-2 jury majority.
00:40:23.000The state Supreme Court said it was in violation of the state constitution because it was non-unanimous.
00:40:27.000The next year, legislators passed a bill requiring unanimous jury recommendations.
00:40:31.000That 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.
00:40:41.000The 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.
00:40:48.000So, again, a lot of people on the left are apparently mad about this.
00:40:53.000When 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.
00:41:06.000Okay, 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.
00:41:19.000As Mark Thiessen writes over at the Washington Post, McCarthy is 100% right to make this move.
00:41:25.000He says, Omar is an anti-Semite who has no business serving on a committee that helps set policy toward Israel.
00:41:29.000Schiff 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.
00:41:39.000Neither deserves access to our nation's secrets.
00:41:41.000That's putting aside the fact that Swallow was apparently nailing a Chinese spy.
00:41:45.000In 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.
00:41:55.000The 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.
00:42:05.000Israel, the other day, had to go into Jenin, which is a terrorist hotbed.
00:42:53.000So him being deprived of a committee assignment makes perfect sense.
00:42:56.000Adam 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.
00:43:10.000Hello, I'm Congressman Adam Schiff with some troubling news.
00:43:13.000Today, 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.
00:43:23.000We knew it would be bad when the Republicans took over, but it's far worse than we expected.
00:43:28.000But I can promise you this, this is not the end of my fight for our democracy.
00:43:54.000According 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.
00:44:02.000She has not explicitly said she would run for re-election.
00:44:04.000That is because she is one million years old and no longer sentient, according to pretty much all sources.
00:44:08.000Schiff said, quote, we're in the fight of our lives for the future of this country.
00:44:12.000And so he announced that he is going to run for the Senate again.
00:44:16.000In his campaign announcement, he said, Schiff has been elected to Congress in 2000.
00:44:18.000and 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.
00:44:26.000Schiff 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.
00:44:41.000Schiff joins Representative Katie Porter, 49, who, of course, announced her run this month.
00:44:46.000She is the person with the whiteboard who writes a bunch of stuff and then people get super excited because she has a whiteboard.
00:44:50.000She has yet to write anything super intelligent on the whiteboard, but it's okay.
00:44:58.000So she is more in line with the age that we expect of our nation's top leaders.
00:45:02.000Barbara 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.
00:46:10.000We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing THE labels, such as THE POOR, THE MENTALLY ILL, THE FRENCH, THE DISABLED, THE COLLEGE EDUCATED.
00:46:18.000Instead, use wordings such as PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES, and use these descriptions only when clearly relevant.
00:47:01.000You're also not supposed to say, the poor.
00:47:03.000So 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.