A new Quinnipiac poll puts Joe Biden s approval ratings below those of Paul Blart Malloch. Inflation numbers continue to shock Americans, and Team Biden is beginning to acknowledge, oh, Macron isn t that dangerous, but they still want to control you. This is the Ben Shapiro Show, and it's sponsored by ExpressVPN. Don t like big tech and the government spying on you? Visit ExpressVpn.com/BenShapiro and use coupon "ELISSA" for 20% off your first month with discount code "SHOP" at checkout. That's discount code: ELISSA at checkout, and you get 20% OFF your entire purchase when you sign up! You can also get a 20% discount when you run your first $50 or $100 credit card, and the discount is good for up to 3 months. You won't have to wait another month to get that discount! If you like the show, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about Ben Shapiro's podcast! The opinions expressed in this podcast are our own, not those of our corporate clients. We do not, in any way affiliated with any of our parent companies, the media, social media or any other third-party entity. We are not responsible for the opinions expressed by our employees, except that which is shared on the show. We are merely expressing our own views and expression is not represented by any other source of income or source of profit or profit from this other source other than that other source is not being compensated for that other person s work, except through a third party source). Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast, Ben Shapiro is a friend of Ben Shapiro, not Ben Shapiro s work is not required to pay for this work, other than Mr. Shapiro s credit card service, or else he is not compensated by that is not that is that is a credit card offer or said so by a friend is that he is being compensated or that is said or said that he has been compensated for this is that said so, he has said so in this message or else is a good thing, right he has it said it's a friend said it is not going to be considered a review or else that is being it is that would be that is it said that it is a girl said it, that's a girl saying it, he said it so it's not that right, he's not getting it, right?
00:00:27.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
00:00:29.000First, you probably racked up some credit card charges over the holidays because most people do.
00:00:33.000If you are thinking about the interest rates that apply to those credit cards if you don't pay them off, you might be getting a little bit queasy right now.
00:00:40.000Well, this is why you should go check out A credit card consolidation loan from our friends over at Lightstream.
00:00:45.000Lightstream believes that people with good credit deserve a better loan experience.
00:03:51.000Right now, according to that Quinnipiac poll, whites Approve of Joe Biden, 32%.
00:03:58.000Only 32% of white people approve of Joe Biden, 57% disapprove.
00:04:02.000Among black Americans, 57% approve of Joe Biden, 27% disapprove, which is also a terrible number for black Americans, for a Democratic president.
00:04:10.000Typically, that number's up in the 80s.
00:04:12.000For Hispanics, according to this Pew poll, Hispanics only approve of Joe Biden 28%.
00:06:01.000It also means that Joe Biden now has the necessity To try and pretend that it's all because Republicans are evil and terrible and no good and very bad.
00:06:11.000We'll get to that in just one moment because that is the new program.
00:06:31.000We'll get to that in just one moment first.
00:06:33.000If you've been thinking about refinancing your mortgage, now would be an excellent time to do so.
00:06:36.000Because at some point in the near future, the Federal Reserve is going to increase interest rates.
00:06:39.000This is going to have an impact on mortgage rates as well.
00:06:42.000Timing the market, it can be a dangerous game.
00:06:44.000So if you're holding off on a mortgage refi in the hopes that the rates are going to drop, You might want to rethink that position, like, right now.
00:06:50.000I mean, the latest forecast projects a few interest rate hikes this year alone.
00:06:53.000The first increase could come in the next month, making now a great time to call my friends over at American Financing.
00:06:58.000Take advantage of a free, no-obligation mortgage review.
00:07:01.000You will learn about custom loan options that can save you up to $1,000 a month.
00:07:30.000Go check them out right now at AmericanFinancing.net.
00:07:34.000With Joe Biden flailing around like this, and with his electoral prospects looking ever dimmer, this means that he has to activate the break glass argument.
00:07:43.000The break glass argument for Democrats, always and forever, is that Republicans are terrible and racist.
00:07:47.000This is always the break glass argument.
00:07:49.000So Joe Biden, Yesterday, he went down to Georgia looking for a poll to steal.
00:07:54.000He was in a bind because he was way behind.
00:07:58.000So Joe Biden goes down to Georgia and he then proceeds to explain that anyone who disagrees with him on his garbage voting, quote unquote, voting rights bill, it's not a voting rights bill.
00:08:09.000If anybody opposes this, it's because they're on the side of George Wallace and Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis, which is a weird thing to say if you are Joe Biden who actually served in the Senate.
00:08:18.000With George Wallace, and had some praise for him at the time.
00:09:18.000One of the things that people are neglecting about some of these polling data with regard to Biden is that Hispanics represent about 19% of the American population.
00:09:26.000Black Americans represent about 13% of the American population.
00:09:29.000And yet Democrats made the calculation over the past couple of years that the only voter metric that matters is black turnout and how the black vote goes.
00:09:36.000Hispanic votes are changing and they are changing very, very quickly.
00:09:39.000To the point that Roy Teixeira, who used to write for New American Century and wrote an entire book at the beginning of the 2000s talking about how the new demographic minority majority would end Republican dominance of politics.
00:09:51.000He's now suggested that that is completely wrong.
00:09:56.000He said just a few weeks ago that if Hispanics start to vote in even somewhat decent numbers for Republicans, Democrats have a world of hurt on their hands.
00:10:04.000And yet Democrats have not focused one iota on Hispanic voters.
00:10:09.000Their only pitch to Hispanic voters seems to be illegal immigration, but it turns out a huge number of Hispanic voters are not all that interested in illegal immigration.
00:10:15.000And no matter how many times you say, Latinx, it's not going to be a thing.
00:10:20.000Joe Biden has nothing to offer Hispanic voters, and so they are turning wildly against him.
00:10:23.000And so he keeps doubling down on this idea that if you oppose him, it must be because you hate Black people.
00:10:27.000That's not going to win over Hispanic voters, or White voters, or Asian voters, or by the way, even a lot of Black voters, who are not falling for this trick again.
00:10:34.000But they just have to keep pushing this.
00:10:37.000It's a much more dangerous argument, by the way, than even the argument that Trump was making in 2020.
00:10:41.000An argument I opposed, which was that the 2020 election was decided by electoral fraud.
00:10:45.000I don't think the 2020 election was decided by electoral fraud.
00:10:48.000As I've said many, many times, The 2020 election was rigged only from the perspective that the media intervened in the election in corrupt, terrible ways.
00:10:57.000That the media suppressed information in the last month of the election cycle.
00:10:59.000That they reported lies over and over about Trump and Russia for four long years.
00:11:05.000That they refused to focus in on anything remotely resembling Joe Biden's policy.
00:11:09.000They refused to ask him difficult questions.
00:11:11.000Social media cut you down at the knees.
00:11:13.000If you asked any questions about Chinese lab leaks in the middle of the election, or if you had questions about Hunter Biden's laptop, like all of this stuff was suppressed.
00:11:20.000So in that sense, there was a rigging that went on.
00:11:22.000And in the sense that there were certain voter procedures that were put in place that loosened voting to an extraordinary extent and made early voting a thing.
00:11:31.000So early voting is corrupt just by its nature because the fact of the matter is you shouldn't be voting two months in advance of an election.
00:12:18.000So Nancy Pelosi is probably on her way out.
00:12:20.000She's going to lose the House speakership in November by all available polls.
00:12:25.000And then she's probably going to retire because she doesn't want to be minority leader.
00:12:27.000Hakeem Jeffries is one of the possible replacements for her.
00:12:31.000He is a radical congressperson from New York's 8th district.
00:12:34.000And here he was yesterday suggesting that we have to kill the filibuster and change all voting law in the United States because of voter suppression.
00:12:42.000This theory that there is widespread voter suppression in the United States is conspiratorial nonsense.
00:12:46.000It is no less conspiratorial than the argument that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes were cast in 2020.
00:12:50.000The theory of voter suppression is a lie.
00:12:55.000I challenge Democrats to show me one person who is prevented from voting who should have been able to vote in the last election cycle.
00:13:06.000But here's Hakeem Jeffries pushing this nonsense.
00:13:08.000The voter suppression epidemic that has been unleashed by the radical right is unacceptable, unreasonable, unfathomable, unconscionable, and un-American.
00:13:26.000That is why it's essential, it's important, it's necessary, with the fierce urgency of now, to pass the Joe Manchin Freedom to Vote Act and the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
00:14:15.000Also, I'm just, I will never, I will never understand why people feel the necessity to go to the thesaurus in order to, in order to drive home their point.
00:14:41.000So the Senate Majority Leader, very temporary Senate Majority Leader, who, by the way, cannot run the Senate.
00:14:46.000Right now, he's running one campaign and one campaign only, and that is to prevent Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez from primarying him in the New York Senate race.
00:14:56.000If she wants to primary him, she'll primary him.
00:14:58.000And nothing he does is going to stop her.
00:14:59.000Here is Chuck Schumer blasting Georgia's voting law as voter suppression.
00:15:03.000Even though, by the way, Georgia's voting law provides for more early voting than New York's does.
00:15:08.000What motivated the insurrectionists is now motivating the state legislature to do dastardly things.
00:15:14.000This idea that there is no change or that this isn't voter suppression.
00:15:18.000They tried to have one voting place in the whole county of Milwaukee, a million people.
00:15:22.000They're telling people that in Georgia, where there are much longer lines in African American precincts than in white precincts, that it's a crime to serve water or a sandwich.
00:15:35.000Greatly restricting or eliminating early voting, saying only one early voting place in our entire county where you have to travel 23 miles.
00:16:09.000One of the things that's amazing here about Barack Obama, as we'll get to in a second, is that Barack Obama is truly a person who believes that his influence is fungible.
00:17:18.000Again, it's available at the App Store or Google Play right this very moment.
00:17:22.000And use promo code SHAPIRO to get $0.25 per gallon on your first fill up, plus another $0.25 per gallon on that first fill up.
00:17:29.000So, former President Barack Obama, of course, he is attempting to I would say inject some life into Joe Biden's White House and it's not going to work.
00:17:54.000And so when he starts writing op-eds, this is his first op-ed apparently since leaving the White House.
00:17:59.000When Barack Obama starts writing op-eds about issues like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or whatever it is, that's going to mean absolutely nothing.
00:18:08.000And of course, he's telling the same lies.
00:18:10.000He says, while the American people turned out to vote at the highest rate in a century in the last presidential election, members of one of our two political parties, spurred on by the then sitting president, denied the results of that election and spun conspiracy theories that drove a violent mob to attack our Capitol.
00:18:23.000Although initially rejected by many Republicans, those claims continued to be amplified by conservative media outlets, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:19:00.000Are none of them capable of getting ID?
00:19:01.000seen before. Legislation that would discourage voters, including racial minorities, low-income voters, young people, from casting a ballot. Weird, why are all those people incapable of casting a ballot? Why, really? I have a question. Are none of them capable of getting ID? Because every single one of them has ID. You need ID to vote.
00:19:19.000in order to, like, show your face in Washington, D.C.
00:19:22.000I mean, Muriel Bowser put out a notice yesterday that before you go out, you need to bring your VAX card as well as your I.D.
00:19:29.000So to go into a restaurant, you need to show your I.D.
00:19:31.000in Washington, D.C., but not to vote if Democrats had their way.
00:19:35.000Now, Barack Obama says others aim to treat certain polling locations different, like creating one set of rules for voters living in cities and another set for people living in more conservative rural areas.
00:19:45.000We're also seeing more aggressive attempts to gerrymander congressional districts.
00:19:48.000Weird, because Cook Politicals suggests that the gerrymandering has been going so poorly for Republicans that actually Democrats have added more seats to Congress for themselves than Republicans have in this election cycle.
00:20:00.000But, says Barack Obama, Finally, and perhaps most perniciously, we've seen state legislatures try to assert power over core election processes, including the ability to certify election results.
00:20:11.000These partisan attempts at voter nullification are unlike anything we've ever seen in modern times.
00:20:18.000Republicans have offered in the Senate to vote along with Democrats to adjust the Electoral Counts Act.
00:20:24.000This would prevent failures of certification in states.
00:20:27.000It would prevent alternative slates of electors from being put forward by states without proper evidence.
00:20:32.000Democrats have rejected this bipartisan compromise because they just want to campaign on the idea that Republicans are in widespread fashion suppressing the vote.
00:20:42.000So Barack Obama tries to pretend that we have to get rid of the filibuster in order to do this.
00:20:46.000He says, The filibuster has no basis in the Constitution.
00:20:49.000Historically, the parliamentary tactic was used sparingly, most notably by Southern senators, to block civil rights legislation and prop up Jim Crow.
00:20:56.000In recent years, the filibuster became a routine way for the Senate minority to block important progress on issues supported by the majority of voters.
00:21:05.000But we cannot allow it to be used to block efforts to protect our democracy.
00:21:09.000So he's saying, let's protect our democratic institutions by passing a federalization of all voting procedure and also by getting rid of the filibuster.
00:21:19.000Let us destroy the institutions of the Republic in order to save democracy, is the pitch that Joe Biden is making.
00:21:24.000See, when you're unpopular, there are a couple of ways to fight this.
00:21:27.000One is to become more popular by pursuing popular policies.
00:21:32.000So, Republicans are responding to Joe Biden's desperate attempt to swivel away from his failing presidency by calling everybody a racist.
00:21:39.000Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, soon to be Majority Leader, again, he blasted Joe Biden in fiery language from the floor of the Senate.
00:21:47.000Here was the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
00:21:50.000He compared, listen to this, a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors.
00:22:08.000Look, I've known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years.
00:22:17.000I did not recognize The man at the podium yesterday.
00:22:23.000Okay, so first of all, Mitch McConnell should recognize the man at the podium yesterday because that guy's been in the Senate saying the same sort of stupid crap for 30 years.
00:22:30.000I mean, this is a guy who said in 2012, while he was vice president, that Mitt Romney, the unsweetened oatmeal of politics, Mitt Romney was a man so racist that he would put black people back into chains if he was elected president of the United States.
00:22:50.000And the sort of old boys club that is the Senate, where everybody is best friends, is really, really silly when it comes to people like Joe Biden.
00:22:55.000Okay, Mitt Romney, for his part, he makes the point that Joe Biden is going down the same road that Trump did, right?
00:23:00.000If you don't like Trump declaring that elections are questionable, then you shouldn't be in favor of Joe Biden saying that all elections are questionable unless he gets his way.
00:23:10.000He said that the goal of some Republicans is to, quote, turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion.
00:23:19.000And so President Biden goes down the same tragic road taken by President Trump, casting doubt on the reliability of American elections.
00:24:05.000This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.
00:24:12.000It is a fundamental power grab by the majority party.
00:24:17.000Ending the filibuster is a very dangerous thing to do because it's been used by progressives our whole time to make sure that we did not get rolled over.
00:24:28.000Okay, and it's not just Joe Biden who's been saying this.
00:24:30.000Chuck Schumer, who's now all in favor of killing the filibuster for this voting rights nonsense, he opposed changing the filibuster like five minutes ago.
00:24:37.000This is Chuck Schumer when he had a little bit more hair in 2005.
00:24:42.000We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis.
00:24:47.000The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option.
00:24:58.000The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time.
00:25:47.000I will do everything I can to prevent the nuclear option from being invoked.
00:25:53.000Not for the sake of myself or my party, but for the sake of this great republic and its traditions.
00:26:01.000Those are powerful words, but they're not mine.
00:26:07.000Every word of my speech today was originally spoken by our esteemed colleague, the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer.
00:26:20.000Yeah, yeah, but consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
00:26:24.000Meanwhile, by the way, Dick Durbin, I mean, how bad is this?
00:26:26.000Dick Durbin is the senator from Illinois.
00:26:28.000Dick Durbin is a man so radical that he suggested in the middle of the Iraq war that holding terrorists at Gitmo was equivalent to Nazi concentration camps, Pol Pot's mistreatment of dissenters, and the Soviet gulag.
00:27:11.000Senator Romney today basically said, I'll use the exact quote, that the speech yesterday that the President gave was, quote, going down the same tragic road taken by President Trump and casting the doubt on the reliability of American elections.
00:27:24.000Does the White House have a response to that?
00:27:27.000With all due respect to Senator Romney, I think anyone would note there's a night and day difference between fomenting an insurrection based on lies totally debunked by 80 judges The hell is she talking about?
00:27:40.000You're right, it's just like Jefferson Davis.
00:27:42.000objective true statements, which is what the president made yesterday about the effects of a coordinated nationwide effort to undermine the constitutional right to vote.
00:27:51.000The hell is she talking about? Objective true statements?
00:27:53.000You're right, it's just like Jefferson Davis. It's just like Bull Connor. These people are, they're insane.
00:27:59.000Now, the reason they have to be insane is because if they re-enter the realm of sanity, they might be held to account for the fact that Joe Biden is a terrible, terrible president.
00:28:19.000He's just garbage all the way around, and everyone now knows it.
00:28:21.000We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
00:28:23.000First, it's a brand new year, and that means you should be pledging to yourself not to waste your time waiting in lines when you don't have to.
00:28:29.000This especially applies over at the auto parts store.
00:28:32.000With the number of car makes and models there are out there, the chances that your local auto parts store is going to have exactly what you need really, really low.
00:28:39.000They're going to just say, we can order this online, it'll take two weeks, and then we're going to upcharge you.
00:28:43.000Or, you have a computer, and you can go to rockauto.com at home and in your pocket.
00:28:47.000Why would you choose to spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same auto parts at a chain store or new car dealership?
00:28:54.000For example, a Delphi FG1456 fuel pump assembly for a 2005 to 2010 Honda Odyssey?
00:29:13.000It's remarkably easy to navigate and you can quickly see all the parts available for your car and choose the brand's specifications and prices you prefer.
00:30:28.000Government can control every aspect of your life and save you all.
00:30:31.000Well, the answer, of course, is that that's not true.
00:30:34.000It turns out that Florida, which took directly opposite policies of California, for example, Florida shielded the elderly, and tranched out the vaccines to the elderly first, and made sure everybody had the opportunity to get a vaccine, and then let everybody go about their business.
00:30:49.000Florida's death per millions ratio, their death per 100,000 ratio, when adjusted for age, because Florida is a much older state than California, Florida's death per 100,000 ratio, as of January 6th, 2022, is 228.7.
00:30:59.000ratio as of January 6, 2022 is 228.7. Californians is 219.8.
00:31:06.000Okay, so they're very, very close in terms of their actual death per 100,000 ratio.
00:31:12.000And California has been locked down since March of 2020.
00:31:30.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the Omicron variant accounted for 98% of COVID-19 cases in the United States last week, based on estimates released by the U.S.
00:31:39.000The variant has fueled a rapid rise in infections since reaching the U.S.
00:31:42.000late last year, surpassing surges associated with earlier versions of the virus and almost eliminating Delta.
00:31:48.000So far, the rate of hospitalization associated with Omicrons has not appeared to be as high as with the prior variants.
00:31:55.000The sheer number of Omicron cases has led to the seven-day average of new hospital patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases running above last January's record highs.
00:32:03.000However, the period of time that people are actually in the hospital is much, much lower.
00:32:08.000ICU stays remain significantly below the level of Delta.
00:32:14.000ICU patients are way below the level of Delta, even though cases are now like triple, quadruple, quintuple the Delta cases that we had last year.
00:32:24.000And yet we're supposed to freak, we're supposed to freak out.
00:33:09.00091% reduction in risk of mortality from Delta.
00:33:13.000Well, Delta post-vaccination had already an infection fatality rate on the level of the flu.
00:33:20.000If you have a 91% reduction in the risk of mortality from Delta, if I could give you a vaccine that gave you a 90% reduction in the risk of mortality from Delta, you would consider this a miracle.
00:33:48.000Instead, Rochelle Walensky also tweets, While less severe, Omicron is much more transmissible.
00:33:52.000We are seeing the unprecedented impact.
00:33:54.000Over 1 million cases in a day, 99% of counties with high transmission and strained healthcare systems protect against COVID-19, get vaccinated and boosted, wear a mask, and stay home if sick.
00:34:23.000Let's say you mask up and you prevent yourself from getting Omicron and thereby you avoid the natural immunity associated with getting COVID in the first place.
00:34:36.000The only question is, do you get this form of COVID, which is super not deadly, according to Rochelle Walensky and Kaiser Permanente, or do you get a future form of COVID, which could be significantly more deadly?
00:35:18.000What matters is how many people are getting super sick and dying.
00:35:20.000Which is why I never cared if a bunch of 20-year-olds got the original variant.
00:35:24.000Because 20-year-olds were not dying of this in large numbers.
00:35:28.000It's just a data disaster, said Catherine Wu, staff writer who covers COVID-19 for The Atlantic.
00:35:33.000The number of case counts soared over the holidays and expected development given the emergence of a variant more transmissible than its predecessors.
00:35:39.000Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities.
00:35:42.000They do not include most people who test themselves at home or are infected without even knowing about it.
00:35:46.000Holidays and weekends also lead to lags in reported cases.
00:35:49.000By the way, there's a huge number of Americans who have Omicron who aren't testing for Omicron.
00:35:53.000Because they're going to get over it and be done.
00:35:55.000If you could add all of those numbers up, case counts would likely be substantially higher.
00:35:59.000For that reason, AP has now told its editors and reporters to avoid emphasizing case counts in stories about the disease.
00:36:16.000While Trump was president, now Biden's president, and got really bad case counts, you gotta stop reporting the case counts.
00:36:21.000Listen, I'm glad they stopped reporting the case counts because the case count is a stupid metric.
00:36:25.000I'm just pointing out it was always a stupid metric.
00:36:28.000According to the Associated Press, no more stories focused solely on a particular country or state setting a one-day record for number of cases because that claim has become unreliable.
00:36:38.000Throughout the media, there has now been more caution in the use of official case counts.
00:36:41.000An NBC News story on Monday about the skyrocketing number of COVID cases relied on a one-week average of case counts.
00:36:47.000A Tuesday story simply referred to a tidal wave of cases.
00:36:51.000The Washington Post used a seven-day average of cases compared that number to last Tuesday's showing a 56% increase.
00:36:58.000However, a huge number of these stories are now pointing out that you don't actually use case rates anymore.
00:37:05.000Even the usefulness of hospitalization and death rates has been called into question in recent days, according to the AP.
00:37:10.000In many cases, hospitalizations are incidental.
00:37:13.000People are being admitted for other reasons and are surprised to find they test positive for COVID, said Tanya Lewis, Senior Editor for Health and Medicine at Scientific American.
00:37:22.000So just when it becomes inconvenient to count cases and hospitalizations and deaths, That's precisely when the media changes its reporting.
00:37:31.000Meanwhile, by the way, Anthony Fauci is now admitting, we're all going to get Omicron, so the next sentence out of his mouth should be, get over it, move on with your life.
00:37:36.000But he will never say that, because then he would be irrelevant again and no one would care about him.
00:37:41.000Sooner or later, as we begin to live with it, what she was referring to is that virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected.
00:37:50.000But if you're vaccinated and if you're boosted, the chances of you getting sick are very, very low.
00:37:59.000If you're vaccinated, you will not die from COVID-19.
00:38:03.000This is just true basically from the advent of the vaccines.
00:38:06.000And if you're not unvaccinated, that's your choice and we can all move on with our lives because we're all passing this to one another, vaccinated or unvaccinated, but they just, they can't let go because Joe Biden's a bad president.
00:38:25.000Well, it matters to me because my kids wake me up at all hours of the night, which means that when I get back on the mattress, I need to go to sleep right away.
00:38:31.000And the best way to make that happen is to have a mattress that was made just for me.
00:38:36.000Why would you buy a mattress made for somebody else in the first place?
00:38:38.000With Helix, you're getting a mattress you know will be perfect for the way you sleep.
00:40:01.000Not only will the book club hold you accountable for each new read, they'll also Get exclusive access to my personal notes and analysis.
00:40:06.000And then on the third Thursday of every month, I will be joining Daily Wire members online for an in-depth lecture and discussion of each book.
00:41:09.000According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
00:41:11.000inflation at its fastest pace in nearly four decades last year, as pandemic-related supply and demand imbalances, along with stimulus intended to shore up the economy, pushed prices up at a 7% annualized rate.
00:41:21.000The Labor Department said Wednesday the Consumer Price Index rose 7% in December from the same month a year earlier, up from 6.8% in November.
00:41:30.000The so-called Core Price Index, which excludes food and energy, climbed 5.5% in December from a year earlier, which was a bigger increase than November's 4.9% rise, the highest rate since 1991.
00:41:42.000This is because we blew an enormous amount of money into the system in 2020, and then Joe Biden decided we need more of that.
00:42:02.000in 2021. So you got a pay cut in 2021.
00:42:05.000According to the Wall Street Journal, it's important to understand what a policy and intellectual failure this inflation represents for Keynesians who are in charge of current economic policy.
00:42:16.000The Biden administration and Federal Reserve flooded the economy with money in 2021, even as the recovery from the COVID recession was over.
00:42:23.000Fed Chairman Jerome Powell became a cheerleader for the $1.9 trillion March spending spree, on top of about $4 trillion in COVID relief Congress spent in 2020.
00:42:31.000The central bank also declined to withdraw its extraordinary monetary support, despite clear signs of incipient inflation.
00:42:37.000When critics began to warn of excess monetary growth and price increases, the sages at the Fed and White House dismissed it as transitory.
00:42:44.000That failure is reminiscent of the 70s, when Keynesians also ran the economy, but had no explanation for the inflation that took off, or for the stagflation that later set in as that awful decade rolled on.
00:42:54.000They blamed corporations, they rolled out Whip Inflation Now buttons, and imposed price controls.
00:42:59.000Only at the end of the decade, after inflation became a political liability for Democrats, did Jimmy Carter appoint Paul Volcker to the Fed.
00:43:07.000He said today's report, which shows a meaningful reduction in headline inflation over last month, with gas prices and food prices falling, demonstrates we are making progress in slowing the rate of price increases.
00:43:17.000But actually, core prices without food and energy increased from the pace of the previous month.
00:43:23.000And this entire price is being paid by people who are in the middle class.
00:43:33.000And by the way, the supply chain crisis continues to marinate and percolate.
00:43:36.000Pete Buttigieg, a potential presidential candidate thanks to the fact that he's gay, the secretary of transportation who's presided over the largest supply chain crisis of my lifetime and went missing for two months to be on paternity leave when no one had suffered any sort of physical trauma at all, Because of course, he and his husband adopted a child.
00:44:00.000Pete Buttigieg, he says that the supply chain problems are going to continue.
00:44:08.000What we know is as long as there is a pandemic, it will be creating disruptions.
00:44:12.000Now the good news is we found a lot of steps that we can take, including in the short term, that have made a huge difference.
00:44:18.000But if we have to bring in so many goods from overseas that a shipping issue or a factory closure thousands of miles away stops us from getting what we need, that's a problem.
00:44:29.000Oh, well, yes, it's all about what's happening overseas.
00:44:32.000By the way, producer prices skyrocketed 10% in December.
00:44:35.000That's the biggest gain ever recorded, according to Fox Business.
00:44:38.000The producer price index surged 9.7% in December from the year-ago period.
00:44:45.000All of this contributes to the fact that the Democrats are in serious, serious trouble.
00:44:50.000According to the Center for Politics, Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia, he is no Republican.
00:44:54.000Larry Sabato points out that this is going to be a massive year for Republicans.
00:45:00.000He says that the Republicans could be picking up tons and tons of seats.
00:45:06.000He says in 2020, the Republicans won 213 seats, just five seats shy of a majority.
00:45:10.000Republicans are starting this cycle with roughly 35 more seats than they held in advance of 1994 and 2010.
00:45:16.000And Democrats are not very overextended, at least based on the 2020 presidential results.
00:45:20.000They only won seven seats Trump carried for president.
00:45:23.000However, the potential exists for Democrats to have, for Republicans to have a blockbuster 2022 election, according to Sabato.
00:45:30.000When assessing the GOP potential in 2022, they think the number they have in mind is 35.
00:45:35.000That would give Republicans a 248 House seat majority, eclipsing their 247 seat victory in 2014 as the largest Republican House majority since the Great Depression.
00:45:47.000They think that this is quite plausible.
00:45:51.000Democrats are in serious trouble and they can whistle past the graveyard by suggesting their opponents are racist.
00:46:45.000Wake up every morning with our show, Morning Wire.
00:46:48.000On today's episode, Biden's election bill push comes under scrutiny, a new analysis finds the administration's economic policies added no jobs, while inflation surpasses COVID among Americans' priorities.