The Ben Shapiro Show - Inflation Comes In HOT

00:00:00.000 We've been told by pretty much every major media outlet that we are now in a soft landing.

00:00:05.000 This means that inflation has started to decline, the economy continues to sail along, yet strangely nobody is feeling like that.

00:00:13.000 And this has been the big perplexing question for Democrats.

00:00:15.000 Why is it?

00:00:16.000 That the economy is so amazing, but nobody actually feels like the economy is so amazing.

00:00:20.000 Well, one reason is that, contrary to popular opinion, we have not yet defeated inflation.

00:00:25.000 And the latest news on that front came in yesterday.

00:00:27.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, stubborn inflation pressures persisted in March, derailing the case for the Federal Reserve to begin reducing interest rates in June and raising questions over whether it can deliver cuts this year without signs of an economic slowdown.

00:00:39.000 The Consumer Price Index, a measure of goods and service prices across the economy, rose 3.5% in March from one year earlier, according to the Labor Department.

00:00:47.000 That was a touch higher than economists had forecast, and a pickup from February's 3.2%.

00:00:51.000 So-called core prices also rose more than expected on a monthly and annual basis.

00:00:56.000 This, of course, drove the stock market down some 500 points.

00:00:59.000 It also meant that bond yields started to go up.

00:01:02.000 The bottom line here is that inflation continues to run almost twice what it is supposed to be running.

00:01:06.000 Remember, that year over year, the inflation rate is supposed to be about 2%.

00:01:09.000 It is currently running at 3.5%.

00:01:11.000 And when you add that on to the giant inflationary bubble that we had in 2021 and 2022, you're talking about prices that are up like 20% for most Americans.

00:01:20.000 Joe Biden's economy has not made up those wage losses.

00:01:24.000 Politico is sounding the alarm.

00:01:26.000 According to them, President Joe Biden has been presiding over a good news economy for the past year with strong growth, low unemployment, and falling inflation.

00:01:32.000 But that good news is reaching its limits.

00:01:34.000 The cost of living rose faster than expected in March.

00:01:36.000 That likely means Biden will have to live with high interest rates well into an election year, with investor hopes fading fast for a Federal Reserve rate cut in June.

00:01:43.000 Now remember, the Federal Reserve has kept those interest rates pretty high by at least the last 10 years of standards.

00:01:49.000 Now what that means is that money is less easy.

00:01:51.000 That means that IPOs aren't as easy.

00:01:53.000 It means that finding money to actually fund your startup isn't that easy.

00:01:57.000 Loans are not as easy to come by.

00:01:59.000 Typically, that presages some sort of economic slowdown.

00:02:02.000 When you raise the interest rates, typically that is supposed to bring inflation down, but it's also supposed to have an impact on markets.

00:02:08.000 It is supposed to drive down prices and all that.

00:02:11.000 That's literally the purpose of the interest rate increases to drive down prices.

00:02:15.000 And that usually comes along with an economic cooling if the economy is superheated.

00:02:20.000 That's not happening because we've dumped so much money into the economy in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 and yes in 2023.

00:02:29.000 That economy doesn't seem like it's going to slow down anytime soon.

00:02:31.000 You can make the case that it used to be supply chain problems that had driven the prices to exorbitant highs.

00:02:37.000 But the supply chain problems, even though they're still there in places like the Red Sea, are not nearly what they were during the pandemic.

00:02:43.000 And yet we're still getting these inflation rates clocking in far too high.

00:02:48.000 Even CNN was admitting that inflation is moving in the wrong direction.

00:02:51.000 Here they were yesterday.

00:02:53.000 This just in, inflation is headed in the wrong direction right now.

00:02:57.000 The latest consumer price report just out shows prices up 3.5% this over same time last year.

00:03:04.000 CNN's Rahel Solomon just looking through it all, just running into the studio to help us out.

00:03:09.000 What are you seeing in this?

00:03:10.000 Hey Kate, so yeah, you put it pretty well there that this is moving in the wrong direction.

00:03:13.000 So, 3.5% on an annual basis.

00:03:16.000 To put that in context, that is hotter than what we were expecting and certainly hotter than we saw the month prior.

00:03:21.000 If you look at CPI on a monthly basis, sort of a similar trend there, right?

00:03:25.000 So, coming in at 0.4% on a monthly basis, that is also hotter than we were expecting.

00:03:33.000 According to Seema Shah, Chief Global Strategist of Principal Asset Management, quote, this marks the third consecutive strong reading and means that the stalled disinflationary narrative can no longer be called a blip.

00:03:41.000 In fact, even if inflation were to cool next month to a more comfortable reading, there's likely sufficient caution within the Fed now to mean a July cut may also be a stretch.

00:03:49.000 If Joe Biden is not able to get any sort of cut to the Fed rate, Coming up to the election, he's got a problem on his hands because it means that economy is going to start to tighten up just before the election.

00:03:59.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.

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00:04:59.000 Larry Summers, who is the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, former president of Harvard University, before he was ousted for political incorrectness, he had previously predicted that there would be a massive inflationary cycle after 2020.

00:05:12.000 People laughed at him because we hadn't had a massive inflationary cycle in the United States for 40 years.

00:05:16.000 He was right.

00:05:17.000 Here he was yesterday explaining that a rate cut in June would be a really dangerous move at this point.

00:05:23.000 You have to take seriously the possibility that the next great move will be upwards rather than downwards and anything could happen.

00:05:33.000 Markets could crash, the indicators could turn down, but on current facts, A rate cut in June, it seems to me, would be a dangerous and egregious error comparable to the errors the Fed was making in the summer of 2021 when it just didn't get the thread on inflation.

00:06:01.000 Okay, well, that is becoming conventional wisdom, what Larry Summers is saying right there.

00:06:06.000 According to CNN, Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said last week she's even willing to consider raising rates should progress on inflation stall or even reverse.

00:06:13.000 For now, she doesn't think there's a high likelihood that hikes will be merited.

00:06:16.000 With that said, the possibility of a soft landing seems to be disappearing.

00:06:21.000 According to CNN, although the economy is booming by many measures, including last month's blowout jobs report, small business owners aren't feeling gung-ho about it.

00:06:28.000 By the way, there's a reason for that.

00:06:29.000 The blowout jobs report was heavily reliant on two sectors, the healthcare sector and, wait for it, wait for it, government jobs.

00:06:35.000 An index produced by the National Federation of Independent Business, gauging how small business owners expect to fare in the future, dropped to its lowest level since 2012, last month.

00:06:43.000 Everybody is feeling it.

00:06:45.000 And consumers are not confident in their ability to make on-time debt payments.

00:06:49.000 Because again, the interest rates are so high that if you are getting behind on your bills, it is very difficult to repay all of that.

00:06:56.000 All of this is very bad for Joe Biden.

00:06:58.000 When you connect a staggering economy with a completely atrocious foreign policy and a president who is no longer with us, that is a bad indicator for a re-elect effort.

00:07:10.000 So Joe Biden had a particularly bad day yesterday.

00:07:12.000 I don't know whether they didn't get him to bed the previous night.

00:07:16.000 I don't know whether he stayed up too late watching Matlock.

00:07:18.000 Whatever it was, Joe Biden was really not with us yesterday.

00:07:21.000 He required notecards for pretty much everything.

00:07:24.000 On his notecards, apparently it said, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, because he needs to be told to do literally everything.

00:07:30.000 We saw this actually in his Unificion interview last week, when he required notecards to be interviewed. 1.00

00:07:37.000 Typically, if you're interviewing someone, you might have notecards. 0.99

00:07:39.000 If you're being interviewed, you typically aren't carrying around notecards. 1.00

00:07:42.000 Here he was, doing like a meet and greet with the Japanese Prime Minister, and that dude needs his notecards.

00:07:49.000 Well, Fumio, welcome back to the White House.

00:07:51.000 Welcome back to the Oval Office.

00:07:53.000 It's good to have you here.

00:07:54.000 Good to see you again.

00:07:55.000 You were here last year.

00:07:57.000 We said the role being played by the United States and Japan is becoming even greater.

00:08:03.000 And I couldn't agree more with your assertion back then.

00:08:08.000 And what we see in our joint effort with Ukraine in the face of Russia's vicious assault is just outrageous.

00:08:19.000 It's like watching him read a foreign language, but it's English from a note card.

00:08:24.000 I would suggest that perhaps the Japanese Prime Minister speaks better English than Joe Biden at this point.

00:08:31.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden finished up this presser and he just kind of randomly was smiling at the walls while the press were ushered out so they wouldn't ask him any questions.

00:08:42.000 There he is, smiling at the wall again.

00:08:56.000 What was that?

00:08:57.000 It was like a weird face, like a weird Joker face, and then you get the weird smirk.

00:09:01.000 It's Joaquin Phoenix in the new preview for Joker 2 happening there with the President of the United States.

00:09:07.000 Again, yesterday was a bad day for him.

00:09:08.000 He also suggested in a speech that he needed to be re-elected because he was in the 20th century.

00:09:15.000 That one I can believe.

00:09:17.000 Here we go.

00:09:19.000 Elect me.

00:09:20.000 I'm in the 20th century.

00:09:21.000 It's the 20th century. 21st century.

00:09:23.000 I mean, to be fair, he was born in the 16th century, apparently.

00:09:31.000 So, exciting stuff there from the President of the United States.

00:09:35.000 And so, Democrats are left with a narrative.

00:09:37.000 They don't have a great economy, as we'll talk about in a little bit.

00:09:39.000 They got a real immigration problem on their hands. 0.86

00:09:41.000 So, they have to say, basically, that Republicans, as always, are the font head of all evil. 0.97

00:09:47.000 They are the root of all sin. 0.93

00:09:49.000 And so, Joe Biden on the campaign trail yesterday, he suggested that Republicans want to kill millions of people by repealing Obamacare.

00:09:56.000 This stuff has been tiresome since Democrats were running ads about Paul Ryan pushing little old ladies off cliffs in wheelchairs.

00:10:02.000 But they're still playing this hit.

00:10:03.000 Again, this is just going to be a play-the-hits campaign.

00:10:06.000 It's the rockin' oldies with Joe Biden over here.

00:10:09.000 My predecessor and his MAGA friends want to, I love the phrase, the language they use, they want to terminate the Affordable Care Act.

00:10:20.000 Terminate.

00:10:23.000 Well, guess what? 0.96

00:10:24.000 Killing millions of Americans, take them off of health care, insurance, and stripping others of services like home care.

00:10:30.000 Folks, by the way, you know how many times they've tried to take out Obamacare, Affordable Health Care Act?

00:10:37.000 49 times.

00:10:38.000 That's a very long word, what he's saying right now.

00:10:39.000 They can keep trying, but they're not going to get it done.

00:10:44.000 So the longest word in the English language is pneumo-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-cloniosis and or whatever he just said just now.

00:10:51.000 Which was all one long mashed potato word, Joe Biden. 0.76

00:10:54.000 But he did suggest, of course, that Republicans are killing people en masse.

00:10:58.000 I do love that he's very upset by the language of terminating Obamacare.

00:11:01.000 What does he think that is?

00:11:06.000 In any case, he's doing a wonderful job and his backup is doing a similarly wonderful job.

00:11:10.000 If you are on a word diet, let me recommend some word salad from Kamala Harris.

00:11:16.000 She really breaks out the Caesar dressing for this one. 0.99

00:11:20.000 It's important to see that, you know, the nature of democracy, there's a duality to it, it has two sides to it.

00:11:28.000 On the one hand, there's incredible strength, right?

00:11:31.000 That when a democracy is intact, what it does for its people, in terms of the strength it gives its people and protects in terms of individual freedoms and rights, right?

00:11:41.000 And liberties.

00:11:43.000 There's an incredible strength in that, what it does for its people when it is intact.

00:11:47.000 On the other hand, democracy?

00:11:49.000 Extraordinarily fragile.

00:11:51.000 It's only as strong as our willingness to fight for it.

00:11:56.000 That's by nature what a democracy is.

00:11:59.000 It is about the people.

00:12:00.000 Oh, that's what a democracy is.

00:12:01.000 It's like a woman. 1.00

00:12:03.000 Strong, but fragile.

00:12:05.000 Delicate, but wonderful.

00:12:07.000 Oh! 0.60

00:12:11.000 Everyone is going to vote for Joe Biden.

00:12:12.000 You understand he's probably going to die in office, right?

00:12:14.000 Y'all get this, right?

00:12:15.000 That dude on his last legs.

00:12:16.000 I'm sorry to break it to you.

00:12:18.000 I don't mean to shatter your bubble about Joe Biden's longevity.

00:12:21.000 That dude is not looking great.

00:12:23.000 And his backup is this.

00:12:24.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

00:12:26.000 First, if you're like most Americans, you're struggling to make ends meet.

00:12:28.000 Everything is more expensive these days.

00:12:30.000 By the time you pay those bills and fill up the car, go grocery shopping, not a lot left.

00:12:34.000 You're laying out the credit card for all non-essentials, maybe some essentials even.

00:12:39.000 Last I checked, the average credit card interest rate for Americans is like 24%, which is insane.

00:12:43.000 How are you supposed to dig yourself out of that debt?

00:12:45.000 Well, if you own a home, I want you to call my friends at American Financing right now.

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00:13:21.000 KamalaHarris also, again, they're going to go to crisis mode.

00:13:35.000 Crisis mode dictates that Democrats have to really up the game.

00:13:38.000 They keep saying stuff like, this could be our last election ever.

00:13:40.000 Now, let me be clear on this.

00:13:41.000 I hate when both parties say this stuff. 1.00

00:13:42.000 It's crap. 0.99

00:13:43.000 When people say, this may be the last, we may never have another election. 1.00

00:13:47.000 You don't believe that. 0.98

00:13:48.000 If you actually believe that, then you go shoot somebody, probably. 0.99

00:13:50.000 The idea that this is the last election ever, that Donald Trump is so scary that he's just like Hitler. 0.98

00:13:57.000 Okay, well then, I don't believe you'd think that.

00:14:00.000 If you did think that, you probably would have focused more effort on taking him down during the Republican primaries, actually.

00:14:07.000 As opposed to in the general election, where you think that he's beatable.

00:14:10.000 Whenever Republicans say it's going to be the last election ever, I notice that you're not preparing to sell your house.

00:14:15.000 And Democrats, you too.

00:14:17.000 This kind of constant ramping up to the possibility of civil war is really silly, and it's really bad when it comes from your top-level politicians.

00:14:25.000 When she talks about democracy being strong but fragile, and then she immediately suggests, in the next breath, that this may be our last election, you understand that you are now presenting an actual threat to democracy that requires revolutionary action.

00:14:41.000 Anyway, here's Kamala Harris saying this stuff. 1.00

00:14:44.000 Treating serious language as though it's a throwaway line is really a problem in American politics, and Kamala does it as much as anybody. 1.00

00:14:50.000 I don't think it's hyperbolic to say this genuinely could be the last democratic election we ever have.

00:14:56.000 You're right.

00:14:57.000 Listen to what he says.

00:14:58.000 He's telling you.

00:14:59.000 No, you're not!

00:15:00.000 Dictators aren't a dictator for one day. 0.99

00:15:01.000 No.

00:15:02.000 Let the people decide.

00:15:04.000 No, and I'm going to tell you, as vice president, I've now met with over 150 world leaders.

00:15:09.000 Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and kings.

00:15:13.000 And in the last three international trips I've taken, which are going back to the end of last year through this year, world leaders have come up to me expressing their real concern.

00:15:30.000 Their real concern that there won't be another election in the United States?

00:15:33.000 Sure.

00:15:34.000 This may be the last election.

00:15:36.000 I love the co-host there who is asking Kamala Harris about that, where she says, This might be the last election.

00:15:42.000 Donald Trump has said, on the one hand, he'll be a dictator for only one day.

00:15:46.000 And then he has said, let the people decide.

00:15:49.000 I noticed neither of those statements is actually a threat to the upcoming election or the one after.

00:15:55.000 I noticed that.

00:15:56.000 Usually when you say, let the people decide, that means not the end of elections.

00:16:00.000 Just the thing I noticed.

00:16:01.000 So Democrats are going to their backup plan.

00:16:03.000 If Donald Trump isn't a threat to democracy, then Donald Trump is a threat to you personally.

00:16:09.000 Again, they're going to drag up.

00:16:11.000 It's play the hits.

00:16:12.000 It's play the hits time 2024 for Democrats.

00:16:14.000 They're getting in early, which means they're a little bit scared.

00:16:16.000 Whoopi Goldberg was playing the old hits.

00:16:19.000 One of those big old Democratic hits.

00:16:20.000 We've already seen one, which is Republicans are going to kill you with their health care plans.

00:16:23.000 Now, here we have Whoopi Goldberg basically paraphrasing Joe Biden about Mitt Romney back in 2012.

00:16:28.000 They're going to put you all back in chains. 0.97

00:16:30.000 Here's Whoopi Goldberg saying that Donald Trump wants to enslave black people or something. 0.93

00:16:35.000 Take a look at the things that they're rolling back. 0.68

00:16:39.000 Remember I said ages ago, you know, in their minds they want to bring slavery back.

00:16:46.000 They're okay with it because, you see, things change.

00:16:50.000 You know, one of the good things about the Supreme Court is you can fight to make sure you make stuff better.

00:16:56.000 You don't generally fight to make stuff worse.

00:16:59.000 Or to roll back.

00:17:00.000 Or to roll back.

00:17:01.000 And to me, if you're okay rolling that back, When things were not even a state, when we had no say, so how's that going to roll?

00:17:13.000 How's that going to roll?

00:17:14.000 What's the next thing?

00:17:16.000 Because you know, with all of this comes birth control.

00:17:21.000 With all of this comes everything that you need as a woman to have had put in place to make sure that we were doing better than we were before.

00:17:35.000 Yes, Republicans all want to bring slavery back.

00:17:37.000 That's where they are going. 0.99

00:17:39.000 And they're going to bring slavery back via restrictions on your ability to kill a baby. 0.93

00:17:44.000 That's really where they're going here.

00:17:46.000 And so the Democrats are going to try to make the entire 2024 election about abortion.

00:17:50.000 They did this in 2012 also.

00:17:51.000 Remember that planted question from George Stephanopoulos to Mitt Romney in 2012.

00:17:55.000 If you have a memory bank that goes this far back, In 2012, Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate for president, believe it or not, for those who are kind of short-memoried here.

00:18:03.000 And when he was candidate for president, George Stephanopoulos, a Democrat, who was the news anchor at one of the debates, proceeded to ask Mitt Romney about bans on contraception.

00:18:15.000 And then this became a meme.

00:18:17.000 The War on Women. 0.67

00:18:18.000 Again, they're bringing back all the hits.

00:18:20.000 The War on Women is what they're bringing back. 1.00

00:18:22.000 So what are they using as the leverage point for the War on Women? 1.00

00:18:24.000 They're talking about this Arizona ruling that pushes abortion law back to the 1864 protection of all life standard.

00:18:33.000 As I've said before, on a practical level, Arizona has a Democratic governor.

00:18:36.000 Arizona has extremely evenly split houses.

00:18:39.000 They have a one-vote majority for the Republicans in the House and one-vote majority for the Republicans in the Senate.

00:18:45.000 It's not going to be too hard to peel off a couple of Republicans to vote with Democrats and go to a 15-week standard on abortion by repealing the 1864 law, for example.

00:18:53.000 But Democrats are trying to use this as case in point of how Republicans want to roll back time to 1864.

00:18:59.000 So you're seeing all over the media today Okay, well, would it be any different if the law was from, like, 1960?

00:19:08.000 I don't really think so.

00:19:10.000 I mean, the law is what the law is.

00:19:12.000 And again, practically speaking, very good shot that they changed the law in Arizona, but not before they suggest that Donald Trump wants to ban abortion federally.

00:19:20.000 Now, again, these issues are not related.

00:19:22.000 A federal abortion ban has actual legal issues that obtain to it,

00:19:27.000 including the problems of federalism and Supreme Court precedent.

00:19:30.000 But Democrats are trying to do the war on women routine with Trump. 0.99

00:19:33.000 The big problem they have here is that unlike Mitt Romney, who was actually significantly more pro-life

00:19:37.000 than Donald Trump, Donald Trump is not all that pro-life on the federal level.

00:19:41.000 Yes, he appointed judges who overruled Roe versus Wade, but he didn't overrule Roe versus Wade on a personal level.

00:19:47.000 Yes, Donald Trump was in favor of the overruling of Roe versus Wade,

00:19:51.000 that doesn't mean that he wanted to replace that with a giant federal abortion ban.

00:19:55.000 In fact, yesterday, Donald Trump suggested precisely the opposite.

00:19:58.000 So here was Donald Trump yesterday talking about the Arizona pro-life law that went into place.

00:20:02.000 Did Arizona go through court?

00:20:04.000 Yeah, they did, and that'll be straightened out.

00:20:07.000 And, you know, it's all about state rights.

00:20:09.000 That'll be straightened out.

00:20:11.000 And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else, they're going to bring it back into reason, and that'll be taken care of.

00:20:17.000 Okay, so, he actually said that he thinks the law, quote, goes too far.

00:20:21.000 And he said, I think it'll be straightened out.

00:20:22.000 And as you know, it's all about states' rights, and it'll be straightened out.

00:20:25.000 I'm sure the governor and everybody else have got to bring it back into reason, and that it'll be taken care of.

00:20:29.000 I think.

00:20:29.000 Okay, so, in other words, Donald Trump is taking the most moderate position that it is possible to take on abortion.

00:20:37.000 Which is, no federal legislation, leave it to the states.

00:20:40.000 That is a more moderate position than pro-lifers want, including me.

00:20:44.000 I prefer that he's had a 15-week abortion, bad like Mike Pence did.

00:20:47.000 But Democrats have to whip this into a frenzy in order to try and defeat Trump.

00:20:51.000 Because Joe Biden is a bad candidate.

00:20:53.000 There's more on this in just a moment.

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00:21:55.000 So you have Mika Brzezinski saying, do we need to hit rock bottom?

00:21:57.000 We're going to get the faux panic from Mika Brzezinski, who's deeply worried about abortion law or something.

00:22:03.000 They wanted to have a conversation and a debate and an impetus for voters to go to the polls centered around abortion.

00:22:12.000 I think obviously they would rather have the right to an abortion than have to debate it on the merits. 0.99

00:22:17.000 But from a political standpoint, Willie, this is monumental development.

00:22:22.000 Well, I mean, to your point, Sam, just to crystallize, I know that you believe women should have a right to access to abortion health care.

00:22:30.000 And on a policy level, this is horrendous.

00:22:33.000 This is absolutely horrendous what's happening.

00:22:37.000 The question is, do we need to hit rock bottom to realize what's happening here?

00:22:41.000 That's going to be the question in this 2024 election.

00:22:46.000 Wow, rock bottom would be all the babies get to live. 0.97

00:22:49.000 I can't imagine what rock bottom looks like to Democrats if rock bottom is where the babies get to live. 0.97

00:22:56.000 Katie Hobbs, the governor of Arizona, she is eager to suggest that the Arizona abortion ban will motivate voters to come out to the polls in favor of Democrats.

00:23:04.000 Here is the wet dish rag who is the actual governor of Arizona because she beat Carrie Lake. 1.00

00:23:10.000 And I am confident that when given the opportunity, they will vote to protect abortion access.

00:23:16.000 Do you think that will get on the ballot for this election?

00:23:20.000 They are well on their way there.

00:23:21.000 They have surpassed the number of signatures needed and they still have months to continue collecting.

00:23:27.000 And this is a common sense measure that is supported by the vast majority of Arizonans in terms of protecting access.

00:23:35.000 And, you know, certainly it's going to motivate voters in November.

00:23:40.000 Okay, but here's the thing.

00:23:42.000 If you cure it now in Arizona the way that Katie Hobbs wants to, it won't be an issue in November.

00:23:46.000 So what are they going to do?

00:23:47.000 Hold it up until November?

00:23:49.000 Here's the reality.

00:23:50.000 Democrats have a problem because Donald Trump actually put them in a bind on abortion.

00:23:54.000 They wanted to use a club to hit him with abortion, and he is actually mirroring many of their positions on abortion.

00:24:00.000 He doesn't want a federal mandate to allow abortion across the land, but he also is not in favor of a federal ban on abortion across the land.

00:24:08.000 So this leaves Democrats in a bit of a bind.

00:24:09.000 So what do they do?

00:24:10.000 They send out their media members to lie and pretend that Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways, which is not true.

00:24:15.000 Here is Maggie Haberman of the New York Times trying to push this untrue line.

00:24:20.000 Trump said, and we at the Times broke this, that Trump was saying to people, when the likely Dobbs decision was impending, that this was going to be bad for Republicans.

00:24:30.000 He has recognized that the politics of this are bad for Republicans.

00:24:33.000 He has also then gone out and said that he proudly helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

00:24:38.000 And so it's a little hard to have it both ways, but he is trying to have it all ways, and he often does.

00:24:43.000 He tries to leave all options open and avoid being pinned down.

00:24:46.000 This is on a significant issue that a lot of women are very, very animated by. 1.00

00:24:50.000 And looking as if you are trying to avoid saying anything, I don't think is going to be a sustainable position for him.

00:24:58.000 This is so confusing to me.

00:24:59.000 It is not, in fact, a confusing position to say that you are in favor of the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and now it gets kicked back to the states.

00:25:06.000 That is literally the Federalist position.

00:25:08.000 That is, by the way, the actual position of the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:25:12.000 Democrats are trying to, they're trying desperately to force Trump into a strong pro-life position so they can run against it, and he's not giving them the bait.

00:25:19.000 And that's a problem for them, politically speaking.

00:25:21.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden has a problem of his own.

00:25:24.000 When it comes to illegal immigration, Joe Biden, of course, has done an absolutely awful job.

00:25:28.000 According to the Herald Review, U.S.

00:25:31.000 Customs and Border Protection officers in the Tucson sector are seizing enough fentanyl and methamphetamine alone to kill billions of people.

00:25:38.000 Similar to agents in other sectors finding drugs hidden in novel ways, recent seizures are of drugs hidden in microwaves, children's bouncy houses, and under watermelons.

00:25:46.000 The Tucson sector, which covers most of the state of Arizona from the Yuma County line east to New Mexico, spans 262 miles on the international border.

00:25:53.000 Nogales CBP agents seized more than 38,500 pounds of drugs in fiscal 2021.

00:26:01.000 Drug seizures went down in fiscal 2022 and 2023 to 26,000 and 25,000 pounds respectively, but seizures of cocaine and fentanyl have increased over the same time period.

00:26:10.000 Not all drugs, of course, are equally deadly.

00:26:13.000 In fiscal 2023, Tucson sector agents seized a record 12,700 pounds of fentanyl.

00:26:18.000 So far in fiscal 2024, through March 5th alone, they've already seized more than 4,700 pounds of fentanyl.

00:26:25.000 That amount is combined enough to kill more than 3.9 billion people, because it doesn't take a lot of fentanyl to kill somebody.

00:26:31.000 A fentanyl poisoning or overdose can be extraordinarily small amounts.

00:26:35.000 We've covered this in the first couple of episodes of our series Divided States of Biden.

00:26:38.000 You should go check that out over at Daily Wire Plus if you want like the complete background on the border crisis plus the fentanyl crisis.

00:26:43.000 Episode one is the border crisis.

00:26:44.000 We actually went down to the Arizona border where they're smuggling the fentanyl over.

00:26:48.000 Episode two is about the impact of the fentanyl crisis in the United States.

00:26:52.000 Ahead of Easter weekend, more than 1.1 million fentanyl pills were seized at the Nogales point of entry.

00:26:58.000 And its director, Michael Humphries, said that on March 26th, Nogales POE agents found and seized roughly 166,000 fentanyl pills hidden inside a microwave.

00:27:07.000 On March 28th, they found and seized more than 661,000 fentanyl pills and 3.9 pounds of meth hidden inside a deflated children's bouncy house.

00:27:16.000 So things are going really well at America's southern border, naturally.

00:27:20.000 And the impacts are being felt all over the United States.

00:27:23.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:27:54.000 That's gcu.edu.

00:27:56.000 Yesterday, the New York Police Department Commissioner, Edward Caban, called migrants ghost criminals.

00:28:02.000 He said that we have illegal immigrants who are running around in our cities with no actual documentation.

00:28:06.000 We have no idea who they are or exactly what to do about it.

00:28:10.000 When there was that high-profile crime in Times Square when the officer was beat by the migrants, you called them ghost criminals. 1.00

00:28:15.000 What did you mean by that?

00:28:17.000 Right now, most of them had no IDs.

00:28:19.000 There's no way we could tell where they live, where they come from.

00:28:22.000 They're pretty much ghost criminals.

00:28:24.000 I gotta think that makes your job tougher.

00:28:26.000 To try to combat crime, and you're trying to look for people you don't even know what their names are.

00:28:30.000 Yeah, absolutely it does.

00:28:32.000 Of course that's true.

00:28:34.000 In fact, Joe Biden's border crisis and fentanyl crisis are so bad that even Democrats in contested states are running against Joe Biden.

00:28:40.000 Jon Tester is the senator from Montana.

00:28:42.000 Montana is a blood-red state.

00:28:43.000 He is deeply concerned that he is going to lose his election.

00:28:46.000 So, he is now running an ad directly against Joe Biden as a Democrat.

00:28:50.000 When Montanans see a problem, we get to work.

00:28:54.000 John Tester worked with Republicans fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new Border Patrol agents.

00:29:03.000 And he fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico.

00:29:10.000 John Tester knows defending Montana starts with securing the border.

00:29:15.000 I'm John Tester, and I approve this message to do whatever it takes to keep Montana safe.

00:29:21.000 Okay, so he's running as a blue dog Democrat against Joe Biden.

00:29:23.000 That shows the size and scope of the problem.

00:29:25.000 In fact, Jon Tester sees the problem so clearly that he is now flipping on the possibility of impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

00:29:34.000 According to Politico today, Senate Republicans are trying to orchestrate the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to an exact maximum political pain on their top Democratic targets in November, especially Tester and Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

00:29:46.000 Democrats are signaling they will quickly shut down the Mayorkas trial once they receive impeachment articles from the House.

00:29:51.000 But Tester is now in a problem because if he shuts down the impeachment of Mayorkas while claiming he's trying to shut down the border, The Republican he's running against is going to win, according to Politico.

00:30:01.000 This puts Tester and Brown in an unenviable bind.

00:30:04.000 Some of their Purple State colleagues will also feel the heat.

00:30:07.000 The upper chamber's campaign map this year already favors Republicans tremendously.

00:30:10.000 The GOP wants to exploit Democrats' vulnerabilities on the topic as migration surges to take back the chamber.

00:30:17.000 Democrats are hoping to quickly move past the trial, remind voters their GOP colleagues tanked a border deal earlier this year.

00:30:22.000 That ain't gonna work.

00:30:23.000 Senate Minority Whip Thune of South Dakota, he said not dealing with it in some way runs the risk of putting a lot of the incumbent Democrats, and for that matter, candidates in other races around the country, in a really difficult position.

00:30:33.000 I wouldn't want to be them defending that vote.

00:30:36.000 So there's a reason, again, that Jon Tester is abandoning Joe Biden over this issue.

00:30:41.000 And no matter how many times Democrats scream that the impeachment is political, it ain't gonna work.

00:30:45.000 Because everybody can see the border crisis.

00:30:47.000 In fact, even Joe Biden can see the border crisis, which is why, once again, he's flirting with the idea of the executive action he should have taken all along.

00:30:54.000 Or, more appropriately, the executive action he should have left in place, because it was Donald Trump who already had in place a remain-in-Mexico policy and differential interpretation of asylum law.

00:31:05.000 Here is Joe Biden saying, hey, maybe I'll shut down the border.

00:31:08.000 Well, it suggested that.

00:31:09.000 We're examining whether or not I have that power.

00:31:12.000 I would have that power under the legislation when the border has over 500,000 people,

00:31:19.000 5,000 people a day trying to cross the border because you can't manage it, slow it up.

00:31:24.000 There's no guarantee that I have that power all by myself without legislation.

00:31:32.000 And some have suggested I should just go ahead and try it, and if I get shut down by the

00:31:36.000 court, I get shut down by the court.

00:31:38.000 But we're trying to work through that right now. 0.98

00:31:41.000 This is the first time that Joe Biden has ever said he gives a crap what a court says. 0.97

00:31:45.000 He once suggested he did not have the unilateral ability to cram down a vaccine mandate on 80 million Americans, then he tried it. 0.98

00:31:51.000 Then the Supreme Court told him he literally could not unilaterally relieve student loan debt, and then he tried to do it anyway.

00:31:57.000 So is the real holdup here his deep and abiding respect for the Supreme Court of the United States, or is it that his left-wing base will be very angry at him if he tries to shut down immigration at America's southern border?

00:32:07.000 Again, just another major issue created by a terrible president.

00:32:10.000 We'll get to the Middle East situation in just one second.

00:32:12.000 Yet another area of the globe that's on fire thanks to the current president.

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00:32:59.000 Okay, meanwhile... The situation over in the Middle East continues to percolate.

00:33:05.000 Tony Blinken continues to try to cater to the pro-Communist voters in Gilbert.

00:33:09.000 It's just not going to stop.

00:33:10.000 It's not going to stop.

00:33:11.000 He put out a statement yesterday.

00:33:13.000 On Eid al-Fitr, which is the end of Ramadan, saying, quote, as we near the end of the holy month of Ramadan, I wish Muslim communities everywhere Eid Mubarak and join in hopes for a safer and more peaceful world.

00:33:23.000 As families and communities come together, we know they do so at a time when many Muslim communities worldwide are suffering.

00:33:28.000 Our thoughts turn to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, civilians in Syria, women suffering under the Taliban in Afghanistan, Uyghurs in the People's Republic of China, Rohingya in Burma and Bangladesh, and far too many others.

00:33:39.000 So he is lumping in just, Be clear, Israel with the Taliban or the Chinese Communist Party. 0.86

00:33:47.000 That is ridiculous.

00:33:49.000 West Bank Palestinians, by the way, are not governed directly by Israel. 0.87

00:33:52.000 They're governed by the Palestinian Authority.

00:33:55.000 So again, this is just another way of attempting to pay off the radicals in the Democratic Party base.

00:34:00.000 Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes killed three adult sons of the head of Hamas's political leadership on Wednesday.

00:34:06.000 That's Ismail Haniyeh, who's been enjoying his five-star accommodations in Qatar this entire time, while people have been bombed because his terrorists are hiding beneath them over in Gaza. 0.93

00:34:17.000 All three were apparently terrorists, according to Israel.

00:34:19.000 Hamas said seven people died in the strike.

00:34:23.000 Chania's answer to this was, quote, I thank God for this honor that he bestowed upon us with the martyrdom of my three sons and some grandchildren.

00:34:30.000 These are people who clearly value life.

00:34:32.000 These are people who... Ismail Chania clearly is just a normal thinking person who wants peace.

00:34:39.000 Because that's how you would respond if your kids and grandkids were hit in a drone strike because they were terrorists and or associating with terrorists.

00:34:47.000 You would immediately respond by thanking God for the honor bestowed upon you with the martyrdom of your sons.

00:34:52.000 That's what you would do, would you not?

00:34:53.000 Oh, you wouldn't?

00:34:55.000 Because you're not a terrorist?

00:34:56.000 And they don't think like you?

00:34:57.000 Yeah, that's what I thought.

00:34:58.000 But we have to pretend that there is moral relativism all across the spectrum.

00:35:02.000 And Hamas, they're just a rational, reasonable group.

00:35:04.000 Why can't some sort of deal be cut Now, Hamas, for its part, is not compromising in any way, because after all, why would they? 0.83

00:35:12.000 Joe Biden has basically given them the keys to the car.

00:35:15.000 According to the Times of Israel, amid intensive U.S.

00:35:17.000 efforts to achieve a deal for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since October 7th, both Israeli and Palestinian officials tempered optimism on Monday around progress in Cairo talks.

00:35:25.000 By the way, there is no optimism.

00:35:27.000 The United States keeps saying optimism so Joe Biden can cater to his base.

00:35:32.000 But Hamas is not caving and Israel cannot cave because they would be leaving an actual militarily operational terrorist group in charge of Gaza were they to pull out right now.

00:35:42.000 They would lose the war, in other words, at the Biden administration's behest if they were to do what Joe Biden wanted.

00:35:47.000 So it's the United States doing happy talk.

00:35:49.000 It's Joe Biden and his secretary saying, oh, we're so close, we're so close.

00:35:52.000 Meanwhile, Hamas is like, we will make no concessions. 0.99

00:35:54.000 And Israel's like, well, we can't let you survive. 1.00

00:35:57.000 You murdered 1,200 of our citizens and turned the entirety of the Gaza Strip into a giant terror tunnel. 0.72

00:36:04.000 In separate interviews, several Hamas officials offered varying comments regarding the state of the talks, ranging from rejection of the latest U.S.-drafted, Israeli-backed terms to assertions that the terrorist group was still studying the proposal.

00:36:16.000 Apparently, the deal under discussion would provide for the release of some 40 Israeli captives in return for a temporary truce and the release of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners, including some convicted of deadly murder.

00:36:28.000 By the way, it is now unclear whether Hamas even holds 40 hostages.

00:36:31.000 How many of the American hostages they're holding are dead?

00:36:33.000 We have no idea.

00:36:34.000 Hamas refuses to say.

00:36:36.000 So clearly, the Biden administration needs to put the pressure on Israel.

00:36:40.000 Clearly, Israel is the problem here, as always. 1.00

00:36:43.000 Meanwhile, the right is tearing itself apart, as per our usual arrangement, because anything you can do, I can do dumber. 0.78

00:36:51.000 So, Marjorie Taylor Greene is currently leading an insurrection against Mike Johnson, the current Speaker of the House.

00:36:55.000 She doesn't have a lot of fellow travelers in this thing.

00:36:59.000 She is now threatening that if Mike Johnson passes a Ukraine aid bill with Democratic votes, then she will push forward her motion to vacate and presumably garner a little bit more steam.

00:37:09.000 Here she was yesterday. 0.99

00:37:11.000 There's a lot of talk about Ukraine in regards to the motion to vacate, but FISA is obviously also a big battle up here.

00:37:17.000 Just how he handles and follows through with the FISA debate, will that influence your thought process on the motion to vacate?

00:37:22.000 How he handles the FISA process and how he handles funding Ukraine is going to tell our entire conference how to handle the motion to vacate.

00:37:33.000 Okay, so she's saying that she's the one in control of the boat.

00:37:36.000 Speaker Johnson, he says these sorts of threats create a continuous situation of chaos, which obviously is true.

00:37:42.000 No governing majority can govern if at any moment a fringe character can simply pull the trigger on a motion to vacate.

00:37:48.000 That's not how this is supposed to work.

00:37:50.000 It was never supposed to work this way.

00:37:51.000 It is unprecedented that it's working this way.

00:37:53.000 And reality, it ain't working at all.

00:37:56.000 And I don't think that would be helpful to us from a political standpoint for the Republican Party to continue to govern, to maintain, keep, and then grow our majority in November.

00:38:06.000 I thought that would have been a great hindrance to it.

00:38:09.000 And so that wouldn't be helpful, and nor does the motion to vacate help us in that regard either.

00:38:14.000 It would be chaos in the House.

00:38:16.000 So Marjorie and I are going to visit later today and look forward to the conversation.

00:38:22.000 And I'm not going to discuss it anymore.

00:38:23.000 I'm not going to discuss it with you all.

00:38:24.000 I'll discuss it with her.

00:38:26.000 Okay, well, here is what Speaker Johnson should do, as I've been saying.

00:38:29.000 He should nuke this nonsense.

00:38:31.000 This nonsense needs to stop. 1.00

00:38:32.000 It is stupid. 1.00

00:38:33.000 It is preventing the business of the House. 1.00

00:38:34.000 And if he is ousted, there's nobody else ready to take the place.

00:38:37.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene knows this.

00:38:38.000 She was asked about it.

00:38:39.000 And she was like, nope.

00:38:41.000 Ain't got another name.

00:38:42.000 So we'll go through another 10 weeks of no speaker, and then eventually, a few purple state Republicans will chip in and make Hakeem Jeffries speaker thanks to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and their deep and abiding desire to be on camera as much as humanly possible.

00:38:55.000 Pushing that forward, yesterday, was the congressional wing in the House that tried to kill FISA Section 702.

00:39:03.000 So FISA Section 702 is a section that lets the government monitor communications of foreigners overseas.

00:39:10.000 That information is then stored on a database, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

00:39:13.000 It can be searched by U.S.

00:39:14.000 intelligence officials for names or keywords, which is quite useful because if Osama bin Laden is planning an attack, you want to be able to, for example, search all of these records by name or keyword.

00:39:24.000 The problem is, U.S. 0.88

00:39:26.000 persons contacted from abroad can sometimes be caught in the data, and the FBI has misused this on occasion.

00:39:33.000 The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act championed by Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner imposes new guardrails as well as criminal penalties for abuse.

00:39:39.000 It also preserves the ability to surveil and act with dispatch without introducing onerous bureaucratic barriers.

00:39:44.000 So basically this debate is whether you can get a FISA warrant or if you need to get a FISA warrant every time you access any request that might catch up an American or Whether you need different procedures.

00:39:54.000 The bill would require FBI personnel to get a prior approval from a supervisor or staff attorney before running U.S.

00:40:00.000 person queries.

00:40:00.000 It would prevent political appointees from approving FBI database queries and it would require audits of U.S.

00:40:05.000 person queries to be run within 180 days after the query was initiated.

00:40:10.000 So this comes down to, do you have to apply for a FISA warrant beforehand?

00:40:14.000 If by the way, it'll be six and one half dozen of another, because here's what's going to happen.

00:40:17.000 If it ends up being that you have to get a FISA warrant before you actually go forward with a search like this, they'll just keep handing it out like they have been in the past, which is to say, like candy, you'll go for a FISA warrant because you want to make a search.

00:40:30.000 The FISA courts will be getting 50 of these requests today, and they'll just greenlight all of them, which is historically what they have done.

00:40:36.000 House Judiciary leaders don't think this is enough.

00:40:38.000 Chairman Jim Jordan and ranking Democrat Jerry Nadler will offer an amendment to require a warrant for every search of the 702 database that includes U.S.

00:40:45.000 persons.

00:40:47.000 I understand both sides of the debate, for sure.

00:40:50.000 The question is, as Mike Johnson says, you're arguing over this stuff in the House, wait until they pass a clean bill in the Senate and they don't include any guidelines on how these searches are to be done.

00:40:58.000 There's a whole other House of Congress, in other words.

00:41:02.000 Johnson plowed ahead, according to Politico, with efforts to bring the bill to the floor despite growing angst in his right flank and former President Trump sounding off and urging Republicans to kill the larger surveillance law.

00:41:11.000 Congress now has no clear path to extending a program that administrations of both parties have touted as vital to national security before its April 19th expiration.

00:41:18.000 It existed during the Trump administration as well.

00:41:20.000 It was not vital for Trump to kill it.

00:41:22.000 It was vital for intelligence services to be able to search queries about Osama bin Laden and his friends.

00:41:29.000 House conservatives are warning they not only take issue with the policy behind the wiretapping proposal, but the path Johnson took to get there.

00:41:35.000 Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, one of the 19 Republicans who blocked the bill, said, quote, Well, you know what's really theatrical?

00:41:38.000 convoluted process. It has been decidedly manipulated right now to make sure certain

00:41:42.000 amendments can't be heard. And he characterized Washington as disappointment theater.

00:41:45.000 Well, you know what's really theatrical? This idea that the House controls every aspect of

00:41:50.000 all legislation as though the Senate does not exist. That's what's irritating.

00:41:55.000 It's also why Johnson needs to reverse the process in how he's approaching this.

00:41:58.000 Because, here's the math.

00:42:00.000 Every time Johnson brings a bill to the floor, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Matt Gaetz, or whoever decides to get their name in the headlines today, is going to put a motion to vacate on the floor.

00:42:08.000 Then, they will wait for somebody to sound off, President Trump to sound off, on something he doesn't know much about, like a FISA surveillance warrant issue.

00:42:15.000 And then, if he sounds off, there will be 25 Republicans who will now side against the bill, and then if Johnson goes ahead with it anyway, then they'll threaten to vacate his speakership.

00:42:25.000 That is not a particularly great way for running the Congress, which is why Johnson needs to seize back the power that a Speaker traditionally had.

00:42:31.000 The Speaker traditionally had the power, as I mentioned before, on the Hastert Rule to move forward with a majority of the Republican caucus.

00:42:38.000 Remember, there may be 20 Republicans sounding off against the bill, and 200 in favor of it. 0.98

00:42:43.000 But the 20 keep outweighing the 200, specifically because of the stupidity of the procedures that have currently been put in place. 0.99

00:42:50.000 Johnson needs to nuke this system and nuke it right now. 0.99

00:42:53.000 Alrighty, guys.

00:42:54.000 The rest of the show continues right now.

00:42:56.000 We need to get into the bizarre spate of celebrities who are having trans kids. 0.99

00:43:02.000 It must be a genetic bottleneck or something in Hollywood.

00:43:04.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:43:05.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 11, 2024

Inflation Comes In HOT

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