The Washington Post accuses Elon Musk of targeting Twitter employees just days after one of their reporters doxed Libs of TikTok. Meanwhile, Russia cuts the gas on Europe, and the U.S. GDP goes negative under Joe Biden. This is The Ben Shapiro Show, and it's sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben Shapiro. Head on over to PureTalk and get the same 5G coverage as one of the big guys, but they will save the average family over $800 a year. I made the switch already, so what are you waiting for? You can keep your number, keep your phone, or get huge discounts on the latest iPhones and Androids. Instead of spending it on the big phone companies that hate your guts, go to Puretalk.com and enter promo code SHAPIRO to save 50% off your very first month of coverage at PureTalk.com. That s Puretalk! You will save $30 a month and get unlimited data and still save a fortune! Go to Pure Talk.com/SHAPIRO and enter Promo Code SHAPIOIR to get 50% OFF your First Month of Coverage. That's Pure Talk! You'll get $30 off your FIRST MONTH of Coverage, and you'll get FREE 7GB of 4GB of 3GB of data! That's $50 off your first month, plus an additional $5,000 when you upgrade your plan gets upgraded to 7GB gets you an ad-free version of the Provenible Provenance Provedero Provenero Provedoro Provedora Provedoria Provenoria Probedo Provedorio Provedoral Procedoria Procedorio, and they'll get you an entire $150,000 of Provedored Procible Probieo Proday Proday, and a FREE 5GB of Vouchor Proday and a $50,000 Testo Probieorior Proday. They'll also get $50 of VOCABULARY PRODOCORIAL PROMOODE, AND A FREE PROGONE PRODONE PROFERION AND A MONTH OF PRIVODY AND A VOTING PRODEGE AND A PATREON AND A FABULORY PRODE AND A CHECK AND A THIRD DAY OF FREE PRONEY AND A MAKING AN AMOUNT OF VOTED AND A VIOTOR AND A RETRIO?
00:00:00.000The Washington Post accuses Elon Musk of targeting Twitter employees just days after one of their reporters doxed libs of TikTok, Russia cuts the gas on Europe, and U.S.
00:00:09.000GDP growth goes negative under Joe Biden.
00:00:36.000This is why you need to take a look at why you are paying Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile so they can spend a bunch of money on their marketing.
00:01:14.000Why not save hundreds of dollars per year instead of spending it on the big phone companies that kind of hate your guts?
00:01:19.000Instead, head on over to puretalk.com, get the same exact coverage as one of the big guys, and enter promo code SHAPIRO to save 50% off your very first month of coverage at puretalk.com, promo code SHAPIRO.
00:01:30.000The prospect again of Elon Musk taking over Twitter is freaking out the blue check marks.
00:02:17.000You are not allowed to criticize people at the company you're about to take over.
00:02:21.000Even though you're about to take the company over because you have critiques of the company, apparently, according to the Washington Post.
00:02:27.000So the Washington Post has an entire piece today about how Elon Musk is a big, bad, evil, bad, mean man who's bad.
00:02:34.000It's called Elon Musk's Boost Criticism of Twitter Executives Prompting Online Attacks.
00:02:38.000This is the way that the left likes to work this thing.
00:02:40.000If you criticize somebody on the left, even if that person is a public figure, and then that person receives blowback, it is your fault.
00:02:48.000So if you're just not criticized, then they wouldn't receive the blowback.
00:02:50.000Now, if you are Taylor Lorenz, a reporter for the Washington Post, and you try to uncover the identity of an anonymous Twitter account called Libs of TikTok, and all that account does is just finds dumb left-wingers on TikTok who post crazy stuff and then post that stuff on Twitter.
00:03:07.000You unleash Taylor Lorenz on that person, you have Taylor Lorenz knock on the doors of the person's relatives, you have Taylor Lorenz link to the person's real estate profile so that the personal information is available, and then later you delete the link and you pretend that this is excellent and necessary journalism.
00:03:21.000That's what the Washington Post does about libs of TikTok, because it's really important to know who stands behind an account that's entire job is to just retweet things that leftists have put out there publicly.
00:03:31.000But if Elon Musk criticizes Twitter employees without naming them, then this is an act of harassment.
00:03:40.000This ties into the broader narrative that the left is trying to tell about Elon Musk, which is that what he really wants is to open up the floodgates on Twitter to abuse and cruelty and malice.
00:03:52.000Because remember, according to the left, free speech is really not a thing.
00:03:56.000Free speech is just a guise for power.
00:03:58.000This is all part of the deconstructionist woke attack on rights.
00:04:02.000The basic idea here is that any principle you hold is really a reflection of power structure.
00:04:06.000So if you're in favor of free speech, it's not because you believe that everybody should be able to speak freely.
00:04:10.000The reason you're in favor of free speech is because you are one of the powerful, and the system of free speech helps you.
00:04:16.000If you really wanted equity, if you wanted justice, if you wanted speech justice, what the left does is they take any modifier, put it in front of the word justice, and then pretend that this is now principle.
00:04:25.000If you wanted equity and speech justice, what you would do is quash the speech of the more powerful, and you would shut up and listen to the less powerful.
00:04:33.000And Elon Musk instead is saying that everybody should be able to speak freely, and this is because he's attempting to re-enshrine his own power.
00:04:39.000And we know that he's attempting to do this because he's being so mean to people like Twitter employees, like the Twitter top lawyer, Nishaya Gaddy, who earned, get ready for this, $17 million last year.
00:04:53.000She is a victim of Elon Musk's evil brutality, making $17 million a year to shut down content to Twitter.
00:05:01.000So according to the Washington Post, two days after striking a deal to purchase Twitter, Elon Musk used his powerful Twitter account to elevate conservative criticism of two executives at the social media company, roiling a workforce already uneasy about how he will balance his abrasive social media style and abrasive free speech with the stewardship of the company.
00:05:20.000Well, I mean, if the workforce doesn't like it, well, I mean, that's a real problem, isn't it?
00:05:24.000Now, again, as a person who's the co-founder of a major media company, let me just say, if the workforce doesn't like how this company is run, the door is located over there.
00:05:36.000If you don't wish to receive a paycheck from this company, there are plenty of other places you can receive a paycheck.
00:05:41.000But according to the Washington Post, Elon Musk, the richest person on planet Earth, needs to take advice from a bunch of barely college-educated left-wing 26-year-olds who spend their days with their button on the bandfinger.
00:05:55.000According to the Washington Post, on Wednesday, Elon Musk tweeted a meme to his more than 86 million followers with the face of Twitter's top lawyer, Vijaya Gaddy, that appeared to suggest the company's decisions are affected by left-wing bias.
00:06:15.000The tweet came hours after he criticized a 2020 policy decision Gaddy made and was in response to an earlier tweet from a political podcast host calling her the company's top censorship advocate.
00:07:06.000If I say that I think Joy Reid is a terrible MSNBC host, and then somebody immediately throws a racial taunt at her, Is that my fault?
00:07:14.000Because I feel like if that's the case, then Bernie Sanders is responsible for the congressional baseball shooting.
00:07:18.000Barack Obama is responsible for the murder of six police officers in Dallas, Texas circa 2015.
00:07:22.000Like if that's the way this is going to work, then the consequences for speech are rather dire.
00:07:28.000Which by the way, this only applies, the left does think this, they just think it applies only to one side.
00:07:33.000So if Elon Musk says a thing and then someone else does a bad thing because they were ticked off by something Elon Musk said, It's Elon Musk's fault.
00:07:40.000If, however, Bernie Sanders says that Republicans are killing millions of people with their health care plans, and then somebody goes and shoots a bunch of Republican congresspeople, then obviously that was just a crazy person.
00:07:49.000It has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders.
00:07:51.000Gowdy was born in India and immigrated to the United States as a child.
00:07:59.000A user, an anonymous user, one user on Twitter, which has hundreds of millions of users, said a mean thing about this lawyer who earns $17 million a year.
00:08:18.000According to the Washington Post, Musk's tweets have singular power to unleash mobs against people with much lower profiles and 280 characters or less.
00:08:26.000As Musk stakes his $44 billion takeover of one of the world's most influential social media platforms on the promise of restoring free speech there, his rhetoric is at odds with the way his supporters have weaponized Twitter.
00:08:36.000Prompting people to lock down their personal profiles and public information.
00:08:39.000Well, I mean, you wouldn't want to have supporters weaponizing Twitter.
00:08:43.000Like, you wouldn't want to have a reporter from the Washington Post doxing libs of TikTok and then revealing personal information about that person.
00:08:49.000Or, if you're the Washington Post, you would want that.
00:08:51.000You would link directly to the person's real estate profile, and then you would actually sponsor the story with advertising on Twitter.
00:08:56.000That's what you would do if you're the Washington Post.
00:08:58.000I mean, the hypocrisy of these people is insane.
00:09:03.000Elon Musk mentions he doesn't like the policy that is purveyed by Twitter's big $17 million-a-year lawyer, and this means that he's a harasser, and therefore somebody has to step in and stop the brutality.
00:09:15.000April Glazer, senior research fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, said, quote, Musk has actually used Twitter as his slingshot when going after critics.
00:09:25.000It's not surprising he would then want to have greater control of that slingshot.
00:09:29.000Well, well, I mean, as opposed to the Washington Post, which has never wanted to have power over social media, which is why half of their staff has been delegated to try and stop the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk.
00:09:41.000And the New York Times in Washington, they have no dog in this fight.
00:09:43.000They are perfectly objective journalismers getting their hot, sticky journalism just everywhere.
00:09:48.000Musk's power to unleash his followers in this way has alarmed some Twitter workers who expressed concern at a company town hall meeting on Monday and in interviews about the possibility of being mentioned in tweets by their future boss.
00:09:59.000It is unusual for an incoming owner to make any public comment about future employees, much less publicly criticize their performance or past decisions.
00:10:09.000The terms of his deal to acquire Twitter allow the SpaceX and Tesla CEO to tweet about his acquisition so long as the tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives.
00:10:19.000A person familiar with the deal-making process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a confidential matter said the so-called disparagement clause is only applicable when Musk is tweeting or commenting about the deal itself.
00:10:29.000So negative comments about Twitter outside of that don't violate his terms.
00:10:32.000Well, I mean, again, if you're trying to moot a $44 billion sale because Elon Musk tweeted something vaguely critical of the company's top lawyer, which is what happened here, good luck with that.
00:10:43.000Musk views Twitter as the de facto town square, a place where rules should be kept to a minimum.
00:10:47.000Twitter employees, however, have spent years developing sophisticated protocols to police its platform for hate speech and other rule-breaking content, including recently investing in tools to limit online harassment.
00:10:59.000Now the company is being acquired by the world's richest person, whose views are fundamentally at odds with those of much of the workforce.
00:11:05.000Well, I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's devastating stuff.
00:11:08.000So you can see the media attempting to step in and stop big, bad, mean, terrible, bad Elon Musk from abusing poor little Jaya Gadi, the $17 million a year Twitter lawyer whose main job consists of censoring people she doesn't like.
00:11:23.000By the way, buried down in this story, the Washington Post acknowledges Musk did not specifically name or tag Gatti.
00:11:29.000But he did respond to a tweet by political podcast host Sagar Anjeti, in which she was named, drawing more than 400,000 likes, retweets, and replies on Musk's post.
00:11:38.000Wow, I mean, so just to get this straight, Musk did not name the person, but he replied to a tweet that did name the person.
00:11:46.000So he's responsible for all of this stuff.
00:12:17.000And the Washington Post, which spends its days doing the dirty scut work of the Democratic Party in uncovering meme accounts that it doesn't like for destruction.
00:13:30.000So in a second, we will get to the fact that Twitter employees are now openly weeping, the entire left weeping, gnashing of teeth, wailing, sackcloth in ashes, full biblical mourning happening over Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
00:13:42.000We'll get into why people on the left think that their tears actually matter in this particular debate.
00:13:47.000But if you are weeping because your biology isn't working the way that it's supposed to, well, why don't you just go get that problem solved?
00:13:53.000You're far from ordinary, but the truth is that ED is actually really common.
00:13:56.000In fact, 52% of dudes age 40 to 70 experience some form of erectile dysfunction.
00:14:00.000Go to GetRoman.com slash Ben right now.
00:14:59.000In terms of people I care about crying, just generally speaking, I mean, there's an entire article yesterday about Vijayagadi crying on a Twitter internal phone call to all the employees who are so deeply upset, weeping, tears of salty rage at Elon Musk taking over.
00:15:13.000Here is a complete list of the people whose tears I care about.
00:15:16.000My wife, my kids, my siblings, my parents.
00:15:39.000And if they cannot control their emotions, that is their problem.
00:15:42.000But, again, the entire... It is amazing.
00:15:46.000And by the way, the reason that the left is doing this, the reason that the left is responding with the tears, is because they know they've lost the argument.
00:16:43.000This is why you have pieces like Elizabeth Spires today in the New York Times.
00:16:46.000Quote, let's be clear about what it's like to be harassed on Twitter.
00:16:49.000Tell me, Elizabeth, what it's like to be harassed on Twitter.
00:16:52.000Tell me, I who trend every three weeks for some random stupid reason.
00:16:57.000I was the number one target of all anti-Semitic Twitter hate on planet Earth in 2015 and 2016.
00:17:02.000Please tell me what it's like to be harassed on Twitter, please.
00:17:06.000And tell me why you now get to control the rules.
00:17:09.000Now some of us are mature enough to say that when people harass us on Twitter, you have a mute button.
00:17:14.000And then there are those of us who suggest that we ought to control the levers of informational dissemination because our feel-feels got hurt.
00:17:21.000So Elizabeth Spires tweets, quote, and she writes in the New York Times.
00:17:34.000And we can tell mean things are bad because my feelings are hurt.
00:17:36.000So the more my feelings are hurt, the more bad they are.
00:17:39.000So Elizabeth Spires writes, quote, The Tesla co-founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, is set to shortly become the new owner of a slightly used social media platform with more than 217 million daily users.
00:17:49.000He has said very little about how he plans to make the business work, but one thing is clear.
00:17:52.000He is really, really preoccupied with how we talk on the platform and appears intent on rolling back some of its moderation policies in order to allow all legal speech on Twitter.
00:18:03.000The statements of free speech absolutists like Mr. Musk conflate harassment with criticism.
00:18:08.000I've been on the receiving end of both.
00:18:10.000In my two decades of writing columns about media, finance, culture, and politics, there's a material difference between the two.
00:18:15.000To wit, a couple of years ago, a couple of weeks ago, a former colleague of Mr. Musk's at PayPal, Keith Rabloy, called me dumb on Twitter after I suggested that eliminating moderation policies would be bad for Twitter's business.
00:18:26.000This is not particularly sophisticated criticism, but neither is it harassment.
00:18:29.000However, I've also received rape threats, anonymous letters to my home address, threatening comments about my family, all manner of misogynistic pejoratives that are not principal in this newspaper, from my stated positions on everything from abortion to hiring practices and startups to who the next James Bond should be.
00:18:43.000Okay, so I'm unaware that Musk is saying that rape threats are now legal on Twitter.
00:18:54.000If I threaten you with rape, that is a crime and I will go to jail.
00:18:58.000So I'm unaware how Musk is changing the policy that rape threats are now okay on the platform.
00:19:03.000But, says Elizabeth Spires, getting rid of policies that restrict hate speech will most likely affect women and minorities much more than it does white men.
00:19:23.000And unlike him, most people on the receiving end of threats and harassment can't afford personal security.
00:19:28.000Twitter's rules already allow for a broad range of abuse, much of which falls into a kind of gray area between personal insult and harassment.
00:19:36.000What exactly does he believe can't be said on the platform right now?
00:19:38.000It certainly doesn't take long to find discredited race science, arguments that women are intellectually inferior, anti-Semitism, defenses of white supremacism, and transphobic comments that remain on the platform even under current policies.
00:20:15.000Also, the Washington Post is noting now, I love this.
00:20:17.000So the Washington Post, Which is itself a corporate takeover with social activism in its center, is now noticing, only now do they notice, quote, Elon Musk's free speech takeover, part of new corporate activism wave.
00:20:33.000So for literally several decades, we have now had left-wing activists taking over major American corporations from the inside.
00:20:41.000Not just shareholders like BlackRock, but the whole stakeholder economy, in which you have CEOs basically Dancing to the tune of the far left.
00:20:51.000But only when Elon Musk takes over Twitter do we now notice in the business section of the Washington Post that there is a corporate activism wave.
00:20:58.000Well, Elon Musk is a response to the corporate activism wave.
00:21:00.000I mean, that's precisely what is happening right now, and they cannot deal with it.
00:21:07.000The fact that they can't deal with it is the reason why what Musk is doing is so all-fired important.
00:21:11.000Now, it's not just important with regard to private companies, because if the left had its way, this would be regulated by the government.
00:21:18.000This sort of stuff would be regulated by the government.
00:21:20.000I make this point because yesterday, The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was time to set up a disinformation governance board to fight misinformation.
00:21:32.000The First Amendment to the Constitution explicitly bars the federal government from inflicting restrictions on freedom of speech.
00:21:38.000Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.
00:21:41.000Yet Alejandro Mayorkas, our feckless Homeland Security Secretary, he spoke about the just-established governance board during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, according to Breitbart, arguing it would help reduce domestic threats to the United States.
00:21:53.000Now, no one is against the idea of preventing Russia from from disseminating actual disinformation within American borders.
00:22:02.000I will just point out that for a solid year, the media's perspective on Hunter Biden's laptop is that it was Russian disinformation.
00:22:09.000So I have no trust in the federal government run by the Democratic media complex to determine what is disinformation.
00:22:15.000And when they conflate disinformation with misinformation, what they are actually saying is we wish to shut down streams of information we don't like.
00:22:21.000Disinformation is an actual diplomatic term of art, meaning that foreign governments are actively spreading lies inside your body politic in order to achieve a particular purpose.
00:22:32.000Misinformation is just anything you don't like.
00:22:34.000Misinformation is when I say a true thing and then PolitiFact says it lacks context.
00:22:39.000To have Alejandro Mayorkas in front of Congress Stating that we are now going to have a board that is dedicated inside the Department of Homeland Security, which by the way should be disbanded immediately and it should be revised inside the Department of Defense in part and inside the Border Patrol in other parts.
00:22:56.000Department of Homeland Security is an evolutionary hangover from the 9-11 era.
00:23:18.000I engage with secretaries of state from all over the country to focus our efforts on election security.
00:23:25.000We have just established a misinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat, not only to election security, but to our homeland security.
00:23:39.000Okay, so again, if they were actually trying to crack down on disinformation, then I might be a little more sanguine about this.
00:23:47.000One of my questions is, who's heading this thing up?
00:23:48.000So the person heading this thing up is a human named Nina Jankiewicz.
00:23:52.000Nina Jenkiewicz tweeted repeatedly in 2020 that Hunter Biden's laptop was in fact Russian disinformation.
00:23:58.000Quote, back on the laptop from hell, apparently, Biden notes 50 former NatSec officials, national security officials, and five former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op.
00:24:11.000Also, Nina Jankiewicz says, by all means, let's regulate social media.
00:24:15.000Let's do it with proper thought and consultation with the nation's best interests at heart, not with the sweep of a sharpie in response to a specter of political censorship that does not exist.
00:24:23.000She said in testimony to the House Elect Committee on Intelligence, quote, disinformation is a threat to democracy.
00:24:30.000She criticized government and social media platforms who have, quote, all but abdicated their responsibility to address, quote, domestic disinformation.
00:24:37.000She recently did an interview with NPR, the new head of this regulatory board for the federal government on disinformation and misinformation, in which she talked about the amount of sexualized abuse online.
00:24:52.000Also, I was not aware that the federal government was generally in the business of policing abusive jokes.
00:25:02.000What are the distinctions that she's making right here?
00:25:05.000Over a period of two months on six social media platforms, we found over 336,000 pieces of gendered or sexualized abuse and disinformation directed at just 10 U.S.
00:25:19.000And when you compare what women receive, as some of my colleagues have done in other organizations, with what their male counterparts receive, it's just far and away much, much worse, especially if you're a woman of color or a woman of an intersectional identity.
00:25:32.000Ah, women of an intersectional identity.
00:25:35.000Here's the equity language about how free speech basically needs to be curbed on behalf of intersectionality.
00:25:39.000She continues along these lines saying that the big problem with free speech is marginalized people might feel insulted.
00:25:44.000And those marginalized people aren't empowered.
00:25:46.000And that means they might be silenced.
00:25:47.000So the best thing we can do is look for speech equity, not free speech.
00:25:52.000In my own life, it is a form of censorship, right?
00:25:54.000Every time I am online thinking about, okay, am I going to tweet?
00:25:57.000Am I going to pitch this article today?
00:25:59.000I think about, you know, do I have the emotional capacity right now to deal with what might come if that's going to be out there in the real world?
00:26:07.000I now carry a personal safety alarm around with me because I am worried about if one of these people who has threatened me online shows up in real life.
00:26:17.000Particularly women of color have had offline threats that originated from online threats.
00:26:23.000You see, it's a form of censorship if people are mean to her.
00:26:26.000Again, this is all part and parcel of the same sort of anti-Elon Musk argument.
00:26:29.000If people are mean or people are abusive, that is a form of censorship.
00:26:47.000But Nina Jankowicz is about to head up a department in the Department of Homeland Security that looks at misinformation and disinformation.
00:26:54.000And this person has openly explained that she is worried about free speech absolutism.
00:27:00.000I don't know how you can have a government agency dedicated to cracking down on disinformation and misinformation when the person in charge of that is a person who actively conflates information she doesn't like with misinformation and disinformation.
00:27:12.000Because after all, that information might make marginalized people feel bad or something.
00:27:18.000The onus always falls on the target of the abuse.
00:27:22.000The platforms aren't doing very much right now.
00:27:24.000And I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities all around the world, which are already shouldering so much of this abuse, disproportionate amounts of this abuse.
00:27:41.000So when we say that the Democrat media complex, they're all in line, they're all in line.
00:27:45.000It's not a coincidence that the same week that the media are going after Elon Musk, the Biden administration is now talking about putting together a board to look at disinformation and misinformation.
00:27:54.000And no, I don't trust them with that sort of authority.
00:27:56.000Neither does the Constitution of the United States, depending on the breadth of that authority.
00:28:01.000And this person certainly should not be confirmed for any sort of position in this administration if she is to undergo some sort of Senate confirmation process.
00:28:08.000Okay, meanwhile, brand new GDP report.
00:28:10.000It turns out that Joe Biden is not just a bad president.
00:28:12.000He has brought about actual stagflation.
00:28:15.000It turns out that the GDP in the first quarter in the United States was negative 1.4%.
00:28:35.000When you blow out the spending, when you regulate the economy, when you freak everybody out about COVID for no apparent reason, when you do all of these things in the middle of global supply chain crises, when you actively prevent oil companies from new oil exploration, When you talk about penalizing companies that you don't like.
00:28:57.000I gotta tell you, none of this is good economic policy and Joe Biden is about to, I mean, the Democrats deserve to be shellacked.
00:29:03.000If people thought the days of stagflation had ended circa basically 1982.
00:29:06.000Fast forward 40 years and we are right back there.
00:29:10.000According to the New York Times, by the way, the New York Times is spinning like a top here.
00:29:13.000This is why I always say a democratic media complex, a term coined by one of my mentors, Andrew Breitbart.
00:29:19.000What he meant by that is that basically they are one in the same, that they are just an echo chamber for one another.
00:29:23.000The New York Times is just the PR wing for the White House.
00:29:27.000Now imagine that the economy had actually contracted, not because of COVID, but the economy had contracted under President Trump during not COVID by 1.4% in a quarter.
00:29:38.000Do you think that the New York Times would run with this headline?
00:29:40.000Quote, the economy contracted in the first quarter, but underlying measures were solid.
00:29:45.000I mean, that's a hell of a spin there by the New York Times.
00:29:49.000The economy contracted, but I mean, sure, you made less money this month, but your underlying economic metrics, pretty good.
00:29:56.000Sure, you have cancer, but underlying that you have been working out and eating healthy lately.
00:30:03.000economy contracted in the first three months of the year, but strong consumer spending and continued business investment suggested the recovery remained resilient.
00:30:39.000Now, it's warning of a deeper downturn caused by the Fed's quest to knock down stubbornly high inflation.
00:30:44.000We will get a major recession, Deutsche Bank economists wrote in a report to clients on Tuesday.
00:30:48.000The problem, according to the bank, is while inflation may be peaking, it will take a long time before it gets back down to 2%, which means the central bank is going to have to raise interest rates so aggressively it hurts the economy.
00:30:57.000Meanwhile, I got the New York Times happy talking this thing.
00:31:00.000Gross domestic product, according to the New York Times, adjusted for inflation, declined at 0.4% in the first quarter, or 1.4% on an annualized basis, according to the Commerce Department.
00:31:09.000That was down sharply from the 1.7% growth, 6.9% to annualized, in the final three months of 2021.
00:31:14.000It was the weakest quarter since the early days of the pandemic.
00:31:18.000Decline was mostly a result of two most volatile components of quarterly reports, inventories and international trade.
00:31:23.000Lower government spending was also a drag on growth.
00:31:26.000This is one of the games, by the way, that we are constantly playing when it comes to GDP growth.
00:31:30.000GDP is a very flawed statistic because GDP basically just means the amount of money flowing around in an economy.
00:31:35.000And so if the government injects trillions of dollars into the economy, this is now considered growth.
00:31:41.000That's not really how economic growth should be measured.
00:31:44.000There are other measures that I think are superior to GDP.
00:31:46.000It's just the kind of all-purpose one.
00:31:48.000The problem is government spending taken as part of GDP means that any government, including the government of China, can simply fudge its stats by injecting crap loads of debt.
00:31:57.000It's like saying that your personal finances are going well because you spent a lot of money using your credit card.
00:32:02.000That's not a particularly great measure.
00:32:05.000Most important, consumer spending, the engine of the U.S.
00:32:07.000economy, grew 0.7% in the first quarter.
00:32:11.000Jay Bryson, chief economist for Wells Fargo, said consumer spending is the aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean.
00:32:21.000The first quarter data mostly predates the spike in gas prices that accompanied Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the lockdowns in China that have threatened to further disrupt global supply chains.
00:32:29.000In other words, all of the bad stuff we saw in March was not really even taken into account in those first quarter GDP stats.
00:32:34.000So get ready for a rough second quarter.
00:32:55.000The good news is that Joe Biden's solution to this is to relieve college debt.
00:33:00.000So he's going to just apparently get rid of college debt, because nothing says quash inflation quite like raising taxes, as Chuck Schumer suggested, while simultaneously relieving college debt, which essentially is just a giant injection of money into the economy.
00:33:14.000Stagflation is now a purposeful policy of this administration.
00:33:18.000They haven't thought this stuff through at all, by the way.
00:33:20.000So with Joe Biden's economy on the rocks, I think everybody is sort of expecting that real estate is going to start leveling out.
00:33:25.000When that happens, there might be some really good buying opportunities available to you.
00:33:29.000And this is why you should be looking at American financing.
00:33:32.000If a new home has been on your mind lately, it is a smart idea to take action right now.
00:33:35.000You can review your budget, start that pre-approval process, get ahead of rising rates.
00:33:39.000Better yet, lock into a competitive rate.
00:33:41.000Like right now, before you start shopping, get the best of both worlds.
00:33:44.000Lock into that competitive rate and maybe you take advantage of the fact that the real estate prices are starting to stagnate just a little bit.
00:33:50.000Real estate is going to always be a healthy investment because again, they ain't making any more of it.
00:33:54.000And here's the thing, American financing knows this.
00:33:57.000Hey, they realize no two journeys home are alike, so they're going to get to know you and then create a custom loan that achieves your goals.
00:34:02.000From flexible terms to fast closings, plus access to every loan in the industry, this is a company that's got you covered.
00:34:08.000And they never charge upfront or hidden fees.
00:34:10.000So whether you're upgrading, downgrading, or investing, they're always the lender I trust and recommend.
00:35:36.000I mean, honestly, it's one of my favorite things that we do here at the company.
00:35:38.000We get to broaden our minds and have great discussions.
00:35:41.000I get to have direct contact with you.
00:35:42.000You send me video questions and we interact during the show.
00:35:45.000After the stream, make sure you pick up your copy of Moby Dick by Herman Melville for next month's book club.
00:35:50.000To join me tonight, you have to be an all access daily wire member.
00:35:53.000So join right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:35:56.000New members can use code Shapiro to get 20% off your membership.
00:35:59.000Seriously, this isn't like any book club you've ever been a part of.
00:36:01.000So, become an All Access member right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:36:06.000Use code Shapiro for 20% off your new membership.
00:36:09.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:36:12.000So again, the Biden administration's plan here is what if we then relieve student debt?
00:36:23.000And the reason they're doing this is because the only people in America who don't hate Joe Biden's administration and like hate it are college-educated white liberal women.
00:36:30.000And so why not just give them some money?
00:36:31.000I mean, that'd be definitely the way out of this.
00:36:34.000So Jen Psaki was asked a question yesterday, a pretty easy question.
00:37:32.000I would point you to the Department of Education to talk about their efforts on that front.
00:37:35.000She has nothing. I mean, weird, weird, weird. She has nothing. By the way, you want to know why colleges cost so much? One of the reasons the colleges cost so much, and this was tweeted out by a person named Theo Jordan. He tweeted out the staffing at some of the diversity, equity, and inclusion positions at one major university.
00:39:05.000Fringe benefits, $3.2 million per year.
00:39:08.000Total compensation for your diversity, equity, and inclusion staff, $13.4 million every single year for a bunch of career useless people.
00:39:19.000By the way, this is why Democrats want to sponsor people to go to college.
00:39:21.000It's not because you need to go to college in order to be a plumber.
00:39:26.000It's because degree inflation is a way for Democrats to spend government money on things they can pretend work and also hire a bunch of their friends in diversity, equity and inclusion and indoctrinate people into the process.
00:39:38.000This is a large-scale, it's also a large-scale make-work program.
00:39:41.000It's sort of the opposite of the Tennessee Valley Authority circa 1935.
00:39:44.000Instead of getting people to go and work in a valley building a dam or something, instead you send them to a garbage college.
00:39:50.000Not OSU, but you send them to some random community college run by Joe Biden, where they learn about diversity, equity, and inclusion for three years and don't enter the unemployment rolls.
00:39:58.000And then they get out and they are good little liberals.
00:40:00.000Who proceed to vote for policies that create work for diversity, equity and inclusion officers.
00:40:06.000So really brilliant economic policy all the way around by the Biden administration as always and forever.
00:40:26.000According to the Associated Press, Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday and threatened to do the same to other countries using its most essential export in what was seen as a bid to punish and divide the West over its support for Ukraine.
00:40:38.000The move was immediately condemned by European leaders as blackmail and marked a dramatic escalation in the economic war of sanctions and counter sanctions that has unfolded in parallel to the fighting on the battlefield.
00:40:49.000and other Western allies vowed to rush more and heavier weapons to Ukraine.
00:40:52.000It could eventually force targeted nations to ration gas.
00:40:56.000And deal another blow to economies suffering from rising prices.
00:40:59.000At the same time, it could deprive Russia of badly needed income to fund its war effort.
00:41:02.000Well, yeah, but Russia's the one cutting off the gas, so my guess is that they probably already have a backdoor deal with China to buy all their gas, or India to buy all of their gas.
00:41:10.000Poland has been a major gateway for delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
00:41:13.000Just hours before Russia's state energy giant Gazprom acted, Poland announced a new set of sanctions against the company and other Russian businesses.
00:41:51.000Maybe it would be coming to an end more easily if the United States were filling the gap, considering the United States was, until very recently, a net exporter of natural gas and oil.
00:42:02.000Unfortunately, this administration is so ensconced in its own wild progressivism that it can't even face up to the realities of world politics.
00:42:11.000So you had a State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, literally yesterday talking about how we have to transition away from fossil fuels, and that's the solution.
00:42:18.000By the way, simultaneously, they're attacking the leading electric vehicle manufacturer on planet Earth in Tesla.
00:42:27.000Also, we need to get away from fossil fuels.
00:42:29.000Also, we need everybody in Europe to be independent of Russian natural gas and oil.
00:42:34.000If you can square that circle, you're the geniuses who created stagflation in the United States.
00:42:37.000Here's Ned Price at the State Department.
00:42:40.000We are working with our European allies and partners, as well as others, to transition away from Russian sources of energy, and ultimately to transition away from fossil fuels entirely, and to continue this transition to renewable, to sources of energy that will see to it that neither the United States nor any country around the world is held hostage to a country like Russia, who can close the spigot whenever they so choose.
00:43:36.000Just slow clap for John Kerry, who's been wrong on every major issue in American life his entire career, including slandering American soldiers in Vietnam as war criminals.
00:43:44.000Here he was, literally yesterday, talking about, We can't have U.S.
00:44:25.000So people are going to have to get a lot more serious than they have been about accelerating this transition.
00:44:33.000This administration, pursuing foolishness every single day of the week, and the policies... Probably should put them in charge of free speech, right?