Joe Biden says the U.S. will militarily defend Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion. Monkeypox freaks out the world and stocks continue to edge into bear market territory as the administration desperately flails. Ben Shapiro's show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com. I trust the professionals over at Birch Gold and you should too. I m a customer of Birch Gold along with thousands of others. I have countless five-star reviews and an A+ rating with the BBB. You should too! Text Ben to 989898 to get started. Well, your 2022 bingo card is getting rather full. Now we have recession, now we have monkeypox, and we have possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Here is the breaking news that we all need to be paying attention to: 1. China might invade Taiwan. 2. Taiwan is significantly more strategically important than Ukraine is by any stretch of the imagination. 3. China is much larger country than the United States. 4. China does have massive military technology. 5. Taiwan has a base of operations in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 6. China has a massive military presence in the South Pacific. 7. There are some real problems with China. 8. China could take Taiwan? 9. Taiwan would be a problem? And so on and so on, etc, etc., etc. The point is... This is the point. And the point is: What would China do if China were to invade Taiwan and take Taiwan and then invade Taiwan, what would they do with it? And what would be the impact on Taiwan do with Taiwan do they have in the area of the Strait of Taiwan and all the other things that they could do with the island of the archipelago in the Pacific Sea? We would be pushed out to sea to encircle Japan and the rest of the place that they have a better access to the middle half of the Atlantic Ocean? How would they take Taiwan out of the middle place of the sky and all that sort of stuff like that kind of thing like that? This kind of stuff? The real problem is the real problem that China does not have a real problem with Taiwan like that... And they would have to be the real problems that we're not getting any of those things like that, right, etc. And they're not going to be any of that?
00:01:34.000I didn't have that one on the bingo card.
00:01:36.000And we have possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
00:01:39.000So this morning's breaking news that the president of the United States had gone out on a limb and he had said that the United States would militarily defend Taiwan if Taiwan was invaded.
00:01:49.000This is what the president of the United States said in a press conference and There are some good things about this and there's some bad things about this.
00:01:57.000The bad thing about this is that it is utterly unclear whether this is in fact the case.
00:02:21.000Joe Biden saying that the commitment that we made is to defend Taiwan militarily.
00:02:25.000Now, the real commitment that we have is to give Taiwan the weaponry to defend itself militarily if China were to invade.
00:02:31.000On a strategic level, on a geo-strategic level, it is not a bad thing for China to think that the United States might directly involve itself militarily if Taiwan were to be invaded.
00:02:40.000After all, Taiwan is significantly more strategically important than Ukraine is by any stretch of the imagination.
00:02:46.000Ukraine is not the source of a wild variety of really vital resources to the world.
00:02:52.000And they're responsible for some grain, but that grain can be made up in other places.
00:02:56.000Taiwan is responsible for nearly all advanced semiconductors on planet Earth at this point, which means that if China were to grab control of that, it would deprive the United States of pretty much all the advanced technology necessary to run an enormous number of our industries as well as a lot of our military tech, because a lot of that stuff, those semiconductors are used in a lot of the machinery that we use in the military as well.
00:03:15.000So there's that problem if China were to take Taiwan.
00:03:17.000There's the problem of China beginning to encircle Australia.
00:03:21.000There's the problem of China beginning to encircle Japan.
00:03:23.000There's essentially the fact that the United States would then have no real base of operations, would be increasingly pushed out to sea in terms of geo-strategic military-naval impact.
00:03:33.000There's some real problems with China taking Taiwan.
00:03:36.000And the reality is that if China attempted to take Taiwan at this point in time, Taiwan could inflict significant casualties on the Chinese, but China would win.
00:03:44.000I mean, China is a much larger country.
00:04:11.000This is us trying to scare the Chinese off the mark.
00:04:14.000It's us trying to say to the Chinese, listen, you should just know upfront that if things get hot here, we will be there with our weaponry ready to fight you.
00:04:23.000The downside is, it's not really true if that's the case.
00:04:25.000And it's not clear that that's the case.
00:04:27.000The United States has not made itself militarily ready for an actual battle over Taiwan with the Chinese.
00:04:32.000We don't have the resources in theater.
00:04:34.000We don't have the ability to resupply, as I say.
00:04:36.000We don't actually have the ability to fight and win a war for Taiwan at this point because we have depleted our military resources, and we've particularly depleted our naval resources over the course of the last 20 years or so.
00:04:49.000So you saw Joe Biden's team actually trying to walk this sucker back as soon as he said it, which is the third time in the last year that Joe Biden has suggested there will be military intervention directly by the United States.
00:04:59.000And his team has said, well, not so fast.
00:05:03.000Again, if you want to make this the new policy of the United States, I'm all for it.
00:05:07.000I think that the United States does have a massive strategic interest in protecting the independence of Taiwan.
00:05:11.000I think that the kind of strategic ambiguity as to whether there is one China, including Taiwan, or whether Taiwan is an independent nation is incredibly stupid.
00:05:21.000It has its own independent government.
00:05:22.000It is not governed by the Chinese government, nor should it be.
00:05:24.000And the fact that the West was strategically ambiguous with regard to Hong Kong for 20 years means that Hong Kong is now subjected to Chinese tyranny and they literally just walked in with no casualties and took over the place and no one said boo.
00:05:35.000So either you draw a hard line or you don't draw a hard line.
00:05:37.000So on a geostrategic level, I'm very much in favor of the idea that the United States is going to stop China from invading Taiwan.
00:05:43.000On an actual practical level, can we do that?
00:05:45.000And are we making commitments that we're unable to fulfill?
00:05:50.000And so when you have Joe Biden out front saying things that Maybe we wish were true, but maybe we don't actually have the stones or the brass to back up.
00:05:57.000The problem is, if Joe Biden says, we will get ourselves involved militarily, that could also have one of two impacts.
00:06:03.000One is that it tells the Chinese, don't do it because the price is going to be too high.
00:06:07.000And even if you were to win Taiwan, you would then be in a state of war with the United States and you really don't want that.
00:06:13.000Possibility number two is that Xi looks at Biden and he says, I'm going to call your bluff.
00:06:18.000You've now just ratcheted tensions up.
00:06:20.000I don't think you have the resources in theater to prevent us from actually taking Taiwan.
00:06:26.000I think you might have those resources in theater over the next couple of years if this is your new strategic proposal.
00:06:31.000And so I'm actually going to try to take Taiwan like ASAP.
00:06:33.000I'm going to try and go in there and take it before you can get more resources over there.
00:06:38.000So this is the problem with getting out over your skis the way that Joe Biden has.
00:06:40.000If you're going to announce a policy like this, it actually has to be a real policy change with the brass to back it up.
00:06:45.000And when I say the brass, I mean the military wherewithal to actually back up the plan.
00:06:49.000According to the Wall Street Journal, President Biden said the United States would respond militarily to defend Taiwan if China tries to take it by force, sparking uncertainty over whether the United States was moving away from its longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity and prompting a clarification from the White House.
00:07:01.000And again, this is what happens with Biden a lot.
00:07:04.000Is you're never sure whether it's the dementia talking or an actual policy change?
00:07:07.000Is applesauce for brains actually saying something that is a real policy shift for the United States?
00:07:11.000Or is the night nurse team from the press comms corps going to have to come out and explain away what he was just trying to do?
00:07:19.000Biden's comments were met with anger from Beijing and praise from Taipei.
00:07:23.000In August and October of last year, the president answered questions on Taiwan by suggesting a break in U.S.
00:07:27.000policy toward the democratically self-ruled island, only to have aides jump in to say nothing had changed.
00:07:33.000This time, he was speaking alongside the Japanese Prime Minister in Tokyo during his first trip to Asia as Commander-in-Chief.
00:07:39.000The president was asked if the United States would get involved militarily in response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after declining to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia's invasion.
00:07:47.000He said, yes, that's the commitment that we made.
00:07:49.000Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin raised his voice when asked at a regular briefing about Biden's remarks.
00:07:55.000He said China has no room for compromise and concession on core concerns like Taiwan and will take firm action to safeguards its sovereignty and security interests.
00:08:03.000Biden in his Monday remarks stressed the U.S.
00:08:05.000remains committed to the Bedrock One China policy, which recognizes the present rulers as the only legitimate government and acknowledges Beijing's claim that Taiwan is a part of the nation.
00:08:15.000But the president said that policy does not give China the right to forcefully take over the island.
00:08:19.000He says, we agree with the one China policy and all the attendant agreements we made.
00:08:22.000But the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, would just not be appropriate.
00:08:27.000It would be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.
00:08:29.000So it's a burden that is even stronger.
00:08:31.000He also played down the possibility China would try to take Taiwan.
00:08:34.000He says, my expectation is this will not happen.
00:08:36.000But Joe Biden's expectations count for nothing, considering that he also expected the Taliban would never take Afghanistan, which happened to be the case for approximately negative 37 seconds.
00:08:45.000And he also suggested that the Russians would probably not invade Ukraine.
00:08:48.000And then he suggested they would invade Ukraine.
00:08:49.000And then he suggested the Russians would fully take Ukraine.
00:08:51.000And then he suggested that we were going to beat them back.
00:08:53.000So Joe Biden's ability to predict things is extremely limited.
00:08:56.000And the man can't predict his own ballot movements at this point.
00:09:01.000Taiwan is thankful to the United States for its rock solid commitment, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Au.
00:09:06.000Responding to Biden's commitment, a White House official underscored the president's assertion that American policy toward Taiwan has not changed.
00:09:13.000The official said Biden was referring to the US.
00:09:15.000obligation to bolster Taipei's ability to defend itself, which is enshrined in the Taiwan Relations Act.
00:09:20.000That act, passed in 1979, portrays any attempt to determine Taiwan's political future through anything other than peaceful means as a threat to American interests.
00:09:27.000Congress is committed to selling defensive weapons to Taiwan, but Washington has previously avoided saying whether it would intervene directly in the event of an invasion.
00:09:35.000And again, he has said that in the past, like routinely, and then his team has to keep walking it back, which makes us look confused, and it makes it look as though we have no plan over there, which is, of course, not a good thing.
00:09:46.000Now, I will say for Joe Biden that it seems as though some of the moves that he is now making with regard to China are good.
00:09:53.000So he is traveling over to Asia, and he's doing what presidents of both parties have been attempting to do over the course of the last 10 years, maybe the only bipartisan policy in the United States at this point, and that is to try to Hem in China by making alliances with the surrounding nations.
00:10:07.000According to the New York Times, Biden has enlisted a dozen Asia-Pacific nations to join a new loosely defined economic bloc meant to counter China's dominance and reassert American influence in the region five years after his predecessor withdrew the United States from a sweeping trade accord it had negotiated itself.
00:10:21.000The alliance will bring the United States together with Japan, South Korea, and India to establish new rules of commerce in the fastest growing part of the world and offer an alternative to Beijing's leadership.
00:10:29.000Wary of liberal opposition at home, Biden's new partnership will avoid the market access provisions of traditional trade deals, raising the question of how meaningful it will be.
00:10:36.000So again, if it's empty sort of stuff, then it really doesn't do anything.
00:10:40.000If it's just like, hey, we're all friends, isn't that great?
00:10:42.000You actually have to have a regional trade bloc that liberalizes the economic trading rules with these nations in order to create a counter-incentive for them to join with the Chinese, who are a huge security threat on the border of all these countries.
00:10:56.000Biden said, we're going to help all of the country's economies grow faster and fairer.
00:11:00.000The president was sitting alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, as well as Prime Fumio Kishida of Japan for the rollout of the initiative, while other leaders joined the event by video conference.
00:11:10.000This is, again, part of the Biden strategy to try to bring in China, which, again, is a good strategy, and it's been pursued by members of both parties.
00:11:17.000The New York Times tries to cover it as though Trump was not trying to do this.
00:11:20.000He was just doing it through bilateral trade agreements, as opposed to through transnational trade agreements.
00:11:26.000Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says it is by any account the most significant international economic engagement the United States has ever had in this region.
00:11:33.000The launch of it tomorrow in Tokyo marks an important turning point in restoring U.S.
00:11:36.000economic leadership in the region and presenting Indo-Pacific countries an alternative to China's approach to these critical issues.
00:11:41.000And again, I've spoken with top-level Democrats on this particular stuff, I've spoken with top-level Republicans.
00:11:46.000There is a widespread bipartisan consensus.
00:11:50.000There needs to be economic activity designed to counter rising Chinese influence, particularly the Belt and Road Program in China, especially at a time of Chinese weakness.
00:12:00.000And China is not in strong economic position right now.
00:12:05.000The Chinese economy is a bit of a mess, and it's been a bit, when I say a bit, I mean a lot of a mess for a very long time.
00:12:10.000And they are sort of threatening to expand territorial holdings to counter the fact that they are in a bit of an economic mess.
00:12:19.000Alright, coming up, China is now boosting its own security pact with a bunch of island nations in order to spread its actual military power, its hard power, all across the Pacific region.
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00:13:33.000According to the Financial Times, China is intensifying its drive for influence in the Pacific by negotiating security deals with two additional island nations following a pact with the Solomon Islands, according to officials in the United States and allied countries.
00:13:44.000Beijing's talks with Kiribati, a Pacific island nation 3,000 kilometers from Hawaii, where U.S.
00:13:49.000Indo-Pacific Command is based, are the most advanced, the official said.
00:13:51.000They're in talks with Kiribati and at least one more Pacific island country over an agreement that would cover much of the same ground as that with the Solomon Islands, said an intelligence official from U.S.
00:14:00.000The warning that Beijing is trying to further increase its clout in the Pacific came as Joe Biden began his visit to Asia amid regional concerns about China's push for influence.
00:14:10.000So, according to a leaked draft deal from March, the pact with the Solomon Islands could allow China to send its own police and military forces to the islands, a development that shocked the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific from Australia and New Zealand to Japan.
00:14:23.000And now they are setting their sights on Kiribati as well.
00:14:26.000So they're trying again to spread out their territorial footprint across the Pacific region.
00:14:31.000And the United States is trying to counter that.
00:14:34.000Now this is a time, as I say, of economic weakness for the Chinese.
00:14:37.000So the fact that the Biden administration is pursuing more of an anti-China policy is a good thing.
00:14:42.000And again, maybe the only bipartisan part of the American political scene right now.
00:14:48.000Joe Biden, you know, he's kind of, I think it's good.
00:14:51.000I think he's actually approaching a larger scale anti-China approach that is a good thing.
00:14:59.000And so, for example, yesterday, Joe Biden over the weekend, he said that our economy is growing at a faster rate than China.
00:15:04.000He's trying to prop up his own economic plans, but using China as the counter is not a terrible thing here.
00:15:10.000Even in the face of historic economic challenges, our economy is providing and proving to be resilient.
00:15:17.000In fact, just yesterday, an independent analysis projected that the American economy is poised to grow at a faster rate than China and the Chinese economy for the first time in 45 years.
00:15:31.000I mean, listen, it's painful to listen to the guy try to stumble out sentences, but by the same token, you know, what he is saying in competition with China is not a bad thing.
00:15:39.000The reason that China, by the way, is failing is because China has embraced Joe Biden's policies to the fullest, meaning domestic subsidies and massive borrowing plans via huge spending.
00:15:48.000So one of the weird things about the Biden administration is at the same time they're trying to counter rising Chinese influence in the Pacific, which is good.
00:15:54.000They're trying to create free trade blocks, which is good.
00:15:56.000And they're trying to make more overt security guarantees to Taiwan, which if they can back that up, all of that is good.
00:16:01.000They're trying to pursue bad economic policy at home that looks more like China.
00:16:04.000Article in the Wall Street Journal today pointing out that China spends an enormous amount of money on exactly the kind of stuff that the Biden administration likes.
00:16:10.000Quote, China spends much more in helping favored industries with state-directed funds, cheap loans, and other government incentives than other major economies, according to a new study expected to intensify the debate in Washington and elsewhere over Beijing's use of industrial policy.
00:16:23.000The study, to be published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday, finds that China's backing of its companies amounted to at least 1.73% of its gross domestic product in 2019, and that trend is continuing.
00:16:34.000In dollar terms, that's more than $248 billion based on market exchange rates, exceeding China's estimated military spending, or $407 billion based on exchange rates that adjust for different costs across countries.
00:16:45.000China's spending, both as a share of GDP and in dollar terms, is significantly higher than that of seven other economies analyzed in the report, including South Korea, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, the U.S.
00:16:54.000The United States, by contrast, spent 0.39% of its GDP on industrial support in 2019.
00:17:00.000Oddly enough, people failed to see the connection between the fact that China has subsidized domestic industries to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year and the fact that China's economy is failing.
00:17:09.000They treat that as though we should imitate the Chinese.
00:17:11.000Well, maybe the reason China's economy sucks is because they keep redirecting money from what would be their most market-friendly uses and toward a bunch of stuff that the Chinese Politburo thinks would be a good idea.
00:17:23.000Beijing's disclosure of subsidies is murky at best, according to China's analysts.
00:17:25.000Its use of industrial policy is one of the most contentious issues involving the country's statist economic model.
00:17:30.000So isolating China, again, all of this is a good thing.
00:17:33.000Maybe the only good thing the Biden administration is doing at this point, but that only works if there is some sort of predictable and reliable Attempt to fulfill promises and the Biden administration so far has been unable to do that in other parts of the world, although they have done a better job in Ukraine.
00:17:50.000And meanwhile, the other headline on your 2022 monkey pox bingo card, you didn't think monkey pox can be on there, did you?
00:17:58.000So now we've shifted from talking about COVID to talking about monkey pox.
00:18:02.000And apparently we're supposed to be very worried about it.
00:18:03.000According to the president of the United States, everybody should be concerned about monkey pox, which is weird because I'm not concerned at all about monkey pox.
00:18:14.000What have your health advisors told you your level of concern should be about monkeypox and the cases that are in the United States and around the world?
00:18:20.000Well, they haven't told me the level of exposure yet, but it is something that everybody should be concerned about.
00:18:26.000We're working on it hard to figure out what we do and what vaccine, if any, may be available for us.
00:18:34.000Should we all be worried about monkeypox?
00:18:37.000According to Sky News in the UK, the UK is facing a significant rise in monkeypox cases over the next week, an expert has warned, as new infections were reported in mainland Europe and the United States.
00:18:47.000More than 100 confirmed or suspected cases have been reported globally, including 20 in the UK, with a majority of infections in Spain linked to a sauna in Madrid.
00:18:56.000Switzerland recorded its first confirmed case on Saturday after an infected person developed a fever and a rash and felt unwell.
00:19:01.000The infection followed close physical contact abroad, which is a euphemism.
00:19:04.000The affected person is isolating at home.
00:19:07.000Officials in the Netherlands said on Saturday that several patients had contracted monkeypox a day after the country recorded its first case.
00:19:13.000And in Germany, at least two cases of monkeypox have been recorded in Berlin after the country's first infection was detected in Munich on Friday.
00:19:19.000Apparently, it has now appeared in a patient in New York City, as well as some people in Florida.
00:19:25.000Israel also reported its first case on Saturday, a man in his 30s who had just returned from a trip to Western Europe.
00:19:33.000So why exactly am I not particularly concerned about it?
00:19:35.000Well, because it turns out that it's sexually transmitted, apparently.
00:19:38.000And so the best science that we have available suggests that it is dudes screwing one another that is creating the spread of monkeypox.
00:19:44.000According to The Guardian, a senior advisor for the WHO has said the monkeypox outbreak seems to be spreading through sexual contact and warned that case numbers could spike over the summer months as people attend major summer gatherings and festivals.
00:19:55.000David Heyman, chair of the WHO's Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential, led a meeting of the group on Friday because of the urgency of the situation.
00:20:04.000Heyman told Reuters the WHO is working on the theory that cases so far identified were driven by sexual contact.
00:20:10.000What seems to be happening now is it got into the population as a sexual form, as a genital form, and is being spread as are sexually transmitted infections, which has amplified its transmission around the world, said Heyman.
00:20:20.000Heyman is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, He said the monkeypox outbreak did not resemble the early days of COVID because it does not transmit as easily.
00:20:29.000The most important message is you can protect yourself.
00:20:32.000So we are going to do the same thing now that we've done in the past.
00:20:35.000We're going to pretend that a disease that is particularly affecting people who engage in a particular type of activity actually might hit you.
00:20:45.000They say, as we enter the summer season, with mass gatherings, festivals, and parties, I am concerned at the admission that the transmission of monkeypox could accelerate.
00:20:53.000This is according to Hans Kluge, the WHO's top official on the continent.
00:20:57.000He says the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity.
00:21:01.000But he's warning that you shouldn't go to, like, big events.
00:21:04.000Britain had registered, by the way, 20 monkeypox infections as of Friday.
00:21:07.000A notable proportion of them were among gay and bisexual men.
00:21:11.000But we are all supposed to apparently now not go to mass gatherings because we might slip and fall onto asexually transmitted disease in some way.
00:21:22.000I'm just going to note here that the scientific differential with regard to expectations and behavior is really, really astonishing.
00:21:39.000First, when interest rates rise, credit card debt gets more expensive.
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00:22:55.000I was double-vaccinated and I had Omicron.
00:22:57.000We're still supposed to vax 1 million times consecutively until 80% of our body weight is actually composed.
00:23:02.000Advice number two is I agree with Mayor Adams that when you're in an indoor space, you should be wearing a mask.
00:23:05.000White House, we are supposed to continue masking up.
00:23:08.000Here's Ashish Jha from the White House saying, when you are in a crowded area this summer, you should continue to wear a surgical mask so we all feel better about one another.
00:23:16.000Advice number two is I agree with Mayor Adams that when you're in indoor space, you should be wearing a mask.
00:23:21.000I feel that very strongly that in crowded indoor spaces, in places with high transmission, people should be doing.
00:23:27.000Okay, so we're supposed to all mask up in public places because after all, we have to stop this or slow this.
00:23:35.000Well, we can't do any of those things, actually.
00:23:37.000Pretty much everybody has immunity, either natural or vax, at this point.
00:23:41.000But we're going to call on you to do all those things, right?
00:23:43.000We're going to shut down businesses for a couple of years.
00:23:45.000We're going to shut down the world economy and destroy it.
00:23:47.000We're going to make sure that your small business never opens again.
00:23:49.000We're going to keep your kids out of school.
00:23:50.000We're going to mask up your small children.
00:23:51.000We're going to force you to jab your kids, like, several times in a row.
00:23:54.000We're going to do all of those things to stop the spread of COVID.
00:23:57.000If you suggest that Monkeypox is not a global crisis, and that it is instead being driven by gay men having sex with one another, this apparently is really, really bad.
00:24:06.000Because you can't expect gay men not to have sex with one another for like a month.
00:24:09.000This is according to Greg Gonsalves over at Yale.
00:24:24.000And it's so telling about the sort of activity that we are expected as human beings to engage in versus what we are expected not to engage in.
00:24:30.000So like breathing, not jabbing your kids, like all that stuff.
00:24:43.000But if you say to people, perhaps to prevent the spread of monkeypox, you shouldn't go to a sauna and screw somebody else, then apparently you have violated all strictures of decency when it comes to human behavior.
00:25:05.000If you say it is, you are perpetuating stigma and ignorance, damaging the public health response to this, and endangering lives.
00:25:12.000Well, I mean, I'm not saying that it is purely a gay disease.
00:25:14.000I mean, presumably, a bisexual person could have sex with a person of the opposite sex and transmit the disease.
00:25:19.000But when you see that this is being transmitted largely among gay men, then you have to say that it is largely being transmitted among gay men.
00:25:25.000I mean, that happens to be the fact of the case.
00:25:29.000But the goal here is always to present that sexual activity has nothing to do with any of this sort of stuff.
00:25:38.000PLOS is the Public Library of Science.
00:25:41.000And they have an entire article on this, saying stigma directed at a particular group of individuals fuels fear and seriously impedes upon outbreak investigation, case identification and public health interventions.
00:25:50.000The repercussions of labeling HIV infection a homosexual disease led to unsolved suffering in gay communities in the 80s who were blamed for the epidemic.
00:25:57.000Well, I mean, the reality is that in the 80s, there was an attempt by a lot of public intellectuals to pretend that it wasn't predominantly being spread in the gay community.
00:26:05.000And there was a massive panic that straight people were going to spread HIV at exorbitant rates, which was not the case.
00:26:10.000By the way, none of this is to justify discrimination against homosexual people or people who engage in this activity, but to not Tell the truth about which diseases are linked to which kind of, I mean, like, we will link your breathing on another person to COVID and we will blame you and we will shame you if you don't get the vaccine.
00:26:26.000But if we say that a disease is spreading predominantly among gay men who are having sex with one another, then it's homophobic?
00:26:31.000Like, that's not the way that this works.
00:26:32.000Describing disease vectors is not homophobic.
00:26:36.000And trying to pretend that it is some act of wild discrimination to describe how diseases are passed is really, really silly.
00:26:44.000It's not only really silly, it's anti-data, but you have Greg Gonsalves saying, Okay, well, I mean, it's not just close physical contact, it's not just us all going to a movie together.
00:27:00.000I mean, we're not all having sex with one another at movies.
00:27:03.000At least not the kind of movies I go to.
00:27:06.000But according to Greg Gonsalves, the answer isn't to shut down all these parties, or tell gay men to stop having sex with them, or dancing in close proximity to each other.
00:28:00.000Educate men on what to watch out for, ask people to stay home if they're sick, or have some unusual lesion pop up even if they aren't planning to have sex.
00:28:07.000If we jump to cancel events and stop having sex, we lose any hope of an effective response later if this doesn't burn itself out.
00:28:14.000Apparently all we had to do to defeat the COVID lockdown, folks, is we should have said from the very beginning, what we need to do is stop People from having promiscuous sex with one another and the entire left would have been like, no, no, that's impossible.
00:28:46.000The best thing is, Greg Gonsalves says, I mean, they don't apply this at all to COVID, but they apply it to monkeypox, which so far has affected like 100 people globally.
00:29:06.000Don't suddenly become work, school, breathing, mass gathering, church negative.
00:29:13.000Educate people on what to watch out for.
00:29:14.000Ask people to stay home if they're sick.
00:29:19.000So apparently, again, now, the chief threat here is that society might encourage people not to have promiscuous sex, and therefore we have to, you know, we wouldn't want to do that.
00:29:29.000So, just going to point out the unbelievable hypocrisy with regard to what we expect people to do versus what we expect people not to do.
00:29:37.000It's unthinkable, unthinkable to ask people not to have promiscuous sex with one another at rock concerts, but it is absolutely thinkable to shut down entire societies for years at a time based on a disease that largely kills the elderly.
00:29:49.000Slow clap for our nation's public intellectuals.
00:29:55.000Meanwhile, speaking of the experts, so remember that time when we were supposed to have an unprecedented economic recovery that was going to just ease right into a boom, considering that we had artificially made the economy comatose in 2020?
00:30:15.000stocks are in the midst of their longest selloff in decades.
00:30:18.000Whether they are close to bottoming is anyone's guess.
00:30:20.000Market selloffs have long stumped strategists trying to predict whether they were close to done.
00:30:24.000Some have concluded with bursts of panicked sellings.
00:30:27.000Others, such as the one lasting from 1973 to 1974, ground to an end after days of subdued trading volumes.
00:30:32.000Many investors and analysts looking back at historic pullbacks believe that the current slump that has put the S&P 500 on the cusp of a bear market still has a way to go.
00:30:40.000The index is down 19% from its January 3rd record, flirting with the 20% decline that would end the bull market that began in March 2020.
00:30:47.000This year's stock sell-off, now in its fifth month, has already gone on far longer than the typical pullback occurring without a recession, according to the Deutsche Bank.
00:30:54.000Yet the Federal Reserve is still in the early stages of its campaign to raise interest rates.
00:30:59.000Meaning financial conditions will tighten further and put more pressure on stocks in the coming months.
00:31:03.000Many people are skeptical the central bank will be able to keep raising rates without tipping the economy into a recession.
00:31:08.000A period when stocks have typically fallen about 30% going back to 1929.
00:31:12.000So it is unclear at this point how deeply the stock market is going to dump.
00:31:16.000But the answer is it ain't gonna be pretty.
00:31:18.000During past bear markets, the stock market dump has ranged anywhere from like 50%, that was October 2007 to 08, to a low of like 25 to 30%.
00:31:35.000David Rosenberg, president and chief economist at Rosenberg Research says, quote, there's not a chance in hell the federal will be able to crush inflation without significantly impairing domestic demand.
00:31:42.000So stock declines have now become just part of what is being predicted.
00:31:47.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Conditions are ripe for a deep bear market.
00:31:53.000With the S&P 500 briefly on Friday down 20% from its January peak, it's very tempting to start trying to call the end of the sell-off.
00:32:00.000The problem is, it's only one of the conditions, for a rally is in place and everyone is scared.
00:32:05.000That worked beautifully for timing the start of the 2020 rebound.
00:32:17.000Surveys of sentiment show fund managers, private investors, and financial newsletters are already at March 2020 levels of caution about stocks.
00:32:23.000Options that protect against market falls haven't been so popular since back then either.
00:32:27.000Consumer sentiment is actually worse than it was then.
00:32:31.000This time, central bankers are scared not by falling markets or by economic outlook, but by inflation.
00:32:36.000Sure, if something major breaks in the financial system, they'll refocus on finance, and a recession could prompt them to rethink rate increases.
00:32:41.000But for now, inflation means falling stock prices are seen merely as a side effect of tighter monetary policy, not a reason to invoke the Fed put and rescue investors.
00:32:50.000There's nothing magical about a fall of 20%, the usual definition of a bear market, but it does crop up a lot.
00:32:55.000In the past 40 years, the S&P 500 bottomed out with a 20% or so peak to trough decline four times, 1990, 1998, 2011, 2018.
00:33:02.000Another four times, it had far bigger losses as true panic took hold.
00:33:07.000It's unclear at this point just exactly what this looks like when we hit the bottom.
00:33:13.000And it is unclear how resilient the economy is either.
00:33:18.000According to Ruth Simon at the Wall Street Journal, small businesses are flashing warning signs on the U.S.
00:33:22.000economy as inflation, supply chain snarls, a shortage of workers, and rising interest rates darken the outlook for entrepreneurs.
00:33:27.000Fifty-seven percent of small business owners expect economic conditions in the U.S.
00:33:31.000to worsen in the next year, up from 42 percent in April, equal to the all-time low recorded in April of 2020.
00:33:37.000Almost six in ten small business owners think that the economic conditions are going to get worse, which they are.
00:33:42.000That measure is one part of a broader confidence index that in May posted its largest year-over-year drop since the COVID shutdowns of April and May 2020.
00:33:50.000Despite rising prices, the portion of small businesses that expects revenue to increase in the coming year fell to 61%, that is down from 79% in May 2020.
00:34:01.000It just feels like there are all these factors that are out of your control, and it doesn't seem like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, said Minnie Long, the owner of Chai Kitchen, manufacturer of kimchi and other fermented Asian-flavored vegetables.
00:34:11.000Again, small businesses and large companies are feeling the strain at this point, and all of this is having a massive impact on Joe Biden's prospect for 2022.
00:34:19.000Things are looking really ugly out there.
00:34:22.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, Biden and his advisors are already grappling with inflation trending near a four-decade high, wavering consumer confidence, headwinds posed by Russia's war in Ukraine.
00:34:34.000Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said, it's this president and his all-Democratic government who have drained American families' pocketbooks.
00:34:40.000Every poll shows our citizens understand that sad reality all too well.
00:34:44.000Already coming up, Joe Biden's numbers, based on the economy, are just horrible.
00:34:48.000And he's going to pay the price for it.
00:34:49.000We'll get some more on that in just one second.
00:34:51.000If you have been worried about the state of the world, well, perhaps you're lacking some sleep.
00:34:55.000Well, let me offer you a way to fix at least that problem.
00:34:58.000This is where your magical Helix Sleep Mattress comes in.
00:35:54.000Hurry on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben.
00:35:57.000Alright folks, if you've seen any of the Daily Wire original documentaries, you know that we are relentless in our pursuit of the truth no matter the subject matter.
00:36:04.000This year, we are confronting radical gender ideology in Matt Walsh's upcoming What Is Woman.
00:36:12.000We've debunked the abortion industry and choosing death.
00:36:15.000And now, exposing the media-driven lies that sanctified George Floyd and gave rise to BLM in The Greatest Lie Ever Told with Candace Owens.
00:36:22.000You've seen how she's been merciless over the last couple of years, calling out the Black Lives Matter movement and the lies that they were built on, the lies that hypnotized the country, and then defrauded it of millions of dollars to speak nothing of the damage it caused and the lies it claimed, especially Black Lives Ruined.
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00:37:01.000So the Biden administration really struggling here.
00:37:09.000The economic numbers for Joe Biden are just brutal.
00:37:12.000A new poll from Axios shows 69% of Americans say that the economy is bad.
00:37:16.00065% said that Biden is slow to react when issues arise.
00:37:20.000And 63% described the state of the country as uneasy and worrying.
00:37:23.000All of which prompted Presidential Chief of Staff Ron Klain to tweet out, I hate to spoil the narrative, But this poll, it's a CBS News poll, shows the president's approval rating moving up and solid public confidence on the two biggest issues he inherited, COVID and jobs.
00:37:39.000The public confidence on COVID is because everyone's already had it.
00:37:42.000And when it comes to jobs, yes, we have a low unemployment rate.
00:37:45.000Also, that poll shows Joe Biden at a 44% approval rating.
00:37:49.000When you're bragging about a 44% approval rating as the chief of staff, that is what we call whistling past the political graveyard right here.
00:37:56.000Even the New York Times is beginning to note how bad things look for the Democrats.
00:38:01.000Standing at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Raphael Warnock led a sermon on the last Sunday before Georgia's Tuesday primaries that was about getting to where you need to go and navigating the challenges ahead.
00:38:12.000Rise up and transform every opposition, every obstacle into an opportunity, Warnock urged.
00:38:16.000He's not explicitly talking about his job as U.S.
00:38:18.000Senator, but he might as well have been.
00:38:20.000For months, nearly all of the political oxygen in Georgia and beyond has been sucked up by ferocious Republican primaries, intraparty feuds that have become proxy wars for Donald Trump's power, fueled by his retribution agenda.
00:38:30.000But the ugliness of the GOP infighting has at times obscured a political landscape that is increasingly tilted in the Republican direction in Georgia and nationally.
00:38:37.000Democrats were excited for Stacey Abrams, the former state legislator and voting rights activist, to jump into the 2022 governor's race, promising a potential rematch of the 2018 contest she only narrowly lost.
00:38:47.000Warnock has emerged not only as a compelling speaker, but as one of his party's strongest fundraisers.
00:38:52.000Yet the growing fear for Democrats is that even the strongest candidates and recruits can outrun President Biden's wheezing approval ratings by only so much, and are at risk of getting washed away in a developing red wave.
00:39:02.000I think 2020 was a referendum on Trump, said Ashley Fogel, 44-year-old Democrat living in Atlanta.
00:39:06.000I don't know if there's that same energy in 2022.
00:39:09.000Already, a Republican-led remapping in Georgia has effectively erased one Democratic House seat and made another vulnerable.
00:39:15.000The challenges facing Democrats are cyclical and structural.
00:39:20.000The Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill could scarcely be narrower.
00:39:22.000The party in power almost always loses in a president's first midterm election, even absent the current overlapping national crises, some of which are beyond Biden's control.
00:39:30.000I love that the New York Times has said, it's not Biden's fault.
00:39:32.000It's not Biden's fault, but it's a little Biden's fault.
00:39:36.000Inside the White House, This political operation has been a subject of quiet griping in some corners for months.
00:39:41.000A furious effort is afoot to reframe 2022 as a choice between the two parties rather than a referendum on democratic rule.
00:39:48.000Aggressive operator longtime Biden advisor has rejoined the administration to sharpen its messaging.
00:39:53.000Yeah, she, Anita Dunn, most famous for putting like a Mao Christmas ornament on a Obama White House Christmas tree.
00:40:01.000The Democratic base is quite demoralized at the moment.
00:40:03.000Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the party's leading progressive voices, put it bluntly, if Georgia was the scene of the highest highs for the Democrats in 2020, turning blue at the presidential level for the first time since 1992, flipping two Senate seats, it's not clear whether the ideologically sprawling and multiracial Biden coalition they unified to oust Trump is replicable.
00:40:22.000This fall, Warnock is expected to face Hershel Walker, the Republican former football star with scant political experience.
00:40:29.000Warnock has already begun leveraging a $23 million war chest to tell voters he feels their pain and to show that he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
00:40:36.000He literally says in one of his ads, I'm not a magician.
00:40:42.000In the Republican race for governor, Brian Kemp, who is going to win his primary with David Perdue, is going to skunk Stacey Abrams.
00:40:49.000According to the New York Times, they say Ms.
00:40:51.000Abrams has emerged as a national star among Democrats.
00:40:53.000But privately, Democratic strategists fear her high watermark might have come in 2018, when she lost in a Democratic wave year.
00:41:00.000Most polling shows a close race for governor and Senate with a slight Republican advantage.
00:41:04.000So good luck to Democrats in all of this.
00:41:07.000They're trying to spin their way out of this and it isn't going particularly well.
00:41:10.000National Economic Council Chair Brian Deese, who's become a regular staple on cable news now because they have to trot somebody out to try and justify this debacle, economically speaking.
00:41:18.000He was asked specifically on CNN whether the United States can avoid a recession and he dodged the question.
00:41:28.000Well, there are always risks, but here's where I think we are.
00:41:31.000Our economy is in a transition from what has been the strongest recovery in modern American history to what can be a period of more stable and resilient growth that works better for families.
00:41:41.000And so if we keep our focus on bringing inflation down in a way that actually helps families... But you're not saying no?
00:41:48.000Look, there are always risks, but we feel very good about where the United States is, particularly when you look on the global landscape.
00:42:06.000It is still near the highest levels in four decades.
00:42:10.000Brian, how did the administration get that so wrong?
00:42:13.000Look, a lot of things have changed over the course of the last year, and we've dealt with a lot of unexpected challenges.
00:42:19.000As I mentioned, the Delta wave of COVID, Omicron on top of that, and more recently, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which has sent gyration through global energy markets.
00:42:51.000The Fed has the major cudgel here, but that involves raising interest rates, which has its own problems.
00:43:00.000There are other things you could do, like relative to tariffs or student loans that would be unpopular.
00:43:07.000I mean, there really aren't a lot of tools here for him, and that's what makes this so uncomfortable.
00:43:14.000Yeah, sad story here for the Democrats.
00:43:17.000So they're talking about kind of throwing everything in the world against the wall.
00:43:20.000And they're talking about, they'll talk abortion, or they'll talk racism, or they'll talk about ending student loans, student loan debt, or they'll talk about how Republicans are going to steal elections if you don't elect Democrats to steal elections, because after all, Democrats have not been too shy about their desire to rig elections by rigging the rule.
00:44:08.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Wydowski, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Ciewiec, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Cristina, Production Coordinator Jessica Grant.
00:44:33.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.