The Ben Shapiro Show - ‘Family Man’ Forced To Acknowledge Seventh Grandchild

00:00:00.000 Well, the president of the United States is wildly unpopular, and a lot of people have attributed that to his policies.

00:00:04.000 The fact that his policies are all about gigantic government spending or equity at the center of all things, or weak foreign policy, including the pullout from Afghanistan.

00:00:12.000 But the reality is that the reason that Joe Biden has been sinking in the polls is because Americans don't like him personally.

00:00:18.000 Unlike Barack Obama, where the polls showed they liked the guy personally, they didn't like his policies.

00:00:21.000 With Joe Biden, the two are just intertwined.

00:00:24.000 Joe Biden is not liked by personally. And the turning point for him was actually the

00:00:27.000 pullout from Afghanistan. Until that point, there'd been a widespread perception that he

00:00:31.000 was a kindly elderly gentleman who wasn't all there, but in essence was a fairly okay guy. But when

00:00:36.000 he pulled out from Afghanistan and basically said, I don't care what happens there, when there 0.99

00:00:40.000 are people falling off wheel wells and American soldiers getting blown up and his entire

00:00:43.000 administration sitting there talking about what a wonderful job they were doing, that really sunk the

00:00:48.000 perception of the American public about him.

00:00:50.000 But he has now underscored that in radical terms because of his association with his son, Hunter.

00:00:56.000 So the public mind with regard to Hunter Biden has shifted to, it started off with Hunter Biden

00:01:02.000 Derelict.

00:01:03.000 Bad guy. 0.99

00:01:04.000 Drug abuser. 1.00

00:01:06.000 Pornography abuser. 1.00

00:01:07.000 Prostitute abuser. 1.00

00:01:08.000 A bad person. 0.99

00:01:10.000 But Joe, you know, decent dad trying to take care of his drug addicted son, trying to make sure that his son was okay.

00:01:15.000 Sympathetic figure.

00:01:17.000 And then, as all these corruption stories roll out, These stories about how Hunter was going around picking up giant bags of cash from foreign sources and Joe was in all likelihood benefiting from that.

00:01:26.000 The documents on Hunter Biden's laptop in which Hunter Biden is bragging to his daughter about funding daddy.

00:01:31.000 The documents from his laptop suggesting that Joe was taking part in meetings either by phone or sometimes even in person stopping by meetings and saying hello.

00:01:40.000 Documents suggesting that Hunter Biden was saying to foreign officials That Joe Biden was sitting next to him as he attempted to essentially pry money out of them.

00:01:48.000 You combine that with Joe Biden's treatment of Hunter Biden's illegitimate daughter, and things start to go bad for Joe Biden in terms of public perception real fast.

00:01:57.000 So, lurking in the background of the Biden family story has always been this idea that they are incredibly tribal.

00:02:02.000 That if you are a Biden, then you get to benefit from the sweetheart deals that are associated with the Biden last name.

00:02:07.000 If you're Frank Biden, you can go around and pick up cash.

00:02:09.000 Joe Biden's brother.

00:02:10.000 If you are Hunter, you can go around and pick up cash. 0.96

00:02:12.000 Because, of course, you're a member of the corrupt Biden family.

00:02:15.000 But if they choose not to give you the name, if they decide that they are not going to extend the name to you, then you're basically cut off at the knees.

00:02:22.000 And who better to apply that logic to than a small baby?

00:02:27.000 So as we all know, at this point, Hunter Biden had a sexual relationship with a woman named London Roberts.

00:02:35.000 London Roberts was acting apparently as his quasi-assistant, and by quasi-assistant we mean that Hunter was basically using her not just for her secretarial abilities, but for apparently other purposes and reasons, sexual in nature, and she bore a child by him whom she named Navy Joan.

00:02:51.000 Navy Joan was born way back in 2019.

00:02:55.000 It is currently 2023.

00:02:57.000 For years, Joe Biden has maintained that he has six grandchildren.

00:03:00.000 He does not.

00:03:01.000 He has seven.

00:03:02.000 He's had seven grandchildren for four years.

00:03:05.000 And there's no real religious objection here.

00:03:06.000 I mean, it's not as though he has differences with Hunter and therefore he's cut Hunter off from the family or something like that.

00:03:12.000 This is some lady that Hunter got pregnant and a kid who obviously is Joe Biden's granddaughter, who he simply refused to give the Biden last name, which of course is the imprimatur of not only legitimacy, But also of moneymaking.

00:03:26.000 In the Biden family, literally the only thing that matters is that last name.

00:03:29.000 That's the only thing.

00:03:30.000 It is not Joe Biden's magic political skill set.

00:03:32.000 He has no magic political skill set.

00:03:33.000 He ran for president 100 times before he latched onto the rising star of Barack Obama, and then rode that in his octogenarian years to the presidency of the United States over Donald Trump.

00:03:43.000 The Biden last name is the moneymaker, and that is explicitly what was denied to Navy Joan.

00:03:48.000 In fact, in the paternity hearings about Navy Joan, Joe Biden, presumably Hunter Biden, said in the final analysis that Navy Joan would be denied Hunter's last name.

00:03:59.000 The only thing that Hunter would be giving to Navy Joan and her mommy were some finger paintings that Hunter Biden had created.

00:04:06.000 Then presumably there'd be some sort of corrupt deal or somebody buys those paintings off of Navy Joan's mom and it's a money laundering operation essentially on behalf of the Biden family, yet again by big name donors who will buy Hunter Biden's paintings from London Roberts, and then that money will eventually see Navy Joan.

00:04:20.000 But Navy Joan will be denied the magical Biden last name that has meant literally tens of millions of dollars flowing into family coffers for decades on end. 1.00

00:04:28.000 So Joe Biden cares about his granddaughter so much that he literally refused to acknowledge her existence.

00:04:33.000 At the White House, there was a Christmas stocking for his dog, you know, the one that was biting all the secret service agents.

00:04:39.000 But there was no Christmas stocking for the granddaughter he refused to acknowledge.

00:04:42.000 Well, over the weekend, Joe Biden reversed that.

00:04:44.000 Well, the poll numbers must have gotten real bad because there was nothing that changed in principle here.

00:04:48.000 It wasn't as though Joe Biden suddenly, it dawned on him that maybe he should acknowledge his seventh grandchild.

00:04:54.000 No, what happened here is pretty obvious.

00:04:56.000 The American people don't like it when this supposed kindly old family man, whose entire excuse for his really ludicrously soft treatment of his son has been that he loves his son oh so much, he's the beautiful boy, he's never done anything wrong.

00:05:10.000 It turns out that that doesn't hold water when you are willing to disown a four-year-old.

00:05:14.000 It's easy to make the claim that you love your kids so much that you let them get away with stuff when everybody in the family is treated with this level of warmth.

00:05:22.000 But when you say, this four-year-old, who through no fault of her own, was born of your son, is not part of the family, but the son, who is a crack-addicted derelict, who runs around the world picking up bags of cash, he is in good with me.

00:05:35.000 That appears a lot more like corruption than it does like family loyalty, because apparently to get kicked out of the family, all that is required is for your mom to be somebody that Joe Biden doesn't like very much or finds humiliating, but to be included in all family activities up to and including present day, even after pleading guilty to actual federal misdemeanors.

00:05:51.000 All you really have to do is go out and continue to pick up bags of cash if you are Hunter Biden or have picked up bags of cash in the past.

00:05:58.000 So, over the weekend, Joe Biden and Jill Biden put out a statement, finally, about this missing grandchild.

00:06:04.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:07:06.000 So here's the statement that Joe and Jill Biden put out to People Magazine.

00:07:10.000 To People, the greatest of all news sources, quote, Our son Hunter and Navy's mother London are working

00:07:15.000 together to foster a relationship that is in the best interest of their daughter, preserving

00:07:19.000 her privacy as much as possible going forward. You know what would have been a great way to

00:07:23.000 preserve her privacy was not to make her the center of a political scandal for nigh on four years.

00:07:28.000 That'd be an easy way.

00:07:29.000 Like, if Joe had just said seven grandchildren the whole time, would that have been a controversy?

00:07:33.000 Or would we know Navy Jones' name?

00:07:36.000 Do you know any of Joe Biden's other grandchildren's name?

00:07:38.000 Let me put it that way.

00:07:39.000 Name another Joe Biden grandchild.

00:07:41.000 Go, quick. 0.96

00:07:42.000 Do you know?

00:07:42.000 No?

00:07:43.000 No?

00:07:43.000 You've never heard of them?

00:07:44.000 Right, because it's only a controversy when you refuse to name your grandchild because your son sired her off a former stripper or something.

00:07:52.000 This is not a political issue, it's a family matter, said President Biden.

00:07:55.000 Jill and I only want what's best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.

00:07:59.000 A source familiar with the situation tells People the recently resolved child support dispute between Hunter and London has dictated how the relationship has played out so far.

00:08:06.000 Okay, that source familiar with the situation would probably be the Biden family.

00:08:10.000 Because who else exactly are they citing?

00:08:13.000 You have to remember there were some fairly contentious legal proceedings between Navy's parents happening until just a few weeks ago.

00:08:17.000 As grandparents, the Bidens are following Hunter's lead.

00:08:20.000 They are and have been giving Hunter and London the space and time to figure things out.

00:08:23.000 I don't understand, what the hell does that have to do with Joe acknowledging that Navy Joan is his grandkid?

00:08:30.000 How does that impact a legal dispute?

00:08:32.000 There is no dispute whatsoever that that is in fact the case.

00:08:35.000 I mean, they literally did a paternity test in May 2019 to determine that Navy Joan is in fact Hunter's kid.

00:08:41.000 So if Joe has just been saying this the whole time, he's like, yeah, they're in the middle of, I'm not going to comment on their legal situation, that's seen mommy and daddy in this particular case, but of course she's our grandchild and we love her.

00:08:49.000 I mean, that's such an easy answer.

00:08:51.000 Again, the reality is that there's only one thing that Joe Biden cares about in life, and that is the Biden name.

00:08:56.000 He has made this absolutely clear.

00:08:58.000 He says this over and over in public life, that the Biden family, I swear on the Biden family name, the Biden family name, because the Biden family name, again, is his only valuable tool.

00:09:06.000 And it was only valuable, really, to everybody who was around him because he was able to parlay his situation as a senator into jobs and cash for his son, for his brother, for everybody else.

00:09:15.000 And presumably, some of that cash came back to him.

00:09:17.000 I say presumably because, again, we have documented accusations that that is the case from Hunter, from his laptop.

00:09:23.000 Speaking to People, the source notes the situation is a family issue.

00:09:25.000 Quote, thousands of families have faced similar circumstances working it out in private versus the spotlight.

00:09:29.000 No, they haven't.

00:09:31.000 How many families are there where the grandparents refuse to even acknowledge that they have a grandchild unless there is some sort of family dispute in which the parents of the child are estranged from the grandparents?

00:09:44.000 Truly, it's a serious question.

00:09:46.000 Does this happen a lot?

00:09:48.000 Where the parents are not estranged.

00:09:49.000 Not only is Daddy not estranged from Grandpa, they basically live together in the same room.

00:09:55.000 I mean, Daddy is flying around the world and staying literally in the same room in places like Ireland with Grandpa.

00:10:02.000 If he has an illegitimate child, is this a common thing?

00:10:04.000 At the center is a four-year-old girl everyone wants what's best for her, including all of her grandparents.

00:10:08.000 I don't think that's been proved by the record.

00:10:10.000 Let's say that.

00:10:11.000 It took until she was four.

00:10:12.000 Okay, she's four years old.

00:10:14.000 She's four.

00:10:15.000 This is not a two-month matter.

00:10:17.000 This is a four-year matter.

00:10:19.000 Why does this matter?

00:10:19.000 Well, because it goes to character.

00:10:21.000 Because in politics, If, as the Democratic Party suggests, character matters, it matters so much so that Donald Trump should never have been president, he should never be president again because of his character defect.

00:10:31.000 Well, the fact is that Joe Biden has portrayed himself in a way that Donald Trump never did.

00:10:35.000 Joe Biden has portrayed himself as a generous, kind-hearted family man who only cares about the members of his family above all.

00:10:41.000 So much so that he's purely sympathetic to his drug-addicted, booze-addled son.

00:10:45.000 But when it comes to the grandkid, well, then that's off-limits.

00:10:49.000 It's off-limits until we decide to say something, at which point it's on-limits for just a second to say once again what a great grandpa Joe is, and then back to being off-limits again.

00:10:58.000 And of course, the media are lapping this up, because the media had no questions about this for a very, very long time.

00:11:02.000 So here, for example, is MSNBC anchor Ali Rafa saying, all they want is to preserve this little girl's privacy again.

00:11:07.000 If they wanted to preserve her privacy, you know it would have been the easiest way to do that, to just have Joe Biden say he has seven grandchildren, which he did.

00:11:14.000 Alex, the president has never shared his reasoning for not publicly acknowledging this little girl, but a source familiar with the family's situation tells NBC News he's avoided doing so until now to give his son and the girl's mother the time and space to navigate this.

00:11:29.000 The president, who's always made his family a very public part of his life, now asking to preserve this little girl's privacy.

00:11:36.000 So at this point, it's still unclear whether the family dynamics change at all.

00:11:42.000 So again, it's all about the preservation of the privacy.

00:11:45.000 And then, if you actually mention the actual situation, then members of the media shut you down.

00:11:49.000 So CNN host Casey Hunt had on a CNN analyst named Scott Jennings.

00:11:53.000 And Scott Jennings is going pretty hard after Hunter.

00:11:55.000 And immediately, Casey Hunt jumps in. 0.99

00:11:57.000 She's like, we have to be respectful.

00:11:58.000 Do we, though?

00:11:59.000 Do we have to be respectful of Hunter?

00:12:01.000 Who undoubtedly was acting as a foreign agent of multiple governments, and who sired a child by a person he called his secretary, and who then ignored that child for four years, and who has denied that child his last name.

00:12:14.000 Do we have to treat Hunter with respect?

00:12:16.000 Hunter is a terrible person.

00:12:17.000 I don't feel any necessity to treat Hunter- and he is a public figure insofar as he was picking up bags of cash with his daddy's name on them.

00:12:23.000 I mean, come on.

00:12:25.000 But here is CNN going into defense mode and spin mode here. 0.97

00:12:29.000 It's not Republicans with all due respect who made Hunter Biden into a complete scumbag on this and other issues. 0.94

00:12:34.000 The ignoring his own daughter for four years and the President of the United States hanging up a stocking for the dog and not for his seventh grandchild. 0.70

00:12:45.000 We can also have sympathy for people who are struggling with addiction.

00:12:48.000 Let's keep this conversation respectful.

00:12:51.000 I totally agree.

00:12:52.000 And you know where I'm from, a lot of families deal with addiction.

00:12:54.000 And you know who ends up picking up the pieces?

00:12:56.000 The grandparents.

00:12:58.000 And in this case, the grandparents would not acknowledge this little girl.

00:13:02.000 It is offensive.

00:13:03.000 But the bottom line is... But they have now.

00:13:04.000 Oh, what a hero!

00:13:08.000 I mean, the fact that she says that she jumps in and tries to stop Scott Jennings from doing all this is just demonstrative of everything that the Biden family relies upon, which is the acquiescence of the media in all these situations, which is really what so much of this is about.

00:13:23.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second because, again, the Hunter Biden saga is, in fact, going to do serious damage to Joe in a way that nothing is going to do damage to Trump.

00:13:33.000 As I've said before, This has been true for years. 0.97

00:13:36.000 Donald Trump, when it comes to this race, is essentially a mud monster. 0.99

00:13:39.000 The more mud you throw on him, the more he is made of mud. 1.00

00:13:41.000 You cannot sully the frock of somebody whose frock is made of mud. 0.99

00:13:45.000 There's no way to do it.

00:13:46.000 But Joe Biden proclaimed that he is a decent, honest, hard-working family man.

00:13:50.000 And it turns out that he actually is a pretty corrupt old politician who is willing to manipulate and use his drug-addled son to pick up bags of cash abroad while ignoring his grandchild.

00:14:00.000 I mean, that's not quite the same look.

00:14:02.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:15:04.000 Okay, so.

00:15:06.000 Meanwhile, the DOJ put out a super bizarre letter over the weekend.

00:15:10.000 So the Department of Justice obviously attempted to cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden.

00:15:13.000 Like, a real sweetheart deal.

00:15:14.000 So much of a sweetheart deal that, as we explained last week, when it was exposed to the light of day, they immediately dissociated themselves from the sweetheart deal they attempted to cut.

00:15:23.000 Basically, they had two sets of charges.

00:15:24.000 One was the tax charges, one was the gun charges against Hunter Biden.

00:15:27.000 In the tax charges, they didn't say anything about waiving further investigations and charges with regard to, for example, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which Hunter Biden clearly violated.

00:15:35.000 He was acting as an amuse on Burisma's board and trying to lobby politicians on behalf of Burisma.

00:15:41.000 Hey, Burisma is a Ukrainian energy company.

00:15:44.000 He was doing this also on behalf of Chinese companies.

00:15:46.000 So there's no question that he violated the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by any available measure.

00:15:51.000 And so the question is, are there further investigations that are going to bear fruit not only with regard to Hunter, but maybe might just touch Joe?

00:15:57.000 And the DOJ was eager to basically get all of these claims off the table.

00:16:01.000 And so there was this kind of bizarre open battle that was happening between the DOJ and Hunter Biden's legal team, where Hunter Biden's legal team would go on national television, and then they would say things like, well, by our understanding, all charges are now off the table.

00:16:12.000 And the DOJ would be like, no, they're not really.

00:16:14.000 And he would say, yeah, you know, they really are.

00:16:16.000 Well, it turns out that Hunter Biden's lawyers had reason to think so, because these tax charges, which were publicly available, those did not waive further charges.

00:16:23.000 But you know what did?

00:16:24.000 It was a diversionary agreement on the gun charge.

00:16:26.000 It said that anything related to the tax charges, including presumably FARA violations, would be waived.

00:16:32.000 Well, the judge saw this, and the judge immediately was like, uh, this seems corrupt and bad, like they're hiding the deal.

00:16:38.000 And the DOJ was like, we never made a deal.

00:16:40.000 What are you suggesting?

00:16:41.000 And so they had to back off of it, which is why the plea agreement is still in limbo between Hunter Biden and the DOJ.

00:16:47.000 I mean, that's really, really corrupt stuff.

00:16:49.000 OK, well, over the weekend, the DOJ also sent a letter to Devon Archer's attorney.

00:16:55.000 Devon Archer is the former business partner of Hunter Biden, who is now testifying today behind closed doors before Congress, talking about Joe Biden and how Joe Biden would get called into meetings and how the big guy was Joe Biden and all of this sort of stuff.

00:17:08.000 It really could be devastating stuff for Hunter Biden, as well as Joe Biden, because again, Joe proclaimed that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden's businesses, which is weird when you're getting called by Hunter Biden's business partners on the phone and he's putting you on the phone with them.

00:17:21.000 So he's lying, in other words.

00:17:22.000 Well, he's supposed to testify to that before Congress today.

00:17:25.000 Well, literally two days before that happens, a letter is sent from Damian Williams, U.S.

00:17:30.000 Attorney, The government respectfully requests the defendant be ordered to surrender at a date and time determined by the court to a facility designated by the Bureau of Prisons to commence his term of imprisonment.

00:17:40.000 The government has conferred with counsel for the defendant about this request and asked that counsel propose a date for the defendant's surrender.

00:17:45.000 Counsel responded with the following position.

00:17:48.000 Mr. Archer believes it is premature to set up a report date in light of his anticipated continuing appeal, as well as the newly discovered sentencing error the government has now concluded.

00:17:55.000 Counsel for Mr. Archer will put in a response to the government's request by Wednesday.

00:17:58.000 The government disagrees with the counsel's position a report date should not be set.

00:18:01.000 So in other words, there is a dispute between the attorney for Devin Archer, he's been convicted in other crimes, and the DOJ literally sent a letter over the weekend saying, we would like to set a date for him to come in and turn himself in.

00:18:15.000 So, this was interpreted by some, including the New York Post's Miranda Devine, suggesting that they wanted Devin Archer to turn himself in to jail before he actually was able to give his congressional testimony.

00:18:24.000 Apparently that's not the case, but the letter itself is still kind of weird.

00:18:28.000 I mean, a letter that you send publicly, right?

00:18:31.000 It's now publicly available.

00:18:32.000 A letter that you send to the attorneys of the person who's about to testify before Congress.

00:18:36.000 From the DOJ, run by the father of the person with whom you were business partners, saying, you ready to turn yourself in for jail yet?

00:18:44.000 What's the story?

00:18:44.000 You ready to go to jail?

00:18:46.000 When are we going to find out?

00:18:47.000 That's a little weird.

00:18:49.000 It raises two specific issues.

00:18:50.000 One, publicly, it again tries to label Devin Archer an untrustworthy, unreliable source because it reminds the entire public that the guy has pled guilty to crimes.

00:19:00.000 And second, it reminds Devin Archer who's in charge, namely the DOJ and you remember, like, Joe Biden.

00:19:08.000 Archer's counsel, again, rejected the notion there's any connection between Archer's tiff with the Justice Department and his potential imminent jail time.

00:19:15.000 He said, we're aware of speculation the DOJ's weekend request to have Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee.

00:19:23.000 To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation.

00:19:25.000 In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along.

00:19:27.000 He'll show up on Monday and honestly answer the questions put to him by the congressional invest— What else do you think he's going to say?

00:19:32.000 If he's actually being intimidated by Joe Biden's DOJ, then he's going to be out there being like, I'm being intimidated by Joe Biden's DOJ who has complete control over my sentencing.

00:19:39.000 Or is he going to go out publicly and he's going to say what he's expected to say, thus achieving the purpose of the letter.

00:19:46.000 So we'll see what Devin Archer has to say behind closed doors, but that is definitely super weird.

00:19:50.000 Meanwhile, you have people who are very much involved in the Trump impeachment, like Representative Dan Goldman saying, the process on the DOJ, this is all fully above board.

00:19:59.000 The Hunter Biden plea deal was fully above board and great.

00:20:02.000 Were you surprised to see the judge in Delaware reject the plea deal?

00:20:07.000 Not reject it, but not accept it?

00:20:09.000 Well, this is a fairly typical process that goes through.

00:20:13.000 This was an unusual agreement, in part because it's a 24-month agreement, and there's the possibility that Donald Trump will be president.

00:20:23.000 And we know from his presidency how much he weaponized the Department of Justice to go after his enemies and to favor his associates.

00:20:30.000 And so Hunter Biden's lawyers are concerned that Donald Trump, if he were to get the presidency, would weaponize the Department of Justice.

00:20:38.000 And so there is an added calculation to this.

00:20:41.000 But the fact of the matter is that this is a Trump-appointed U.S.

00:20:44.000 attorney, a Trump-appointed judge.

00:20:47.000 This is a very Independent and thorough investigation.

00:20:53.000 And I think that whatever happens in the Hunter Biden case, we can rest assured that it was done based solely on the facts and the evidence and that there was nothing else to it.

00:21:04.000 Oh, there's nothing to it.

00:21:05.000 It's all wonderful, according to Dan Goldman.

00:21:08.000 Mm-hmm.

00:21:09.000 Head of the impeachment management for Donald Trump.

00:21:11.000 Yes, I totally believe you, Dan Goldman.

00:21:14.000 In just one second, we'll get to the other side of the race.

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00:22:16.000 Okay, so naturally, the outcome from the media when it comes to Hunter Biden's corruption and Joe Biden's potential involvement in that corruption is that there's nothing to see here.

00:22:29.000 Chuck Todd over on NBC says, you know, the Republicans are going to go after Joe and Hunter, whether there's anything there or not.

00:22:36.000 OK, so first of all, let me point out you guys set the standard.

00:22:39.000 You did.

00:22:40.000 It is the way politics works.

00:22:41.000 We all may wish that it worked where one side acted above board and the other side was scurrilous.

00:22:46.000 But here's the reality.

00:22:47.000 If the rules only apply to one side, they ain't rules.

00:22:50.000 And so if you go after Donald Trump for four long years with bullcrap investigations about how actually he was a member of the Russian oligarchy, And you have Adam Schiff trotted out on places like Meet the Press routinely to talk about how they have a smoking gun hidden behind clothes.

00:23:04.000 They can't show it to you now.

00:23:05.000 They can't show it.

00:23:05.000 But sooner or later, they will emerge from behind the Price is Right curtain and they will explain to you exactly how Donald Trump was working hand in glove with Vladimir Putin.

00:23:15.000 And it turns out all to be false.

00:23:16.000 Well, guess what?

00:23:17.000 When the shoe is on the other foot, Things are going to be kind of... Now, here's the reality.

00:23:21.000 We currently have more documented evidence that Joe Biden was receiving benefit from Hunter Biden's foreign payoffs than that Donald Trump was receiving foreign payoffs.

00:23:31.000 That evidence is much better for Joe than it is with regard to Donald Trump.

00:23:35.000 We still have yet to see what is the documented benefit that Donald Trump received from, for example, the Russian government.

00:23:41.000 Where is it?

00:23:43.000 Well, we know full well, Hunter, I keep coming back to it because it's so perfectly obvious.

00:23:48.000 Have you ever texted your child, your adult child?

00:23:51.000 Let's say that you're 40, 50 years old.

00:23:52.000 Have you ever texted your adult child that you are paying grandma's bills when you're not actually paying grandma's bills?

00:23:57.000 Hunter Biden literally texted his daughter saying that he's been paying for everything in the family and for pop for years.

00:24:04.000 Do you think that was just made up?

00:24:07.000 Even if Hunter Biden was high on crack at the time, did he just come up with that out of nowhere?

00:24:12.000 Really?

00:24:12.000 Here is Chuck Todd proclaiming, well, it's just unfair.

00:24:15.000 They're going to go after him no matter what.

00:24:16.000 Well, here's the thing, the media will defend Joe Biden no matter what.

00:24:19.000 So yeah, I mean, that is going to be how this goes.

00:24:22.000 Do you think it would behoove the president for him to come out and say, hey, I had no business dealings with my son.

00:24:27.000 My son's issues are my son's issues.

00:24:29.000 Do you think he needs to say that more directly?

00:24:31.000 Because there's a lot of people that believe something, something else would happen.

00:24:35.000 Well, let's be clear about that point, Chuck.

00:24:36.000 There's been a five year investigation, five years by a Trump appointed U.S.

00:24:42.000 attorney.

00:24:43.000 This investigation started during the Trump administration, and they've come forward with not one shred of evidence.

00:24:49.000 I'm tying President Biden to any of this.

00:24:52.000 I am encouraged that in sharp contrast to President Trump, you've just detailed his mountain of legal problems where President Trump is fighting and pushing back and obstructing.

00:25:02.000 Hunter Biden's come forward, taken responsibility, paid his late taxes.

00:25:07.000 As you just discussed with Chuck Rosenberg, I think the hiccup in the Delaware District Courthouse will get ironed out pretty quickly.

00:25:13.000 And I don't think President Biden needs to say anything more than he has.

00:25:16.000 House Republicans are going to accuse him.

00:25:18.000 They are.

00:25:18.000 They're going to make the accusation.

00:25:20.000 They're going to accuse him of all sorts of stuff.

00:25:21.000 Perhaps whether they have the evidence or not.

00:25:22.000 Correct.

00:25:25.000 Whether they have the evidence or not.

00:25:26.000 I love that Democrats are saying whether they have the evidence or not.

00:25:28.000 Four years of accusations that the 2016 election was stolen by Putin on behalf of Trump with zero evidence.

00:25:34.000 Four years of it.

00:25:35.000 They've still maintained it, by the way.

00:25:37.000 Fairly amazing stuff.

00:25:38.000 Okay, meanwhile, Donald Trump is of course using this as the impetus for his campaign.

00:25:42.000 So this campaign, you gotta say, Donald Trump is one of the luckiest SOBs ever to live in politics.

00:25:47.000 Because when the dice are down, they tend to break his way almost always.

00:25:52.000 And this is particularly true when it comes to the way this race is shaping up. 0.99

00:25:55.000 So right now, it is shaping up for the Republican side as a referendum on Joe Biden's corruption.

00:26:00.000 And so that is going to break very much in Donald Trump's favor.

00:26:02.000 Because again, Donald Trump, as he himself has proclaimed, with the inerrant instinct that he has, and this is the magical benefit of Donald Trump, truthfully.

00:26:10.000 Donald Trump is not an intellectual.

00:26:11.000 Donald Trump is not a person who thinks through policy positions.

00:26:14.000 Donald Trump isn't a person with policy positions.

00:26:16.000 Donald Trump is a series of impulses, but his instincts are inerrant.

00:26:20.000 When it comes to targeting people, when it comes to destroying political opposition, the dude is a genius.

00:26:25.000 He really is.

00:26:25.000 I mean, he's really good at this.

00:26:27.000 Or I should rather say he has a genius for it.

00:26:30.000 Because it doesn't come from, I think, IQ points as much as it comes from just, he has a gut-level understanding of where to put the knife in. 0.53

00:26:35.000 He's been great at this since the 2015 campaign, which is why the nicknames that so many people dismissed as, you know, dumb or a waste of time, including me, they resonate, obviously.

00:26:46.000 He does have a capacity to speak to the 7th grade side of people that is really inerrant.

00:26:51.000 And it's also true when it comes to kind of capturing the political id.

00:26:56.000 When it comes to a person who sums up the political id and is able to capture it in a way that no other politician in my lifetime can, Trump is that guy.

00:27:03.000 So Trump understands the momentum in the Republican Party with regard to Joe Biden is all about the corruption.

00:27:07.000 It's not about his policies.

00:27:08.000 It's not about what a bad politician he is.

00:27:10.000 It's about his personal corruption.

00:27:13.000 And so over the weekend, Trump really went hard at Joe Biden on this.

00:27:18.000 And in fact, Trump, he loves campaigning as an outsider.

00:27:21.000 It's his favorite thing to do.

00:27:23.000 Donald Trump was the president of the United States.

00:27:25.000 He has an extraordinary level of loyalty inside the Republican Party, and he's still campaigning as an outsider because it allows him to be as free-willing as he wants to be.

00:27:31.000 The minute you're burdened with the feeling of being an establishment, Figure, the moment you actually have responsibility for your own party, well, then people can hold you accountable for failures, right?

00:27:40.000 This is what started to happen in 2022, after Trump endorsed a slate of candidates who all lost in the Senate.

00:27:45.000 There was just for a brief moment in time, Republicans were like, wait, doesn't he bear some responsibility for those losses?

00:27:50.000 Maybe we shouldn't nominate him.

00:27:51.000 And then he went right back to being the freewheeling, sort of free radical actor.

00:27:54.000 And everyone, oh, well, he's not responsible for any of that.

00:27:56.000 He's only responsible for what he himself does, not for anybody else.

00:28:00.000 So he is, Again, when it comes to this, he does have a genius for this.

00:28:04.000 So, Donald Trump over the weekend, he aimed at Joe Biden, but he simultaneously aimed at all of his Republican opponents.

00:28:12.000 Again, free fire zone from Donald Trump.

00:28:14.000 Always, always, always.

00:28:16.000 No discretion in the fire, but just fire in every direction.

00:28:18.000 So he says that not only should Joe Biden be impeached, which, you know, the evidence may very well indicate that he should be impeached.

00:28:26.000 I said this last week.

00:28:27.000 But he also said that if people don't vote to impeach Joe Biden, regardless, he's going to then primary them.

00:28:34.000 Which is a way of declaring his political virtue to Republican members of the base who really, really don't like Joe Biden.

00:28:39.000 So again, I may think this is bad politics.

00:28:42.000 If you're in a purple district and you vote for Joe Biden's impeachment, you may lose your seat.

00:28:44.000 But Donald Trump doesn't care about that.

00:28:45.000 Again, he bears no responsibility for the Republican Party.

00:28:49.000 Donald Trump doesn't care whether the Republican Party wins or loses.

00:28:51.000 He cares about whether he wins or loses.

00:28:53.000 This has been perfectly true since he was running in 2015-2016 when he refused to endorse the idea that if he lost the primaries, he'd even vote for the other guy who won.

00:29:00.000 So here's Donald Trump in Erie, Pennsylvania over the weekend.

00:29:04.000 They play a different game. 0.99

00:29:06.000 These people are corrupt as hell, and they play a different game. 0.98

00:29:09.000 They play a much tougher game of hardball, and the Republicans have to play like these two guys and these three people. 0.99

00:29:16.000 Actually, four people that we have.

00:29:18.000 They have to play tough.

00:29:22.000 And they have to be, and honestly, and if they're not willing to do it, we've got a lot of good, tough Republicans around, and people are going to run against them, and people are going to win, and they're going to get my endorsement every single time, and they're going to win because we win almost every race when we endorse.

00:29:38.000 I mean, put aside the fact that that is 100% not true in the major top-of-the-ticket Senate races, where his record was abysmal.

00:29:44.000 But that doesn't matter, because again, this is Donald Trump being able to run against anyone and everyone at the same time, which is the benefit of being Donald Trump.

00:29:51.000 Every other candidate has to worry about attacking Trump.

00:29:53.000 Trump doesn't worry about attacking anybody.

00:29:55.000 He'll go after whoever he wants.

00:29:56.000 Donald Trump will go after primary opponents inside the Republican Party.

00:29:59.000 He will go after congressional primary opponents.

00:30:03.000 And again, because he channels that political id for the Republican Party, we all feel, in the Republican Party, a lot of people feel like he'll do that to the Democrats too, which is true.

00:30:12.000 He will.

00:30:12.000 I mean, so long as they're on his wrong side.

00:30:14.000 If they start to wheedle him and if they start to massage him a little bit, then that may shift and that may move.

00:30:19.000 And then Donald Trump continued to aim at Joe Biden over the weekend.

00:30:22.000 He said he's talking about Ukraine.

00:30:24.000 And now he's making the suggestion he's trying to come again.

00:30:25.000 This is the guy.

00:30:28.000 I've said the word genius here a few times, but it is true.

00:30:30.000 There is a growing sentiment inside the Republican Party that the war in Ukraine is somehow an element of corruption.

00:30:36.000 Now, you can believe several things at once.

00:30:37.000 One, the Ukrainian government is corrupt. 0.95

00:30:39.000 It is. 0.93

00:30:39.000 It has been for decades. 0.93

00:30:41.000 Two, the war in Ukraine against Russia is in America's interest in the sense that it degrades the Russian military, prevents them from invading further countries, maintains the reliability of NATO against foreign aggression, sends a message to China that if they invade Taiwan, there will be actual consequences for all of that, and prevents Vladimir Putin from consolidating resources on behalf of an anti-American alliance, right?

00:31:00.000 All of those are real American interests.

00:31:01.000 But you can also hold that With the position that obviously all money that we spend over there, we have to know where that money is going.

00:31:08.000 We have to assume that some of that money is going to bad places and all of the rest.

00:31:11.000 But Trump understands that there is a rising sentiment against the funding of the war in Ukraine.

00:31:17.000 And so now he's going to blame that on Joe Biden's corruption in Ukraine.

00:31:20.000 So he's linking two issues now for the Republican base, like a heavy chunk of the Republican base.

00:31:24.000 Issue one is Ukraine, which again, for probably a plurality of Republicans at this point, or at least verging on a plurality, the Ukraine war is unpopular.

00:31:31.000 He's merging that position with the anti-Joe Biden position to create a sort of iron nexus that is very useful to him politically because he's the only one articulating it.

00:31:39.000 Here he was talking about how the suggestion is that we're in war in Ukraine specifically because Joe Biden wanted to pick up cash.

00:31:48.000 But the weapons stockpiles to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family's corrupt business dealings.

00:31:59.000 We have to know, and the public deserves to know.

00:32:03.000 In addition, Congress should immediately vote to block Joe Biden's recent call-up of reserve forces.

00:32:10.000 We're sending now troops over to Europe to fight.

00:32:14.000 OK, so it is not true, by the way, that we're sending troops to Europe to fight in Ukraine, that that is not actually true.

00:32:19.000 But again, this is smart politics from Donald Trump.

00:32:23.000 Now, the problem is, does Donald Trump actually have any sort of plan to win the actual election?

00:32:28.000 So all of this plays inside the Republican primary, where everybody hates Joe Biden.

00:32:32.000 Everybody knows that Joe Biden is corrupt and a lot of people don't like the Ukraine war.

00:32:35.000 But an actual election between Joe Biden and Trump, that's a risky strategy, because the reality is that the Ukraine war is still a majority proposition in the United States.

00:32:43.000 The reality is he's going to stack up Trump against Joe Biden.

00:32:45.000 We'll get to Trump's flaws in just one second.

00:32:47.000 Again, I've praised his inerrant political instinct because they really are quite good.

00:32:51.000 But by the same token, a lot of the things that he's preparing for when it comes to the actual general election are not going to materialize.

00:32:57.000 We'll get to that in just one second first.

00:33:00.000 Not a big fan of the veggies over here, as you know.

00:33:03.000 I don't like how they taste.

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00:33:29.000 Well, Balance of Nature actually sent a bunch of product down to the studio for the team to try.

00:33:32.000 It's kosher, so I've been using it, and let me tell you, it may be keeping me alive at this point, given the fact that I have four children who wake me up at all times of the night, plus a dog.

00:33:39.000 Producer Jake also, he's been trying the Balance of Nature fruits and veggies.

00:33:43.000 He really hates garlic, but he loves the benefits to be got from things that like garlic, and this is why he likes his Balance of Nature fruits and veggie capsule.

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00:34:07.000 Also, are you sick of those wool corporations dragging your values through the mud? 0.97

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00:34:31.000 He didn't put any of that paraben in his hand soap.

00:34:33.000 I don't know what paraben is.

00:34:34.000 But also, there are no sulfates.

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00:35:02.000 Okay, meanwhile, now again, because the campaign against Joe Biden is coming down to not his policy so much as sort of personality, corruption, and all of the rest, this really benefits Trump, because this is the area where Trump really excels in tearing people down.

00:35:16.000 For literally years, he's just been dragging people down into the mud with him, and the idea is once they're both in the mud, then he's competitive.

00:35:21.000 And that, by the way, is what the polls are showing right now.

00:35:23.000 What the polls are showing is that he's very competitive with Biden, not because he is popular, but because Joe Biden is unpopular.

00:35:28.000 With that said, The thing that Trump would then need to do is run an actual concerted race with regard to, you know, expending resources to get the votes.

00:35:37.000 So over the weekend, Donald Trump suggested that all of his primary opponents should drop out so people would stop spending money on his primary opponents and give the money to him.

00:35:43.000 And then he would spend it on things like ballot harvesting.

00:35:47.000 Any Republican that doesn't act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out.

00:35:55.000 Okay, and then he came out and he suggested that he was going to spend all this money that he

00:36:04.000 raises from his primary opponents getting out. He was going to spend all that on ballot harvesting.

00:36:08.000 Now, there's only one problem with this. 0.99

00:36:11.000 You'd be kind of foolish to believe him. 0.82

00:36:12.000 He didn't do it in 2016. 0.88

00:36:13.000 He didn't do it in 2020.

00:36:15.000 He had no ground game in 2016.

00:36:18.000 He really didn't.

00:36:18.000 I mean, this is well-documented.

00:36:20.000 His campaign was run basically from 30,000 feet, and then he relied on Hillary Clinton's under-turnout to actually win the election.

00:36:28.000 Again, my favorite stat from the 2016 election is that in 2016, Donald Trump won fewer absolute votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney won in 2012.

00:36:36.000 But Donald Trump won Wisconsin and Mitt Romney lost Wisconsin.

00:36:39.000 The 2016 election was just as much, I think more, about lack of turnout for Hillary as it was about additional turnout for Donald Trump.

00:36:47.000 In 2020, he didn't have a ballot harvesting operation.

00:36:49.000 He actively told people not to vote early.

00:36:51.000 And then he did that again in 2021 in the Senate runoff race in Georgia, both of them.

00:36:57.000 That he ended up losing.

00:36:58.000 The Republicans ended up losing, then handing control of both the Senate and the House to Joe Biden, who proceeded to spend six to seven trillion dollars.

00:37:04.000 So do you think that Donald Trump is going to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a ballot harvesting operation?

00:37:09.000 An operation to actually get out the vote?

00:37:11.000 I have doubts.

00:37:11.000 The reason I have doubts is because we now have a story that Donald Trump has spent from his campaign super PACs, or his campaign super PACs have spent on his behalf, tens of millions of dollars on legal fees.

00:37:22.000 Now that's not what you're giving money to.

00:37:24.000 You're not actually- Donald Trump is a billionaire.

00:37:27.000 Now, I think that a lot of the legal problems that Trump is facing, some of them are of his own making, like the classified documents nonsense down in Florida.

00:37:33.000 That's of his own making.

00:37:34.000 He could have just handed those documents back to the National Archive and none of this ever would have happened.

00:37:37.000 But many of these legal troubles are not of his own making.

00:37:39.000 That'd be like the Manhattan DA going after him for Stormy Daniels nonsense.

00:37:43.000 It's of his own making in the sense that he shouldn't have shook Stormy Daniels and then paid her to be quiet.

00:37:46.000 But it's not of his making in the sense that it's a legally specious case.

00:37:50.000 But even assuming that there are tons of bills that are being incurred by Trump on a personal level, That are frivolous and that shouldn't have to be incurred?

00:37:59.000 When you give money to Trump's campaign, do you think you're paying his legal bills?

00:38:02.000 Or do you think you're paying for the ballot harvesting?

00:38:04.000 Because his legal bills, that didn't help you win the election.

00:38:07.000 Also, he's a billionaire.

00:38:08.000 Presumably, he can pay his own legal bills.

00:38:10.000 And then, he can use the money that you are giving him, the small donor.

00:38:13.000 He has tons of small donors.

00:38:14.000 And he can use that to defeat Joe Biden.

00:38:16.000 But that's not actually where the money is going.

00:38:17.000 According to the New York Times, the political action committee former President Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year, it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican frontrunner, according to two people familiar with the matter.

00:38:30.000 The decision signals a potential money crisis for Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly.

00:38:36.000 He's also avoided creating a legal defense fund for himself and people have become entangled in the various investigations related to him.

00:38:41.000 So he could have created a legal defense fund and you could have given money to the legal defense fund to spend on his legal bills.

00:38:45.000 But no, he knows you're not going to give money to his legal defense fund.

00:38:48.000 He knows that you want to give money to his campaign, so he'll beat Biden.

00:38:52.000 That's the reason why you care about Donald Trump, presumably, is you don't want Joe Biden to be president anymore, not that you care about how Donald Trump handles paying his big-ticket lawyers.

00:39:02.000 The refund was sought as the political action committee Save America spent more than $40 million in legal fees incurred by Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter.

00:39:13.000 The numbers will be part of the Save America Federal Election Commission filing expected to be made public today.

00:39:18.000 That $40 million was in addition to $16 million that Save America spent in the previous two years on legal fees.

00:39:24.000 Since then, of course, Trump has been indicted twice and has expanded the size of his legal team.

00:39:28.000 His two co-defendants in the case related to his retention of classified material work for him, total legal spending $56 million.

00:39:35.000 So when you donate money to Trump, do you think that's going toward ballot harvesting?

00:39:39.000 I have doubts.

00:39:40.000 I am not certain that that is the case.

00:39:42.000 And that is a problem.

00:39:43.000 Because, again, you can elect Trump in the primaries.

00:39:45.000 Data suggests that a lot of people do like Trump in the primaries.

00:39:47.000 The current state of the race, if you look at the latest polling that is out today, suggests that Donald Trump is a New York Times-Siena College Poll of likely Republican primary electorate.

00:39:57.000 it. 54% for Trump, 17% DeSantis, 17% others, 13% no answer.

00:40:04.000 So DeSantis is the closest person and he's not within 30 points of him.

00:40:09.000 you And so the primary base seems like they are cruising toward Trump.

00:40:14.000 And not just that.

00:40:15.000 Trump's base makes up more than a third of the likely Republican electorate.

00:40:18.000 So you have 37% saying that they are the MAGA base and will vote for Trump no matter what.

00:40:23.000 And then you say there are 37% who are persuadable and 25% who are not open to Trump.

00:40:28.000 So, the MAGA base is 37 according to this poll.

00:40:30.000 The not open to Trumps are 25.

00:40:32.000 That means that the remaining 37% would have to split in favor of one other candidate, not in favor of like 10 other candidates, in favor of one other candidate by essentially a margin of 2 to 1 in order to defeat Trump in the primaries.

00:40:47.000 0% of the MAGA category say that Trump has committed any serious federal crime.

00:40:54.000 Only 2% said he even did something wrong in his handling of classified documents.

00:40:57.000 So nothing is changing right there.

00:40:59.000 And again, when you look at the remaining half, the two-thirds who say that they are persuadable or not open to Trump, well, even among those members of the Republican electorate, they disagree on the issues.

00:41:12.000 They're fractured.

00:41:14.000 It's gonna be very difficult for anybody to consolidate this, according to Nate Cohen looking at the data over at the New York Times.

00:41:19.000 DeSantis' support right now is split between those who are still open to Trump and those who are not.

00:41:25.000 Overall, DeSantis holds just 32% of voters who aren't considering Trump.

00:41:29.000 Right, so that means that you'd have to assume that all 25% who say they're not open to Trump would shift into the DeSantis category.

00:41:34.000 Right now, they're split, with Chris Christie, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy each attracting between 5% and 10% of that vote.

00:41:42.000 So once again, it looks like the field is very, very split.

00:41:45.000 So Trump has an advantage in the primaries, no question.

00:41:48.000 The problem is, does that translate to an actual general election victory?

00:41:51.000 Is anybody even thinking about, is Trump even thinking about that at this point?

00:41:55.000 What is the case that Trump is making for why he will do better in 2020 other than Joe Biden's failures?

00:42:01.000 By the way, this is exactly the same case that Joe Biden is making about Trump.

00:42:04.000 The case that Biden is making about Trump is I can be as terrible as I want to be. 0.64

00:42:08.000 I can be as corrupt as I want to be. 1.00

00:42:09.000 I can be as foolish and out of it as I want to be. 0.99

00:42:13.000 I mean, there's a picture of Joe Biden that's floating around the internet of him on the beach in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware over the weekend. 0.97

00:42:19.000 It is not flattering.

00:42:20.000 He's an 80-year-old man walking around in his swim trunks and no shirt with sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap, and it looks just like how you'd imagine.

00:42:27.000 He is very, very old.

00:42:29.000 He is very, very dodderly.

00:42:30.000 He is not with us anymore.

00:42:32.000 But his entire case is, I am not Trump.

00:42:33.000 And meanwhile, Trump's entire case is, I'm not Biden.

00:42:37.000 So, I mean, that is a hell of a dynamic, going into a presidential election.

00:42:42.000 Which, by the way, is why so many people have worried about no labels, or RFK, or Cornel West, or some of these third party candidates.

00:42:48.000 Now, in the end, will it end up being a binary vote?

00:42:50.000 Almost certainly it will.

00:42:52.000 But, is there any guarantee how that goes?

00:42:54.000 For either side?

00:42:56.000 No guarantee at all.

00:42:58.000 So, again, is that the best way to run a campaign?

00:43:01.000 I have serious doubts.

00:43:03.000 Okay, meanwhile, there's a lot of uncertainty out there about the economy and you sense the sort of growing warmth in the press for the idea that we're going to escape a recession because the inflation data came in last week and it's coming in, you know, kind of close to normal.

00:43:15.000 We're now back down toward the 2% number that people are looking for from the Federal Reserve.

00:43:19.000 And it seems as though the economy is sort of defying gravity at this point because the GDP is still clocking in at 2.4, 2.6%, which are good numbers, right?

00:43:28.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, recent good news on inflation has ignited a debate over how much central banks' interest rate increases are responsible.

00:43:34.000 The answer matters for where inflation and interest rates are headed.

00:43:37.000 The Federal Reserve and European Central Bank in the past week lifted their benchmark interest rates to 22-year highs and left open the door to additional increases.

00:43:43.000 If higher rates were not responsible for progress on inflation today, that suggests central banks could be able to lower them before a painful recession sets in.

00:43:50.000 So this is really the question, is whether the reason inflation came down is because of the increases in the interest rates, or whether it's supply chains basically healing themselves.

00:43:57.000 If it's because the supply chains are healing themselves, theoretically, if we start to go into recession, then the central banks could theoretically lower those interest rates again without jacking up the inflation, if it is from the low interest rates in the first place, and that's what created the bubble.

00:44:10.000 Then lowering the inflation rates, lowering the interest rates right now would create another secondary bubble of inflation.

00:44:15.000 But there's a more significant problem on the horizon.

00:44:18.000 And the more significant problem...

00:44:20.000 is economic stagnation.

00:44:21.000 So, last week, there was a lot of talk about the GDP coming in, and the GDP stat came in, and everybody was very, very excited about how it came in.

00:44:31.000 Analysts had suggested it was going to be a lot lower than it actually showed.

00:44:36.000 Apparently, the Gross Domestic Product grew at a 2.4% annual rate last quarter, while analysts had been expecting a reading of 1.5%.

00:44:43.000 And so a lot of people were saying that, well, soft landing might now be possible.

00:44:47.000 Here's the problem.

00:44:48.000 GDP is a bad stat.

00:44:49.000 The reason GDP is a bad stat is because it is about consumption.

00:44:52.000 GDP measures the amount of consumption, end-user consumption, in an economy.

00:44:56.000 You pay a price at the store to buy a product, that goes into GDP.

00:44:59.000 The government spends a crap load of money on things, that goes into GDP.

00:45:04.000 Well, the problem with that is it doesn't actually answer for how business dynamics works.

00:45:10.000 It's a Keynesian model of how the economy works.

00:45:13.000 It assumes that the more consumption there is, the better the economy is doing.

00:45:16.000 It assumes that if you buy a bunch of hamburgers, the economy is doing amazing, and if you buy fewer hamburgers, it's because the economy is doing poorly.

00:45:23.000 It also imagines that if the government spends a crap load of money, like unprecedented amounts of money, that that means the economy is doing great, because all of that gets counted in the GDP.

00:45:32.000 The better statistic is something called gross output.

00:45:35.000 So gross output has been a statistic that's been in semi-wide use since about 2014.

00:45:40.000 There's an economist named Mark Skousen who wrote about it in 2014, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis started using gross output as an alternative for GDP.

00:45:48.000 And he explains it this way.

00:45:49.000 He says, in many ways, gross output is a supply side statistic, a measure of the production

00:45:53.000 side of the economy.

00:45:54.000 GDP measures the use economy.

00:45:56.000 That's the value of all final or finished goods and services used by consumers, businesses

00:45:59.000 and government.

00:46:01.000 The measure of an economy's gross output has been around since the 1930s.

00:46:06.000 Gross output essentially measures the amount of business investment.

00:46:10.000 It's the make economy, the total sales from the production of raw materials through intermediate producers to final wholesale and retail trade.

00:46:16.000 So instead of just looking at all of the product that is bought by you at the store, it looks at the product that is bought all the way along the chain.

00:46:25.000 And so if you're buying a chair, it looks at who paid for the wood, and then who paid for the planks of wood, and then who paid for the screws and the planks of wood to put them together, and then who paid for the varnish to make sure, right?

00:46:34.000 It includes all of that.

00:46:36.000 So it's a broader measure of the output of an economy because it includes actual business investment.

00:46:40.000 So Skrusen says, Why pay attention to gross output?

00:46:43.000 For starters, research I published in 1990 shows it does a better job of measuring total economic activity.

00:46:48.000 GDP is a useful measure of a country's standard of living and economic growth, but its focus on final output omits intermediate production and, as a result, creates much mischief in our understanding of how the economy works.

00:46:58.000 In particular, it has led to a misguided Keynesian notion that consumer and government spending drive the economy rather than saving, business investment, technology, and entrepreneurship.

00:47:07.000 So if you look at GDP data, GDP data always suggests that consumer spending is the number one element.

00:47:12.000 So this is why you get statistics about consumer confidence.

00:47:15.000 When consumer confidence is low, the economy must be about to tank.

00:47:17.000 When people are spending less money at the store, that means the economy is about to tank.

00:47:21.000 And then the next biggest measures of the GDP would be government expenditures and then business investment third.

00:47:27.000 But in reality, when you flip that and you look at gross output, what you find is that suddenly it's only about 40% of the economy.

00:47:36.000 Business outlays are substantially larger than consumer spending in the economy.

00:47:40.000 They make about 50% of economic activity.

00:47:44.000 So, in other words, government spending is not a giant, giant chunk of gross output.

00:47:49.000 It is a giant chunk of GDP.

00:47:51.000 And government spending that goes to direct benefits that then is spent, that is a huge part of GDP, but it's not as big a part of gross output.

00:47:57.000 And gross output matters.

00:47:58.000 Why?

00:47:58.000 Because the reality is the way the economy works, and this has been the biggest argument in economics for at least 150 years, is whether economies are driven by consumers, by you buying a product, or are they driven by people making the product.

00:48:10.000 The Keynesian demand-siders basically suggest that because you spend money, someone makes a product for you.

00:48:18.000 Supply-siders say you generate new, better, innovative products, and that makes people want to buy them.

00:48:23.000 So the argument in favor of supply-side economics, which is something I subscribe to, because number one, I think it's truer, and number two, it pushes for a more liberal, free-market view of the economy, is that when people are allowed to keep their own money, they produce new and better services.

00:48:36.000 What a consumer-based economy cannot do is create new product.

00:48:40.000 It is the supply-sider who creates new product.

00:48:42.000 The entrepreneur who creates new product.

00:48:44.000 This is also why you see a gap between how Democrats talk about the economy and how Republicans talk about the economy.

00:48:48.000 Conservatives very often, when they talk about the economy, they talk about the value of the entrepreneur.

00:48:52.000 Which is really a credit to Joseph Schumpeter, the Viennese economist, who really talked a lot about what he called creative destruction.

00:49:01.000 The entrepreneur comes along and, yeah, breaks old products and makes amazing new products.

00:49:04.000 It's always some entrepreneur.

00:49:06.000 It's an Elon Musk or a Henry Ford or Thomas Edison.

00:49:09.000 Somebody comes along, makes a new product available to you that you never would have thought of, but now you need it.

00:49:13.000 20 years ago, would you just as a consumer have thought up the iPhone?

00:49:16.000 Even if you had, could you have made the iPhone?

00:49:17.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:49:19.000 You see a product on the shelf and then you want to buy it.

00:49:20.000 Who made that product?

00:49:21.000 It wasn't you.

00:49:22.000 You're buying it.

00:49:23.000 So what's more interesting about that?

00:49:26.000 The creation of the new product or who buys it?

00:49:28.000 So GDP tends to measure economic strength by who's buying the phone, as opposed to measuring economic strength by who invested in the phone, who's putting money into the phone, who's creating the phone.

00:49:37.000 Because the idea is that supply In essence, we'll create demand for a new and better product, right?

00:49:43.000 As Henry Ford suggested, if I had listened to the consumer, I just would have come up with a better horse.

00:49:49.000 A faster horse.

00:49:51.000 But instead, he came up with a car because he was the entrepreneur.

00:49:54.000 Okay, so here's why this is important.

00:49:56.000 When you look at gross output right now, everybody's looking at GDP as, ah, the economy's going great guns.

00:50:00.000 Gross output?

00:50:01.000 Not so much.

00:50:03.000 So according to GrossOutput.com, the U.S.

00:50:05.000 economy is resisting recession but is flashing red.

00:50:07.000 Business spending has dropped 9% in real terms over the past two quarters.

00:50:11.000 Today, the federal government released first quarter gross output, the top line in national income accounting.

00:50:16.000 Geo measures spending at all stages of production.

00:50:18.000 Real gross output rose 2.7% compared to 2.0% in real GDP.

00:50:22.000 Consumer spending is still robust, rising 6% during the past two quarters, but business spending is floundering.

00:50:28.000 Nominal business-to-business spending has been flat since September.

00:50:31.000 In real terms, it is down 9%.

00:50:32.000 Recession is still in the near future.

00:50:35.000 So again, I like looking at gross output.

00:50:37.000 I think it is a much better measure of where the economy is because how I spend as a business person is going to matter a lot to my employees.

00:50:44.000 It's going to matter a lot to the consumers of this company, right?

00:50:46.000 That's true for everybody who has lots of employees and lots of consumers.

00:50:50.000 So when you're being given happy talk about how the economy is going great because of GDP, Number one thing to check, check the gross output number, which has been basically flat for the last couple to three quarters.

00:51:01.000 Okay, meanwhile, why does that matter?

00:51:03.000 It matters because when it comes to a general election, yeah, Joe Biden's personal corruption is going to matter.

00:51:07.000 Yeah, Joe Biden's personality is going to matter.

00:51:09.000 But you know what's going to matter even more?

00:51:10.000 If we are in recession, Joe Biden is in serious trouble.

00:51:13.000 If we are not in recession, Joe Biden probably fails to re-elect.

00:51:16.000 Very, very difficult to lose a re-elect when your economy is good.

00:51:18.000 It looks like the economy is going to be bad.

00:51:19.000 You know what would be great?

00:51:20.000 Somebody's able to argue against that.

00:51:23.000 This is why one of the great frustrations is that many of the things that make Ron DeSantis an excellent governor also make him a politician who doesn't have the pizzazz or sizzle of Donald Trump.

00:51:33.000 Namely, he just does the thing, right?

00:51:36.000 Governor DeSantis' great win as governor of Florida Yeah, there's been all the talk about woke and all the talk about fighting education.

00:51:42.000 All that matters.

00:51:42.000 Matters an awful lot.

00:51:43.000 But he's also really good at, like, the bread and butter.

00:51:45.000 Florida is the number one incoming state for tax revenue, according to the Daily Mail.

00:51:51.000 California and New York have lost a combined $640 million in tax revenue due to people moving out of state.

00:51:56.000 That'd be me.

00:51:57.000 As conservative Florida and Texas see a boost of $23 billion after an influx of movers.

00:52:03.000 The number one state for incoming money?

00:52:06.000 Florida.

00:52:07.000 $12.4 billion in net income migration to the state of Florida.

00:52:11.000 That is because it is a well-governed state.

00:52:12.000 It is a good place to live.

00:52:14.000 It's a well-governed state.

00:52:16.000 And that's a boring message, but it's also one that tends to win general elections.

00:52:19.000 The message that is a lot more controversial is the character message, especially when you have character flaws of your own and when you're in the middle of legal battles that will likely culminate in actual trials with you in the dock in May of 2024, which is what's very likely to happen right now.

00:52:36.000 Ron DeSantis talks like you actually want a politician to talk, like, about the things.

00:52:41.000 But is that what people want in a primary?

00:52:43.000 That's sort of it.

00:52:44.000 So here is Ron DeSantis, for example, over the weekend talking about the drags on the economy.

00:52:48.000 That's the kind of thing that for me is actually great.

00:52:52.000 Like this is what I wish our politicians were talking about, but they are not.

00:52:56.000 Here we go.

00:52:57.000 I think the biggest drag on the economy is the administrative state and the bureaucracy.

00:53:02.000 And yes, I mean, I want lower taxes.

00:53:03.000 I'll go as far as we can on that.

00:53:05.000 But when I talk to small business people, I almost never hear about that.

00:53:09.000 I hear about the growth of government and what government's doing to choke off their ability to just run their businesses the way they see fit.

00:53:17.000 And the bureaucratic state, the administrative state, that gives an advantage to the big guys.

00:53:20.000 Because the big guys can handle it.

00:53:22.000 They've got lawyers, accountants.

00:53:23.000 It's those small, small businesses, medium-sized businesses.

00:53:28.000 So getting that off, in addition to the energy, that is going to be a huge, huge thing.

00:53:33.000 The Fed, getting that reined in, I think is very important.

00:53:36.000 Reducing federal spending, very, very important.

00:53:40.000 Yes, it's super boring.

00:53:41.000 And also, let me remind you, it's super important.

00:53:44.000 This is the sort of stuff where if you're on the middle, you're on that fence in the 2024 election, and it's somebody like DeSantis versus someone like Biden, and Biden's run the economy to the ground, and you have somebody else on the other side saying, here are the things I'll do to fix the economy, that might actually matter an awful lot.

00:53:56.000 Because it turns out number one issue for most Americans when it comes to presidential elections, the state of the economy.

00:54:01.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a couple of things that I hate.

00:54:04.000 So, Things that I like over the weekend,

00:54:06.000 I was reading a really fun novel by Andrew Weir.

00:54:09.000 Andrew Weir is the guy who wrote The Martian.

00:54:11.000 The book is Project Hail Mary.

00:54:13.000 And it's, Andrew Weir, he's a delight, just as an author.

00:54:17.000 He's a delight because he's actually having fun with the reader.

00:54:20.000 And he's obviously having fun writing this sort of stuff.

00:54:22.000 So, basically, it's about a middle school science teacher who back in his academic days

00:54:27.000 had written a paper about alien life.

00:54:29.000 And it turns out that the sun is actually declining in the amount of energy that it's releasing

00:54:35.000 because there is alien life, but it's living on the sun and it's sucking away the energy from the sun.

00:54:41.000 And he has to somehow figure out a way to fix all of this.

00:54:44.000 And I won't spoil it for you.

00:54:46.000 I'll just say it's a really fun read if you liked The Martian.

00:54:48.000 Actually, The Martian is a very simple, high-concept premise, right, which is, you know, man on Mars trying to survive.

00:54:54.000 This one is even a little bit more high-concept because it is save all humanity by journeying to a foreign star and then hooking up with alien life.

00:55:04.000 It's really, it's a really enjoyable book.

00:55:06.000 Again, you can tell he's having fun writing it, and so it's a lot of fun to read as well.

00:55:09.000 So if you're looking for like a summer beach read, That'll teach you something about physics and about chemistry and about science generally.

00:55:15.000 This is a really fun book, Andy.

00:55:16.000 We're great for if you try and get your like 16 year old in school interested in science, this would be a really good book for them to read.

00:55:22.000 Okay, time for some quick things that I hate.

00:55:28.000 Okay, thing number one that I hate. 0.76

00:55:30.000 So, can we stop normalizing people who are totally insane?

00:55:33.000 Like, stop normalizing insanity.

00:55:35.000 You have to treat everybody with respect, but I'm not going to treat it with respect when a man spends $14,000 to transform himself into Akali. 0.93

00:55:44.000 This apparently is a thing.

00:55:46.000 A Japanese native has now transformed himself into a canine after forking out more than $14,000 for a custom-made Kali costume. 0.99

00:55:53.000 The private citizen says the unusual garment has helped actualize his dream of becoming an animal.

00:55:57.000 Ah, we have reached the end of expressive individualism.

00:56:01.000 Robert Bella predicted that expressive individualism, the idea that what is inside you is the most important thing in all humanity, that that is the end of the individualist era.

00:56:10.000 That's where we are.

00:56:11.000 Men dressing up as dogs to roll around. 0.78

00:56:14.000 I mean, I'm not sure you could get any more literal with the man returning to the animals sort of metaphors that we, the biblically minded, tend to use. 0.69

00:56:20.000 But here we are, a man who spent $14,000 to dress up as a dog so that he can roll around on the streets with other dogs and presumably smell their butts.

00:56:30.000 Here we go.

00:56:32.000 This is, uh... 0.79

00:56:34.000 And then this crazy lady who's walking around. 1.00

00:56:36.000 And then this crazy lady who's walking around. 1.00

00:56:45.000 This man dressed as a dog. 0.79

00:56:51.000 That is a human being in a Kali costume and everybody is pretending that this is somewhat normal. 1.00

00:56:57.000 Look at these little kids in the background who are like, look, a doggie!

00:57:00.000 A doggie! 0.92

00:57:00.000 And they get up there and it's a creepy, creepy human. 0.92

00:57:03.000 This is so horrifying, I can't even tell you.

00:57:06.000 The Island of Dr. Moreau type of stuff.

00:57:08.000 It's like people doing it to themselves.

00:57:11.000 I don't even know how the person got into this costume, nor do I want to know.

00:57:15.000 That sounds terrible.

00:57:17.000 Man.

00:57:18.000 This is, uh...

00:57:20.000 And the breeding is just going to be horrible.

00:57:24.000 Apparently he wrote in the clip, Do you remember your dreams from when you were little?

00:57:27.000 You wanted to be a hero or a wizard.

00:57:29.000 I remember writing in my grade school's graduation book, I wanted to be a dog and walk outside.

00:57:33.000 He had a vague dream of becoming an animal ever since he was a child.

00:57:36.000 When I fulfilled that dream, this is how it turned out.

00:57:39.000 He chose to become a collie due to the negligible size difference between that breed and humans.

00:57:46.000 So he said, I rarely tell my friends because I'm afraid they will think I am weird.

00:57:52.000 My friends and family seem very surprised to learn I became an animal.

00:57:55.000 You didn't. 1.00

00:57:56.000 You're a crazy person who is wearing a dog suit. 1.00

00:57:59.000 And then we're supposed to pretend that that is perfectly normal. 1.00

00:58:01.000 Well, why not?

00:58:01.000 Alrighty, guys.

00:58:02.000 The rest of the show continues right now.

00:58:03.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:58:04.000 We'll be jumping into the mailbag.

00:58:06.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:58:07.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 31, 2023

‘Family Man’ Forced To Acknowledge Seventh Grandchild

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