The Ben Shapiro Show - February 28, 2024


For The Democrats, The Crazies Are The Captain Now


Episode Stats

Length

46 minutes

Words per Minute

203.27716

Word Count

9,449

Sentence Count

637

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary

In this episode, we look at why Joe Biden is so dependent on the crazies in his own party, and why he has never been able to govern as a third-way candidate in order to achieve the goals he set out to achieve as a presidential candidate in 2016. And why he s now looking much more seriously at President Donald Trump as a potential successor. Joe Biden has always been a third way candidate, and now that he s running for president, he s looking more and more like a candidate who s going to have to work with Trump to win re-election. And that s a problem for him, because Trump is much more likely to be re-elected than Biden is to win the 2020 election, and that s why Biden s approval ratings have never recovered from their low point after 9/11 and the Afghanistan pullout from Afghanistan, and they veered back to the low 40 s ever since. In other words, Joe Biden never really had the opportunity to be a full-on left-wing presidential candidate, because he was running against a crazier person, Bernie Sanders. And that's why he didn t do what he really wanted to do, which is to become a Third Way candidate and govern as an FDR-like figure like his old man, a third party candidate like Hillary Clinton. We ll talk about why that s not a good thing and why it s now a disaster for him and why Biden is now looking more like Trump, not less likely to win in 2020 and what that means for him in 2020. It s an amazing story, and it s a story about how a president who could have been a second term, but chose to go full on left wing, not right wing, and how he s not going to get a second chance at it, and what he s actually got knocked out of the running for the White House by Donald Trump in 2016, not by a primary challenge from a guy who s more moderate than he actually got a chance to run for president in 2016 and how that s actually not a shot at it at all, but by how he did it, not how much he actually did it. and why that matters more than he should have a second time, and the impact on his chances of winning the election, not what he could have done in 2020 not how he could be a transformative president, and why he should veered away from being a third Way candidate, not a third Party candidate.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Well, the Michigan primaries were last night, and there's some interesting stories on both sides of the aisle.
00:00:05.000 The bigger story, of course, is on the Democratic side of the aisle, where the incumbent president of the United States only won about 80% of the vote.
00:00:13.000 Now, that sounds like a lot, except for the fact that a huge number of people in Michigan voted uncommitted.
00:00:18.000 That was a concerted attempt by crazies in the Democratic Party in Michigan, particularly crazies who support Hamas, many of them in Dearborn, Michigan, who decided that they were going to show Joe Biden that unless he swivels his support from Israel to Hamas, he is somehow going to lose Michigan to Donald Trump.
00:00:35.000 And this raises a serious question.
00:00:37.000 Why is Joe Biden so dependent on the crazies in his own party?
00:00:41.000 After all, Joe Biden came into office running against the crazies in his own party.
00:00:46.000 You'll recall, if you go all the way back to the 2020 primaries, that he was running against a crazy person, Bernie Sanders, who's a nutjob old socialist, And then Joe Biden made a signal error.
00:00:54.000 He decided that he was going to be LBJ.
00:00:55.000 because Jim Clyburn in South Carolina endorsed Joe Biden and the entire Democratic Party unified
00:01:01.000 to stop Bernie Sanders, the crazy guy, that Joe Biden ended up winning the nomination
00:01:05.000 and then defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
00:01:08.000 And then Joe Biden made a signal error.
00:01:09.000 He decided that he was going to be LBJ.
00:01:11.000 He was going to be FDR, not a placeholder for the next generation of Democrats,
00:01:17.000 but he was going to be a transformative president.
00:01:20.000 And if you're on the left, being a transformative president means spending more money than God or man has ever seen.
00:01:26.000 If you're on the left, then being a transformative president means embracing all of the most woke versions of politics ranging from diversity, equity, and inclusion to trans politics.
00:01:36.000 You have to embrace the most radical possible position.
00:01:39.000 ...and drag the American public along with you.
00:01:42.000 It also means on the foreign policy front, the realities of foreign policy exist for every president, which is why virtually every president talks one way when they're on the campaign trail, and then they get into office and they realize the way the world actually works, and they swivel how they actually govern.
00:01:55.000 George W. Bush came into office pledging to be an isolationist and then 9-11 happened.
00:01:59.000 Barack Obama came into office pledging to be an isolationist and then he involved us in a bunch of Middle Eastern conflict.
00:02:05.000 Donald Trump came into office pledging to be an isolationist and then he brokered the Abraham Accords and took pretty harsh stances against Russia and China.
00:02:12.000 Joe Biden came into office pledging that he was going to get out of Afghanistan and make America less involved in the world.
00:02:17.000 And now there are two major ongoing wars in the world in which the United States has indirect involvement.
00:02:22.000 So in other words, Joe Biden never really had the opportunity to be full on left wing when it came to foreign policy, because being the president of the United States basically forestalls that.
00:02:30.000 His one attempt at doing that, which was the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, cratered his presidency.
00:02:36.000 If you look at his approval ratings throughout his presidency, Joe Biden's approval ratings dramatically sank in the aftermath of the Afghanistan pullout, and they have never recovered.
00:02:43.000 They've remained in the low 40s ever since.
00:02:46.000 All of which means that if Joe Biden had come into office and then governed as he pledged he was going to govern, as a left-wing moderate, a liberal moderate, Somebody who sought consensus.
00:02:56.000 Somebody who is just going to restore a sense of normalcy and moderation to American politics.
00:03:01.000 He would not now be in the dire straits that he is.
00:03:03.000 Moderates have fallen off the bandwagon.
00:03:05.000 Independents are now looking at Trump.
00:03:07.000 And by the polling data, a plurality of independents favor Donald Trump over Joe Biden right now, which is why Donald Trump is up in the polling against Joe Biden.
00:03:16.000 How Joe Biden loses independence to Donald Trump is an amazing story.
00:03:19.000 Because again, independents are very off-put by Donald Trump on a personal level.
00:03:22.000 They voted against him in 2020.
00:03:25.000 Late-breaking independent voters in 2016 voted 2-1 for Donald Trump.
00:03:28.000 In 2020, late-breaking independent voters voted 2-1 for Joe Biden, and now they're shifting back to Trump.
00:03:33.000 There's only one reason for that, and that is that Joe Biden allowed his ambitions to be a historic president that they would make statues of to overcome his good political sense.
00:03:42.000 He didn't want to be a Clintonian third-way president.
00:03:44.000 He wanted to be like Barack Obama.
00:03:46.000 He wanted to be somebody who people thought of for generations to come as a transformative president in American history.
00:03:53.000 And because of that, he has now alienated the actual base that he wants held.
00:03:57.000 And that base is now looking much more seriously at President Trump as his rival.
00:04:00.000 And that means that he is in thrall to the crazies.
00:04:03.000 And that is the story of what happened in Michigan last night.
00:04:05.000 Again, when you look at these statistics, what you see is that Joe Biden won approximately
00:04:10.000 618,000 votes.
00:04:12.000 First of all, that's a very large number of votes for an incumbent president in a primary.
00:04:19.000 If you go back to like 2012 and you look at the Michigan primary in 2012 for the Democrats,
00:04:24.000 what you will see is that Barack Obama in the Michigan primaries in 2012, when he was
00:04:29.000 the incumbent president, which would be the same position as Joe Biden right now, he only
00:04:34.000 In other words, no one showed up to vote in those primaries.
00:04:37.000 Why did no one show up to vote in the primaries?
00:04:39.000 Because everybody kind of was like, eh, whatever, who cares?
00:04:41.000 He's going to be the nominee.
00:04:42.000 Why am I even bothering to show up?
00:04:44.000 But for Joe Biden, a lot of people showed up.
00:04:47.000 618,000 people showed up to vote for Joe Biden.
00:04:49.000 But the bigger story, of course, is that 101,000 people showed up and voted uncommitted.
00:04:54.000 And there was an overt attempt, again, by the crazies in Michigan, led by people like Rashida Tlaib.
00:04:59.000 To jack up the number of people who voted uncommitted.
00:05:03.000 Another 23,000 voted for Marianne Williamson.
00:05:05.000 Another 20,000 voted for Dean Phillips.
00:05:08.000 So Joe Biden ends up winning about 81% of the vote total in Michigan.
00:05:12.000 But again, that big story is going to be the uncommitted voters because the idea is that if those uncommitted voters decide not to vote for Joe Biden in the actual election in November, then you could very well lose the state.
00:05:21.000 Now he won that state by about 150,000 votes last time.
00:05:25.000 100,000 is a lot of votes.
00:05:26.000 Are all those people going to vote actively against Joe Biden?
00:05:28.000 Probably not.
00:05:30.000 But say half of those people decide that they are not going to show up to the polls for Joe Biden because they're unhappy with Joe Biden.
00:05:35.000 Well, that means that he's in real trouble in Michigan.
00:05:38.000 Which means again, when you steer away from middle, that means you are more reliant on your remaining voting base.
00:05:43.000 And his remaining voting base is full of crazy people.
00:05:46.000 And that is why you are seeing Joe Biden constantly embracing crazy unpopular positions.
00:05:53.000 I mean, the reality is that the polling data suggests that when it comes to, for example, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the American people are broadly supportive of Israel.
00:06:01.000 The latest Harvard-Harris poll shows that 82% of Americans say they support Israel more than Hamas.
00:06:09.000 All the Hamas voters are in the Democratic Party.
00:06:13.000 68% of Americans say that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties in fighting its war with Hamas.
00:06:21.000 So in other words, there's pretty heavy support.
00:06:23.000 America remains a very pro-Israel country, but not inside the crazy wing of the Democratic Party.
00:06:28.000 And that's the part that Joe Biden has made himself totally dependent upon.
00:06:32.000 And we should understand that that Democratic Party, the crazies in the Democratic Party, they don't even know they're crazy.
00:06:38.000 That is the thing to understand about crazy people in general.
00:06:41.000 Crazy people in general do not know that they are crazy.
00:06:42.000 They think that they are perfectly sane and you are crazy.
00:06:45.000 These folks are nuts.
00:06:47.000 And they can't even tell that they are nuts.
00:06:49.000 They deny the level of the nuttiness.
00:06:52.000 Joe Biden does too.
00:06:52.000 Joe Biden pretends this is all normal politics as usual.
00:06:55.000 It is not.
00:06:57.000 It is not normal politics as usual to have 100,000 people vote against you because you side against an actual genocidal terrorist group.
00:07:04.000 That is wild.
00:07:05.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:08:06.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Uncommitted blew past their original target of 10,000 voters and clocked in at a figure substantially higher on Tuesday than it has been in recent Michigan primaries.
00:08:15.000 And they have now tallied about 13% of the entire tally.
00:08:21.000 By comparison, uncommitted drew about 11% of the vote in the 2012 Michigan Democratic primary won by President Barack Obama.
00:08:27.000 But again, the numbers were way lower in 2012.
00:08:30.000 David Axelrod, who's a former senior advisor to Obama, said Michigan is going to be a marginal state this fall.
00:08:34.000 If the voters who registered their protest walk away this fall, it could be decisive.
00:08:38.000 He says, this was a cost-free vote.
00:08:39.000 This is a good point to make.
00:08:40.000 In the fall, it will be a choice of much greater consequence.
00:08:42.000 In other words, if you don't vote or if you vote uncommitted in the actual election, then all those voters in Dearborn, what, are they going to vote for Trump, the most pro-Israel president in American history?
00:08:50.000 Good luck with that.
00:08:51.000 But again, this goes to the broader point.
00:08:53.000 Joe Biden has put himself in thrall to the radicals, and the radicals have him by the short hairs, which is why the New York Times has an entire piece today titled, Young Voters Say Their Discontent Goes Deeper Than Israel and Gaza.
00:09:04.000 The energy on Michigan college campuses ahead of the 2022 midterms, students said, was electric.
00:09:08.000 Armed with promises to protect abortion rights, Democratic candidates held large campus rallies, drawing crowds who came prepared to cheer rather than to protest.
00:09:15.000 On Election Day, students showed up in droves, but before, The Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, the energy seems to have morphed into apathy or anger.
00:09:22.000 Young activists have been at the forefront of sustained backlash to President Biden's staunch support of Israel and its military campaign in Gaza.
00:09:29.000 Interviews with more than two dozen students across the state indicated a deeper well of dissatisfaction, not just with the incumbent president, but the prospect of once again having to choose between Biden and Trump, people decades older than they are.
00:09:41.000 Voters under 30 who backed Biden by more than 20 points in 2020 are unenthusiastic about a rematch.
00:09:47.000 Voters under 30 overwhelmingly voiced their opposition to the conflict in a New York Times Siena College poll saying Israel had not done enough to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza and the military campaign should stop.
00:09:56.000 Again, when you make your entire campaign dependent on the low propensity voters in the youth vote, When you make your entire campaign dependent on people who are not only low propensity but radical, that of course is going to shape the rest of your campaign.
00:10:10.000 And you have only one choice at that point, and that is to steer into the radicalism.
00:10:14.000 Joe Biden is so dependent on the crazies in his base that he has to steer in that direction.
00:10:19.000 It explains everything that he is doing right now.
00:10:22.000 And the radicals know it, which is why you have pieces like the one in Politico today about the Michigan lawmaker, the Democratic floor leader of the Michigan House of Representatives, a man named Abraham Ayesh, who is denouncing Joe Biden.
00:10:38.000 He said he stood with no spine and did not demand peace for Palestinians, did not demand peace for Israelis, and instead continues to fund a genocide.
00:10:44.000 He is now 30, and he is the first Arab-American House Majority Leader in the history of the state of Michigan.
00:10:50.000 Which, again, kudos to the Michigan State Republican Party for being completely incompetent at their jobs.
00:10:54.000 Really well done.
00:10:56.000 But this is the narrative that the media have been pushing and they're going to continue to push it.
00:11:00.000 Now, Joe Biden does have another strategy.
00:11:02.000 He could navigate away from the crazies.
00:11:04.000 In other words, Joe Biden could take a moderate position on everything from, say, the border, to abortion, from spending, To Israel.
00:11:12.000 He could take the moderate mainstream position.
00:11:14.000 The 80% position.
00:11:16.000 But we have moved out of the realm of normal politics in this country.
00:11:19.000 We really have.
00:11:19.000 It used to be that the best way to win an election was to take a bunch of 80% positions.
00:11:24.000 Find the 80% positions.
00:11:26.000 Things where Americans were 80% pro the position and then you do that.
00:11:30.000 But instead, we have now decided to abandon those in favor of 43% propositions and then hope that there are enough people in that 43% who are gonna vote to outweigh the people on the other side who presumably are unenthusiastic or not going to vote.
00:11:48.000 It's an amazing, amazing thing.
00:11:50.000 And make no mistake, these folks are legitimately quite crazy.
00:11:54.000 So, for example, Cornel West, who is on the left of the Democratic Party,
00:12:00.000 and he's running as an independent, but of course, he is a far leftist and is quite
00:12:03.000 representative of some of the crazies in the Democratic Party.
00:12:05.000 Cornel West spent his day yesterday suggesting a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
00:12:10.000 These are the people Joe Biden is going to try to pander to.
00:12:12.000 You can see his policy already shifting.
00:12:14.000 Do you believe in the idea of eradicating a terrorist group like Hamas,
00:12:19.000 which did such barbaric things to innocent civilians?
00:12:24.000 Well, one, I mean, you and I know that a Jewish life has exactly the same value as a Palestinian
00:12:30.000 A Palestinian baby has the same value as a Jewish baby.
00:12:33.000 The question is, how do you get at the roots of it?
00:12:36.000 Anytime you kill an innocent person, that is a crime against humanity.
00:12:40.000 Did Hamas commit war crimes?
00:12:43.000 Absolutely!
00:12:44.000 Murder is murder.
00:12:46.000 Now, I believe in just war.
00:12:47.000 Combatants can kill combatants.
00:12:49.000 I'm not like Martin Luther King.
00:12:51.000 I'm not a pacifist.
00:12:52.000 But combatants must not kill civilians or innocent people, no matter who it is, IDF or Hamas.
00:13:00.000 But the problem is, if you're going to call Hamas a terrorist group and the IDF is killing innocent people, they're terrorists too.
00:13:07.000 Okay, Cornel West is an absolute clown, but again, representative of a huge clown base inside the Democratic Party.
00:13:16.000 It's an amazing thing.
00:13:17.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:14:25.000 By the way, if you really want to know the extent to which the radicals in the Democratic Party are in control,
00:14:32.000 look at James Carville.
00:14:34.000 So James Carville, this is the part that's amazing.
00:14:35.000 The Moderates in the Democratic Party have decided they need to cave to the Radicals.
00:14:39.000 So James Carville is one of the more moderate members of the Democratic Party, right?
00:14:43.000 He is the designer of the Clintonian Third Way.
00:14:46.000 He and Dick Morris were the people who basically designed triangulation.
00:14:50.000 James Carville has been the person who's been on the ramparts in the Democratic Party saying you need to stop talking about men in women's bathrooms and you need to start talking about, say, economic issues.
00:15:00.000 But here he is basically acknowledging that the crazies now run the party.
00:15:04.000 He says that if we get to Chicago, the Democratic Convention, which is going to happen in Chicago this year, again, I gotta say, just amazing writing this year of Trump, where you have the Democrats going back to Chicago for the convention, the same place that the 1968 convention took place, in which you had a hotly contested Democratic primary fight, the assassination of a major political figure in RFK, in which you had massive riots over the Vietnam War,
00:15:33.000 That's where they chose to have their convention this year.
00:15:35.000 Just really well done.
00:15:36.000 So here's James Carville saying that if we get to the Chicago convention, and the Gaza war is still continuing, then it's gonna get wild.
00:15:44.000 You know, Diane was talking about this uncommitted vote in Michigan because of the war in Gaza.
00:15:51.000 There are some Democratic activists who are saying they want to see Democrats vote uncommitted instead of for President Biden.
00:15:58.000 What do you think about the concerns about that?
00:16:00.000 Are they well-founded?
00:16:01.000 Is this being blown out of proportion?
00:16:03.000 What do you think?
00:16:05.000 Well, first of all, congratulations on your new show.
00:16:07.000 I'm honored to be a part of it.
00:16:09.000 Thanks, James.
00:16:09.000 I think this issue is deep.
00:16:11.000 And I think it's a lot deeper than just progressive advocates or young people or college campuses.
00:16:19.000 I hope the president can get some kind of ceasefire and take this off the front burner because, frankly, it's damaged politically.
00:16:26.000 It's pretty substantial.
00:16:28.000 And if we get to Chicago at the convention and this thing is still going on, I don't want to think about what's going to happen there.
00:16:36.000 Okay, now understand that when James Carville is caving to the radicals, that shows you that they have to.
00:16:42.000 He doesn't want to.
00:16:43.000 They have to.
00:16:44.000 And then, of course, you have the great minds of the New York Times who also are urging Joe Biden to cave to the radicals.
00:16:49.000 That, of course, would be morons like Thomas Friedman, legitimately one of the dumbest people in the history of foreign policy commentary.
00:16:55.000 Thomas Friedman, a man who gets all of his advice from cab drivers in random places.
00:17:00.000 And this moron is still advising the Biden administration on foreign policy.
00:17:03.000 He has a piece in the New York Times today titled, quote, Israel is losing its greatest asset, acceptance.
00:17:09.000 Was that Israel's greatest asset?
00:17:11.000 I noticed that Israel has another asset and it's called the very powerful military.
00:17:14.000 If Jews were waiting for acceptance for all of human history, that was a strategy that failed pretty dramatically until Israel actually arose and had, you know, an air force.
00:17:24.000 I noticed that Thomas Friedman seems to like the Jews having the goodwill of the world up until the point where they defend themselves and start killing terrorists.
00:17:33.000 He says, quote, I've spent the past few days traveling from New Delhi to Dubai and Amman.
00:17:36.000 I have an urgent message to deliver to President Biden and the Israeli people.
00:17:39.000 I'm seeing the increasingly rapid erosion of Israel's standing among friendly nations, a level of acceptance and legitimacy that was painstakingly built up over decades.
00:17:46.000 And if Biden is not careful, America's global standing will plummet right along with Israel's.
00:17:52.000 So where exactly is he feeling the legitimacy that you drain away?
00:17:57.000 He says the legitimacy is draining away in the Arab world.
00:17:59.000 Oh, shocker!
00:18:01.000 I can't believe it!
00:18:04.000 But why is he really doing that?
00:18:06.000 The reason that he is doing that, Thomas Friedman, is not only because he happens to be wrong on foreign policy literally all the time, but because he knows, and everyone else knows, Joe Biden abandoned the thing that got him to office in the first place.
00:18:18.000 And now he's in serious trouble, which means that now he's putting pressure on Israel in the middle of a war against a terrorist enemy.
00:18:24.000 Israel has now reduced Hamas's serious control over the Gaza Strip to the city of Rafah.
00:18:29.000 It is in the south of the Gaza Strip.
00:18:32.000 Everyone knows it is a final climactic battle in the Gaza Strip.
00:18:35.000 And what is Joe Biden doing as Israel is prepared to go in and kill, presumably, Yahya Sinwar, who is the leader of Hamas, the mastermind of the October 7th attacks?
00:18:42.000 He's telling Israel effectively to back off.
00:18:45.000 According to Axios, the Biden administration gave Israel until mid-March to sign a letter provided by the U.S.
00:18:50.000 on Tuesday that gives assurances it will abide by international law while using U.S.
00:18:53.000 weapons and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
00:18:56.000 Three U.S.
00:18:56.000 and Israeli officials told Axios, The assurances are now a requirement under a memo issued earlier this month by President Biden.
00:19:03.000 While it doesn't single out Israel, the new policy came after some Democratic senators expressed concern over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
00:19:09.000 If the assurances aren't provided by the deadline, U.S.
00:19:11.000 weapons transfers to the country will be paused.
00:19:13.000 Now, here is the problem with that idiotic notion.
00:19:16.000 International law is a chimera.
00:19:18.000 It is a lie.
00:19:19.000 International law is largely designed by people who do not abide by it under any circumstances and only apply it to people they seek to hamstring.
00:19:27.000 International law, in other words, is a joke.
00:19:28.000 That is never how foreign policy has run.
00:19:30.000 The Wilsonian notion that there is some sort of great congress of powers that gets together and decides the morality of the world and that international law now applies is silliness.
00:19:39.000 It has always been silliness.
00:19:41.000 And yet that is what Joe Biden is now pushing.
00:19:44.000 And why is he doing that?
00:19:45.000 He's doing that because he wants the votes in Michigan.
00:19:46.000 That's all.
00:19:47.000 It's very simple.
00:19:49.000 The memorandum was issued by the White House after pressure from Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
00:19:54.000 Three U.S.
00:19:55.000 officials told Axios that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the White House that he was concerned an amendment would divide the Democratic caucus in the Senate.
00:20:02.000 And so what did Schumer do?
00:20:03.000 Instead of standing up to his own crazies, he told Joe Biden to just do it as an executive action.
00:20:09.000 Again, not a shock at all.
00:20:10.000 This is what the Democratic Party is now.
00:20:11.000 So, is Joe Biden, are the Democrats likely to placate the crazies?
00:20:16.000 The answer is no, because they're crazy.
00:20:19.000 This is the problem.
00:20:20.000 Once you are enthralled to the crazies, everything runs out of control pretty quickly.
00:20:24.000 So who are the people who are voting uncommitted in Michigan?
00:20:27.000 Well, they're probably people like the people that we saw last night over at Berkeley.
00:20:30.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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00:21:08.000 So over at UC Berkeley, there was, as per our usual arrangement, a massive protest that turned into a riot.
00:21:15.000 It was a private event, and Jewish students were threatened, assaulted, and prevented from attending the speech by a Jewish speaker on campus.
00:21:24.000 Students were called derogatory names like Dirty Jew or You Jew.
00:21:27.000 Here is some tape of what was going on at Berkeley.
00:21:29.000 they'd cancel the event and evacuate the hall.
00:21:31.000 And that's what we're doing.
00:21:39.000 We have the Jewish student trying to go to one of our events.
00:21:42.000 Protesters who are blocking Jewish students from entering the event.
00:21:45.000 Shame! Shame on all of you!
00:21:47.000 This is what they do.
00:21:51.000 These are the people that Joe Biden is catering to.
00:21:55.000 Precisely the group that Joe Biden is catering to.
00:21:57.000 College-aged students who hate Jews.
00:22:00.000 Those are the people that Joe Biden is very, very hot on getting.
00:22:04.000 And what's amazing about all this, again, is that by and large, Americans support Israel against Hamas.
00:22:09.000 If Joe Biden had shown one iota of actual credible leadership, rather than trying to have the baby to placate the nuts, Then he would be more popular on this issue.
00:22:17.000 You know what Americans like?
00:22:18.000 They like when American allies actually win wars.
00:22:20.000 You know what they don't like?
00:22:21.000 When American allies lose wars.
00:22:22.000 You know how we know that?
00:22:23.000 Because Joe Biden lost a war in Afghanistan and it tanked him.
00:22:27.000 Joe Biden's failure to secure anything approaching victory in Ukraine.
00:22:30.000 Joe Biden's failure to secure anything approaching victory with regard to Israel and Hamas is a bad thing for him politically.
00:22:36.000 Because if you decide, that is a shrinking base of nuts.
00:22:41.000 And he wants the nuts.
00:22:42.000 What's amazing about that is that, of course, puts the nuts in the driver's seat.
00:22:46.000 And let's be very clear.
00:22:47.000 Joe Biden has now done that.
00:22:48.000 Internationally, not only domestically.
00:22:50.000 Because you know who knows they're in control now.
00:22:52.000 Hamas.
00:22:53.000 So Joe Biden, the other day, he made a claim that a ceasefire was mere moments away.
00:22:57.000 He was eating ice cream.
00:22:59.000 And he made the claim that a ceasefire was about to happen.
00:23:03.000 All would be well.
00:23:07.000 And then Hamas was like, nope.
00:23:09.000 And the reason Hamas said no is because they know that they can jack Joe Biden around.
00:23:14.000 The more intransigent Hamas is, the more they make demands that are not fulfilled, the more pressure Biden will exert on Israel, not on Hamas.
00:23:22.000 And no point does Joe Biden ever say to Hamas, OK, guys, you know what?
00:23:25.000 We tried to make a deal.
00:23:26.000 The deal is not forthcoming.
00:23:27.000 Israel have at it.
00:23:28.000 At no point did Joe Biden say that, because he's afraid that if he does that under any circumstances, he loses Michigan.
00:23:33.000 So he has now handed the baton to the terrorist group in a variety of ways.
00:23:38.000 As we've discussed over the last couple of days, for example, the Palestinian government, not the head of the government, Mahmoud Abbas, the dictator, but the rest of the Palestinian elected government, I say elected because they're not elected, government resigned to make way for a Hamas-led government.
00:23:52.000 And then Joe Biden is going to tap that government on the head and call it the new Palestinian government.
00:23:56.000 New boss, same as the old boss, except worse in the West Bank.
00:24:00.000 And now, Hamas officials say on Tuesday there was no breakthrough in the mediated talks with Israel aimed at pausing the war and freeing the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip that came one day after Joe Biden said that a ceasefire was imminent.
00:24:12.000 Bassem Naim, a Hamas spokesperson, said in a text message the militant group had yet to formally receive any new proposals since senior Israeli officials met with Qatar, Egypt, and U.S.
00:24:21.000 in Paris last week to advance a possible deal.
00:24:23.000 Another Hamas official, Ahmad Abdel-Hadi, said the group was sticking to its demand that Israel agree to a long-term ceasefire and that leaks about the talks were designed to pressure Hamas to soften its position.
00:24:34.000 By long-term ceasefire, they mean leaving Hamas in place, which is the only thing Hamas needs in order to declare victory.
00:24:39.000 Understand that in a normal traditional war, when you degrade the enemy's military capacity the way that Israel has done Hamas, and Hamas does not have offensive projective capacity at this point, that would normally be considered a win.
00:24:49.000 That's not the way that it works in the Middle East.
00:24:51.000 In the Middle East, the way that it works is if you provoke a war and you get your ass absolutely kicked, but you survive and you wave your flag, you are somehow the victor.
00:25:00.000 That is the way this idiotic regime works in the Middle East.
00:25:05.000 And Hamas knows that.
00:25:06.000 So all they're looking to do at this point is survive.
00:25:09.000 How crazy are the crazies?
00:25:11.000 They're so crazy that the moderates among the crazies are still crazy.
00:25:14.000 So for example, there was a tweet that was going around yesterday.
00:25:16.000 Everybody was laughing at it, but it does demonstrate the sort of standards
00:25:20.000 that proponents of Hamas and the Palestinians more broadly, It does demonstrate how nuts a lot of these folks are.
00:25:30.000 There is a person, his name is Mohamed Elkurd.
00:25:32.000 He's a Palestinian writer and poet.
00:25:36.000 And he lives in East Jerusalem.
00:25:39.000 He was born in East Jerusalem.
00:25:41.000 He, uh, and he apparently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and he, uh, studies poetry at Brooklyn College as well.
00:25:53.000 He's a correspondent for The Nation.
00:25:56.000 So, you know, a well-respected member of the pro-Palestinian left, obviously.
00:26:01.000 So, he, um, he gave a speech not all that long ago in which he claimed that Quote, our day will come, but we must not be complacent.
00:26:11.000 Our day will come, but we must normalize massacres as the status quo.
00:26:14.000 Talking about October 7th.
00:26:15.000 Well, the other day, he tweeted out this.
00:26:18.000 Quote, you can't protest peacefully.
00:26:20.000 You can't boycott.
00:26:21.000 You can't hunger strike.
00:26:22.000 You can't hijack planes.
00:26:23.000 You can't block traffic.
00:26:24.000 You can't throw molotovs.
00:26:25.000 You can't self immolate.
00:26:26.000 You can't heckle politicians.
00:26:27.000 You can't march.
00:26:28.000 You can't riot.
00:26:29.000 You can't dissent.
00:26:30.000 You just can't be.
00:26:32.000 And that tells the whole stories of the crazies that Joe Biden has turned his party over to.
00:26:36.000 Not that Mohammed Al-Kurd is an American citizen who can vote, but his allies in the United States can.
00:26:42.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:27:44.000 And I just want to analyze this for a moment because it tells the whole story of the Arab-Israeli conflict in like one tweet.
00:27:51.000 His version of just being, okay?
00:27:53.000 His version of leave us alone.
00:27:55.000 Leave us alone is a pretty well-respected argument that is made by people on all sides of various political aisles.
00:28:02.000 Leave us alone is a pretty good argument, right?
00:28:04.000 Leave me alone.
00:28:05.000 I'm not bothering you.
00:28:06.000 Leave me alone.
00:28:06.000 But his version of leave us alone, right?
00:28:09.000 Leave me be is Blocking traffic, throwing Molotov cocktails, self-immolating, and hijacking planes.
00:28:17.000 Right?
00:28:18.000 I mean, that's a crazy statement!
00:28:21.000 You can't just let us be.
00:28:22.000 It's so difficult when you won't let us hijack planes.
00:28:26.000 It's so hard when you won't let us throw Molotov cocktails or set ourselves on fire.
00:28:32.000 These are the people that Joe Biden has hitched his boat to.
00:28:36.000 Good luck to him.
00:28:37.000 By the way, things are gonna get worse before they get better because of all of this.
00:28:40.000 The great lie in the Middle East is that when you broker these temporary hudnas, these temporary ceasefires, that this somehow calms the waters in the Middle East.
00:28:46.000 That is wrong.
00:28:47.000 The only thing that matters, as always, is victory.
00:28:50.000 The only thing that matters is power and control.
00:28:52.000 That's all that matters in this region of the world.
00:28:54.000 There is no baseline agreement on values.
00:28:57.000 That means that if Hamas survives, Hamas is therefore strengthened.
00:29:01.000 Hezbollah is strengthened.
00:29:03.000 And by the way, just to note the double standard here, it truly is amazing.
00:29:06.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the start of Ramadan looms as an informal but urgent deadline to strike an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, as the militant group called Wednesday for mass protests during Islamic holy month that Israel fears is part of a plan to spread the conflict outside of Gaza.
00:29:19.000 Israeli leaders have said they would launch an offensive against Hamas' last stronghold in Gaza if a deal is not reached by Ramadan, set to start around March 10.
00:29:27.000 The US, Egypt, and Qatar have warned Israel against a ground offensive in Rafah as it could endanger negotiations.
00:29:32.000 Negotiations, by the way, Hamas is totally playing for all they are worth.
00:29:36.000 On Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau from his five-star hotel in Qatar, called on Palestinians outside Gaza to converge on Al-Aqsa Mosque.
00:29:45.000 This is the routine that happens pretty much every year around Ramadan, in which Muslims are allowed to gather en masse at Al-Aqsa, and then they start hurling molotov cocktails and rocks at Israeli soldiers, and then when Israeli soldiers quash it, they suggest that it's some form of a brutal occupation and evil army action to stop them from worshiping on the Temple Mount.
00:30:03.000 Which, as a multiple-time visitor to the Temple Mount, there are only restrictions on me as a Jew.
00:30:07.000 There are no restrictions on Muslims who are worshiping at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
00:30:10.000 Zero.
00:30:12.000 If you go there to worship, you're fine.
00:30:14.000 If I go up on the Temple Mount and I openly pray, I will be expelled from the Temple Mount.
00:30:17.000 That is the way that it works up there.
00:30:18.000 Christians, too, by the way.
00:30:21.000 But the truth doesn't matter in this region of the world.
00:30:23.000 All that matters is power.
00:30:24.000 And again, the amazing thing here is that look at...
00:30:29.000 The West can't even comprehend.
00:30:30.000 They can't.
00:30:31.000 The West has now allied itself for PR purposes with groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.
00:30:37.000 Because once you try to broker a deal and you legitimize one of the sides of the deal that is a terrorist group as a legitimate side of the deal, you now become their proponent.
00:30:44.000 This is exactly what happened with Barack Obama in Iran.
00:30:47.000 He signed a terrible Iran deal and then he had to spend the rest of his administration running cover for the Iranians.
00:30:52.000 Because if he had acknowledged the Iranians were lying and sponsoring terror everywhere, then it would have looked like he was a sucker.
00:30:58.000 He had sunk cost fallacy about his own Iran deal.
00:31:00.000 And the same thing is happening here with regard to these negotiations.
00:31:03.000 The United States is like, let's do negotiations with Hamas.
00:31:05.000 And Hamas is like, all right, let's do it.
00:31:08.000 And then they're doing whatever they want to do.
00:31:09.000 And the US is like, well, we do want them part of the negotiations.
00:31:12.000 Joe Biden's like, well, we do want them as part of the negotiation.
00:31:16.000 And that means we have to treat their demands reasonably.
00:31:19.000 Meanwhile, they're literally looking to weapon up for their holiday.
00:31:24.000 Now I just have a question for all the Christians, Jews, non-Muslims in the audience, and moderate Muslims in the audience, by the way.
00:31:30.000 Why would your holiday be the occasion of launching a vast terror attack slash war?
00:31:38.000 It is amazing the double standard here.
00:31:39.000 If you're a radical Muslim, not only can you use your own mosque as a shield for your weaponry, which routinely happens, Not only can you use your own holiday as a shield.
00:31:49.000 Oh my God, you can't attack us on Ramadan.
00:31:51.000 It's very holy to us.
00:31:52.000 Also, we're going to kill you because it's Ramadan and now it's our time.
00:31:56.000 These are radical Muslim propositions.
00:31:57.000 But also, when you guys have a holiday, that's the best time to attack.
00:32:00.000 Again, October 7th, which is on the Jewish calendar, probably the happiest day of the year.
00:32:06.000 And that was the perfect time for Hamas to rush across the border and slaughter 1,200 people.
00:32:11.000 Joe Biden has wedded himself to this, and he has done this because he refuses to moderate on any issue.
00:32:16.000 His vision outweighed his capacity.
00:32:18.000 He wanted to be transformative, and he has been alright.
00:32:21.000 And once you are dancing with the devil, that dance just gets faster and faster.
00:32:25.000 And it's not just, by the way, with regard to Israel and Hamas, although that's the most clear-cut example because of what's happening in Michigan.
00:32:31.000 It's also with regard to the border.
00:32:33.000 The obvious question on the border.
00:32:34.000 Why won't Joe Biden shut the border?
00:32:37.000 Everyone wants him to.
00:32:38.000 By polling data, Joe Biden needs to close the border.
00:32:41.000 He needs to take harsh action on the border.
00:32:44.000 Donald Trump is destroying him on this issue in all polling data.
00:32:47.000 It has now jumped to the top of the heap among issues that Americans actually care about.
00:32:51.000 And still, Joe Biden is dithering and doing nothing.
00:32:54.000 Why?
00:32:54.000 Seriously, why?
00:32:55.000 And the only possible reason is because he is enthralled to his crazies.
00:33:00.000 He's enthralled to the nut jobs.
00:33:02.000 So for example, Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday, she said Joe Biden is heading down to the border.
00:33:06.000 She was asked, so is he going to announce any executive action or anything to, you know, stop the giant flow of illegal immigration?
00:33:11.000 I think nope.
00:33:12.000 Actually, no.
00:33:27.000 We've spoken to executive actions, I've spoken to that many times.
00:33:31.000 We think the bottom line is the way to have dealt with this border, the challenge that we see at the border, what we see with this immigration, a broken immigration system that has been broken for decades.
00:33:42.000 Okay, so no.
00:33:49.000 That's a no.
00:33:52.000 They're not going to do anything about any of this.
00:33:55.000 Meanwhile, by the way, the bodies are stacking up.
00:33:58.000 Bill Malugan, who does an excellent job reporting on these issues, Over the past 24 hours, he's just been reporting crime after crime.
00:34:04.000 So, for example, local media in Washington, D.C.
00:34:06.000 reporting a Salvadoran illegal immigrant has been arrested in connection with the murder of a two-year-old child on February 8th.
00:34:13.000 ICE says that he was released from custody after arrests multiple times in 2023 after the local jurisdiction ignored ICE detainers.
00:34:20.000 The two-year-old was caught in the crossfire of a gang war.
00:34:24.000 That was not the only illegal immigrant serious crime over the course of the last 48 hours to pop into the news.
00:34:31.000 According to Fox 8 Live, a 19-year-old Honduran man has been arrested in Kenner, Louisiana, following a series of violent crimes, according to police.
00:34:38.000 The Kenner Police Department says the investigation began Tuesday, February 20th, when it was notified of the rape of a 14-year-old girl at Knife Point.
00:34:46.000 The suspect was then identified as an immigrant, a Honduran, in the United States illegally.
00:34:53.000 Apparently, police say a man was getting out of his vehicle and was approached by this person and demanding his property.
00:34:59.000 During the robbery, police say that the perpetrator stabbed the victim multiple times in the face and the back.
00:35:06.000 Officers of the scene found this illegal immigrant covered in blood.
00:35:10.000 The chief of police says undocumented immigrants are difficult to identify due to lack of documentation.
00:35:15.000 This person had reportedly used aliases in the past, including Elvin Lockett.
00:35:22.000 Then, according to Chief Jason Owens, who is the 26th Chief of U.S.
00:35:25.000 U.S. Border Patrol, quote, in the last 72 hours, U.S.
00:35:28.000 Border Patrol agents throughout the Southwest border region have apprehended 11 individuals
00:35:32.000 with violent criminal histories.
00:35:34.000 Their criminal histories include child molestation, aggravated assault, rape, murder and manufacture
00:35:38.000 and trafficking of firearms.
00:35:40.000 And Joe Biden still won't close the border.
00:35:42.000 He still won't close the border.
00:35:44.000 There's only one reason for that, and that is because, again, once more, once you have a band in the middle, you have to attack to the extremes.
00:35:51.000 Joe Biden has made that decision, and now we are all reaping the whirlwind from that.
00:35:56.000 In just one second, we'll get to Democratic politicians who don't actually want to reap that whirlwind particularly.
00:36:00.000 First, tomorrow is Leap Day!
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00:36:24.000 It's for one day only.
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00:36:27.000 Get it tomorrow at jeremysrazors.com before the offer ends.
00:36:30.000 Okay, meanwhile.
00:36:30.000 Okay, there are Democrats who do not wish to go down with the sinking radical ship.
00:36:34.000 That apparently includes Eric Adams.
00:36:36.000 Eric Adams ran again on a more moderate platform as mayor of New York.
00:36:39.000 Now he is saying that he wants to deport migrants accused of serious crimes.
00:36:43.000 Now, you might think that that would be like a normal proposition.
00:36:45.000 Wrong!
00:36:46.000 The Democratic City Council is trying to oppose him.
00:36:48.000 According to the New York Times, for years, New York City leaders have relished the status of being a so-called sanctuary city where local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials is limited.
00:36:57.000 On Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams made it clear his views were different.
00:37:00.000 If he had his way, he said he would permit law enforcement in New York City to work openly with immigration authorities to more readily deport migrants who are suspected of serious crimes.
00:37:08.000 There's some people that feel they should be able to remain here, keep their actions, until they're eventually convicted, he said.
00:37:12.000 I don't subscribe to that theory.
00:37:14.000 A reporter asked Adams about due process.
00:37:16.000 He said they didn't give due process to the person they shot or punched or killed.
00:37:18.000 There's a philosophical disagreement here.
00:37:21.000 The city council says there are no plans to revisit these laws.
00:37:24.000 Again, that divide is the Democratic Party in a nutshell, which is why the Democratic Party is, in fact, in a process of shrinking away.
00:37:33.000 Now, the Democratic Party has also yet to take advantage of positions on which the Republican Party is not in the 80%.
00:37:41.000 So, take the situation with regard to Ukraine.
00:37:44.000 So, the United States has a bunch of conflicting data on what Americans think of funding for Ukraine.
00:37:51.000 According to a recent YouGov poll, in the United States, The 43% of Americans believe that the West should continue to support Ukraine in its efforts against Russia until such a time as Russia withdraws from the country, even if that means the war and its effects last longer.
00:38:08.000 Some 23% of Americans say they want to encourage a negotiated peace to end the fighting, even if it means Russia still has control over some parts of Ukraine.
00:38:16.000 So a plurality of Americans still believe that funding for Ukraine would be the proper way to do this.
00:38:22.000 And when it comes to whether the West is doing enough to prevent the Russians from winning in Ukraine, the United States, 46% of Americans say that we're not doing enough.
00:38:33.000 25% say that we are doing more than enough or enough.
00:38:36.000 And this is a YouGov poll from January.
00:38:40.000 As far as the level of aid being sent to Ukraine, 33% of the American public believes that we should maintain the same levels of support to Ukraine.
00:38:48.000 Some 26% believe that we should reduce our level of support.
00:38:51.000 Some 23% believe we should increase our levels of support.
00:38:56.000 So one of the big questions when it comes to funding for Ukraine is whether the reduced position is read as status quo or whether the increased position is read as status quo.
00:39:06.000 Because generally Americans kind of like status quo.
00:39:08.000 They're like, okay, fine.
00:39:09.000 We'll just keep spending what we've been spending.
00:39:10.000 We don't want to see like a radical uptick in the amount of spending.
00:39:12.000 But only 26% of Americans are expressing that they would actually like to reduce our levels of support according to this YouGov poll.
00:39:18.000 So that is a minority proposition that Americans desperately want to reduce the commitment that has been made to Ukraine.
00:39:27.000 With that said, there are swing state voters who do believe that we've given too much to Ukraine.
00:39:33.000 So, a poll from the UK Telegraph, this is from January, early January, finds that in, for example, Michigan, 32% of Americans believe that America has given too much to Ukraine, 21% say too little, 29% say the right amount, 18% say they do not know.
00:39:51.000 Okay, bottom line though is, the hard and fast opposition to more aid to Ukraine, so long as that aid is not, you know, wildly overdramatic, The vast majority of American voters, or at least the vast plurality, are still in favor of continued aid to Ukraine.
00:40:04.000 They don't want to just cut off Ukraine at the knees right now.
00:40:09.000 Which is why it is very strange that Republicans continue to not negotiate over the situation in Ukraine.
00:40:15.000 Now the Democrats have failed here, signally, to convince the American public that they actually hold the middle ground.
00:40:20.000 The question on Ukraine is who holds the middle ground.
00:40:21.000 The middle ground on Ukraine is the one the Americans want.
00:40:23.000 Most Americans want to provide enough aid to Ukraine to help them withstand the Russian barrage, but not enough aid that it is a serious cost to the United States or we don't want to shore up their bureaucracy or anything like that, which is why there are Republican backbenchers who are now proposing an alternative aid to Ukraine bill, which presumably is pretty popular with the American people.
00:40:44.000 That is a Ukraine aid bill.
00:40:45.000 It's being proposed by actually a bipartisan coalition, including Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Jared Golden of Maine and Don Bacon of Nebraska.
00:40:55.000 It's called the Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act.
00:40:58.000 It includes border control measures, including that migrants coming over the southern border have to remain in Mexico, which would be the biggest single policy prescription that was reversed by Joe Biden.
00:41:07.000 So that in and of itself would be a huge win.
00:41:08.000 Remain in Mexico being enshrined in law would be a major win for the United States if this bill were to pass the House and the Senate.
00:41:15.000 And the bill includes $47 billion for Ukraine priorities that is down $13 billion from the proposal approved by the Senate.
00:41:21.000 The House lawmakers excluded the Senate's $7.8 billion in government budgetary aid to Kiev.
00:41:27.000 Saying, why are we paying their government expenditures?
00:41:29.000 We just want to pay for the weaponry so that they can stop the Russians from invading.
00:41:34.000 The bill would also fund U.S.
00:41:35.000 military operations in the Red Sea.
00:41:37.000 It would spend $3 billion on helping America build more submarines.
00:41:40.000 And it would spend $4 billion refilling Israel's stocks of air defense interceptors.
00:41:44.000 Which makes sense because if you want to stop Iran from, for example, firing a missile at Israel, Israel needs that aid, presumably.
00:41:51.000 So, that bill is being proposed by a bipartisan coalition.
00:41:55.000 The House Speaker Johnson has been unable to bring forward anything.
00:41:59.000 And herein lies the unworkability of the Republican House, snatching defeat from the jaws of obvious victory.
00:42:03.000 Again, there are a thousand ways Republicans can win this particular PR battle.
00:42:08.000 And they seem to be ignoring all of them because, again, the House Speaker is dependent on a single vote.
00:42:13.000 The House majority is down to low single digits.
00:42:16.000 And that means that if Speaker Johnson does something to cross, like, four Republicans, he loses his speakership.
00:42:23.000 Now, maybe at this point, he should just say, okay, fine.
00:42:24.000 Well, but that's the job.
00:42:26.000 The job is I pass bills that I think are going to help the Republican party win, say, the next congressional election and help Donald Trump win the presidency.
00:42:33.000 Because let's be real about this.
00:42:35.000 Joe Biden is now running against Congress.
00:42:37.000 That is what he is doing.
00:42:39.000 For example, yesterday, here was Joe Biden saying that the consequences of an action in Ukraine are dire.
00:42:44.000 That's a hard case to make if Republicans were passing, say, a $47 billion aid package that includes serious border provisions, as opposed to passing nothing.
00:42:52.000 He's counting on Republican inaction to help carry him over the finish line.
00:42:55.000 Again, this is the only place where he can even attempt to grab what he believes to be a moderate middle position, is on Ukraine.
00:43:02.000 And that's only being made possible because Republicans have not made clear exactly what the hell they want.
00:43:05.000 They're completely divided.
00:43:07.000 Here is Joe Biden.
00:43:09.000 We've got a lot of work to do.
00:43:10.000 We've got to figure out how we're going to keep funding the government, which is an important problem, an important solution we need to find, and I think we can do that.
00:43:20.000 And in Ukraine, I think the need is urgent.
00:43:23.000 I hope we get to speak to that a little bit.
00:43:26.000 And I think the consequences of inaction every day in Ukraine are dire.
00:43:32.000 Bottom line here is that at some point the Republican leadership is going to have to stand up for the majority of its actual constituents and take positions that may alienate the more radical parts of the base.
00:43:43.000 Again, even inside the Republican Party, it is a minority proposition, it still is, to completely cut off aid to Ukraine.
00:43:50.000 That is still not a, just by polling data, that is not a majority position inside even the Republican Party.
00:43:55.000 And if Russia were to overrun Kiev, it would look even worse for Republicans, as Joe Biden found out when he let the Taliban overrun Kabul.
00:44:02.000 So are Republicans going to allow by, again, whoever acts not crazy wins.
00:44:07.000 Whoever seizes the middle ground in this election cycle wins.
00:44:11.000 That is presumably why Republicans are also discussing the possibility of averting a government shutdown.
00:44:16.000 The Speaker Johnson, he said that he's optimistic that we would avert a government shutdown this weekend.
00:44:21.000 And this is, in fact, the correct political position.
00:44:24.000 I know that there are a lot of people who like government shutdowns because they believe they achieve something.
00:44:28.000 I'm only in favor of a shutdown if you get a win out of it.
00:44:30.000 But it turns out that this shutdown is not likely to achieve anything like the substantive win you need in order to offset the PR catastrophe that would be Joe Biden running against a Congress that is completely dysfunctional.
00:44:42.000 Here was Johnson yesterday.
00:44:44.000 The other big priority for our country, of course, is the funding of our government.
00:44:49.000 And we have been working in good faith around the clock, every single day, for months and weeks, and over the last several days, quite literally around the clock, to get that job done.
00:44:58.000 We're very optimistic.
00:44:59.000 I hope that the other leaders came out here and told you the same.
00:45:03.000 We believe that we can get to agreement on these issues and prevent a government shutdown.
00:45:07.000 And that's our first responsibility.
00:45:10.000 Okay, again, it looks as though Johnson will avert the problem when it comes to the government shutdown, because again, why hand Democrats a political victory for minimal gain?
00:45:18.000 But when it comes to Ukraine, again, that's where Biden is going to run on that.
00:45:22.000 Republicans have the advantage right now on the border.
00:45:24.000 They have the advantage on Middle Eastern policy.
00:45:26.000 They could also have the advantage on Ukraine, if they would simply articulate a policy that makes any sort of sense.
00:45:31.000 But again, it's too fragmentary in the House, and Biden's own vagueness on policy, and on what he actually seeks there, Is not going to make up for Republican failures when it comes to even passing a thing.
00:45:44.000 Like, figure out what you want and pass the thing in the House.
00:45:45.000 That's what the House is for.
00:45:46.000 Just do that.
00:45:48.000 Just take another example.
00:45:50.000 The House had proposed the passage of an Israel aid only bill.
00:45:55.000 And Joe Biden threatened to veto it.
00:45:57.000 Well, why not make him veto it?
00:45:58.000 Why not make the senators vote on it?
00:45:59.000 The Republicans in the House still have not passed that out of committee.
00:46:02.000 It was rejected for sort of the giant voice vote that happens where by popular consent, you're just allowed to push the bill forward.
00:46:08.000 Doesn't mean Republicans can't do it.
00:46:09.000 They can.
00:46:11.000 A little bit of smart politics here would go a long way.
00:46:14.000 Because again, Joe Biden is incredibly vulnerable.
00:46:16.000 In just one second, we're going to get to the Republican side of the aisle, what it means that Donald Trump was able to win almost 70% of the vote in the Michigan primary against Nikki Haley.
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