Joe Biden tries to distract from economic failure with gun control pandering, and now he s heading to Saudi Arabia after spending two years trying to ostracize its leaders. We ll get to all the news in just one moment, including the President of the United States delivering a really obnoxious, pandering speech about gun control. First, let us talk about the simple fact that you are spending way too much for your cell phone coverage. Here is the thing: Pure Talk can save you tons of money, even more money than you previously thought. If you re still with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, your family could be saving over $900 a year. With PureTalk, you don t have to compromise on price. You can choose the plan and price that's right for you and you ll be supporting a company whose customer service is right here in the U.S., and whose CEO proudly served our country. I made the switch. I think you should too. Go to Puretalk.com, select the plan you want, enter the promo code SHAPIRO, save 50% off your very first month of coverage, and you can literally be switched over to Pure Talk service in less than 10 minutes. Head on over to puretalk.co/SHAPIRO and you will still save a fortune. Ben Shapiro: This show is sponsored by Expressive VPN. It s time to stand up against big tech. -Ben Shapiro: Protect Your Data at ExpressVPN? Subscribe to the Ben Shapiro Show on The Ben Shapiro Podcast on The FiveThirtyEight Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s FiveThirty Eight Podcasts on Podchaser on YouTube - Subscribe on iTunes and Shout Out to Your Local Podcasts On Your Local Radio On The PODCAST On Itunes And Other Podcasts Outtro Music on This Is Itunes On This Is That And This And That And That On This And Other Things - And This Is A Podcast On This & That And A Podcast Out? - The Peezy Peece & This And A Ride On A Podcast And A Friend On That And His Story On This Out And A BUNCH ON That And And A FOG AND A THOTTER AND A FOTOTION AND A BUFFY THO AND A PLOT ON A BODY AND A CHEEOT AND A SINGLE BAND AND A GOT A BODY BAND ON THE PEEOT ON THOT AND THOT ON THE OTHER THONE
00:00:00.000Joe Biden tries to distract from economic failure with gun control pandering, and now he's heading to Saudi Arabia after spending two years trying to ostracize its leaders.
00:00:10.000This show is sponsored by Expressive VPN.
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00:00:21.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment, including the President of the United States delivering a really obnoxious, pandering, insincere speech about gun control.
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00:01:31.000Well, Joe Biden's presidency is flailing.
00:01:33.000We have yet another article from CNN today talking about how Joe Biden is in over his head and doesn't really understand what it means to be president of the United States.
00:01:41.000His approval ratings are at all-time lows.
00:01:43.000He is just falling apart as a president.
00:01:46.000And this means it's time to redirect to some hot-button social issue he hopes will get people out to vote in favor of Democrats.
00:02:03.000The problem for Joe Biden is that there is not wide consensus in the United States on precisely the kinds of action that need to be taken with regard to gun control.
00:02:24.000Now Joe Biden does not have the power of Barack Obama to command a room.
00:02:28.000He doesn't have the ability to speak well into camera.
00:02:30.000He doesn't have the ability to speak at all at this point.
00:02:32.000So the notion that he is going to mobilize the entire American population on behalf of a wildly controversial Slate of measures that has failed every time it's been brought up for a vote, including when Democrats controlled Congress under Barack Obama.
00:03:02.000And so the idea that he's going to suddenly flip the switch and suddenly Americans are going to side with him, side with his ideas, it's just wrong.
00:03:23.000He walks out in the middle of these lit candles.
00:03:26.000There's 56 lit candles, not to represent victims of gun violence per se, but to represent the 50 states and six territories that America covers.
00:03:35.000It's Weird imagistically, in the sense that it makes it seem as though he's in a church or something.
00:03:42.000It tries to treat him as almost a holy leader.
00:03:45.000That is what the imagistics suggest here.
00:04:33.000I mean, Democrats and their gun control proposals, we all know are proxies for their real idea, which is what if we just removed all guns from American life?
00:05:26.000Old man jabbering at you is going to tell you exactly how he's going to fix the problem.
00:05:30.000Whenever Democrats say, by the way, that they are not interested in taking the guns of law-abiding people, the question is, then why are your laws targeting law-abiding people in the main?
00:05:39.000Why aren't your laws actually specifically targeted at the people who are potentially going to commit acts of heinous violence?
00:05:45.000Instead, the idea is that we're going to ban vast swaths of people from owning specific types of weaponry or magazines, or we're going to ban specific types of weapons for hundreds of millions of Americans.
00:05:56.000All these laws are aimed at law-abiding people, which is why they are controversial.
00:05:59.000If they were only aimed at the non-law-abiding, there are very few Americans who are in favor of non-law-abiding people getting their hands on weapons.
00:06:09.000But Joe Biden, again, he has to fib because if he actually admits that what he wants to do is remove guns from the hands of an enormous number of Americans who are law-abiding, then that is going to play very badly for him in Peoria.
00:06:21.000Well, Joe Biden says it's not about taking all of your guns away.
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00:08:22.000Enact safe storage law and red flag laws.
00:08:25.000Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability.
00:08:30.000Address the mental health crisis, deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence.
00:08:40.000These are rational, common sense measures.
00:08:43.000Okay, no one knows. He's not even speaking English in part of that clip. So that makes it kind of difficult to mobilize the American people on their own. Many of the things that he's suggesting don't make a lot of sense. So he talks about banning assault weapons.
00:08:56.000There was an assault weapons ban in place in the United States before Columbine.
00:09:00.000There is no measurable data suggesting the mass shootings or shootings in general dropped because of the so-called assault weapons ban.
00:09:07.000Democrats keep going back to the drawing board on this one because it's the only thing that they've passed that's a major gun measure in the last 25 years.
00:09:13.000So they just keep going back on this one over and over and over, but it's not going anywhere.
00:09:17.000Again, Barack Obama tried this and Barack Obama was a much more sterling order than this guy.
00:09:22.000Then he proposes strengthening red flag laws.
00:09:25.000I'm all in favor of a workable version of a red flag law in which somebody actually gets their day in court to prove that they are not in fact crazy or violent and they have their guns removed from them if they are.
00:09:36.000But that has to be connected to a system of involuntary commitment whereby if somebody is a danger to themselves or others, they don't end up out on the street.
00:09:45.000One of the big problems with red flag laws is that nobody ever calls the cops, and when they do call the cops, the cops don't actually do anything.
00:09:49.000I mean, the red flag laws were well in place in Buffalo, New York.
00:09:52.000That did not stop a white supremacist from shooting up a black supermarket.
00:09:56.000So, those laws, unfortunately, they sound much better in theory than they actually end up being in practice.
00:10:04.000And you have them talking about strengthening background checks.
00:10:07.000The shooters in these cases, who legally purchased their weapons in the first place, did so by passing a background check, including the shooter in Uvalde, Texas.
00:10:15.000So I'm not sure what he means by strengthening background checks.
00:10:20.000When he says lower the age to purchase a rifle from 21 to 18, I'm perfectly fine with that so long as you're willing to raise the age of voting from 18 to 21.
00:10:29.000In other words, adulthood is adulthood.
00:10:31.000If the idea is that you should be able, at 18 years old, to vote and you can be drafted into the army, but you don't have the ability to defend yourself with a rifle, for example, I don't see the interior logic of that one.
00:10:42.000If you're going to make a push that your brain is not sufficiently developed to be able to own a rifle until you're 21 years old, well then, I'm wondering why you're able to vote and why we're able to draft you and put you on the front lines of a war somewhere.
00:10:53.000That doesn't make a lot of sense either.
00:10:54.000And, again, very little of this would prevent any of what we have seen.
00:10:59.000Because when it turns out bad people want to do bad things with guns in the United States, they seem to be able to do so.
00:11:05.000Whether they get the guns legally, whether they get the guns illegally, whether they alter legal weapons into illegal weapons, whether they obtain the guns by going to somebody else's house and stealing the guns.
00:11:15.000The actual stuff that there is widespread agreement on in the United States, things like, for example, hardening schools, making sure there are armed guards, making sure that the doors of the exterior to buildings are locked, making sure that the police respond with alacrity and actually do what they are supposed to do when they are called, like that there is broad-spectrum involuntary commitment being strengthened.
00:11:32.000All these things there actually is broad-spectrum agreement on.
00:11:36.000But Joe Biden hasn't proposed any of that legislation.
00:11:39.000Instead, he's out there trying to pander.
00:11:40.000And the reason that he is trying to pander is because, again, this is electoral for him.
00:11:44.000This is why, in the end, what it comes down to for Joe Biden is the idea that we have to just do something.
00:11:52.000Joe Biden has become the cheerleader president.
00:11:56.000Just all the people on Twitter who spend their days after school shootings saying, do something!
00:12:07.000Joe Biden is the President of the United States.
00:12:09.000It is his job to propose to Congress legislation that he believes will actually be effective in stopping school shootings.
00:12:15.000And yet, here he is, just shouting at the sky, do something, repeatedly.
00:12:19.000Here he is invoking God, which, again, it's always interesting when Joe Biden invokes God, like on guns, and when he doesn't invoke God, like on abortion.
00:12:38.000For 19 third and fourth graders and two teachers.
00:12:43.000Standing there in that small town, like so many other communities across America, I couldn't help but think there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields.
00:12:58.000Here in America, we spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken, whose lives will never be the same.
00:13:40.000Here he is railing at Congress to do something.
00:13:43.000This time, we have to take the time to do something.
00:13:48.000And this time, it's time for the Senate to do something.
00:13:53.000But, as we know, in order to get anything done in the Senate, we need a minimum of 10 Republican Senators.
00:14:01.000I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican Senators trying to find a way.
00:14:08.000But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans Don't want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable.
00:14:25.000And then he just spills it right out, right?
00:14:27.000Then he just says, if Congress doesn't do what I want them to do, people will go to vote, which is really what this is about.
00:14:32.000I'm going to propose stuff that does not have bipartisan support.
00:14:34.000I'm going to do so specifically in order so that the American people rebuke the Republicans on the other side of the aisle.
00:14:39.000Now listen, All is fair when it comes to politics and pandering, but can we stop pretending for a second that the proposals that Joe Biden is making here actually have anything to do with preventing school shootings?
00:14:48.000Because none of the proposals that he is suggesting would actually prevent school shootings.
00:14:54.000There is no actual logical connection between the things that he is proposing and things that would actually make our students safer.
00:15:01.000I've been in this fight for a long time.
00:15:04.000saying the quiet part out loud, which is if I don't get my way, you should vote the guys I don't like out of office because obviously they're evil and bad and are standing in favor of school shootings. I've been in this fight for a long time. I know how hard it is, but I'll never give up. And if Congress fails, I believe this time a majority of the American people won't give up either.
00:15:26.000I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote.
00:15:44.000Well, the Biden administration is quite insincere when it comes to these sorts of topics because, of course, what they really want more than anything is to just win elections.
00:15:59.000You're going to want to check out his show.
00:16:01.000The Jordan Harbinger Show features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, ranging from people like Kobe Bryant or Dan Carlin to Yomi Park or Colonel Oliver North.
00:16:12.000It's clear that Jordan goes in the weeds preparing for these.
00:16:14.000The questions that he asks are really interesting and he really gets important and good answers.
00:16:18.000Every Friday, Jordan also releases a Feedback Friday episode to respond to listener questions covering everything from the conventional problems like leaving a dream job to heavy subjects like helping somebody escape an abusive relationship.
00:16:28.000Plus, listening to Jordan goes great with listening to this show because you're always learning.
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00:17:01.000Vice President Harris, for her part, did some more of the same stuff yesterday.
00:17:03.000She, of course, is even more of a great order than the President of the United States, who cannot get English sentences out of his face hole.
00:17:09.000Here is the Vice President of the United States, who is just so sincere.
00:17:15.000What just rolls off of her in waves is her sincerity.
00:17:19.000Here's the Vice President of the United States, a predictive text machine come alive.
00:17:24.000Of course, all of us hold the people of Tulsa in our hearts, but we also reaffirm our commitment to passing common-sense gun safety laws.
00:17:34.000But we cannot, as an administration or those of us who are here, address this alone.
00:17:48.000Again, over and over and over again, it's the same routine from these folks.
00:17:52.000And then, when you actually start talking about the problem, when you suggest that perhaps we should harden schools, perhaps we should make it easier to involuntarily commit people who seem to be violent, when we do any of that stuff, then all of a sudden it's, whoa, whoa, whoa, why aren't we talking about guns?
00:18:05.000Because we would like to solve the problem.
00:18:07.000That's why we're not talking about guns.
00:18:08.000Because in the main, the gun is not really the problem.
00:18:11.000It's the person who wields the gun who tends to be the problem.
00:18:14.000Contra Joe Biden, who suggests that guns themselves are the problems.
00:18:17.000Inanimate objects themselves are the problems.
00:18:20.000That is a thing that President Biden himself said in his address.
00:18:23.000He said that guns are the number one source of child death in the United States.
00:18:27.000Well, no, the person wielding the gun is typically the source of the child death in the United States.
00:18:39.000According to new data just released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America.
00:19:26.000Call it a subjective opinion, call it whatever you want.
00:19:28.000I do not find this to be a sincere man.
00:19:30.000Every time he says, for God's sake, I just... It's bad acting.
00:19:35.000I'm not saying he doesn't care about kids who get shot.
00:19:37.000I'm sure he does care about kids who get shot.
00:19:39.000When he pretends that the solutions that he's offering are actual solutions rather than just get-out-the-vote efforts, I don't believe him.
00:19:46.000Because it's pretty obvious that these are get-out-the-vote efforts from the President of the United States.
00:19:50.000And I would note, on a logical level, when he suggests that more children are dying by gun than on-duty police officers, maybe one of the reasons for that is because, you know, I spot a couple of differentiators.
00:20:05.000One of them is that on-duty police officers carry guns.
00:20:08.000Kids cannot carry guns, nor should they, obviously.
00:20:11.000But the point is that people who are protected tend not to get shot as often.
00:20:16.000Even in the most dangerous situations, they tend to not get shot quite as often because they can protect themselves.
00:20:20.000So he's making directly the case that he supposedly opposes.
00:20:25.000This, by the way, is the case that Democrats are consistently making, is the idea that even a lawful, law-abiding person who knows how to use his gun isn't capable of stopping a bad guy with a gun, which of course is untrue.
00:20:35.000I'm unaware of any situation in which the threat of a good guy with a gun has not ended a situation with a bad guy with a gun.
00:20:42.000Do folks on the left just think that bad guys with guns randomly give up their guns when they get bored or tired?
00:20:48.000And you have Representative David Cicilline, who's making precisely that case.
00:20:52.000I'd just like to add a couple of thoughts.
00:20:55.000And the first is, I don't think there is a single incident, and maybe there's one, but I've not found one, of an assailant using an assault weapon that was stopped by a person with a gun.
00:21:09.000So this is a Just maybe there's one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of shootings.
00:21:15.000But the truth of the matter is school resource officers are an important response to school safety.
00:21:23.000But what I also know is it requires special training to be a school resource officer.
00:21:27.000And it's up to local communities to decide where that's appropriate, what schools they want to use school resource officers in.
00:21:33.000And so having someone who's a retired police officer or someone who used to be in the army may not actually be the best person to be in that position.
00:22:31.000And tragically, in 2016, in Dallas, Texas, five brave police officers, SWAT-trained police officers were murdered by a killer with an assault rifle.
00:22:46.000So I think we've debunked the idea that the answer to a killer with an assault rifle is to have more quote-unquote good guys with guns.
00:23:41.000Joe Biden has no intention of actually improving people's lives, apparently.
00:23:44.000It's just about making sure that you vote for his party, even though they're doing an incredibly bad job.
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00:24:58.000You know what else isn't going to help is the fixation that Democrats seem to have on not making commitments with regard to keeping schools open.
00:25:06.000This is a party that is just cruising for a bruising.
00:25:08.000Yesterday, there was an insane situation over at the White House.
00:25:12.000The White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha was asked a specific question about whether in the fall the schools would be open and whether they should remain open basically regardless of what happens with any new wave of Omicron or something.
00:25:27.000And he starts to answer the question and Corinne Jean-Pierre jumps up on the podium and basically wrangles him out of the room.
00:25:35.000This administration is so out of touch that they actually think that there's political support for the possibility of shutting down schools again, which is crazy.
00:25:56.000By the way, this is the same day that you have the Washington Post running a study suggesting that the pandemic radically disrupted learning for American teens, which of course it did.
00:26:05.000But we can't have the White House actually announcing that the schools are going to remain open.
00:26:08.000I wonder why people are feeling insecure with this White House in charge.
00:26:12.000Meanwhile, their solution is we have to give shots to all of your small children.
00:26:16.000Ronald Klain, the White House Chief of Staff, tweeted out yesterday, We are on track to become the first large country in the world to vaccinate kids under five, starting in 19 days.
00:26:23.000I don't know why he thinks this is a pitch.
00:26:25.000I honestly God don't know why he thinks this is a pitch.
00:26:30.000Statistically speaking, kids who get COVID are fine.
00:26:33.000The number of kids who have died from COVID without pre-existing conditions is infinitesimally small.
00:26:39.000It is extraordinarily small by the CDC stats.
00:26:42.000And yet they're still talking about closing down schools and why we need to vaccinate five-year-olds, four-year-olds, three-year-olds.
00:26:49.000Why is it a good thing that we're the first large country in the world that's vaccinating tiny kids who are not generally susceptible to serious harm from COVID?
00:26:58.000Okay, speaking of hitting the iceberg of reality, Joe Biden's foreign policy is just a complete and utter cluster.
00:27:06.000There's this amazing situation that is currently happening.
00:27:09.000Joe Biden is now visiting Saudi Arabia.
00:27:11.000So you'll recall that Joe Biden has spent the last couple of years ostracizing Saudi Arabia to the benefit of Iran.
00:27:16.000He's been reaching out to Iran, which is an intransigent evil terror state that has attempted to foster terrorism everywhere in the region, has fostered terrorism in Syria, has fostered terrorism in Lebanon, has fostered terrorism in the Gaza Strip, has fostered terrorism in Yemen.
00:27:30.000And Joe Biden has been reaching out to those people who are also seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
00:27:34.000At the same time, he has been cracking down on the Saudis.
00:27:38.000Now, listen, the Saudis are an unreliable ally of the United States.
00:27:43.000They also happen to be the world's largest pumpers of gas and oil.
00:27:47.000So you're alienating the people you need to pump the gas in favor of a terror regime that opposes all of America's interests.
00:27:54.000And you're doing so because of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is a quasi-journalist.
00:27:59.000I say quasi because he was basically a semi-contributor to the Washington Post who was very much in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
00:28:11.000It is also true that Saudi Arabia versus Iran on the, which is a greater human rights violator scale, Iran wildly outclasses Saudi Arabia.
00:28:19.000And yet we are reaching out to Iran and we are alienating Saudi Arabia.
00:28:22.000And this is part of Joe Biden's broader attempt to transition away from oil and natural gas.
00:28:27.000Well, the iceberg of reality has now been hit.
00:28:30.000And that iceberg of reality is that it turns out that the single most efficient form of energy on planet Earth is still carbon-based fossil fuels.
00:28:37.000And that means that when the gas prices spike, guess who's going to have to go begging hat in hand?
00:28:41.000Joe Biden's idiotic foreign policy with regard to oil, gas, and the Middle East?
00:28:45.000Led him to try to reintroduce relations with Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, in the perverse hope that suddenly Venezuela would start pumping gas, despite the fact they've been generally unable to pump large quantities of gas for probably a decade and a half because the government nationalized the industry and is wildly inefficient at actually even getting the gas out of the ground.
00:29:31.000We could have compensated for the spike in gas prices by going to people like Saudi Arabia if Joe Biden had not spent the last several years alienating Saudi Arabia and talking about how the Saudis are the world's worst human rights violators and we have to cut off relations with them and how dare they do what they are doing in Yemen and why don't we make nice with the Iranians.
00:29:46.000So now Joe Biden has to go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia because it turns out people don't like high gas prices and they want their gas prices lowered.
00:29:52.000So according to the Wall Street Journal, Apparently, Saudis are going to boost their oil production in advance of Joe Biden arriving in Saudi Arabia.
00:30:00.000Quote, Saudi Arabia took steps on Thursday to boost oil production and extended truce with Iran-backed forces in Yemen, two significant moves that helped pave the way for President Biden to visit the kingdom later this month.
00:30:09.000As the two countries try to reset their strained relationship, Saudi-led OPEC and its allies agreed to a bigger-than-expected oil production increase, allowing Riyadh to potentially pump more crude.
00:30:18.000At the same time, Saudi Arabia agreed to extend a two-month-old ceasefire with Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen, where the kingdom has been entangled in a costly and unpopular seven-year-old war.
00:30:26.000Well, they were totally fine with extending a ceasefire, so long as the Houthis extend the ceasefire.
00:30:29.000By the way, it is worth noting that Saudi Arabia is a much more moderate regime than it was even 10 or 15 years ago.
00:30:35.000Mohammed bin Salman, the new leader, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Yes, he is a brutal person who had Jamal Khashoggi killed.
00:30:45.000Also, he's modernizing Saudi Arabia's entire investment infrastructure and attempting to make peace with Israel.
00:30:52.000The United States has been, in any sort of real politics scenario, you have to acknowledge that major world powers are going to have to make common cause with people who happen to be dictators.
00:31:02.000So long as those people happen to share many of our interests.
00:31:04.000And if you're stacking up Saudi Arabia's interests with Iran's interests right now, Saudi Arabia shares many more of our interests than Iran does.
00:31:11.000So Joe Biden is now having to go back and basically make nice with the Saudis to the consternation of the far left.
00:31:18.000According to the Wall Street Journal, both moves were sought by the United States and helped set the stage for Biden to visit Saudi Arabia later this month, as the president looks to set aside longstanding divisions with the kingdom amid high oil and gasoline prices that have driven inflation.
00:31:29.000While the visit hasn't officially been announced, Thursday's moves create momentum for the president's trip.
00:31:33.000In other words, Joe Biden went to the Saudis and he said, we need you to pump more oil and also give us like some sort of face-saving solution with regard to the Houthis for a couple of weeks so that you can pump more oil and I don't look like a complete dullard.
00:31:45.000But here's the thing, Joe Biden does look like a dullard because you have been paying higher gas prices for the last year and a half because Joe Biden decided to alienate the top pumpers of oil on planet Earth via OPEC.
00:31:56.000And he did so despite the fact that Saudi Arabia, again, has been moderating and attempting to make peace with Israel.
00:32:02.000Covertly and in many ways, rather overtly, Joe Biden alienated an actual burgeoning, strengthening American ally in the Middle East in favor of the Iranians.
00:32:12.000And also because Joe Biden has a perverse notion of environmentalism because he's run by his hard left.
00:32:18.000And it turns out that that policy is garbage.
00:32:21.000Jennifer Granholm, our energy secretary yesterday, for example, she was rambling about the clean green energy economy.
00:33:47.000That's why I did this, he says, according to the Associated Press.
00:33:50.000Another video showed someone clearing the cake off the glass protecting the Mona Lisa as onlookers held up their phones to film the incident's aftermath.
00:33:57.000The 36-year-old man was detained and sent to a psychiatric unit.
00:34:01.000And the basic notion here is somehow throwing cake at the monuments of Western civilization, like the Mona Lisa, that this is going to convince people that they ought to lower their carbon emissions and embrace clean energy.
00:34:13.000Fortunately, we have idiots like Sonny Hostin on The View to explain why this is actually a good thing.
00:34:18.000I think those kinds of stunts, like he wore a wig and he dressed up as an elderly woman in a wheelchair to smuggle it in.
00:34:25.000We're talking about that as opposed to what the issue is that he's actually protesting.
00:34:28.000So I think that stunts like that don't work at all.
00:35:14.000You can pay higher gas prices at the pump.
00:35:17.000All in favor of a bizarrely utopian notion of how energy is produced, combined with the utopian notion of how foreign policy ought to be done.
00:35:27.000And it only cost you, you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of the last couple months to play out Joe Biden's green and foreign policy fantasies.
00:35:35.000Again, that iceberg of reality is slamming Joe Biden's Titanic.
00:35:38.000Well, with the economy on the brink of chaos, thanks to the bad policy of the Biden administration, you're probably spending a lot of time in that office chair these days.
00:35:44.000But here's the thing, your office chair, it sucks.
00:35:51.000xChair has made my time at my desk not only more productive, it's honestly my favorite place to sit for any reason, because it is supremely comfortable.
00:35:58.000It's got all the gadgets, all the gizmos.
00:36:00.000It doesn't just have the patented Dynamic Variable Lumbar Support, offering the ultimate in customized support.
00:36:06.000My xChair can even give me a massage, or heat up, or cool down.
00:36:08.000And now, thanks to the xChair's new FS360 armrest, I can even adjust my armrest to the perfect position, which is like a big deal, because if you've got armrests that are too high, it's really uncomfortable.
00:36:17.000Too low, and you've got no arm support.
00:36:18.000All these unique xChair features help the hours at my desk Fly by in complete comfort.
00:38:53.000So, for example, the Federal Reserve's Lael Brainard says it's actually too early to say if inflation has peaked.
00:38:58.000There could be more inflation on the way.
00:39:01.000With our number one challenge being the need to get inflation down, we do expect to see some cooling of a very, very strong economy over time.
00:39:12.000So you think we're starting to see that already?
00:39:17.000I'm going to be looking for a consistent string of data on both the strength of demand, labor market coming into better balance, and of course, importantly, a string of decelerating inflation data to feel more confident.
00:39:36.000Separately, the Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said the central bank could encounter greater financial market volatility and higher unemployment in its quest to push down inflation Loretta Mester said this will take fortitude.
00:39:48.000This will be painful, but so is high inflation.
00:39:51.000Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is attempting to divest itself of its $9 trillion portfolio.
00:39:57.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve began the process Wednesday of shrinking its $8.9 trillion asset portfolio.
00:40:03.000When the Fed shrinks its asset portfolio, it's not selling bonds.
00:40:06.000The Fed dramatically expanded its portfolio in March 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal, to stabilize dysfunctional markets.
00:40:11.000And then it continued to purchase Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in huge quantities in order to stimulate the economy.
00:40:16.000So they just started buying product and injecting money into the economy.
00:40:19.000It ended those purchases in March of 2022.
00:40:21.000It's been keeping its holdings steady by reinvesting the proceeds of maturing securities into new ones.
00:40:26.000Well, starting June 1, the Fed is going to allow up to $30 billion in treasuries and $17.5 billion in mortgage bonds to mature every month without investing the proceeds, meaning they're not going to buy up more assets.
00:40:36.000The central bank is shrinking its holdings passively or by attrition because they don't want to flood the market with all of these securities and then undermine the price of the securities.
00:40:45.000The Fed is saying over the long run, it wants to own primarily treasury security, selling mortgage assets, but more quickly shift the composition of its asset holdings toward treasuries.
00:40:54.000The Fed is desperately attempting to bring down the inflation rate, and it's not having its desired effect.
00:41:51.000The Treasury Secretary says that she was wrong, so why doesn't anybody here at the White House?
00:41:55.000Okay, what the Secretary was pointing out, this is talking about yesterday when she was doing her hit, her TV hit with CNN, is that there have been shocks to the economy that have exacerbated inflationary pressures which couldn't have been foreseen 18 months ago.
00:42:11.000Just that I understand, the Treasury Secretary says that she was wrong, but the White House was not wrong about inflation.
00:42:17.000Here's the thing, we have achieved a... First of all, I explained to you what she was trying to say, so I just laid that out.
00:42:24.000This is Putin's price hike, which the president refers to, and that is what Secretary Yellen was referring to, if you read the entire transcript, and that's what I'm trying to say to you.
00:42:35.000Man, they're going to try and happy talk their way through this one and it is not going to work.
00:42:39.000Joe Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein, he's still refusing to say whether the stimulus contributed to inflation.
00:42:50.000And you have the chief economic advisor of the President of the United States who can't say it.
00:42:56.000We've had many economists on this show over the last couple of weeks, and in fact months, pointing to some of the pandemic-era stimulus packages.
00:43:03.000Do you believe that those packages are contributing to the inflation we're seeing today?
00:43:07.000The inflation that we're observing right now is very much a function of high levels of demand and constrained supply.
00:43:15.000Now that relates to COVID, that relates to some things that certainly weren't in the picture.
00:43:19.000And sure, fiscal policy is always going to contribute to the demand side of the equation.
00:43:24.000But I am not here to, at all, look at this in any sort of one-sided way.
00:43:33.000You don't want to look at it one side away because it turns out the side you're on happens to be the wrong side.
00:43:37.000Now, meanwhile, again, all of these things are connected.
00:43:39.000The domestic American economy, the inflation problems that we're having, the price of gas, all of these problems are interconnected and they are deeply connected with further foreign policy issues like the increasing aggressiveness of China.
00:43:52.000According to the Wall Street Journal, China is now poised to launch its newest, most advanced aircraft carrier in a major step that will enable its Navy to expand military operations on the high seas.
00:44:00.000New satellite imagery reviewed by the Wall Street Journal shows that after several years of work in the Xiangjiang Shipyard in Shanghai, China's third carrier, known as Type 003, may be afloat in the coming weeks or even days.
00:44:11.000The Type 003 is China's third aircraft carrier, its largest and most advanced.
00:44:15.000It uses new electromagnetic catapult technology akin to what the United States and French carriers have to launch aircraft.
00:44:21.000According to Matthew Funayol, the senior fellow at the China Power Project at the CSIS, once operational, China's third carrier will greatly expand its ability to secure its near sea interests while also enabling the Chinese Navy to project power further away from the Chinese mainland. The ship's launch reflects China's steady progress expanding its naval fleet.
00:44:38.000According to Funayol, all signs point to this progress continuing for its fourth, fifth, maybe even a sixth carrier. All of this is deeply disturbing because China is seeking to expand its power at the expense of American interests.
00:44:52.000Now, what you would do if you are smart and the leader of the United States is you would strengthen America's economy by taking the shackles off.
00:45:07.000If you were actually taking seriously foreign threats, you wouldn't be making overtures to Iran.
00:45:12.000You'd be making overtures to Saudi Arabia, which owns an enormous amount of oil and gas, and actually is not diametrically opposed to American interests.
00:45:19.000You'd be strengthening our allies in the Middle East as they make alliances with one another.
00:45:26.000These are all things that you would be doing.
00:45:29.000You would also, presumably, be encouraging some sort of end to the war in Ukraine.
00:45:53.000report says that Putin seems to have reemerged after undergoing treatment in April.
00:45:58.000Apparently there was also an assassination attempt on Putin's life in March.
00:46:02.000So Putin is insecure and that insecurity is leading him to try to strengthen his grip in Ukraine.
00:46:10.000Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, he is saying that Russia currently holds 20% of the entire country.
00:46:18.000And it is unclear which direction this war is going at this point.
00:46:21.000According to the Washington Post, Ukraine is suffering significant setbacks in parts of the East amid grueling street-by-street battles in the key city of Severodonetsk, with the British Defense Ministry saying most of the city is now in Russian hands.
00:46:32.000After nearly 100 days of fighting, Russian forces control 20% of Ukraine.
00:46:35.000That would include most of the oil-rich regions of Ukraine.
00:46:40.000It does mean that China has been basically shoring up Russia, buying up all of its oil and gas assets at extraordinarily cheap prices.
00:46:47.000China is strengthening its geopolitical hold.
00:46:50.000So forcing Russia to the table and also leaving a door open for negotiation would be vital at this point.
00:46:55.000Joe Biden seems to have no idea what to do on any of this.
00:46:59.000And so what you end up with is elevated prices at the pump for you, a strengthened China, you end up with high inflation rates, and you end up with a shrinking economy in the long run.
00:47:09.000Because, again, who's going to invest into an economy that is this confused and confusing?
00:47:14.000I mean, I talk with major institutional investors on a regular basis, and nobody knows where to put their money.
00:47:18.000Because they don't know which way the economy is going.
00:47:20.000Because Joe Biden has not made clear what exactly the economic policy of the United States is going to be, or who's going to get punished.
00:47:26.000Or if firms that don't get their ESG score, their environmental social governance score proper, on the NASDAQ are going to suffer significant legal and financial setbacks.
00:47:36.000All this is creating an enormous feeling of chaos.
00:47:38.000And no matter how much Joe Biden tries to talk his way out of this by citing to gun control, it isn't going to work.
00:47:44.000Feelings of uncertainty were downed against the party in power.
00:47:46.000The party in power right now is the Democratic Party.
00:47:48.000Joe Biden is the president of the United States.
00:48:17.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Sajevitz, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Christina, Production Coordinator Jessica Grand.
00:48:41.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.