Mitch McConnell agrees to a temporary debt ceiling increase, and President Joe Biden s approval rating plummets to shocking lows, and ESPN suspends Sage Steele for saying the unsayable. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Don't let big tech track what you do - anonymize your web browsing at ExpressVpn. Anonymize you, too! Slash, Ben. You can get 50% off your first month with code SHAPIRO. That's 50% OFF your FIRST MONTH, PLUS you get an ad-free version of the show on the App Store or Google Play. You got nothing to lose. You're in it for the long term, and all you have to lose is your privacy. Pure Talk is simply smarter wireless again. PureTalk is giving you killer 5G coverage on the same 5G network as one of the big guys for about half the cost. You can still get unlimited talk, text, and 6GB of data for just $30 a month. Go to PureTalk.com/SHAPIRO to get started with a 30-day, risk-free guarantee. You'll get a lot more than you could ever dream of with PureTalk, and you won't have to pay a premium for a plan that lasts 30 days. You won't even have to wait 30 days to get a chance to use PureTalk to get the full plan! That's right, you'll get it in 30 days, no commitments, no commitment required, no insurance, and no commitments required, just a whole bunch of stuff like that! And you'll be getting it all for free! FREE PROOFSIPPED! ShIPPED TO SHIPPED to your inbox, no questions asked, no pro-choice, and a whole lot of stuff, no guaranteed, guaranteed, and everything you can do it, just like that, right in the whole thing, right at the whole world can be it, no matter what she's gonna get it, she'll say it, and she'll be talking about it, right, she's not gonna say it anywhere else, right she'll even says it, anywhere she says it's gonna be that she'll do it anywhere she'll she'll says it'll be she's going to say it's She's gonna do it...and she'll hear it, She's not going to she'll talk it, so she'll tell her right, right like that's gonna she's GAY AND GAY, right'll she's QOTED, right's she's SOOOOO QOTING THAT SORDS ARE NOT QED AND GOT IT, WILL she'll SOOO QED OF THAT, SOTTER AND A THOTED TO THAT, WILL SHE'S GOT A SORRY, SALLY QE AND A SALLY CHEATING THAT SALLY RALLY AND A BALLYHIE CHEER AND A COURSES AND A Q& A AND A LOT OF THOT AND A FABULITY AND A DERED AND A PAPABODY AND A MALAY AND A KETTER THAN THAT S NOT QOT HE'S QOTION AND A VOTED THAT AND A TOTALLY NOT A SINGLE THING AND A GASL AND A NECK AND A NOT A QOT HER AND A CHEOTHE THAT'S NOT A DOWED TO A SOTHE AND A YEAH? AND A JOTTERED THAT?
00:00:00.000Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agrees to a temporary debt ceiling increase, President Biden's approval rating plummets to shocking lows, and ESPN suspends Sage Steele for saying the unsayable.
00:00:21.000Anonymize your web browsing at expressvpn.com.
00:00:23.000Slash, Ben, we'll get to all the news in just one moment.
00:00:26.000First, you are just paying too much money to your cell phone provider if you are using one of the big providers like Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile.
00:00:32.000You're spending your money so they can pay for their social initiatives or their retail stores across the country that you never actually use.
00:00:38.000Instead, what if you could get the same exact service as one of the big cell phone providers, except you would actually be spending a lot less money.
00:01:31.000So, late last night, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, he essentially, quote-unquote, caved to the Democrats.
00:01:39.000What he did is he agreed to a short-term debt ceiling increase.
00:01:42.000The way this is being characterized by the Democrats is a win for the Democrats because instead of them having to cram everything in in the next couple of weeks and then ram through a debt ceiling increase via the use of reconciliation, now they will probably have more time to negotiate out this build back better regime, this terrifyingly large package that they are putting together.
00:02:01.000So a lot of people on the right this morning are very angry with Mitch McConnell, I think in part justifiably so, but I think that there is a logic to what McConnell is doing and I think it has to do mainly with Joe Manchin.
00:02:11.000It certainly does not have to do with Biden.
00:02:13.000So one of the theories that is being trotted out there is that Mitch McConnell caved because Joe Biden's agenda is actually popular.
00:02:19.000He didn't want to be seen holding it up.
00:02:20.000That, of course, is absolute nonsense.
00:02:39.000Here you have Joe Biden, who is basically at the same level as Trump was when Trump was at his lowest levels of approval rating.
00:02:45.000So these are really bad numbers for Biden.
00:02:46.000And unlike Donald Trump, who had a pretty solid ceiling and a pretty solid floor, Biden didn't really have a ceiling, but he also has no floor.
00:02:53.000What that means is that when he starts to lose support, there is no load to which he cannot crater.
00:03:22.00027% approval rating on immigration 25% approval rating on the border 23% approval rating only 44% of Americans say that he is honest Only 41% of Americans say that he is a leader.
00:03:38.000I mean, those are viciously brutal numbers for Joe Biden.
00:03:42.000And that means that he really has no coattails.
00:03:44.000And one of the reasons that he has no coattails is, of course, because Joe Biden is not with us.
00:03:49.000There is no world in which people think that he is capable of grabbing the bull by the horns anymore, because he is much more likely to grab the bull, and the bull is likely to buck him, and he is likely to fall down and break a hip.
00:04:01.000This is why we are consistently on a day-to-day level seeing the White House attempting to guard Joe Biden the way you would a nursing home patient from a symptomatic five-year-old.
00:04:10.000And so Joe Biden yesterday, he was doing a live stream and his staff just started ushering reporters out.
00:04:16.000We see this almost every week where people are asking questions to Joe Biden.
00:04:19.000All of a sudden, they're getting shoved out of the room.
00:04:21.000They're using one of those old vaudeville canes and they're grabbing people and they're just yanking them out.
00:04:36.000And then nearly 65 million people across this country.
00:04:40.000So they're having a business roundtable, and you can see the reporters just getting yanked out of there.
00:04:44.000Wouldn't want anybody to ask any inconvenient questions.
00:04:47.000They also built this very bizarre set for Joe Biden.
00:04:49.000So he's no longer speaking, I guess, from the Oval Office.
00:04:51.000Instead, they built a socially distanced set for him.
00:04:54.000Which just looks as though he's playing at being president.
00:04:57.000He's like underground in a bunker somewhere with a digital background that's projected to make it look like he's in the Oval Office, but he isn't actually in the Oval Office.
00:06:00.000Okay, when you have the guy who was the head of the DNC, Terry McAuliffe, saying that the president is unpopular in Virginia, which again is right outside Washington D.C., a lot of federal employees in Virginia, that is a real warning sign.
00:06:13.000And so Joe Biden does not have virtually any momentum at this point, and his agenda is way too radical for the American people.
00:06:19.000This is the part that's truly astonishing is that his original, again, I've said this a thousand times, the only reason that he was elected is because one, he was dead and two, he was supposed to be a dead moderate.
00:06:27.000He has only kept one of those promises.
00:06:29.000He is not an alive person, but he is not moderate in any way, shape or form.
00:06:32.000He had Jen Psaki yesterday proclaiming that she doesn't mind if Americans pay higher gas prices in order to prevent climate change.
00:06:40.000How's that going to go over in middle America, Jen?
00:06:43.000What COP26 is about is to continue the conversation on the international stage at the leader level.
00:06:51.000That has been going on below the leader level continuously, basically, about our need to work together to address the climate crisis, one of the greatest national security crises the president sees.
00:07:02.000A number of other world leaders agree on that front.
00:07:05.000Certainly, we all want to keep gasoline prices low, but the threat of the crisis, the climate crisis, certainly can't wait any longer.
00:07:13.000Okay, so that sort of stuff is not going to go well for the Biden administration.
00:08:31.000Joe Biden is pushing an unpopular agenda that is not likely to win him many plaudits.
00:08:37.000The Build Back Better agenda that he is pushing right now is not, in fact, popular.
00:08:41.000The American people do not feel it is necessary to blow out spending and taxes at this point in time, not when the economy is teetering on the brink of a serious slowdown, thanks to both supply bottlenecks and thanks to the fact that the federal government has been paying people to stay home.
00:08:53.000The American people are not on board with this, and Joe Biden has no traction on any of this.
00:08:58.000He's now been relegated to going back to the old Democratic standby.
00:09:01.000If you buy it, if you disagree with me, it's because you want America to fail.
00:09:06.000And so this was Joe Biden speaking yesterday.
00:09:08.000He went to Michigan in an attempt to drum up support for Build Back Better.
00:09:12.000And his suggestion was that if you don't agree with him, then it's because you are complicit in America's decline.
00:09:19.000To support these investments is to create a rising America.
00:09:25.000To oppose these investments is to be complicit in America's decline.
00:09:31.000Okay, so in other words, if you don't want to spend $5 trillion, you want America to decline.
00:09:34.000First of all, this is rooted in such an economic fallacy, it makes your head spin.
00:09:38.000If Joe Biden's idea is that the way that you build a strong country, a stronger economic country, that the way that you build a stronger economy is to blow out the spending and the taxes, I would love to see one country where this has been true.
00:09:50.000That blowing out spending and taxes is what makes the economy hum.
00:09:54.000There's so little evidence of this, it makes your head swim.
00:09:58.000And the fact is that in Europe, when they blew out the spending during the 1970s, 1980s, they got economic stagnation.
00:10:03.000This is what's happened in places like Sweden and Denmark and Norway.
00:10:06.000They actually had to cut social services and they had to scale back their tax and regulation regime in order so that their economy would start growing again.
00:10:14.000Even Germany and France have had to do this in the recent past.
00:10:18.000The United States is a great example of this.
00:10:20.000In the 1960s, we had a booming economy.
00:10:26.000And then, thanks to fat union contracts, particularly in places like the auto industry, making those industries less competitive, combined with LBJ deciding that it was time to blow out the spending and we were going to pay for both guns and butter, the Vietnam War and massive social spending, we saw economic stagnation from essentially 1969 all the way until the early 80s.
00:10:44.000There is no evidence that these kinds of quote-unquote investments make the economy run.
00:10:50.000When you suck money out of the private sector economy, where risk is either rewarded or punished, and instead you take that money and you put it in a place where there is no question about risk, you can simply hand the money to your favorite political constituencies and bear no burden for having done so.
00:11:07.000See, this is the thing about governmental spending.
00:11:16.000If you spend money in a stupid way in the private sector, you go under.
00:11:20.000It's always amazing to hear people jabber about profit rates.
00:11:24.000And when you talk about the profitability of companies on average, you're ignoring all the companies that went under.
00:11:28.000Every time you decide to start a company, you are taking the risk that the company goes under and that you lose the money that you invested in the company.
00:11:35.000When people talk about the average profit, they're talking about the companies that succeed.
00:11:38.000That is a small subset of companies, period.
00:12:03.000He can blow trillions of dollars on random garbage, and as long as that money is going to people who are likely to vote for him, there's very little blowback.
00:12:11.000The only way there's blowback, if somehow the American people realize that these massive investments, the size and scope of these investments, is actually hampering the economy.
00:12:18.000And that's precisely, by the way, what these sorts of investments do.
00:12:21.000The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial on this this morning.
00:12:25.000They say the lesson from Europe's cradle-to-grave welfare state is that Mr. Biden's expanded entitlement is likely to be reduced incentive to work and invest, slower economic growth, lower living standards, less fiscal space for essential public goods like national defense.
00:12:39.000Most of the European cradle-to-grave welfare states have older populations than the United States, says the Wall Street Journal.
00:12:43.000This alone does not account for their lower labor participation rates and much higher structural unemployment.
00:12:49.000European jobless rates tend to be much higher than in the United States, especially for the young.
00:12:53.000In 2019, labor participation was 62.6% in the United States versus 49.7% in Italy.
00:13:00.000Literally less than half of people eligible to work in Italy are working.
00:13:02.000working. 55% in France, 57% in Spain, 59% in Portugal, 61% in Germany. While the United States' economy was slowed to recover from 2008-2009 because of Obama's policy uncertainty, says the Wall Street Journal.
00:13:16.000GDP growth still averaged 2.3% from 2010-2019, surpassing Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany.
00:13:24.000Democrats say that generous family leave will encourage more women to work and expand the workforce, but Italy offers 22 weeks of maternity leave at 80% of previous earnings.
00:13:32.000France provides 16 weeks at 90%, Spain 16 weeks at 100%.
00:13:36.000Why does that come along with higher payroll taxes?
00:13:40.000It means that people have stopped hiring pregnant women or women who are unlikely to be in the workforce, who are of childbearing age.
00:13:49.000There are unfortunately economic disincentives to hiring people who are going to be out of the workforce for a significant period of time that you then have to pay for via payroll tax.
00:13:57.000Europe's little-discussed secret, says the Wall Street Journal, is that its cradle-to-grave welfare states are financed by the middle class via value-added and payroll taxes.
00:14:04.000The combined employer-employee social security tax is 36% in Spain, 40% in Italy, 65% in France.
00:14:11.000Value-added taxes in most European economies are around 20%.
00:14:15.000This isn't about the rich paying their fair share in Europe.
00:14:18.000This is about everybody paying through the nose.
00:14:21.000Which is why the Democrats are attempting to gimmick the system.
00:14:25.000They're determined to gimmick the system.
00:14:28.000In fact, a great example of a European state that has realized this is Sweden.
00:14:33.000The left likes to cite Sweden as a great example of this giant welfare state.
00:14:38.000Sweden has been scaling back its taxes and regulation.
00:14:41.000It's the only reason that they started to grow again, because from 1970 to 1993, they went from the fourth wealthiest economy on planet Earth, it's like the 13th wealthiest economy on planet Earth, and then they started to realize, we've done some really stupid crap here.
00:14:53.000Joe Biden, however, seems to think that it strengthens the economy to spend all of this money.
00:14:58.000And this is not a popular position, which is why Joe Manchin has been pushing back on it, right?
00:15:03.000And so Joe Manchin openly said yesterday, we should not be turning our society into an entitlement society.
00:15:10.000I don't believe that we should turn our society into an entitlement society.
00:15:15.000I think that we should still be a compassionate, rewarding society.
00:15:19.000I think that fares best for all of us, but compassion means taking care of those who can't take care of themselves, whether they're young, whether they've had some type of a challenge in life, whether it be mental or physical.
00:15:32.000Those are responsibilities that we have, and we can all meet those responsibilities.
00:15:37.000Okay, so that is Manchin pushing back on the entire mentality that Joe Biden is pushing.
00:15:41.000And that has some pretty serious consequences, including a huge firefight inside the Democratic Party right now.
00:15:47.000All this is predicate to explaining what Mitch McConnell is actually kind of doing with the debt ceiling, which again is sort of, I would say, half justifiable.
00:16:14.000We send them a box filled with old videotapes and video reels and film reels, and they send you back a digitized version of all of that stuff.
00:17:16.000So Joe Manchin is now demanding that progressives quote unquote, prioritize their programs.
00:17:20.000He's telling his colleagues, progressives need to pick just one of Biden's three signature policies and discard the other two, according to Axios.
00:17:29.000By forcing progressives to choose among an expanded child tax credit, paid family medical leave or subsidies for childcare, Manchin is complicating any potential deal, but also signaling his willingness to negotiate, He's also aligning himself with Democratic centrists in the House, who want to trim the number of programs in any final package, but fund them for longer.
00:17:45.000Meaning, Manchin is not going along with the budgetary gimmick that many of the progressives have been urging, which is, what if we fund all of the programs, but for like four years?
00:17:54.000Instead of making it a 10-year bill, we make it a 4-year bill, spend the exact same amount of money, and then pretend that we're not spending that much money.
00:18:00.000Because we'll artificially sunset the bills, knowing that Congress is then going to come back in and refund all of the bills.
00:18:08.000So Manchin's saying, no, we're not going to do that.
00:18:10.000If you want to put together a program, that program is going to have to be budgeted over the course of 10 years, and that means you're actually going to have to pick and choose which programs you want.
00:18:17.000Progressives are hopeful they can retain all of their cherished programs in a final bill by funding many of them for shorter durations and lowering the bill's ultimate price tag by essentially lying to you.
00:19:15.000The president has proposed extending the expanded $3,600 per child tax credit Which he funded for one year in the American Rescue Plan for another four years.
00:19:26.000The costs for providing paid family medical leave vary wildly.
00:19:28.000The White House proposed $225 billion over 10 years in April, but the House Ways and Means Committee is pricing it at $500 billion.
00:19:35.000And whenever you start coming up with these government estimates, they're always low by a factor of probably a third.
00:19:40.000For Biden's child and infant care proposals, which include subsidies for poor and middle-class families for daycare and two years of universal preschool, like Head Start, which has been a complete and utter federal failure, the House wants to spend $450 billion.
00:19:51.000And Manchin is saying, no, you are going to have to cut a lot of this stuff.
00:19:57.000Apparently, Manchin is pretty comfortable with federal funding for universal preschool, but he'd use child and infant care proposals as a separate program.
00:20:04.000By the way, all the way back in the day, Elizabeth Warren, you know, the senator, she used to be a rather interesting law professor at Harvard Law School.
00:20:10.000She wrote a book called The Two-Income Trap, in which she explicitly opposed Universal child and family care, because she said what this does is it essentially creates a disincentive for women to stay home and take care of their kids if they want to do so.
00:20:23.000It forces family into what she called a two-income trap, driving up the price of goods and services by requiring that both parents work as opposed to one staying home.
00:20:30.000This is when Elizabeth Warren was actually a much more interesting human being.
00:20:35.000Okay, so the Biden versus Manchin battle is really a pitched one.
00:20:39.000And not only that, it's pretty extraordinary to what level people are angry at each other.
00:20:45.000How angry is Bernie Sanders at Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin?
00:20:48.000Here's how angry he is, according to Axios.
00:20:50.000He actually withheld support for a joint statement condemning last weekend's protests against Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, because it also wouldn't include a rebuke of her political views.
00:21:00.000So there was an attempt to put together a joint statement from Republicans and Democrats saying, do not follow people into bathrooms and harass them.
00:21:08.000And Bernie was like, no, I think it's OK to follow people into bathrooms and harass them.
00:21:13.000The only way that I will sign that statement is if you also say that Kirsten Stenema is a jerk.
00:21:17.000If you say that she's a jerk, then I will say it's bad to follow her into the bathroom.
00:21:20.000If you say she's not a jerk, or if you don't say anything, then it's OK to follow her.
00:21:25.000I mean, this schmuck, You know, it was one of his supporters who literally shot members of Congress at a baseball game not all that long ago.
00:21:33.000And now Bernie's like, I won't even condemn people following a woman into a bathroom.
00:21:40.000According to Axios, the move is emblematic of the hostility between the progressive and moderate members who have been sparring over the cost and scope of President Biden's agenda.
00:21:47.000Sanders wanted the statement to urge Sinema to draw a proposition to prescription drug reform, as well as Biden's $3.5 trillion social safety net expansion.
00:21:57.000So again, Sanders communications director, Mike Casca, he asked that the statement be edited to include a preface, quote, while we hope Senator Sinema will change her position on prescription drug reform and support a major budget reconciliation bill.
00:22:08.000Cory Booker was like, no, we're not doing that.
00:22:12.000So Sanders said, I'm not going to sign.
00:22:13.000Please cut Senate Democratic leadership team from the headline.
00:22:21.000I mean, the email exchange is pretty insane.
00:22:24.000The fact that Sanders' team was like, well, you know, we're only going to sign on to violence is bad so long as we condemn the person against whom the assault was done, right?
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00:24:36.000They can only use reconciliation two times in a given year.
00:24:38.000If they have to do it for just a debt relief bill, then this means that they cannot use it three times, right?
00:24:43.000It means that that becomes one of the issues on which they've used reconciliation unless they bundle it with their broader build back better nonsense package or bipartisan infrastructure package.
00:24:54.000right? Unless they partner with one of those two. And those things aren't passing right now.
00:24:57.000So this put Democrats in a bind. They didn't want to use reconciliation.
00:25:01.000And also, they didn't want to use reconciliation period for the debt ceiling increase. Because when you do a reconciliation bill for a debt ceiling increase because of parliamentary procedure, basically for a wide variety of reasons, you get what is called a vote-a-rama, in which any amount of amendments can be proposed to a debt ceiling relief package.
00:25:18.000And Democrats then have to vote up or down on all of those things. So Republicans would propose a lot of popular stuff. Democrats would vote it down. And then they'd all be on record voting against that stuff, which is really bad for them.
00:25:29.000Legislators always have an incentive not to vote on specific issues but to vote on giant broad Overarching packages.
00:25:35.000Because that way they can say, yeah, you know, I didn't like this one provision, but I did like the overarching bill.
00:25:39.000You know, better to vote for that crap sandwich than vote against the crap sandwich.
00:25:42.000What senators and congresspeople fear more than anything is single issue bills where they are forced to actually give their opinions on single issues, right?
00:25:50.000Because then they can be held accountable for those opinions.
00:25:52.000That's what the Votorama would have done.
00:25:54.000So the basic Republican strategy here was We are going to tell you to do the debt ceiling yourself.
00:26:00.000Okay, then the time on the debt ceiling grew rather close, right?
00:26:06.000We were like two weeks away from the debt ceiling.
00:26:09.000And the Democrats started to panic because the Voterama would take longer than a week, right?
00:26:15.000The Voterama could take a week, 10 days.
00:26:17.000It's not, it's possible they wouldn't even get it done.
00:26:19.000And then they started to see that as maybe an opportunity.
00:26:22.000Maybe they could browbeat Republicans.
00:26:24.000So if there was some sort of economic fallout from the debt ceiling, that if they were playing chicken, maybe it would be better for Biden to simply let the car go over the cliff on the debt ceiling and then blame Republicans.
00:26:42.000Whether they were able to convince Joe Manchin to kill the filibuster for the debt ceiling increase.
00:26:46.000So Manchin, for his part, said that he was not going to do that.
00:26:49.000But maybe the reason that he said he was not going to do that is because he'd already heard from McConnell that we were going to push off the debt ceiling.
00:26:54.000Here was Joe Manchin on this yesterday.
00:26:57.000I implore them to engage, start working, work this out.
00:27:14.000But for his part, Joe Biden, supposed moderate, was saying yesterday maybe we'll change the filibuster rules in order to pass the debt ceiling increase.
00:27:20.000Are Democrats considering using a meter option to raise the debt limit?
00:27:25.000Using a carve-out with the filibuster to raise the debt limit?
00:27:27.000Oh, I think that's a real possibility.
00:27:31.000Okay, so they started talking about killing the filibuster, which would of course have made the Democratic 50 votes plus Kamala Harris majority a lot more credible in terms of the stuff that it could do.
00:27:43.000The filibuster prevents them from doing very, very radical stuff.
00:27:52.000Democrats can, anytime they want, pass the debt ceiling through reconciliation.
00:27:56.000But, this had become a major talking point for the Democrats.
00:27:59.000They would much prefer to talk about the debt ceiling than to talk about, for example, the actual Build Back Better plan, because the Build Back Better plan, they're busy battling that one out.
00:28:07.000Plus, I have a feeling that behind closed doors, Joe Manchin was basically saying, listen, You've counted on me so far to hold the line when it comes to the Build Back Better thing.
00:28:16.000But if we hit the debt ceiling, there's gonna be a lot of pressure on me to basically strike back by helping to kill the filibuster here because we can't let the government go into complete shutdown mode.
00:28:26.000So I really think that probably what happened here is that McConnell went to Manchin and the basic deal was we're going to sign a short-term debt ceiling extension.
00:28:33.000And that's going to give us two months to let you guys fight it out.
00:28:36.000McConnell's like, fine, I'll let Manchin fight it out and Sinema fight it out and let those guys fight it out with Biden and Sanders.
00:28:41.000Maybe they come to an agreement, maybe they don't.
00:28:44.000And then if we hit December and they still haven't come up with the debt ceiling increase, then it's totally on them.
00:28:48.000Because we even went along with the short-term with the short-term extension, and they still couldn't get it together in time.
00:28:54.000Right now, it's completely on them, just in time for election season.
00:28:56.000I think that McConnell also has his eye on the election in Virginia, because if we hit November, and if Youngkin beats McAuliffe in Virginia, the Build Back Better agenda is dead.
00:29:09.000There's just not enough moderate Democrats who are willing to sacrifice their seats on behalf of an agenda that's so unpopular, dragged Terry McAuliffe to defeat in Virginia.
00:29:17.000Once we hit next year, by the way, ain't nothing getting done.
00:29:20.000We may be entering the end of the legislative phase of Joe Biden's presidency already.
00:29:25.000Because nothing's getting done in an election year.
00:29:28.000And then if Republicans win the House, which they are very likely to do in 2022, ain't nothing getting done for the final two years of Joe Biden's presidency.
00:29:35.000So we're already down at crunch time for the Democrats.
00:29:38.000And every day that Democrats are arguing with each other is a day where Democrats, number one, aren't getting anything done.
00:29:43.000And number two, is a day where Republicans aren't in the headlines.
00:29:47.000And the best thing for Republicans is not to be in the headlines.
00:29:50.000The media and Biden had successfully ginned up and out upset, apparently, about the debt ceiling.
00:29:55.000The Republicans were like, it's just not worth it.
00:29:57.000So Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda is not popular, but if he could throw mud on the Republican hem, then maybe he could distract from the fact that his agenda isn't popular.
00:30:05.000This is why, for example, Biden has been going out there and saying it's wrong and dangerous not to raise the debt ceiling.
00:30:10.000Democrats are willing to step up and stop this economic catastrophe if Senate Republicans will just get out of the way.
00:30:18.000But our Senate Republican friends are planning to block the vote to raise the debt limit by using the procedural power called the filibuster.
00:30:28.000To say that in plain English, it means you have to have 60 votes when there's a filibuster.
00:30:34.00060 votes, a super majority, instead of 50 to get anything done.
00:30:43.000For his own part, Senator McConnell said, quote, it's not clear whether the Democratic leaders have wasted two and a half months because they simply can't govern or whether they're intentionally playing Russian roulette with the economy to try and bully their own members into going back on their word and wrecking the Senate. Okay, and so it's theoretically possible that Democrats now think that they have the whip hand with regard to McConnell by threatening to kill the filibuster over the debt ceiling, but I think that this was the entire deal.
00:31:06.000I think that the deal that McConnell made with Manchin and Sinema, again, this is speculative, but I think it's given the incentive structures in play, it's probably accurate, that basically Manchin and Sinema probably went to McConnell and they said, if it comes down to the debt ceiling and we are seen as obstructing the debt ceiling along with you, then it's going to be very hard for us to push back against the progressives, but give us a little bit more rope And then whatever happens comes December is on Joe Biden.
00:31:29.000I think that is is quite possible at this point in time.
00:31:32.000So should McConnell be blamed for that?
00:31:35.000I mean, you could say that he caved to a certain extent, because if he had held the line and maybe Democrats would have blinked first, and maybe they would have used the reconciliation process.
00:31:43.000Or maybe Joe Biden just would have done what he's typically done, try to use executive action by minting a trillion dollar coin or something like that.
00:31:50.000Or maybe Manchin and Sinema were actually wavering.
00:31:54.000If Manchin and Sinema were actually wavering, then that meant that McConnell had lost a lot of leverage.
00:32:00.000And so he sort of had to do what he could do here, push it off for a couple months, let the Democrats fight one another for the next couple of months.
00:32:05.000And really not for the next couple of months, really for the next month.
00:32:34.000You wanted the extension, you got the extension.
00:32:36.000Now if you can't put it together, it is all on you.
00:32:38.000It is all, and by the way, if they do put something together, it's gonna be unpopular.
00:32:42.000So it's kind of a lose-lose for the Democrats.
00:32:45.000Okay, meanwhile, the Biden administration has yet to see a political issue that they will not make into a legal one.
00:32:53.000It is an astonishing thing what the DOJ is doing right now, the FBI.
00:32:58.000So the National School Boards Association, a little bit earlier this week, sent a letter to Joe Biden, essentially calling on the FBI to investigate people who are critical of critical race theory.
00:33:10.000Saying that people who are getting rowdy, maybe even involving themselves in low-level criminal activity at school board meetings, are akin to domestic terrorists.
00:33:18.000Which is pretty insane, given the fact that half the country burned down last year.
00:33:23.000According to the National School Boards Association, America's public schools and its education leaders are under immediate threat.
00:33:29.000The National School Boards Association respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.
00:33:38.000Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues, and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech.
00:33:45.000However, there must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs.
00:33:52.000NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to active violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety.
00:34:02.000So they're looking for a reason why the feds ought to get involved because, of course, criminal activity is criminal activity at the state and local level.
00:34:08.000If somebody assaults a school board member, that's not a federal crime.
00:34:15.000So why exactly is the NSBA appealing to the Biden administration?
00:34:19.000Because they do wish to chill many of these conversations.
00:34:23.000It is their goal to chill conversations about critical race theory.
00:34:26.000It is their goal to prevent the feedback loops that have been really bad for many Democrats on local school boards around the country.
00:34:35.000They say, quote, as these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
00:34:52.000And of course, because this administration is in hock to the unions, Merrick Garland immediately asked the FBI to address the, quote, recent disturbing spike in threats against educators.
00:35:04.000So we've now got the FBI involving itself, saying that the Justice Department will hold strategy sessions with law enforcement in the next 30 days and is expected to announce measures in response to the quote, rising criminal conduct directed towards school personnel in the nation's public schools.
00:35:19.000Jen Psaki was asked about this at the White House.
00:35:21.000She was asked whether you are actually targeting parents, not just the ones who are violating the law, but you're actually using the federal government to chill speech by targeting one specific type of real local level crime.
00:35:33.000Does the administration agree that parents upset about their kids' curriculums could be considered domestic terrorists?
00:35:39.000What the Department of Justice said in a letter from the Attorney General is that, quote, threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values.
00:35:51.000These were threats against public servants, threats against members of the school board.
00:35:57.000Regardless of the reasoning, threats and violence against public servants is illegal.
00:36:03.000Okay, but that does not answer the question as to why the federal government is involved in that.
00:36:06.000Nobody's defending threats against public servants.
00:36:09.000The question is whether the federal government ought to be involving itself in local crimes of this nature and whether that has anything to do with chilling the entire issue.
00:36:18.000Doocy said, something the school board's association is asking is for the administration to consider using the Patriot Act to consider investigating some of these school board protesters.
00:36:25.000So would the administration be okay with the FBI using the Patriot Act to surveil these parents?
00:36:30.000And Saki said, I don't speak on behalf of the National School Board Association, I speak on behalf of this government.
00:36:37.000Well, then, why don't you answer the question on behalf of the government, since you work for the government?
00:36:42.000Okay, the fact that this is being elevated to the federal level is disturbing.
00:36:47.000We're being told that critical race theory isn't being taught in public schools, and then the minute that people start talking about critical race theory, and then some of the people who are involved in those discussions do criminal things, it immediately gets elevated to the federal level?
00:37:02.000Is there any rationale for that on a criminal law basis?
00:37:05.000I mean, it's pretty obvious at this point the answer is no.
00:37:07.000Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the politically correct cancellation of the day.
00:37:11.000First, let us talk about something great you can do for your family.
00:37:14.000So, over at the couch in our den, we have a beautiful portrait of me and my wife and two of our three kids.
00:37:20.000And when we do that, we are going to go to paintyourlife.com and get a professional hand-painted portrait created from any photo at a truly affordable price.
00:37:28.000Or you can combine photos of people or places you love into one painting.
00:37:31.000You can choose from a team of world-class artists and work with them until every detail is perfect.
00:37:35.000It's a user-friendly platform that makes it easy to order a custom-made hand-painted portrait in less than five minutes.
00:38:16.000Available at paintyourlife.com slash terms.
00:38:18.000Again, text BEN to 64000 to get started.
00:38:22.000Alrighty, this coming Tuesday, October 12th, we are making backstage extra super duper exciting.
00:38:27.000Instead of our usual daily wire studio, We will be live streaming our conversation on stage at the famous Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, doing what we do best, talking sense to you.
00:38:36.000This will be an event and a live stream unlike any other we've done.
00:38:39.000We are thrilled to be able to share it with all of you.
00:38:41.000Plus, we'll be making some extremely exciting and awesome announcements.
00:38:44.000You're not going to want to miss those.
00:38:46.000There will be some big surprises, so be sure to tune in.
00:38:49.000Join me, Candace Owens, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin, and our live audience for a backstage like never before.
00:38:58.000Central, head on over to dailywire.com or Daily Wire YouTube to catch the show.
00:39:03.000Also, as the legacy media continues to spin the news, our newest podcast, Morning Wire, continues topping the Apple and Spotify charts.
00:39:09.000We're continuing our commitment to bring you the news without a hidden agenda.
00:39:13.000It is great, it is convenient, it is easy listening.
00:39:15.000It's the only daily podcast that values your time and the truth.
00:39:18.000And while we are working overtime to bring you the news you need to know, we need your help to keep the facts trending to our number one.
00:39:23.000So please subscribe, start listening right now, Two Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:39:28.000Leave a five-star review if you like what you hear.
00:39:31.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:39:34.000So meanwhile, political correctness continues to run amok in our institutions.
00:39:44.000So, Sage Steele is a really, really talented broadcaster over at ESPN, and she does the Noon Sports Center.
00:39:50.000She's been doing Sports Center at ESPN for years.
00:39:55.000She happens to be a biracial woman, and she was doing a podcast with Jay Cutler.
00:40:02.000And she made some controversial comments.
00:40:04.000Now, in the past, she's been pretty openly somewhat conservative, Sage has.
00:40:09.000So the notion that Sage Steele was ever really hiding the ball on her politics is untrue.
00:40:14.000And she's gotten blowback pretty publicly from people at ESPN about it.
00:40:18.000Now remember, ESPN has become MSNBC with footballs.
00:40:22.000ESPN spent years broadcasting whatever idiotic political statements LeBron James wanted to make, and then treating them as though they were some sort of Moses on the mountain moment.
00:40:32.000Anything, anything dumb and left that athletes say is projected into the stratosphere by ESPN.
00:40:37.000Its anchors spent four years making overtly political comments about Donald Trump, for example, to very little blowback.
00:40:44.000Unless they said something so extraordinarily outrageous that it drew like intense fire.
00:40:48.000Pretty much every day was just dominated by lies about policing in the United States, or about systemic racism in the United States.
00:41:30.000Her dad is black and her mom is white.
00:41:32.000And here is what Sage Steele had to say.
00:41:36.000And she's like, well, what happens when you fill out your census?
00:41:40.000I'm like, well, I don't know when the last time I filled out my census was, but if they make you choose a race, she's like, where are you going to put it?
00:42:08.000Okay, so how dare she point out the reality, which is that Barack Obama, you know, characterizes himself as purely black as opposed to biracial, and she literally says in that clip, you can do what you want, right?
00:42:31.000For her to say that she, who has the same racial status as Barack Obama, chooses to write mixed race on her forms, and Barack Obama does not, is sort of culturally interesting.
00:42:39.000That's true, that is kind of a culturally interesting thing.
00:42:42.000And it demonstrates how our society tends to box people in to single race thinking, as opposed to the reality, which is that a huge number of Americans in the United States are mixed race, and that continues to grow year on year.
00:42:54.000There's nothing particularly controversial about that.
00:42:56.000And then she had this to say about vaccine mandates.
00:42:58.000So ESPN, Disney, they put down these vaccine mandates.
00:43:01.000Like a lot of other major companies in the United States, Sage Steel is very critical of that.
00:43:23.000Um, but I do know for me personally, I feel, I feel like defeated.
00:43:29.000Okay, and ESPN decided that they were going to suspend her over this.
00:43:36.000So they issued a statement on Tuesday saying that Steele would not return to the network for a week, foregoing her noon spot on SportsCenter, and has been removed as host of the 2021 ESPNW Women and Sports Summit, taking place October 18th through the 20th.
00:43:52.000They said, at ESPN we embrace different points of view, dialogue, and discussion that makes this place great.
00:43:57.000That said, that said, always that said, but we expect that those points of view be expressed respectfully in a manner consistent with our values and in line with our internal policies.
00:44:07.000I don't see anything disrespectful about what she said.
00:44:10.000She was giving her opinion on vaccine mandates.
00:44:12.000It seems much more disrespectful that you are forcing her to get a vaccine to continue working at ESPN and forcing people to continue like that.
00:45:20.000I don't understand what she says here that is fireable or suspendable.
00:45:22.000That did not stop ESPN from suspending her until, apparently, further notice.
00:45:29.000I think there's a pretty good shot that ESPN ends up canning her at the end of this.
00:45:33.000And I think the reason for that is because, by the way, I think the real reason for that is ESPN is trying to cut salary because they've been losing viewers hand over fist.
00:45:40.000And I'm sure that Sage Steele has been working there for quite a while, makes good money over there, and they're probably just going to find some excuse to can her.
00:45:48.000But again, it is just indicative of how stupid our culture is that if you go on air and you're a biracial woman, you say something people don't like about Barack Obama, you might lose your job over it.
00:45:58.000Or if you say that you don't like VAX mandates, you might lose your job over that.
00:46:02.000Meanwhile, that's not the only politically correct attempted cancellation of the day.
00:46:05.000So, Dave Chappelle has a brand new special on Netflix.
00:46:09.000And he sort of alternates his specials.
00:46:11.000He does ones that are kind of woke and then highly praised because they're not as funny, but they're woke by the Rotten Tomatoes crowd.
00:46:17.000And then he does ones that are actually funny, but politically incorrect.
00:46:19.000So, he makes some comments in his new Netflix special about the phenomenon of TERFs.
00:46:29.000that biological women exist. Here is Dave Chappelle defending JK Rowling.
00:46:32.000I'm team turf. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact. You have to look at it from a woman's perspective. Look at it like this. Caitlyn Jenner, whom I've met, wonderful person. Caitlyn Jenner was voted woman of the year, her first year as a woman. Ain't that something?
00:47:02.000OK, for this sort of stuff, GLAAD is now lambasting Dave Chappelle and they're calling for Dave Chappelle to be removed from Netflix.
00:47:11.000Glad said Dave Chappelle's brand has become synonymous with ridiculing trans people and other marginalized communities.
00:47:16.000Negative reviews and viewers loudly condemning his latest special as a message to the industry.
00:47:20.000Audiences don't support platforming anti-LGBTQ diatribes.
00:47:24.000Amazing how the people who are very much in favor of expanding every quote-unquote right to encompass pretty much every activity do not include among those rights speaking what you think about things.