New polling suggests that blue tide may be a mirage. The New York Times issues a long, scathing attack on Hasidic Jewish schools in New York. And Russia is on the run, but what if Vladimir Putin uses a nuke? This is The Benchmark Bureau Show with Ben Shapiro. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data. Join them at ExpressVpn.com/BenShapiroShow to join the conversation and get access to all of Ben's insider tips, tricks, and strategies for success in business, investing, and life. Ben Shapiro's The Ben Shapiro Show is available on all major podcasting platforms, including Vimeo, iTunes, and Stitcher. If you haven't checked out the show yet, you can do so here: Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Use the promo code at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you become a patron. You can also become a supporter of the show by texting BBB at BBB to 741741 and receive a discount of $99.99. The show will also include an additional $5 when you sign up to receive $10,000 when you shop through BBB gets $5,000 in total during the course of the ad discount. That offer starts in two weeks. Thank you, BBB will also receive an ad discount when you review the program? The code: BBB is also receive $4,000, and I get a discount when I review the course that starts in six months get a total of $13, I get my total discount through my policy offer through my cart discount starts begin two times get a chance at $72, she gets my total get $ibeed through my VIP rate offer? $4 of $4istee_4istory and other such a promo code, $5isteeeee, and other things like that gets my ad discount, 5 star my totalististeeing my carting discount, and she gets a discount code, she also gets my discount rate and gets my freebie, and all of that gets a VIP discount offer, and all that she gets 5-place she gets it gets a courseistististeeship and other thing is $6isteee_isteedeeded, she gets all that and more?
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00:00:24.000Well, the brand new inflation data is out and it's really, really bad.
00:00:28.000The inflation data from Joe Biden's administration continues to just buck all expectations that the Fed was going to bring this thing Under control.
00:00:36.000You're talking about 8.3% inflation out today.
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00:01:29.000Well, for a while here, the polls have been suggesting that this congressional election is going to be a lot closer than originally thought.
00:01:43.000The suggestion was that Republicans, six months ago, were going to run away with this thing.
00:01:48.000Now, it looks as though it's a lot more even.
00:01:50.000The latest polls show, the last five polls show NPR Has the Democrats up in the generic congressional poll 4 points.
00:01:57.000Insider Advantage has the Democrats up 1.
00:01:59.000Economist YouGov has the Democrats up 6.
00:02:05.000And that sort of gap suggests that there may be a polling sample problem here.
00:02:10.000This is a point that is made by Nate Cohen over at the New York Times.
00:02:13.000He's pointing out that the polling data seems to be skewed toward Democrats in a very similar way to how it was skewed toward Democrats in 2020.
00:02:22.000Even The Economist, which is polling at Democrats plus four.
00:02:26.000Even The Economist is suggesting that Republicans have about a 75% shot at taking the House.
00:02:31.000They're suggesting about a 75% shot that Democrats take the Senate.
00:02:34.000I'm going to suggest that it's like a 50-50 shot that Republicans take the Senate and about a 98% shot that Republicans take the House.
00:02:41.000Now again, those numbers are just coming directly from nowhere, but if I were to just put money on it, I would say that the Republicans have a decent shot of taking the Senate and I would say they have an overwhelming shot.
00:02:51.000Nate Cohen points out that there seems to be a trend of polling errors over the course of the last several years.
00:02:56.000He says, ahead of the last presidential election, we created a website tracking the latest polls.
00:03:00.000Internally, we called it a polling diary.
00:03:02.000Despite a tough polling cycle, one feature proved to be particularly helpful, a table showing what would happen if the 2020 polls were as wrong as they were in 2016, when pollsters systematically underestimated Donald Trump's strength against Hillary Clinton.
00:03:14.000Here's what it looked like on Election Day in 2020, plus a new column with the final result.
00:03:18.000As you can see, the final results were a lot like the poll estimates, with 2016-like poll error.
00:03:23.000We created this poll error table for a reason.
00:03:25.000Early in the 2020 cycle, we noticed Joe Biden seemed to be outperforming Mrs. Clinton in the same places where the polls overestimated her four years earlier.
00:03:32.000That pattern didn't necessarily mean that the polls would be wrong.
00:03:34.000It could have just reflected Biden's promised strength among white working-class voters, for instance, but it was a warning sign.
00:03:41.000Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016.
00:03:47.000Wisconsin is a good example, says Nate Cohn.
00:03:50.000On paper, the Republican Senator Ron Johnson ought to be favored to win re-election.
00:03:53.000The 538 Fundamentals Index, for instance, makes him a two-point favorite.
00:03:56.000Instead, the polls have exceeded the wildest expectations of Democrats.
00:03:59.000The state's gold standard Marquette Law School survey even showed Democrat Mandela Barnes leading Johnson.
00:04:05.000But in this case, good for Wisconsin Democrats might be too good to be true.
00:04:08.000The state was ground zero for survey error in 2020, when pre-election polls proved too good to be true for Mr. Biden.
00:04:13.000In the end, the polls overestimated Biden by about 8 percentage points.
00:04:17.000Nearly enough, Barnes is faring better than expected by a similar margin.
00:04:20.000The Wisconsin data is just one example of a broader pattern across the battlegrounds.
00:04:23.000The more the polls overestimated Biden last time, the better Democrats seem to be doing relative to expectations.
00:04:28.000So in other words, where the polls were wrong about Biden, it seems like the polls are doing the same thing with Democrats in the 2022 cycle.
00:04:33.000Conversely, Democrats are posting less impressive numbers in some of the states where the polls were fairly accurate two years ago, like in Georgia.
00:04:39.000If you put this relationship on a chart, you see a consistent link between Democratic strength today and polling error two years ago, which raises the possibility that the apparent Democratic strength in Wisconsin and elsewhere is a mirage, an artifact of persistent and unaddressed biases in survey research.
00:04:53.000If the polls are wrong yet again, it won't be hard to explain.
00:04:55.000Most pollsters haven't made significant methodological changes since the last election, says Nate Cohn.
00:04:59.000The major polling community post-mortem declared it was impossible to definitively ascertain what went wrong in the 2020 election.
00:05:06.000The pattern of Democratic strength isn't the only sign the polls might still be off in similar ways.
00:05:10.000Since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion Some pollsters have said they're seeing the familiar signs of non-response bias when people who don't respond to a poll are meaningfully different from those who participate creeping back into their surveys.
00:05:20.000In other words, people who are very motivated about abortion are the ones who stay online for the polling surveys.
00:05:24.000And people who just don't like Joe Biden very much are the ones who are saying, no, I don't feel like talking to you.
00:05:29.000Brian Stryker, a partner at Impact Research, Biden is a client, told me his polling firm was getting a ton of Democratic responses in recent surveys, especially in the familiar places where the polls have aired in recent cycles.
00:05:39.000So it's possible that what we are watching here is a bit of a mirage.
00:05:42.000So if this were the case, right, if what we are looking at is Senate polling with the 2020 poll, like poll error, what you would see is Democrats probably winning in Colorado, probably winning in Pennsylvania, although by less, winning in Arizona.
00:06:14.000And by the way, I think that some of those races are going to get a lot closer.
00:06:17.000I've been saying for a while, the race between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman is going to get a lot closer because Fetterman is a horror show of a candidate.
00:06:24.000The race in Arizona seems like that one is growing out of reach for Republicans.
00:06:29.000Pennsylvania, I think, is almost certain to get closer.
00:06:32.000I'd be shocked, actually, if Adam Laxalt doesn't win in his race against Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic Party senator from Nevada, who is up in a very tight election race right now.
00:06:41.000So what we could have been talking about here, you know, this giant Democratic surge, it could be that there's been a surge.
00:06:46.000It could be that the polling is moving in Democrats' favor.
00:06:48.000It could also be That there is a significant polling error that has yet to be taken account of.
00:06:53.000And there's some data to back this, especially if Republicans do what they've been doing the last couple of weeks, and they stop focusing in on, for example, Donald Trump and the FBI.
00:07:01.000I've been suggesting for a couple of weeks now, as the Democrats were drawing closer in the generic ballot, as they're drawing ahead by many polls, that the Republicans were making a large-scale mistake by focusing in on the FBI and Donald Trump.
00:07:12.000That is not a referendum on whether the FBI did the right thing in raiding Donald Trump's house.
00:07:16.000That's not a referendum on whether the DOJ is correct to be pursuing an indictment of Donald Trump.
00:07:21.000All I'm saying is that as a political matter, it is a major mistake for Republicans to focus in on an issue where Republicans are largely motivated and so are Democrats, but Democrats way more than Republicans.
00:07:32.000Like if Trump is on the ballot in 2022, that does not bode well for Republicans.
00:07:36.000There's some new polling out today, actually, from an organization called WPA Intelligence.
00:07:43.000And what this poll shows is exactly what I'm talking about.
00:07:45.000Overall, they have Democrats plus two in the generic ballot, Democrats plus three with likely voters.
00:07:51.000But what we are seeing is that on the issues Republicans win.
00:07:55.000When it comes to Trump and the FBI, Republicans get themselves in trouble.
00:07:58.000So Trump's favorables among independents, for example, he's at minus 32 among independent voters.
00:08:11.000So what that shows is, again, Biden is actually more favorable among independents than Trump is among moderates, so-called moderates in the voting base.
00:08:22.000Biden is at underwater by just five points.
00:08:24.000So if Trump is made the point of comparison in 2022 for Republicans, they're going to be in serious trouble in the Senate and it's going to hurt them pretty badly in the House.
00:08:32.000Same thing is true by the FBI, by the way.
00:08:34.000Overall, the FBI still has a plus 22 favorability rating.
00:08:37.000So making that the top of your issue pile is a big mistake.
00:08:41.000Now, on the fundamentals of the election, the Republicans are still way ahead.
00:08:45.000By a 61 and 39 margin, voters say they would rather live in Florida than California if they were given a choice, for example.
00:08:52.000Even almost 50% of pro-choice voters in this poll say that they would limit abortions to 15 weeks or earlier.
00:08:56.000So on a lot of the issues, Republicans actually have the advantage.
00:09:01.000By the way, a lot of Democrats are just misinformed.
00:09:03.000This poll shows that 52% of Democrats believe that the Supreme Court outlawed abortions, which, of course, is incredibly silly.
00:09:07.000So a majority of Democrats, according to that poll, actually believe something that is overtly false, that the Supreme Court outlawed abortions.
00:09:13.000Nearly half of Democrats, by the way, believe that Russia stole the 2016 election, which demonstrates that election denial is a bipartisan phenomenon.
00:09:22.00074% in this poll of college-educated Democratic women believe that Florida banned the word gay in all schools, which, of course, is not true.
00:09:29.000So, you know, what this polling data shows is, again, that what we could be seeing here, especially if Republicans reorient, which is something that it seems like they've been doing for the past couple of weeks, if Republicans reorient, Democrats could still have a world of hurt on their hands come the election cycle.
00:09:45.000And some of these races, I mentioned the Fetterman race because again, that one seems to me like a really low hanging fruit for Republicans.
00:09:52.000All Mehmet Oz has to do is just put the focus squarely back on John Fetterman.
00:09:55.000The simple fact that John Fetterman is an extraordinarily radical candidate who also happens to resemble Uncle Fester and happens to have had a stroke that seems to have prevented his ability to speak publicly.
00:10:10.000Plus, he's just a bad candidate overall.
00:10:12.000I mean, these are all factors militating against making a man who's been a career useless person but does wear Carhartt sweatshirts.
00:10:20.000a senator. This guy is, he's unbelievably bad at this. And the fact that he's been treated by the media as somehow good at this is astonishing to me. I mean, yesterday, for example, John Fetterman, actually it was over the weekend, on September 11th, he did an abortion rally basically on September 11th, which is what you do on September 11th, apparently, if you're a Democrat in Pennsylvania. And he was wearing his fabled Carhartt hoodie, because he's one of you.
00:10:44.000He's one of the people, a person whose parents have basically supported him through his mid-40s, and who is the mayor of a town of 1,800 people with a salary of under $2,000 per year, living in an apartment that he bought for $1 from his sister. And John Fetterman declared himself John Fetterwoman on the campaign trail over the weekend, which, ladies, you can have him.
00:13:04.000Well, it may be important in Pennsylvania to have a Senate candidate who actually is capable of being a Senate candidate, but in business, I'll tell you what's important.
00:13:11.000That is having a business capable of running efficiently.
00:13:14.000And I'll tell you what you can't afford.
00:13:15.000It's to spend a lot of time and money on going to the post office.
00:14:09.000Sign up with promo code Shapiro for a special offer that includes a four-week trial, plus free postage, plus digital scale.
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00:14:20.000Even the Washington Post is like, this guy might not be able to be a senator.
00:14:24.000The Washington Post editorial board put out a full-scale piece today talking about how John Fetterman needs to debate more than once for the Senate to demonstrate that he's actually fit for the office.
00:14:34.000Quote, The race might well determine which party controls the Senate.
00:14:37.000Voters would benefit from seeing the two candidates exchange ideas and test each other.
00:14:40.000Mr. Fetterman has seemingly been reluctant to commit to firm debate dates.
00:14:43.000That troubling stance has raised questions about whether he's still recovering from a serious stroke, is fit to serve in the Senate.
00:14:48.000After suffering a stroke in May, Fetterman was off the campaign trail for three months and has campaigned little since then.
00:15:35.000Fetterman acknowledges his difficulties with auditory processing, which make it hard for him to respond quickly to what he's hearing.
00:15:40.000He receives speech therapy, and we wish him a speedy, full recovery, but the lingering unanswered questions about his health, underscored by his hesitation to debate, are unsettling.
00:15:50.000Apparently, he had been diagnosed in 2017 with cardiomyopathy.
00:15:54.000He had a pacemaker with a defibrillator implanted after the stroke.
00:15:57.000The campaign's response to questions about Fetterman's health is to point to a doctor's note released more than 14 weeks ago which said he should be able to campaign and serve in the United States Senate without a problem if he takes his medications and exercises.
00:16:07.000But that's not good enough because, again, he is on the campaign trail and we can see that he is not functioning the way that you need a senator to function.
00:16:15.000The fact that he is avoiding a debate is pretty obvious.
00:16:18.000By the way, he's not the only one avoiding a debate.
00:16:21.000In terms of gubernatorial races, right now, Katie Hobbs, who is the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Arizona trying to replace Doug Ducey, she's running against Carrie Lake.
00:16:31.000Carrie Lake is running dead even with her.
00:16:33.000And Katie Hobbs, who has no excuse at all, is now denying debates with Carrie Lake, specifically because Carrie Lake is really good on TV.
00:16:40.000According to TheCentralSquare.com, Katie Hobbs will be the first candidate for Arizona governor in decades to refuse an invitation to debate her opponent in a state commission organized event.
00:16:49.000Hobbs, the current Democratic Secretary of State, announced on Sunday she would respectfully decline the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission invitation to reach terms on debating her Republican opponent, former Fox 10 anchor Carrie Lake.
00:16:59.000No other candidate running for office in November had declined an invitation, nor has any candidate for governor done so since the commission began holding debates in 2002.
00:17:08.000She's obviously avoiding a debate because Carrie Lake is going to clock her.
00:17:12.000Carrie Lake, again, is very good on TV and Katie Hobbs is going to get shown up.
00:17:16.000Meanwhile, in some of the races that Democrats are considering competitive, these are not competitive races.
00:17:21.000So for example, in the gubernatorial race in Florida, Ron DeSantis is running away with that race.
00:17:26.000Anybody who tells you differently is lying to you.
00:17:38.000And one of the reasons for that is because, aside from the fact that Charlie Crist has literally run on the ballot of every party in the United States, there are parties that have yet to be invented where Charlie Crist is preparing to run.
00:17:49.000But Charlie Crist is a terrible candidate.
00:17:52.000And Ron DeSantis is a very popular governor.
00:17:54.000I mean, how bad is Charlie Crist as a candidate?
00:17:57.000He's out there saying things like this on the campaign trail.
00:18:01.000We got a divider on the other side and a uniter over here.
00:18:04.000You know, some people call him DeSatan.
00:18:54.000Say, in a volatile midterm election where Democrats have unexpectedly taken the lead in crucial battleground states, Republicans have found a glimmer of hope in their quest to seize control of the Senate.
00:19:01.000Eight weeks before election day, they're within striking distance of capturing the seat long held by late Democratic titan Harry Reid before Senator Catherine Cortez Masto won it in 2016.
00:19:09.000Cortez Masto may be the most endangered Democratic incumbent in this cycle, even though her party hasn't lost a Senate race here in a decade.
00:19:15.000While Democrats are still projecting confidence, polls show a dead heat despite massive spending by Cortez Masto and an early assault of negative ads designed to tarnish rival Adam Laxalt.
00:19:24.000This is definitely our best opportunity at any point in the last 14 years, said Jeremy Hughes, Republican consultant who's worked on many Nevada races.
00:19:30.000Hughes cited GOP gains in voter registration, a trend of Hispanic voters drifting away from Democrats, rising gas prices and food as the key forces propelling Republicans.
00:19:38.000In an interview, Cortez Masto, who eked out her first Senate victory here by 2.4 points in 2016, acknowledged she had her work cut out for her if she wants to keep her seat.
00:19:46.000She said Nevada's races are always competitive.
00:19:48.000I'm not going to take anything for granted, and you can't either.
00:19:51.000Okay, well, again, she should not take that seat for granted, considering the fact that Adam Laxalt is a very good candidate.
00:19:57.000He is running a strong race against her.
00:19:59.000There are some other races, by the way, that seem a lot more competitive than people are sleeping on.
00:20:03.000I mean, the Colorado Senate race right now.
00:20:06.000That is a possible win for the Republicans, despite the fact that Colorado has turned pretty significantly blue.
00:20:13.000Republican Joe O'Day is running very competitively against Michael Bennett right now.
00:20:18.000According to the latest polls, Bennett has the lead.
00:20:22.000But again, these polls are within the margin of error.
00:20:29.000I mean, there's one poll showing Bennett at 48 and O'Day at 47 with 5% undecided, according to the Washington Examiner.
00:20:35.000There are a lot of close races out there, so this is why I'm saying.
00:20:37.000And I think that a lot of the pessimism is starting to wane as, again, the focus moves off of Trump and back onto the key issues.
00:20:45.000Which, by the way, is one of the reasons why you're seeing so many leaks from the DOJ.
00:20:49.000Anybody who believes the DOJ and the FBI are apolitical, why are all the leaks always in one direction?
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00:22:07.000Ring.com forward slash Ben to get started.
00:22:11.000Speaking of which, another leak again today.
00:22:14.000This one about the DOJ going after officials surrounding Donald Trump.
00:22:19.000According to DNYU's Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two top advisors to former President Trump and blanketed his aides with about 40 subpoenas in a substantial escalation of the investigation into his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, people familiar with the inquiry said on Monday.
00:22:34.000And how many anonymous sources can leak information about this investigation before you start to doubt the political non-partisanship of these agencies?
00:22:43.000The leaks are the story in many of these cases.
00:22:46.000The content of the leaks doesn't actually forward this.
00:23:15.000The kind of slow drip leading up to the election, I have very little doubt that's an attempt by members of the DOJ and the FBI to shift the midterm elections away from the Republicans.
00:23:24.000The seizure of the phones coupled with a widening effort to obtain information from those around Mr. Trump after the 2020 election represents some of the most aggressive steps the department has thus far taken in its criminal investigation into the actions that led to the January 6th, 2021 assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
00:23:38.000The extent of the investigation, according to DNYU's has come into focus in recent days, even though it has often been overshadowed by the government's legal clash with Trump and his lawyers over a separate inquiry into the handling of presidential records.
00:23:49.000Federal agents with court-authorized search warrants took phones last week from at least two people, Boris Epstein, an in-house counsel who helps coordinate Trump's legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020.
00:24:03.000The names of those receiving the latest rounds of subpoenas in the investigation have dribbled out gradually.
00:24:09.000I mean, almost as though it is a public relations campaign.
00:24:14.000The New York Times, by the way, first reported this.
00:24:16.000So, yeah, I mean, it seems as though pretty obviously there is an attempt being made to redirect the conversation back toward Donald Trump.
00:24:24.000There's a reason for that, and that's because if the conversation is not about Donald Trump, Democrats are in real trouble.
00:24:29.000And Joe Biden out on the campaign trail is not a boon for Democrats.
00:24:33.000Joe Biden is out there on the campaign trail, for example, talking about how inflation eased.
00:24:39.000You feel like you're spending less at the grocery store?
00:24:41.000It turns out that gas prices have eased, but food prices are still up.
00:24:45.000When gas prices go down fairly dramatically, as they have over the past couple of months, some of that is due to lack of demand.
00:24:51.000Some of that is due to the Interest rate increases that have taken money out of people's pockets.
00:24:58.000And there are a lot of reasons for the decline in gas prices.
00:25:01.000Very little of it has to do with, for example, Joe Biden releasing from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, which are now at an all-time low.
00:25:07.000When Joe Biden is out there bragging about inflation decreases, you're certainly not feeling that at the supermarket.
00:25:12.000When the gas prices go down but inflation remains high, that's because the other items in that basket of goods that define inflation have gone up in price.
00:25:18.000Here is Joe Biden trying to brag about his inflation record.
00:25:40.000That is not, that is, it is not his policies.
00:25:44.000I mean, I'm going to need to see a relationship between the stuff Joe Biden has done and the easing of gas prices, because those are not related.
00:25:50.000He did not get additional gas out of OPEC.
00:25:53.000He did not increase the amount of supply in the United States.
00:26:31.000He's been talking about this cancer moonshot thing.
00:26:33.000It's one of the great bugaboos of my political life is when politicians get up there and they say, this problem that no one is able to solve because it is one of the deepest and most difficult problems in science.
00:26:43.000We could all solve it if we only had the sufficient will and poured enough money into it.
00:26:45.000It's like, dude, that's not how science works.
00:26:48.000But again, this is the person the Democrats have chosen to make the face of their party.
00:26:53.000And they're going to have to deal with that.
00:26:55.000And then secondarily, the other face of their party is Kamala Harris, who's also terrible at this.
00:26:59.000She's been spending the last week out there talking about how people who oppose her are extremists who trumpet quote-unquote so-called freedom.
00:27:05.000When people use the phrase so-called freedom to describe actual freedom, you should start to get a little bit frightened.
00:27:17.000You know, right now, extremist so-called leaders are trumpeting the rhetoric of freedom while they restrict and systematically attempt to take away freedoms.
00:27:36.000The people who didn't want to mask up the children and wanted all the kids to go back to school, those are the people who are the true threat to your freedom.
00:27:42.000Meanwhile, again, his economic policy is going to be the one that is going to be front and center in the 2022 elections.
00:27:49.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Stocks are riding a tentative recovery with the S&P 500 up 1.1% on Monday, but whether they can keep their momentum hinges in part on how earnings season plays out next month.
00:27:58.000Analysts have now cut their estimates for third quarter earnings growth by 5.5 percentage points since June 30th.
00:28:04.000According to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet, that is more than usual.
00:28:07.000It marks the biggest cut since the second quarter of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns brought economic activity to a standstill.
00:28:14.000So they're saying that basically all of these companies are going to stop making money.
00:28:16.000Companies have also been looking increasingly pessimistic lately.
00:28:20.000A total of 240 companies in the S&P 500 mentioned recession on their post-earnings conference calls for the last quarter.
00:28:26.000In fact, that's data going all the way back to 2010.
00:28:29.000The markets have been resilient, hoping that this is going to be kind of a short and shallow recession.
00:28:35.000But the simple fact is that if the earnings go down more than people expect, that could turn really quickly.
00:28:40.000Investors say markets have been able to hold their ground lately, in part because companies are still expected to report modest earnings growth through the rest of the year.
00:28:47.000Other data points, such as employment and consumer spending, have continued to show strength in the economy.
00:28:50.000But many caution stocks' recent gains look vulnerable, should data take a turn for the worse in the coming months.
00:28:55.000David Greshak, Managing Director and Investment Strategy and Research at Aspirant.
00:28:59.000He says, you've got this really unpleasant combination of very high inflation, an economy that's already slowing down, and a central bank that's tightening policy rapidly.
00:29:06.000Stock valuations also remain elevated, said Mr. Greshak.
00:29:10.000And the simple fact is that if the stock market has already taken a pretty significant hit over the first half of the year, based on inflationary policy, based on the fact that the earnings are not high enough, as the earnings reports start to lower, the stocks are going to readjust.
00:29:27.000ratios on these stocks remain stable, but the earnings go down, right?
00:29:31.000The price earnings ratios, if the earnings go down and the price earnings ratio remains stable, the price of the stock is also going to go down.
00:29:40.000The S&P 500 trades at 17 times its next 12 months of expected earnings.
00:29:43.000According to FATSAT, that is below its five-year average, but above where it was at the end of the second quarter due to the fact that stock prices have risen while earnings estimates have fallen.
00:29:52.000Mr. Greshek said, all things considered, it doesn't really feel like a great time to be adding risk here.
00:29:55.000The S&P 500 is already down 14% for the year.
00:30:00.000Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is cutting hundreds of jobs, which is a sign, obviously, that the markets are ready to boom.
00:30:07.000Goldman Sachs is preparing to lay off hundreds of staffers as soon as next week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:30:11.000The job cuts are part of the bank's annual performance reviews that have been suspended during the pandemic, according to a person familiar with the matter.
00:30:16.000Goldman reinstated those reviews earlier this year following a slump in Wall Street dealmaking activity.
00:30:21.000Goldman had 47,000 employees on staff at the end of June, up from 41,000 a year earlier.
00:30:26.000After a record-setting 2021, the industry-wide slump in mergers and new IPOs has hit Goldman's bottom line this year.
00:30:31.000Second quarter investment banking revenue fell 41% from a year ago.
00:30:34.000Goldman's profit fell by nearly half in that same period.
00:30:37.000Well, yeah, as the inflation gets taken out of the economy, a lot of that speculation goes away as well.
00:30:53.000So the Biden administration's preferred policy of boosting unions is actually going to turn around and clock it right in the face.
00:30:59.000It turns out that when you give unions disproportionate power, they can hold up the United States economy.
00:31:03.000It's one of the least covered stories.
00:31:05.000In the media, the Washington Post has a good piece on it today for, I think, the biggest and best piece on this.
00:31:10.000President Biden apparently made calls to union leaders and rail companies on Monday, pressing for a deal to avert a national railroad strike that is days away from shutting down much of the country's transportation infrastructure.
00:31:21.000Get ready for the freight trains to stop running.
00:31:23.000Biden administration officials have also started preparing for a potential shutdown, warning a strike could seriously damage the United States economy, as well as hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, according to two people familiar with the matter.
00:31:33.000Oh, you mean that, um, the alligator that you were riding on turned around and started to eat you?
00:31:43.000Biden's calls follow unsuccessful emergency meetings at the White House last week, which have been led by the White House National Economic Council and included Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, The most indispensable person in the administration, who just went absent for several months and no one noticed, is also involved in trying to broker the impasse, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about internal deliberations.
00:32:04.000The stalemate pits two of Biden's top priorities against each other.
00:32:07.000The president has been an adamant defender of union workers, but does not want a breakdown in the nation's transportation infrastructure that would disrupt commuter and passenger services.
00:32:15.000The administration has basically no time to act.
00:32:18.000The nationwide rail shutdown is set to go into effect after midnight on Friday.
00:32:21.000Labor and management have been at an impasse over difficult issues like sick time and penalties for missing work.
00:32:25.000It would be the first such strike in about three decades.
00:32:27.000Amtrak is already warning passengers interruptions will begin Tuesday on its national network.
00:32:32.000The passenger railroad said it's pulling trains on three long-distance routes to avoid possible passenger disruptions while on the routes.
00:32:38.000The freight industry warns the strike would shut down 30% of the country's freight and halt most passenger and commuter rail services.
00:32:46.000A freight railroad shutdown could devastate Amtrak operations, according to the Association of American Railroads.
00:33:01.000By the way, biggest news of the day, biggest expectations of the news for the day, is a worse-than-expected inflation report less than two months away from the midterms.
00:33:10.000The consumer price index was expected to rise 8.1% Instead, CPI rose 8.3% year-over-year for August.
00:33:20.000So, all that talk that Joe Biden was saying about how he had stabilized inflation, what that means is that the Federal Reserve has been attempting to raise those interest rates and cut down on inflation, and they were trying to get to this sort of lukewarm state where they could gradually increase the inflation rates and prevent the economy from falling into recession.
00:33:35.000They're gonna have to slam on the brakes.
00:33:38.000Grocery prices keep going up, according to Neil Irwin.
00:33:41.000It was the chief economic correspondent at Axios.
00:33:44.000Another 0.7% rise in food at home, up 13.5% over the last year.
00:33:49.00013.5% increase in the price of food over the course of one year.
00:33:54.000These are bad, bad numbers for the Democrats.
00:33:57.000And what you're going to see right now is the stock market take a serious dive.
00:34:01.000Because the stock market basically priced in the idea that the inflation was going to be brought under control.
00:34:06.0008.3% food 11.4% 11.4% year over year inflation.
00:34:12.000Why it's almost as though when you fire hose money into the economy the way the divide administration has and you regulate and you are on the verge of a railroad strike and maybe all this bad policy has consequences.
00:35:09.000That's why everyone was awaiting the CPI coming out today.
00:35:13.000And that CPI, it ain't good for the Democrats.
00:35:16.000Democrats are going to have a lot to contend with going into the election.
00:35:19.000Well, when you look at these economic statistics from the Biden administration, you think, man, people who say they're experts aren't always experts.
00:35:26.000Every time you go to that auto parts store, you get up to the front of the line and the person at the front is like, I can tell you what you're missing.
00:35:31.000And then he looks it up online and then he orders it and then upcharges you.
00:35:34.000Or you could just skip all of that, go directly to the experts over at Rock Auto.
00:35:37.000You know, some states now have laws that say that as early as the 2030 model year, new vehicles will have to be electric in order to be registered, which means your internal combustion engine car is going to be more expensive over time because the supply is going to decrease.
00:37:24.000The border issue is so big that the Washington Post is now having to issue editorials telling Democratic mayors that if you're going to be a sanctuary city fanatic, then you got to own it.
00:37:33.000Because there is a crisis on the border, according to the Washington Post.
00:37:36.000The Washington Post says, and I quote, the White House has scarcely taken notice of the hundreds of eastbound buses that have arrived in the district since April, and twice the Pentagon brushed off the mayor of DC's request for National Guard troops to help handle logistics arising from the arrival of what is rapidly approaching 10,000 migrants. The caper by Republican governors on the border to send illegal immigrants to Washington, DC.
00:37:59.000has been politically effective to the extent that it has posed a growing dilemma for Democratic officials provoking their peak.
00:38:05.000Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., said mayors do a lot of things, but we're not responsible for a broken immigration system.
00:38:09.000Says the Washington Post, that's not really right.
00:38:11.000In fact, state and local officials nationwide must accommodate a flow of migrants in schools, shelters, streets, impelled to seek refuge in the United States by terrible conditions in their countries and the relative scarcity and availability of jobs in this one.
00:38:23.000Bowser's emergency declaration enabling her to tap $10 million in city funds will help fund an Office of Migrant Services to oversee meals, medical care and temporary housing for the new arrivals.
00:38:33.000Now she needs to formulate a long-term plan that reflects the reality of migrants' increasing numbers, whether or not the federal government reimburses the city as she hopes and as it should do.
00:38:47.000Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is just, I love this, because the people who are now paying the price for this are Democratic mayors who are receiving incoming illegal immigrants.
00:38:54.000Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, spent her Sunday explaining that the border is secure in many, many words.
00:39:03.000I will say that when it comes to lots of words spoken to provide very little of substance, Kamala Harris is just, she is the master, the mistress of it.
00:40:08.000My favorite part of this, whoever suggested that Kamala Harris is the human incarnation of a predictive text mechanism, that's exactly right.
00:40:41.000Kamala Harris, the suspense is, does she know what's going to come out of her mouth next?
00:40:46.000I really enjoy the parts of that particular statement where she says, the border is secure and that is a priority for any nation to have a secure border.
00:42:04.000Joe Biden made a religious man out of me.
00:42:07.000I'm now a religious believer that this administration is capable of screwing up literally anything.
00:42:12.000And what that means for the election is that as much faith as I have in Republicans sucking at their jobs, I have even more faith that Democrats are going to suck at their jobs.
00:42:20.000So the continuing bleep show will, I think, spiral into Democratic defeat in 2022 in the election cycle.
00:42:27.000I think Democrats know this, by the way.
00:42:29.000I think panic is going to break out any second here.
00:42:32.000I keep coming back to the CPI report today.
00:42:57.000We're going to be getting into the New York Times, pretty obviously targeting anybody who sends their kids to a school that doesn't promote left-wing values.