A new GDP report looks surprisingly good, and Democrats celebrate, and CNN begins laying off large numbers of employees, and the left continues its crusade to destroy Elon Musk. We ll get to all the news in just one moment. Today's show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.org/ProtectYourOnline Privacy. Ben Shapiro is a columnist for The Daily Wire and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show." He is a regular contributor to CNN and the Wall Street Journal, and is one of the most influential people in American politics. He's also a frequent guest on Fox News and CNN Worldwide and hosts the conservative radio show "The Weekly Standard" and is a frequent contributor on CNN's "The View From The Top" and CNN's Hardline with John Avlon. You can reach Ben Shapiro at Ben.Shapiro@Ben Shapiro.co.nz and get 20% off your entire order at ThePearlSource.co/thebenshapiro. The best gift you can give to mom, wife, girlfriend, sister, etc. this holiday season is from The Pearl Source. Don t wait until it's too late to do your holiday shopping! The PearlSource is a trusted company that makes quality, high-grade pearl jewelry that can be passed down through generations and passed down to you, the consumer. It's the consumer from the middlemen. There's no middlemen, no middleman. That means you won't have to pay retail prices, no markups, no matter where you get your jewelry, no shipping, no extra shipping, and you'll get it all the way through the holidays. If you don't want to wait until the holidays, you can get all the best prices, you'll have it all without having to spend it anywhere else. . You'll get a 20% discount code SHOP THE P.P.S. at the PearlSource. - Ben Shapiro's The Ben Shapiro show is code SHAPIRO for 20% of the entire order, plus free shipping and free shipping throughout the holiday season, plus an additional 20% on your first week of shipping, shipping included in The Ben will be getting 20% in the show. and shipping, plus a free 60% off the entire show is included in the discount offer, plus she'll get an extra 15% discount when you sign up for that code SHIPPED.
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00:00:21.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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00:02:57.000is on track to expand again in the waning months of 2022, despite growing worries of recession.
00:03:02.000GDP, the official scorecard for the economy, was revised up from a 2.6% rate of growth in the preliminary reading issued last month.
00:03:08.000GDP had actually shrunk in the first two quarters of the year, which is the technical definition of a recession.
00:03:12.000But we were told by the left, We can no longer use that definition of a recession because after all, there was a midterm election to worry about.
00:03:18.000Well, we had a recession in the first part of the year, technically speaking, and now we don't.
00:03:22.000We had a third quarter that had 2.9% annualized growth, which is a decent number.
00:03:26.000And then in fourth quarter, we're still waiting to hear what's going to happen.
00:03:29.000Now, a lot of people are out there celebrating today.
00:03:32.000A lot of people suggesting that basically the recession has now been escaped.
00:03:38.000Joe Biden has handled this thing beautifully, and so has the Federal Reserve.
00:03:41.000Karine Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented press secretary, yesterday she suggested we are not in a recession and there will be no recession.
00:03:46.000Instead, we are in what they call a transition, which is their word for there's probably going to be a recession, but we're going to pretend it's not a recession.
00:03:53.000The 700,000 manufacturing jobs that have been created in this president's administration because of the work that he's done.
00:04:01.000And so now what we're seeing, and you've heard us talk about this, is we're seeing an economy that's going into a transition to more stable and steady growth.
00:04:48.000Boy, we zoomed up to 2.9 percent, added three-tenths, very unusual, up 2.9.
00:04:54.000On the consumption side, we improved by three-tenths from 1.4 up to 1.7.
00:05:01.000Okay, so the question is where the economy goes from here.
00:05:04.000Is this the actual beginning of a soft landing that has been foreseen by some people at the Federal Reserve?
00:05:09.000Or is this what we would call a false spring?
00:05:12.000Essentially, is this a false look at an optimistic economy?
00:05:16.000And then we're about to start to really slow down in a serious way.
00:05:19.000So there's some bad indicators in the data.
00:05:22.000Even buried in that 2.9% figure, according to Market Watch, the main engine of the economy, consumer spending, increased at a solid 1.7% annual clip in the third quarter, the government said.
00:05:30.000Previously, that increase was put at a softer 1.4%.
00:05:32.000Now that, of course, is linked to inflation.
00:05:34.000People still have a lot of money in their pocket because the government spent so much money over the course of the last couple of years and the Federal Reserve decided to inflate the currency over the course of the last couple of years before Basically slamming on the brakes.
00:05:47.000Okay, so the question is, what exactly drove that GDP number?
00:05:50.000So to understand what drove the GDP number, you have to look at the generalized GDP formula, the gross domestic product.
00:05:54.000Gross domestic product is a very, very rough estimate of what the economy is doing because it's largely based on spending.
00:06:02.000So if you spend dollars in the American economy, that is considered a contribution to GDP.
00:06:06.000If you take those dollars and you put them in the bank, then that is not really considered a contribution to GDP.
00:06:13.000So GDP is calculated by looking at private consumption spending, plus investments, you put your money in the stock market, plus government spending.
00:06:20.000So GDP really favors a Keynesian approach to government.
00:06:24.000So whenever the Biden administration throws a lot of money out there, government spending, that increases the GDP stat plus the trade deficit.
00:06:32.000So the big driver here is exports minus imports.
00:06:35.000And the reason for that is because while the U.S.
00:06:36.000economy has been wildly inflated, The truth is that the dollar versus other currencies is actually doing better because people have more faith in the future of the American economy than they do in, say, the European economy or in the Asian economy for very good reasons.
00:06:48.000Europe's economies are all reliant on a declining demographic with heavy regulation.
00:06:53.000Their industries are not nearly as innovative as the United States.
00:06:56.000The United States, in other words, is still the best bet on the block.
00:06:58.000And because of that, that means that people are buying a lot of American product right now.
00:07:02.000And we are not buying as much product from outside the United States because of shipping Lines and supply chain problems.
00:07:09.000So that trade deficit was reduced radically in the third quarter.
00:07:13.000And what that means that the GDP stat is a little bit artificially boosted.
00:07:17.000Business investment, as we say, is in fact slowing.
00:07:20.000Corporate profits actually fell 1.1% in the third quarter.
00:07:22.000Adjusted pre-tax earnings declined to an annualized 2.97 trillion.
00:07:27.000The largest contribution to growth in the third quarter came from that huge drop in the trade deficit.
00:07:31.000The broader economy's performance was less stellar, according to MarketWatch.
00:07:35.000So there are a lot of people, I think, who are preemptively celebrating what's going on with the economy.
00:07:38.000All I would say is some caution is in order.
00:07:41.000That's not stopping, by the way, the Federal Reserve.
00:07:44.000from slowing its role in terms of increasing interest rates, nor is it stopping the Biden administration from spending oodles of money that we simply do not have.
00:07:51.000So Jerome Powell has already signaled that the Fed is prepared to slow its rate rise pace in December, and that led to a big rebound in the stock market yesterday.
00:07:59.000It actually took the stock market out of bear market territory for the year, and then in the futures trading this morning, the stock market started to dump a little bit again.
00:08:07.000Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday, he provided a clear signal that the central bank is on track to raise interest rates by only half a percentage point at its next meeting.
00:08:16.000There was some expectation that he might have gone 0.75 points again to just slam those breaks on particularly hard.
00:08:21.000But if he's going 0.5 points, then the idea here would be That the economy is settling down, that the inflation is beginning to come down in a real and market way.
00:08:28.000Powell in a speech on Wednesday said an overheated labor market needed to cool more for the Fed to be confident inflation would decline toward its 2% goal.
00:08:34.000Because the Fed had raised rates rapidly and it takes time for those moves to influence the economy, it would make sense for officials to slow the rate increases, he said at an event at the Brookings Institution.
00:08:42.000He said the time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.
00:08:48.000Investors had been eager for evidence the central bank would slow its pace of rate rises.
00:08:52.000Markets rallied as soon as Powell said this sort of stuff.
00:08:54.000As I said before, it is a bad sign for any sort of industrialized economy when the word of one person getting up and saying a thing can shift the markets by 7, 8, 900 points.
00:09:04.000The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 735 points, enough to put the index back in a bull market defined as a 20% rise from a recent low.
00:09:11.000Powell suggested Fed officials were moving into a new phase of policy tightening in which they would try to judge just how high rates needed to rise.
00:09:16.000And my colleagues and I do not want to over tighten because cutting rates is not something that we actually want to have to do soon.
00:09:22.000We're going to try to find our way to what that right level is.
00:09:24.000So instead of slamming on the brakes, the idea is we're going to ease the brakes.
00:09:27.000Now, the problem is we actually don't know whether the breaks being slammed on so far is going to have the impact on inflation that Powell thinks that apparently it will.
00:10:01.000And they would still be declaring that a success.
00:10:04.000Which suggests to me that there's still some pain on the horizon here.
00:10:08.000Powell reviewed signs of progress on the inflation fight, including a slowdown in interest rate sensitive sectors of the economy like housing and improving supply chain conditions.
00:10:14.000But he said declines in rents and goods prices might be insufficient.
00:10:18.000If firms don't also slow their hiring to bring the strong demand for labor into better balance with a shortfall in the supply of workers, labor demand has eased a little bit in recent months.
00:10:25.000Job openings totaled a seasonally adjusted 10.3 million in October, according to the Labor Department.
00:10:30.000That was down from 10.7 million in September, far exceeded the 6.1 million unemployed people who are seeking work in October.
00:10:36.000So there's still a ton of people who are seeking workers, again, because consumption is outpacing supply right now, which is one of the contributors to inflation.
00:10:44.000And so it seems as though it's a little bit early, frankly, for the Federal Reserve to be easing off of its talk about raising the interest rate.
00:10:53.000It seems like they should be forecasting actually more pain than they are, but they're going real easy on all of this.
00:10:59.000Again, none of this is stopping the Biden administration from trying to inject even more money into the economy, which is going to create upward pressure on that inflation rate again, and maybe mean that Jerome Powell, by easing off the brakes a little bit, is going to have to slam the brakes on again in the near future.
00:11:14.000According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policies fueled housing inflation.
00:11:19.000Now rising mortgage interest rates are pricing out buyers.
00:11:21.000So the Biden administration doesn't want to deal with the impact of that.
00:11:24.000Now they are guaranteeing million-dollar mortgages will expand taxpayer liability and the housing market dysfunction.
00:11:29.000Congress created government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee middle-class mortgages and make housing more affordable.
00:11:35.000Now the administration is turning a government-backed mortgage into an entitlement for the affluent in coastal areas where zoning regulations drive up prices.
00:11:41.000The Federal Housing Finance Agency, FHFA, said Tuesday it's going to increase the maximum size of mortgages Fannie and Freddie will cover, known as the conforming loan limit, to almost $1.1 million in high-cost areas from $970,000 this year and $765,000 in 2020.
00:11:57.000The conforming loan limit in other areas will rise to $726,000 from $510,000 two years ago.
00:12:02.000So that means the federal government is now essentially going to subsidize your mortgage at the same time that we are trying to actually increase the interest rates on mortgages to get the economy to stop inflating.
00:12:13.000So the Biden administration does not actually want the consequences of a slowing economy that are necessary because of those vast inflation rates that we've seen over the course of the last couple of years.
00:12:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, new home construction is falling, which could weigh on the economy as housing helps drive demand for household goods.
00:12:30.000But a correction is overdue and would prevent a housing mania that ended up in tears in 2008.
00:12:34.000Instead, the administration wants to prop up housing demand and prices by raising the guarantee limit.
00:12:39.000This will please realtors and the affluent, especially in California areas where the median home price exceeds the new limit, like Orange County, San Francisco and San Jose.
00:12:47.000Sorry to state the obvious, says the Wall Street Journal, but anybody who can qualify for a million-dollar mortgage does not need the government to subsidize it with a guarantee.
00:12:53.000The average 30-year interest rate on a jumbo loan is 6.8%, which is similar to a government-backed mortgage.
00:12:58.000Borrowers with jumbo loans tend to have higher incomes and credit scores, but these mortgages are getting riskier because borrower monthly payments have risen faster than income.
00:13:05.000So now, basically, you have the government stepping in and subsidizing high housing prices.
00:13:10.000And none of this is particularly beneficial to the long-term status of the American economy.
00:13:15.000And again, there are a lot of There are a lot of countervailing signs that the economy is not doing all as well as the Biden administration is touting right now.
00:13:23.000For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
00:13:25.000economic growth actually slowed this fall, according to the Fed's Beige Book.
00:13:29.000Businesses expressed greater uncertainty and increased pessimism for the U.S.
00:13:32.000economy as prices and interest rates continued to rise, according to the Central Bank's latest compilation of economic anecdotes from around the country.
00:13:38.000That's what's known as the Beige Book.
00:14:44.000And then they own the consequences of that.
00:14:47.000And they're going to spend the money anyway.
00:14:48.000According to The Hill, Senate conservatives on Wednesday sent a letter to McConnell urging him to skip a year-end omnibus spending package and instead insist on a short-term stopgap funding measure to punt spending negotiations into next year when Republicans will control the House.
00:15:00.000Those Senate conservatives said we believe it would be both imprudent and a reflection of poor leadership for Republicans to ignore the will of the American people and rubber stamp an omnibus spending bill that funds 10 more months of Joe Biden's agenda without any check on his reckless policies that have led to a 40-year high in inflation.
00:15:14.000The Senators wrote the Republicans must not accept anything other than a short-term continuing resolution that funds the federal government until shortly after the 118th Congress is sworn in.
00:15:23.000Republicans will control a small House majority next year that does give them some leverage over top-line spending numbers on the omnibus package, as well as whether to include earmarks in the legislation.
00:15:33.000Senators Scott, Lee, Cruz, and Braun argued any stopgap spending measure to fund the government until January or February should not include any add-ons either.
00:15:41.000McConnell told reporters on Tuesday morning there was widespread agreement at a White House meeting between Biden and congressional leaders on the need to pass the omnibus.
00:15:47.000He said, I think there's widespread agreement we'd be better off with an omnibus than a continuing resolution, but there are significant hurdles to get over to do that.
00:15:52.000And then he sort of softened his comments after a meeting with other Republicans.
00:15:56.000He said, we had a robust discussion at lunch.
00:15:58.000This will continue in the coming weeks over the way to end the session with regard to government spending.
00:16:02.000If you're interested in reducing spending, probably the best way to do that would be a one-year CR.
00:16:06.000If, on the other hand, you're concerned about the defense of our country and the funding of the Ukraine war, you're somewhat hesitant To go in that direction.
00:16:13.000It seems as though McConnell, once again, is at war with Senate conservatives inside his own caucus.
00:16:18.000Mitch McConnell is fairly good at things like, he's very good at things like stopping bad judicial nominees when he has the power to do so.
00:16:26.000However, when it comes to spending, Mitch McConnell has been no great shakes and nor has anybody else in the Republican Party.
00:16:32.000And part of that is due to the fact that the Republican Party is not really a repository of conservative ideas.
00:16:37.000And part of that is the fact that every time Republicans actually try to lower spending, they get punished at the polls for it.
00:16:42.000The problem with the American people when it comes to this is that the American people are all in favor of lowering the spending until they actually see the spending being lowered, which is why Democrats keep being able to blow out the spending until we actually hit economic crisis or recession.
00:16:56.000Meanwhile, again, Joe Biden's people, they continue to push the most radical possible policy.
00:17:01.000Joe Biden's energy advisor continues to say that we're going to phase out oil drilling in the United States, which is an amazing statement at a time when gas prices are still like 50 percent higher than when Joe Biden took office.
00:17:12.000But when he says we're going to end drilling domestically, that causes the major oil producers to not want to invest long term.
00:17:24.000Can you give me, you say we like them, we want them to produce, give me a number on how long.
00:17:29.000Do you want them to do it for five more years?
00:17:59.000Okay, well, what this really means in the long term for the Biden administration is probably there will be a recession next year.
00:18:05.000When there is a recession, we will finally emerge from that recession into very slow growth, which is exactly what Barack Obama did.
00:18:10.000Joe Biden's plans, economically speaking, are no different from Barack Obama's.
00:18:13.000In fact, if you recall, when Joe Biden entered office, he put out his prospectus for the next few years, economically speaking.
00:18:19.000And his suggestion was that the United States was going to grow at less than 2% GDP year on year for about the next 10 years, which is a really, really stagnating rate of growth for the world's most powerful economy.
00:18:29.000By the way, members of the media who are pumping up the Biden economy, they're not feeling it themselves, that is for sure, because CNN is now laying off hundreds of people, according to Mediaite.
00:18:38.000CNN chief Chris Licht announced the network will start making layoffs as part of his budget cut strategy.
00:18:42.000They're expected to target hundreds of CNN employees.
00:18:45.000Oliver Darcy, CNN's senior media reporter, released a letter that Licht sent out to the entire company on Wednesday.
00:18:49.000In it, Licht announced that the first round of layoffs will impact the network's paid contributors.
00:18:53.000The network's remaining staff would be informed of those changes tomorrow.
00:18:55.000So you're going to see a bunch of people who were on TV no longer be on TV because CNN is really cutting.
00:19:02.000It turns out that they really needed Donald Trump to be president in order to succeed, economically speaking.
00:19:07.000Licht has been vocal about his interest in reorienting CNN's editorial focus on straight news reporting.
00:19:11.000He's also signaled the network's rating struggles and debt.
00:19:13.000From the discovery, WarnerMedia merger could necessitate dramatic cuts for the network's projects, including hundreds of job losses.
00:19:19.000Mediaite says that the layoffs mostly focus on paid contributors.
00:19:23.000But the reality is that CNN is going to have to fire a bunch of its actual hosts.
00:19:28.000I'm sorry, shifting Don Lemon from evenings into mornings, where he can continue to be a left-wing propagandist while proclaiming to Stephen Colbert that he is in fact an objective news reporter, that ain't going to cut it over at CNN.
00:19:38.000You can also see, by the way, why the media are so desperate for Donald Trump to come back.
00:19:44.000It's something to remember as we go forward into the Republican primaries and toward 2024 is that the media do not get ratings out of other Republicans.
00:19:51.000The media don't get ratings out of Joe Biden.
00:19:53.000The media only get ratings out of Donald Trump.
00:19:57.000It is the thing they love more than anything else.
00:20:00.000Their goal is going to be to give Donald Trump as much attention as humanly possible, specifically because, number one, the truth is it's a win-win for them.
00:20:08.000If Donald Trump wins, the media makes bank.
00:20:11.000The New York Times exploded in subscribership because Donald Trump was president.
00:21:05.000A mattress should never be a one-size-fits-all solution because why should you have to compromise on comfort?
00:21:09.000Helix has a sleep quiz that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress because why would you buy a mattress made for somebody else?
00:22:58.000Twitter was the place that they were going to be able to control the narrative.
00:23:02.000And now that Musk has taken over Twitter with $44 billion of his own money and investor money, they're very angry that he did that.
00:23:08.000And so they play this silly game now where they find people who have been laid off by Twitter, the disgruntled employees, and then they suggest that those disgruntled employees have an amazing insight into Twitter.
00:23:20.000So, for example, they've started citing Yoel Roth, who's the former head of trust and safety over at Twitter, suggesting that the place is not safe anymore.
00:23:44.000There was smoke, and ultimately for me, it didn't reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter, but it set off alarm bells for every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack and leak campaign alarm bells.
00:23:55.000Asked if it was a mistake for Twitter to have blocked the story, Roth said yes, but he also suggested that the place is not safe, that it's a really bad place now that he is no longer there.
00:24:06.000And this is contributing to, again, more democratic heartburn over Twitter.
00:24:13.000Musk is out there saying openly that there needs to be more transparency as to what went on at Twitter while he was not in charge.
00:24:19.000There's a person who tweeted at him the other day suggesting that there needed to be More transparency.
00:24:27.000Twitter has shown itself to be not safe for the past 10 years and has lost users' trust.
00:24:30.000The past theme of trust and safety is a disgrace, so it doesn't have any right to judge what's being done now," said this Twitter user.
00:24:35.000They had a chance, but they sold their souls to a corporation.
00:24:37.000And Musk responded directly to this person.
00:24:40.000That's one thing that's amazing about Musk.
00:24:41.000I mean, he's the richest man in the world, and he's just responding to randos on Twitter.
00:24:45.000The obvious reality, as longtime users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust and safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.
00:24:51.000Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent, and even-handed.
00:24:53.000And this, of course, is what is driving people up a wall on the left.
00:24:57.000This is why you have Elizabeth Warren, who's ripping on Elon Musk.
00:25:01.000I have to say, there's great irony to Elizabeth Warren suggesting that there cannot be too much power at the top of a privately held company, when she is literally the creator of the Consumer Finance Protection Board, which was, under her auspices, completely independent of any other branch of government that had its own funding mechanism, and basically With such an autocracy, the Supreme Court struck down its entire structure.
00:25:22.000Elizabeth Warren has no problem with centralization of power.
00:25:24.000She just wants to be the person with the bad haircut at the top of it.
00:25:28.000Republicans say that Democrats are picking on Elon Musk.
00:25:58.000I mean, that's an amazing statement from a person who's in favor of centralization of powers, Elizabeth Warren.
00:26:04.000Joe Biden literally goes into a dark room.
00:26:06.000He actually goes into his coffin at night.
00:26:08.000And when they close that coffin, he signs a bunch of executive orders.
00:26:11.000And this emerges as the policy of the United States.
00:26:14.000Again, Elizabeth Warren is the creator of the Consumer Finance Protection Board, which is explicitly designed to basically control the American economy without any sort of check or balance on it.
00:26:23.000But she's very angry that Elon Musk, who spent his own money and investor money in order to buy a company, is being actually quite transparent about how he's making these decisions.
00:26:31.000He's just saying, I don't want this person on, I don't want this person on, I do want this person on.
00:26:34.000And he's willing to take the flak for that.
00:26:36.000And that's not transparent enough for Elizabeth Warren.
00:26:38.000What she wants is a completely opaque algorithm that supposedly decides on an objective basis who's getting bad.
00:26:45.000But everybody knows, if they've been watching Twitter for the past 10 years, that that's not how it works over at Twitter.
00:26:49.000That it's not, it's not objective in any way, shape or form.
00:26:52.000You see people who completely violate the rules and get away with it.
00:26:54.000You see people who don't violate the rules and get banned.
00:26:57.000The problem for her is not that she doesn't like one person at the top deciding, it's that she doesn't like the person at the top who is doing the deciding.
00:27:04.000And you're seeing this all over the place now.
00:27:06.000I mean, it is incredible how many of these left-wing government apparatuses all over the world are now cracking down on Twitter.
00:27:13.000Like of all the companies to crack down on right now, Twitter is not the one.
00:27:17.000I mean, Apple is the one that really deserves it.
00:27:19.000But according to Forbes, the European Union is now issuing a warning to Twitter owner Elon Musk, saying the platform will be banned entirely inside the EU unless it tightens its moderation policies and eliminates its arbitrary approach to reinstating banned users, according to the Financial Times.
00:27:34.000Thierry Breton, who's in charge of enforcing the EU's digital laws, told Musk on Wednesday that Twitter risks being in violation of the Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms to remove hate speech and bans ads targeting people based on political beliefs.
00:27:46.000Breton said Musk must agree to an extensive independent audit of the platform, citing people with knowledge of the talks between the two.
00:27:51.000So the EU is trying to gain control over Twitter.
00:28:05.000Because Musk is allowing more people on Twitter to talk.
00:28:09.000Which demonstrates once again that the Europeans and the left generally, they have no interest in freedom of speech as a principle.
00:28:14.000They want freedom of speech for the people who agree with them and everybody else gets to shut the hell up.
00:28:18.000And so anybody who promises to open that thing up is going to become some sort of an enemy to them to the point where they talk about shutting down his actual company.
00:28:26.000Musk reportedly responded by calling the Digital Services Act very sensible.
00:28:29.000He says he's vowed that Twitter's policies will comply with applicable laws.
00:28:31.000He would have to because otherwise it's going to get banned over there.
00:28:33.000European officials have also expressed concern about how Twitter can enforce its policies after Musk laid off about half of his workforce.
00:28:39.000Again, this sort of interference from government in a business like Twitter is pretty amazing stuff.
00:28:47.000So, the fact that the EU is now targeting Musk, the fact that Elizabeth Warren is targeting Musk, the fact that the White House has said that it's targeting Musk, I mean, even Janet Yellen is now claiming that she misspoke when she said there was no basis to actually investigate Elon Musk buying Twitter.
00:29:01.000Bloomberg reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter would warrant a government review if deemed to raise national security concerns, walking back her previous comments that played down the need for scrutiny.
00:29:11.000Yellen said if there are issues, it would be appropriate for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to take a look.
00:29:16.000She would not comment on the potential of a review of Musk's purchase, saying she would not reveal what specifically the federal government could be looking at.
00:29:23.000But earlier this month, she had said there was no basis for an investigation into Musk's finances.
00:29:28.000So now, obviously, she is shifting modes.
00:29:31.000And that, of course, followed President Joe Biden saying he would support a review of Musk and his quote-unquote relationship with other countries.
00:29:38.000I've never seen governments crack down on any company like this, save maybe Huawei.
00:29:43.000But aside from Huawei, which is an actual Chinese government apparatus, I do not understand why Twitter is coming under this sort of scrutiny.
00:29:49.000Meanwhile, Apple is getting away with literally doing the bidding of the Chinese government.
00:29:54.000And the biggest story that nobody seems to be covering very much is this story that Apple actually shut down AirDrop in China before these giant protests broke out in China.
00:30:03.000So Apple, it should be noted, something like 95% of all the components in an iPhone are compiled and manufactured in China.
00:30:11.000A huge percentage of the value of the iPhone is made in China.
00:30:15.000And because so much of their production for the iPhone 14, for example, is centralized in China, Apple just does the bidding of the Chinese government.
00:30:56.000Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, over at Facebook, he's ripping on Apple also because the App Store is dominant and essentially has monopolistic power over what is allowed on the App Store.
00:31:05.000There was a big controversy that broke out when Twitter accused Apple of trying to ban it from the App Store for political differences.
00:31:27.000That isn't really the case on Android phones.
00:31:29.000Google might control what goes in the Play Store, but they've always made it so that you could sideload and have other app stores.
00:31:37.000I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control, like unilaterally what apps get on a device.
00:31:47.000And I don't think that's a sustainable or good place to be.
00:31:50.000Zuckerberg happens to be correct about this.
00:31:53.000It is, again, quite amazing which companies have fallen under the scrutiny of Democrats on the left and which ones have not.
00:32:00.000So Facebook in the aftermath of 2016 fell under the scrutiny of the left because they'd allowed too many companies that were not left-wing to thrive.
00:32:05.000Twitter has now fallen under the scrutiny of the left because Elon Musk took it over.
00:32:11.000I mean, the most obvious example, by the way, of this, of people who are friendly with Democrats, people who are who are joining with the Democratic sort of coterie in their ideology, getting easy treatment is Sam Bankman Freed.
00:32:33.000And a lot of people held their money in the exchange so that they could buy and sell various forms of cryptocurrency.
00:32:39.000There was an associated company, call it Alameda Capital, which was Alameda Research, which was actually a hedge fund that was connected to FTX.
00:32:48.000Sort of tangentially connected to FTX.
00:32:50.000And Elemator Research was buying all sorts of FTT, which was a cryptocurrency created by FTX to boost its own stock price, essentially.
00:33:00.000Where was Elemator Research getting its money?
00:33:01.000It turns out they were getting their money directly from user accounts at FTX.
00:33:13.000And yet, Sam Bankman-Fried yesterday, as long as you give tens of millions of dollars to Democrats, man, you can get away with pretty much anything.
00:33:19.000Sam Bankman-Fried yesterday was part of a New York Times Dealbook Summit alongside people like Janet Yellen.
00:33:26.000I mean, this is post the implosion of FTX.
00:33:29.000This is in the middle of a massive investigation that's going on into how billions of dollars suddenly went missing from user wallets over at FTX.
00:33:38.000Meanwhile, Sam Bankman Freed is literally talking to a thousand people at this insane gathering of the Glitterati.
00:33:47.000According to the New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, told the Dealbook Summit on Wednesday the company's downfall was caused by, quote, a massive failure of oversight on my part.
00:33:56.000Whatever happened, why it happened, I had a duty to our shareholders, our customers, our investors, our stakeholders, the regulators of the world to do right by them, he told Andrew Ross Sorkin via video from the Bahamas.
00:34:05.000Clearly, I didn't do a good job of that.
00:34:06.000I didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone.
00:34:08.000I'm deeply sorry about what happened, he said while drinking from a can of La Croix.
00:34:13.000He also said that spiraling losses at Alameda Research, FTX's sister company, essentially meaning that the crypto exchange was loaning Alameda large sums of money and left the trading firm with a large margin position at FTX.
00:34:24.000He took pains not to mention Carolyn Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, by name.
00:34:29.000Perhaps that's because he was schtipping her at the time.
00:36:07.000On behalf of everybody here and on behalf of the public, I want to thank you for engaging in it at a time, in truth, when I know you've been advised not to.
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00:36:35.000Studies show that prolonged sitting is associated with an increased risk for obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, other chronic illnesses.
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00:37:20.000Right now, Flexispot is offering a huge $80 off their E7 Pro Plus standing desk with code SHAPIRO.
00:37:36.000Also, the season of giving is officially upon us.
00:37:39.000But as you shop holiday gifts and deals, you should ask yourself, who exactly are you giving to?
00:37:43.000Because if you're buying stocking stuffers from woke companies, you're really just stuffing the pockets of leftist CEOs and paying them to mock your values.
00:37:51.000His brand new collection of Jeremy's Razors products will make the perfect gift for the pronounless men in your life.
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00:38:07.000Go to jeremysrazors.com today for your last chance to save.
00:38:12.000And meanwhile, Joe Biden in the aftermath of a kind of shocking non-election blowout.
00:38:18.000Joe Biden was asked yesterday essentially whether he was going to run again.
00:38:22.000He was doing a speech and at the very end of his speech, somebody shouted, four more years.
00:38:25.000And Joe Biden's like, oh, we'll see about that.
00:38:42.000Now, the rule for Biden probably is that if Joe, if Donald Trump ends up being the nominee for the Republicans, he'll run again because he thinks that he can beat Donald Trump.
00:38:48.000But if it's anybody else, is there a possibility that he that he steps down?
00:38:52.000I think the Democrats are gonna have a real tough time letting him go.
00:40:41.000I hear more about the Navajos than I hear about me.
00:40:47.000So, this is the beginning of a bad Taylor Sheridan script.
00:40:51.000As the first lady of the United States ends up going to a Native American reservation and then just, um, and then just staying there forever.
00:40:58.000Meanwhile, Corine Jean-Pierre is fibbing that Joe Biden has been to the border.
00:41:01.000He has never been to the border, apparently.
00:41:03.000But this is the favorite game of the Democratic Party, is we've been to the border when we haven't.
00:41:06.000You remember Kamala Harris said this at one point.
00:41:35.000And since he took office... When did he go to the border?
00:41:38.000Since he took office, the President Biden has been taking action to fix our immigration system and secure our border.
00:41:45.000And that's why, on day one, he put forward an immigration reform piece of legislation to deal with what is currently happening at the border.
00:41:56.000But, you know, we're not seeing that from Republicans.
00:41:59.000We're not seeing a willingness to work with us on fixing a situation that's been around For decades now.
00:42:08.000Instead, they're doing political stunts.
00:42:25.000We have a massive crisis on our southern border.
00:42:27.000As I discussed at the top of the show, the economy is still not going great guns here.
00:42:31.000And the fact of the matter is that we are probably seeing a fall spring.
00:42:34.000When it comes to foreign policy, China is getting more aggressive.
00:42:36.000Meanwhile, the White House is targeting Elon Musk and Twitter.
00:42:40.000This is not an administration that is in control of itself.
00:42:42.000Meanwhile, the House Democrats have decided on their new leadership class.
00:42:45.000Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries was elected on Wednesday to lead House Democrats in the next Congress, making history as the first black person to lead either party in either chamber and taking on the responsibility of keeping the caucus united on policies and messaging as they set their sights on winning back the majority next term, according to the Washington Post.
00:43:00.000Now, again, we're going to play this game until the end of time, which is first black person to do anything.
00:43:18.000I just don't understand why it's that big a deal.
00:43:19.000I don't think that it is at this point, but you have to come up with some historic reason why Hakeem Jeffries should be the leader of the Democratic Party.
00:43:25.000Now, the truth is Hakeem Jeffries is more competent than many of the other people who are up for the post.
00:43:30.000But there are some problems with Hakeem Jeffries as the Democratic leader.
00:43:33.000Among those problems is that Hakeem Jeffries is kind of an election denier.
00:43:35.000So if the entire idea here is that election denial is bad, it's weird to appoint an election denier to the top post.
00:43:41.000He tweeted out post-2016 that Trump was not the legitimate president.