Inflation gets even hotter as the White House struggles for a response, Joe Biden heads to the Middle East, and abortion hearings in Congress continue to reveal just who has the moral high ground. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To join the VIP membership program, go to express.vpn/joinnow and use the promo code: "ELISSA" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse Lacrosse you download the Lacrosse app. You'll get access to all the latest economic and political news and access to access to our most popular epsiode of the day, "The Economic Update." Subscribe today using our podcast s RSS feed to stay up to date on all things economic and financial news. Like, comment and subscribe to my other podcast, The Economic Update, wherever you get your news and financial information. Subscribe to my new podcast, Economic Talk Daily, where I break down what's going on in the world and give you the inside scoop on what's happening in the economy and what you can do to help you prepare for the next economic downturn. If you like what you hear, share it with a friend, tweet me and let me know what you thought of it! if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to improve the economic situation. Timestamps: 4:00 - What s going on with the economy? 6:30 - Inflation? 7:15 - Is there a recession coming? 8: What s the risk of a recession? 9: Is the Fed hitting peak inflation? 11:00: What should the Fed slowing down? 14:00 15:00- What is the problem? 16: Should we be worried about inflation hitting peak? 17:40 - Will the Fed hit the brakes? 19:30- What should we do about it? 21:10 - What's the worst thing the Fed should do now? 22:15- Does the Fed have a chance to do next? 24:15 25: Is there any hope? 26:40- Is it possible to slow the inflation rate? 27: Is it time to hit the peak of the inflation crisis? 29:00? 30:30 32:00 +3:00 Is the economy back on the table? 35:00 Should I buy some gold? 33:00 Do we have a recession here?
00:00:00.000Inflation gets even hotter as the White House struggles for a response, Joe Biden heads to the Middle East, and abortion hearings in Congress continue to reveal just who has the moral high ground.
00:00:35.000And that might be something you might want to be interested in, like right about now, considering that your alternative is to trust the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who's full on admitting, quote, I was wrong about the path inflation would take.
00:00:46.000Yeah, you still don't understand because leaving your money in the hands of the Quote-unquote experts at the Federal Reserve or the Treasury Department.
00:01:38.000He's here to make history by shattering every bad record there is to shatter.
00:01:43.000According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer inflation accelerated to 9.1% in June, a pace not seen in more than four decades.
00:01:50.000Adding pressure on the Federal Reserve to act more aggressively to slow rapid price increases throughout the economy, the Consumer Price Index advance for the 12 months ending in June was the fastest pace since November 1981, according to the Labor Department.
00:02:00.000A big jump in gasoline prices, up 11.2% from the previous month, nearly 60% from a year earlier, drove much of the increase.
00:02:07.000Shelter and food prices were also major contributors, but there are no areas of the American economy that are not inflating.
00:02:13.000At this point, the June inflation reading exceeded May's 8.6% rate, which, by the way, gave the lie to the idea that we had hit an inflection point on inflation last month.
00:02:20.000There was a lot of talk that we had already hit peak inflation.
00:02:24.000The June inflation, again, was higher than May.
00:02:26.000That prompted investors and analysts to debate whether the Fed would consider a 1 percentage point rate increase rather than a 0.75 point rise later this month.
00:02:34.000The truth is, they probably need to wallop everybody with like a 1.5% increase.
00:02:38.000All of these incremental increases, they ain't going to do it.
00:02:41.000I was listening to a podcast the other day with Mohamed El-Erian of Allianz.
00:02:45.000And Mohamed El-Erian was saying correctly, That the big problem here is that the Fed had the opportunity to hit the brake hard enough to actually stop the inflation, but they risk tipping over into a recession.
00:02:56.000And instead they decided to sort of tap, tap, tap, tap the brakes.
00:02:59.000And the problem is the car has not slowed down nearly enough.
00:03:01.000And so now they're going to have to slam the brakes.
00:03:03.000They're not going to have to hit the brakes firmly.
00:03:06.000And the problem is when you slam the brakes, there's a very good shot that the passenger ejects right through the windshield because ain't nobody wearing a seatbelt around here.
00:03:12.000Slowing demand is the key, is key to the Fed's goal of restoring price stability In an economy that is still struggling with supply issues, according to the Wall Street Journal, raising interest rates elevates the risk of a recession.
00:03:21.000Core prices, excluding volatile food and energy, increased by 5.9% in June from a year earlier.
00:03:27.000That is slightly less than May's 6.0% gain, according to the Labor Department.
00:03:31.000On a month-to-month basis, core prices rose 0.7% in June.
00:03:34.000That's a little bit more than they did in May.
00:03:37.000Stocks declined on Wednesday after wavering for much of the day, with the S&P 500 index falling by 0.5%.
00:03:42.000Bond yields jumped following the inflation report.
00:03:44.000Yields on longer-term Treasuries quickly gave up those gains.
00:03:47.000Nobody knows where to put their money at this point, considering there are no safe havens.
00:03:51.000Retailers' ability to shut unwanted inventory could test whether pricing is returning to pre-pandemic patterns.
00:03:56.000Some retailers like Target have already said they are planning big discounts in order to get rid of all of their unwanted inventory.
00:04:03.000A lot of others with robust warehouse capacity like Walmart are likely to hold on to their excess inventory, according to analysts.
00:04:09.000Discounts haven't shown up prominently in inflation figures so far.
00:04:11.000Prices for apparel, home goods, both of those were on the rise.
00:04:15.000And again, all of this is the result of terrible economic policy from the Biden administration.
00:04:19.000Yes, there have been supply chain shocks.
00:04:21.000Yes, COVID created those supply chain shocks.
00:04:23.000Sure, war in Ukraine isn't helping things.
00:04:25.000But the simple fact of the matter is that the inflation rate in the United States is not, as Joe Biden likes to lie, the lowest in the Western world.
00:04:31.000In fact, it is one of the highest in the Western world.
00:04:33.000And that is because Joe Biden's proposal, indeed his entire economic strategy, was rooted in fire hosing money at people.
00:04:41.000Because this is part of Democrats' core ideological belief, which is that all inequity in the system, all evils in the system, can be fixed by helicopter cash.
00:04:50.000If you just drop money on people, this will magically fix all of the problems, it will rectify all of the inequalities that plague the evil systemic American society.
00:04:57.000Well, there's only one problem with that, which is that what you do when you helicopter cash is you inflate things.
00:05:03.000And yet, the axioms were supposedly never going to apply again.
00:05:07.000And the evidence for that was that in 2008, 2009, during the Great Recession, that there was a rather large increase in spending in the United States and inflation didn't follow.
00:05:16.000But that's because demand was already leveled off.
00:05:18.000Here, you had demand that was super hot because we had heated up the amount of money in the economy, and then you had supply chains, and then you decided to pour more money on top of all of that.
00:05:27.000Well, I think it's worthwhile remembering here that all of these supposed experts in the Biden administration were telling us, not all that long ago, that everything was going to be fine.
00:05:34.000You'll remember that it was transitory inflation according to the Federal Reserve until a few months ago.
00:05:38.000And you'll remember that back in December, Joe Biden said that inflation had already hit its peak, that we're already on the way down.
00:05:54.000Do you think this is the peak of those prices or is it Americans first when it comes to the prices of the commodity?
00:06:02.000I think it's the peak of the prices and I think you'll see it change sooner, quicker, more rapidly than it will take, than most people think.
00:06:13.000Every other aspect of the economy is racing ahead.
00:06:24.000In June of 2021, Ron Klain, who's trying to tweet his way through this crisis, he just goes on Twitter and he finds some mild piece of good news and then he tweets it out.
00:06:31.000So yesterday he was spending all of his day tweeting out news that the gas prices had dipped over the past 30 days to $4.60 a gallon, which is still a whopping price that is penalizing Americans for the great crime of driving to the grocery store.
00:06:44.000Ronald Klain, June 16th, 2021, quote, There are going to be transitory impacts of restarting an economy that was shut down.
00:06:51.000At a key point in the Fed forecast today, inflation projected down to 2.1% in 2022.
00:06:55.000If by 2.1% in 2022, they mean like 9%, then they got that one right, just nailed it.
00:07:02.000Then they got that one right, just nailed it.
00:07:04.000Ron Klain, right on the money as per our usual arrangement.
00:07:07.000Now, this has some serious impacts on average Americans.
00:07:11.000We're not just talking about your spending too much money at the grocery store.
00:07:13.000We're talking about the fact that all the wage gains that got created over the past several years have now been eaten up by inflation.
00:07:18.000According to Fox Business, the average American worker has lost $3,400 in annual income as a result of skyrocketing inflation since Biden took office 18 months ago.
00:07:27.000Overall, the CPI surged 9.1% year-over-year in June.
00:07:32.000This means a decline in actual income.
00:07:35.000That amounts to roughly $3,400 yearly for income decreased for the average worker.
00:07:46.000Antoni, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, quote, there are plenty of families, but that's more than their food budget for the entire year.
00:07:51.000I can't emphasize how much this is really crushing consumers.
00:07:54.000And it's true, by the way, that you're seeing these bottlenecks in like every area of the American economy.
00:07:59.000If you talk to local business people, local business people are suffering.
00:08:02.000They cannot find people to work the jobs because they don't have enough money to pay the inflated wages that would get people off their can.
00:08:09.000Because there's a real shortage of labor in the market, right?
00:08:11.000The unemployment rate is still really, really low.
00:08:14.000They are running into supply chain issues at every turn and running out of like basic products.
00:08:19.000I was at a restaurant recently, it was a breakfast restaurant.
00:08:21.000They literally run out of cream cheese and they were like, we have to wait until next week to get some more cream.
00:08:27.000So all of this is really crippling American businesses.
00:08:30.000And when that happens, you're likely to see a recession.
00:08:33.000And that recession is only going to be exacerbated by the moves that the Federal Reserve does have to make in order to tamp down the inflationary spiral that we are currently in.
00:08:41.000Now the White House is, of course, taking the world's dumbest tack because this is what they do.
00:08:45.000So Corinne Jean-Pierre, the eminently untalented press secretary for the Biden White House, she tweeted out, The anti-inflation reconciliation bill the president is fighting for would lower inflation by empowering Medicare to negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs and save consumers and taxpayers money at the same time.
00:09:00.000Congressional Republicans oppose it. Tooth and nail.
00:09:03.000So by anti-inflation reconciliation bill, she means the giant trillions dollar large Build Back Better plan.
00:09:09.000They're now trying to rebrand it and then throw it back out there as though this is going to fix the economic problem.
00:09:14.000It is incredible that when faced with the prospect that they have dug themselves into a massive hole, their solution is to immediately try to find some sort of digger and then just keep digging all the way until they actually hit China.
00:09:26.000Like physically hit the core of the earth and just keep going all the way through.
00:09:30.000The first rule of holes is to stop digging.
00:09:31.000But for this White House, the first rule of holes is, why won't the Republicans come on in here with a shovel and help me dig even deeper?
00:09:38.000The fact that they're still pushing a form of Build Back Better is insanity.
00:09:40.000It also happens to be politically inept.
00:09:43.000And the simple fact is Joe Manchin in West Virginia ain't gonna vote for that.
00:09:45.000He's already said he's not gonna vote for that.
00:09:47.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden put out a statement of his own.
00:09:49.000This is the White House statement and it is so unbelievably toned up because when people are enmeshed in economic suffering, the thing that is not going to help them is when you say to them, you must be crazy, everything's fine.
00:09:59.000First of all, it's pretty rare that that solution has ever worked in any sort of political relationship.
00:10:14.000When was the last time that has worked?
00:10:15.000And when you're talking about the American people who are losing thousands of dollars every year thanks to your inflationary policies, Joe Biden sitting there going, everything's roundu!
00:10:23.000That is not exactly going to calm the roiled waters here.
00:10:28.000I mean, this is so tone deaf, but I mean, he may actually be fully tone deaf at this point, like physically.
00:10:34.000He says, quote, while today's headline inflation reading is unacceptably high, it is also out of date.
00:10:39.000Energy alone comprised nearly half of the monthly increase in inflation.
00:10:42.000Today's data does not reflect the full impact of nearly 30 days of decreases in gas prices that have reduced the price of the pump by about 40 cents since mid-June.
00:10:50.000Those savings are providing important breathing room for American families.
00:12:28.000is producing 12.1 million barrels of oil per day and is on track to break records.
00:12:32.000And so now he's going to pretend that he's pro-oil and pro-natural gas, which, of course, is eminently untrue.
00:12:38.000So number one is I'm going to bring down the price of gas by doing And then he says, I'm going to continue to insist, as I have with urgency recently, reductions in the price of oil must produce lower gas prices for consumers at the pump.
00:12:51.000The price of oil is down only about 20% since mid-June, but the price of gas has so far fallen only half as much.
00:12:57.000Well, I mean, that's because there's a lag time between the production of oil and the production of gas.
00:13:01.000You have to refine oil into gas, you moron.
00:13:04.000So that means that some of that reduction in price is going to take a while to hit the market.
00:13:09.000Oil and gas companies must not use this moment as an excuse for profiting by not passing along savings to the public.
00:13:14.000Well, maybe they are also saving up for the fact that the minute that this price spike is over, you are going to absolutely crunch them again.
00:13:30.000I mean, you were supposed to pass that on in spending.
00:13:32.000Well, some of you put it in the bank because you knew that at some point the firehose would stop.
00:13:36.000Second, says Joe Biden, I will urge Congress to act this month on legislation to reduce the cost of everyday expenses hitting American families from prescription drugs, utility bills to health insurance premiums to make more in America. So that is spending more money, which creates more inflation.
00:13:51.000So solution one, I'm going to yell at the oil companies and also I'm really not going to increase oil production in any serious way.
00:13:57.000Second, I'm going to ask people to spend more money in an inflationary cycle to bring down inflation.
00:14:02.000Third, I'll continue to oppose any efforts by Republicans to make things worse by raising taxes on working people or putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years.
00:14:14.000Our entitlement programs, which are mandatory spending under federal law, What exactly are you talking about?
00:14:20.000And then he says, finally, I'll continue to give the Federal Reserve the room it needs to help it combat inflation.
00:14:26.000Well, I mean, he doesn't really have any ability to do anything otherwise, and that is literally their job, and they are supposed to be an independent agency.
00:14:33.000Well, if you think that the White House's economic policy is a little bit frightening, well, think about the fact that when you go away this summer, there might be someone lurking and watching your home.
00:14:40.000I know, it's creeping you out a little bit, what I'm saying right now, but here is the thing.
00:14:43.000You can protect your home with Ring Alarm.
00:14:45.000Now, you're thinking to yourself, wait, Ring, aren't those the video doorbell people?
00:14:47.000Well, yeah, they are, but they also have an award-winning home security system with available professional monitoring when you subscribe.
00:14:53.000Best of all, you can easily install it yourself.
00:15:46.000It is likely to result in nothing much.
00:15:49.000And what that really means is that Joe Biden just has to count on the Federal Reserve.
00:15:52.000Now, the problem is that the Federal Reserve, as we say, is going to have to slam on the brakes at this point.
00:15:58.000Paul Volcker, in order to actually stop inflation in the early 1980s, had to jack up the interest rates to like 20%.
00:16:04.000Right now, the interest rates in this country are still at 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%.
00:16:07.000We're going to need to get, according to Lawrence Summers, who was first on the ball on this stuff, we're going to need to be at like 5% to 6% to even talk about tamping down inflation at this point.
00:16:17.000So a 0.75% point increase in the interest rates, 75 basis points, that ain't going to do it.
00:16:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, three Fed officials who spoke Wednesday didn't say whether they would favor a move to actually increase the interest rates by a full percentage point, which it hasn't done in decades at a meeting later this month, but they wouldn't rule it out.
00:16:34.000Everything is in play, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostock told reporters in Florida.
00:16:38.000We don't have to make that decision today, said Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
00:16:43.000Fed officials are set to begin their pre-meeting quiet period on Saturday, leaving little time to shape expectations around their policy plans.
00:16:52.000Which means that the American people are not going to leave that money sitting in the bank.
00:16:56.000They're going to spend that money before it's worth a lot less, which means more inflation.
00:17:01.000The way that you enter an inflationary cycle is people have money in the bank.
00:17:03.000Instead of holding on to that money because they're afraid of inflation eating up the value of the money in the bank, they take the money and they spend the money.
00:17:10.000And then you get inflation, because if you spend too much money, and it's the same number of goods, all the prices go up.
00:17:15.000So when people lose ability to trust the Fed, what you end up with is a price-wage spiral.
00:17:23.000The Federal Reserve has not earned the trust of the American people at any point in here.
00:17:28.000They clearly don't know what they're doing.
00:17:30.000And so the notion that the Federal Reserve is going to be single-handedly bringing the inflation rate up and thus tamping down, bringing the interest rates up and then tamping down inflation, That seems rather pie in the sky without any sort of pain whatsoever.
00:17:44.000And again, I just come back to the fact that the Biden administration is now trying to claim that there's nothing happening that's bad.
00:17:51.000I mean, Joe Biden's statement that everything is hunky-dory, Kevin Bacon in Animal House standing in front of large-scale explosions in the background saying, all is well, everything is fine.
00:18:20.000Quarter two, we don't actually have a final number on yet.
00:18:23.000So when people say we're in a recession, people like Joe Biden say, well, we're not technically in a recession because you can't actually know whether we're in a recession until we actually release the stats on Q2.
00:18:32.000And then the minute that we find out that there was negative growth in Q2, and we say, okay, so I guess we're in a recession, he said, no, no, no, because now we're past Q2, we're in Q3.
00:18:38.000So we're going to play this dumb little time lapse game and try to pretend that people aren't feeling the pinch.
00:18:45.000So, I mean, this really calls for bringing out the big guns.
00:18:48.000That means time to call out the most articulate person in American public life, of course, Kamala Harris, the predictive text mechanism of a human being.
00:18:54.000So here's Kamala Harris, our intersectional, supremely talented vice president of the United States, to explain that it's all in your head.
00:19:02.000Before I begin, I will address this month's CPI report.
00:19:07.000There is no question that we still have work to do.
00:19:10.000But it is important to note that these numbers do not fully reflect the recent drop in gas prices.
00:19:17.000Average national gas prices have fallen every day for nearly 30 days.
00:19:22.000Since mid-June, prices are down 40 cents a gallon.
00:19:27.000Fighting inflation is one of our administration's top economic priorities, which is why we have taken action to lower the cost of living for Americans, millions of Americans.
00:19:39.000We are releasing one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices at the pump.
00:19:50.000If this is the best they can do is Kamala Harris out there saying that she's going to do more, good luck to you.
00:19:54.000Greg Ip has a good piece over at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that everybody should be a little bit wary about the suggestion that the Federal Reserve is going to be your friend here.
00:20:04.000The Fed's tightening has accomplished its mission.
00:20:06.000Strong labor market and consumer fundamentals will keep any recession mild.
00:20:09.000These are among the storylines providing a tailwind to stocks in recent weeks.
00:20:12.000They feed hopes the Federal Reserve has achieved a soft landing, bringing inflation down to 2% without pushing up unemployment or tipping the economy into recession.
00:20:27.000First, they claim the inflation threat has passed.
00:20:29.000Though inflation hit a four-decade high of 9.1% in June, market sentiment on inflation has improved markedly.
00:20:35.000Since early last month, the Bloomberg Commodity Index has fallen 18% from its 2022 peak.
00:20:39.000Since early June, expected inflation over the next five years, based on the pricing of inflation-indexed bonds, has dropped 0.4 percentage points.
00:20:48.000It is certainly better to have bond and commodity markets expecting inflation to go down rather than up, but the Fed has made it clear it wants to see actual inflation go down.
00:20:55.000Inflation sentiment alone is not going to cut it.
00:20:58.000And right now, the real question is going to be, after they cut down on the inflation by jacking up the interest rates, what is the baseline level of inflation going to be?
00:21:14.000Greg Ip also points out, people are saying that the Fed is going to shift its priority to recession from inflation.
00:21:20.000But this reflects a pre-2021 mindset, when inflation was usually around 2% and there was no need to force a lower by strangling the economy.
00:21:27.000Thus, a recession was always a policy error, the result of tightening too much or easing too little.
00:21:31.000When growth weakened or the financial system seized up, the Fed could rush to the rescue by slashing rates, buying bonds or both.
00:22:15.000Concealed Carry Association as a partner of this show.
00:22:18.000Right now, they're giving away this free Concealed Carry and Family Defense Guide and a chance to win $1,000 to buy a gun to protect yourself and your family 100% free.
00:22:26.000Guns in the hands of law-abiding people who know how to use them make the country safer.
00:22:30.000You get all of that when you text Ben to 87222.
00:22:32.000It's a 58-page guide loaded with valuable information.
00:22:36.000In the guide, you're going to learn how to detect attackers before they see you, what the USCCA has learned about school shootings, equipment and training basics about the law and justice systems, how to responsibly own and store a gun, particularly if you have little kids, and a whole lot more.
00:23:26.000Bottom line is that the Democratic Party and the House Democratic Caucus is the party of national security in the 21st century.
00:23:34.000We are the party that's dedicated to rule of law, to affirming our connection with our allies, to addressing the largest national security threat facing our planet and our country, that is climate change, which is both a threat multiplier and a threat magnifier, and dedicated to doing this in the right way.
00:23:54.000Okay, if what they truly believe is that what the United States needs to do is embrace green energy, prepare for more pain at the pump.
00:24:01.000Maisie Hirono, the world's dumbest senator, she said the same thing yesterday.
00:24:05.000We're in the middle of an inflationary spiral where gas prices are still way higher than they need to be.
00:24:09.000And Maisie Hirono's out there like, let's speed up our transition to green energy.
00:24:11.000These people are so committed to their utopia.
00:24:13.000They don't care how many bodies are in the way.
00:24:16.000Congress can and should provide individuals and businesses with long-term incentives to speed up the transition to cheaper, cleaner sources of power, higher energy efficiency, and more affordable transportation options.
00:24:30.000Congress should also support clean energy manufacturing, and supply chains right here in the United States.
00:24:37.000As we deal with high oil and gas prices now, we need to keep our eye on how we can accelerate the transition to more affordable options while making our country much more energy self-reliant in the long term like Hawaii is doing.
00:24:55.000And by the way, if you want to see how well these sorts of policies work out, take a look at Sri Lanka, where the entire government has just fallen, thanks to the fact that they embraced Green New Deal-esque solutions on the environment, and then totally undercut their ability to do things like farm.
00:25:08.000Look at the farm riots that are happening up in the Netherlands right now, thanks to the fact that they've decided to essentially outlaw family farming.
00:25:15.000There are real-world effects to your dumb garbage policies, and those real-world effects are going to be felt in the polling data.
00:25:22.000Joe Biden is getting madder and madder over the fact that he's wildly unpopular.
00:25:25.000He was asked about it the other day, and he became his usual sort of grumpy self.
00:25:30.000Mr. President, what's your message to Democrats who don't want you to run again?
00:25:41.000That poll showed that 92% of Democrats, if I ran, would vote for me.
00:25:45.000A majority of Democrats say they don't want you to run again in 2024.
00:25:48.00092% said if I did, they'd vote for me.
00:25:52.000Okay, well, I mean, if you can't find 92% of Democrats to say that they wouldn't vote for the Democratic candidate, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about.
00:25:59.000The polls say that they don't want Joe Biden to run.
00:26:02.000Read the polls, Giacomo, Giacobluni, Messerschmitti.
00:26:07.000Okay, so things are not going well for Joe Biden on the domestic front.
00:26:10.000Well, maybe they'll go a little bit better on the foreign policy front.
00:26:13.000Now, the way they could go better on the foreign policy front is if he went to the Middle East and just doubled down on what President Trump did.
00:26:18.000That was the brightest spot of President Trump's presidency.
00:26:21.000He had two major bright spots, President Trump.
00:26:24.000One was the appointment of Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and guarded gun rights and decided to hobble the ability of the bureaucratic state to make up its own rules.
00:26:31.000That was a major victory by President Trump.
00:26:33.000And the other major victory was bringing peace to the Middle East, which is something that so many presidents have attempted a Nobel Prize for and none have achieved, except for the guy that they all hate, President Trump.
00:26:42.000Well, early on in his administration, it seemed like Joe Biden was going to try to undercut all of the gains that had been made in the Middle East.
00:26:48.000And the good news is that it seems like even Joe Biden, as befuddled as he is, even as misguided as he is on foreign policy, even he has to see the writing on the wall.
00:26:57.000The ground has changed in the Middle East.
00:27:02.000There was a lot of talk about whether he was going to shake hands with people.
00:27:05.000The White House had released The suggestion that perhaps he wasn't going to shake hands with people because of COVID.
00:27:10.000What that really was is a way to end around the possibility that he'd have to shake the hand of Mohammed bin Salman, who is the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia at this point.
00:27:19.000First Biden is going to Israel, then he's going to Saudi Arabia.
00:27:21.000Biden, early in his administration, tried to alienate the Saudis.
00:27:25.000He tried to rip on the Saudis for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a American green card holder who also happened to be allied with Muslim Brotherhood.
00:27:32.000He was a kind of quasi-journalist and he was murdered by the Saudis on Turkish soil.
00:27:38.000That's also called the Middle East, where nearly every country, with the exception of Israel, engages in massive human rights violations on a regular basis, including the killing of dissidents.
00:27:45.000In any case, Joe Biden had sort of alienated the Saudis.
00:27:48.000He had made pretty clear that he was going to try to revitalize the Iran deal.
00:27:51.000And then it turns out the situation on the ground had just moved too far.
00:27:54.000It turns out the Iranians are entrenched in their opposition and hostility to America and to the West.
00:27:59.000It turns out that the Saudis actually did Want to normalize relations with the Israelis.
00:28:03.000It looked like the winning horse in the Middle East right now is not the Iranians.
00:28:07.000Barack Obama ironically, by attempting to cozy up to the Iranians, actually indirectly brought peace to the Middle East by forcing the Saudis into the same camp as the Israelis, which is why you now have Bahrain and UAE and Morocco and all these other countries that have made peace with Israel.
00:28:22.000Dan Signore, who's a great commentator on Israel, has a good podcast of his own.
00:28:27.000He wrote the book Startup Nation about Israel.
00:28:28.000He points out, in Israel's entire 72-year history, there have been two peace agreements with Arab nations, one with Egypt, one with Jordan.
00:29:11.000If you watch the tape of him, he's got all of his aides steering him like you would steer your grandmother in a nursing home if the floor had just been waxed.
00:29:19.000Joe Biden gets in front of the microphones and he proceeds to flub on the Holocaust, which is not really a great idea in the state of Israel.
00:29:26.000I will once more return to the hollow ground of Yad Vashem to honor six million Jewish lives were stolen in the genocide and continue, which we must do every, every day, continue to bear witness to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust, horror of the Holocaust, honor those we lost so that we never, ever, ever forget that lesson.
00:30:47.000If Joe Biden had come into office and then he had run against his progressive base, which is what he did with Bernie Sanders to defeat him, he'd be a much more popular, much more successful president today.
00:30:55.000And in the Middle East, it looks like he's starting to do this a little bit because the reality on the ground is not in his control.
00:30:59.000And he can either jump on the train created by Donald Trump or he can stay off that train and be run over by it.
00:31:06.000The situation on the ground is just different.
00:31:08.000Right now, there are dozens of flights every day that are traveling between the UAE and Israel and they're using Saudi airspace in order to do so.
00:31:14.000Right now, the Saudi regime is like this close to normalizing relations with Israel.
00:31:18.000All it takes is a little bit of a shove from the United States and that will happen.
00:31:22.000Or a little bit of subsidization from the United States and that will happen.
00:31:24.000Joe Biden can either get on board or he can get left behind.
00:31:27.000The situation is just beyond his control at this point.
00:31:31.000And so all of the progressive wishes and hopes that he would go there and he would side with Iran, that he'd go there and he'd call Israel an apartheid state, for example, which is a lie and an anti-Semitic lie at that.
00:31:39.000All of that went immediately by the wayside.
00:31:41.000So Joe Biden was on Channel 12, which is the big news channel in Israel.
00:31:45.000And here he was saying that anyone who calls Israel an apartheid state, they're just wrong.
00:32:30.000People like Jake Sullivan inside his administration reportedly wanted him to dump that as a demand so they could cut some sort of crap deal with the Iranians.
00:32:36.000And Biden said to the Israelis, he's not going to do that.
00:32:38.000He's going to make sure that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stays on the terrorist list.
00:32:43.000Are you committed to keep the ROGC on the foreign terrorist organization list, even if that means that kills the deal?
00:32:50.000Yeah, we'll have to see if the White House walks that one back.
00:32:52.000But one thing that the White House actually did walk back is Jake Sullivan, who again is a horror show on Middle East policy because he used to work for Barack Obama, who was overtly anti-Israel.
00:33:01.000Jake Sullivan had attempted to sort of push the narrative that the United States was going to create a Palestinian consulate in East Jerusalem, which would have essentially said that America does not recognize a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
00:33:16.000Joe Biden and the team over at the White House walked that one back as well they should, because there is no support inside Israel for any of that.
00:33:22.000And for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that the Palestinian Authority is an actual terror organization, and the last time Jerusalem was divided.
00:33:30.000The side that was controlled by Jordan was completely not open to people of different religions, while the side controlled by Israel was completely open to people of all religions.
00:33:36.000So Joe Biden is actually acting like quite the moderate.
00:33:38.000He's going to have to continue to do that because realities on the ground do not favor him.
00:33:42.000When he goes to Saudi Arabia, which is really the bigger part of his trip that's coming up, when he goes to Saudi Arabia, he's going to have to actually shake hands with Mohammed bin Salman.
00:33:51.000He's going to have to actually negotiate with Mohammed bin Salman.
00:33:55.000He needs the peace deal between Israel and the Saudis.
00:33:58.000And in fact, it looks like there are going to be incremental moves in that direction.
00:34:01.000According to CNN, In the lead up to the trip, U.S.
00:34:04.000officials have been working to deepen Israeli-Arab security coordination and broker agreements that will inch Israel and Saudi Arabia closer to normalization.
00:34:11.000People familiar with the matter said Saudi Arabia is expected to announce this week that it will allow all commercial flights to and from Israel to use its airspace.
00:34:19.000That is, that is flights filled with Jews flying over Saudi airspace and allow Israel's Muslim minority to take charter flights directly to Saudi Arabia.
00:34:26.000That means for the first time, like actual direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia, Biden will also fly directly to Saudi Arabia from Israel.
00:34:33.000He called that a symbol of the budding relations between the two nations.
00:34:36.000And again, I know Saudi officials who overtly will say that they wish to normalize relations with Israel.
00:34:41.000Now, Biden is trying to slow talk this and he's trying to say normalization between Israel and Saudi will take a long time.
00:34:46.000Maybe because he doesn't want to do more in this direction.
00:34:49.000It would undercut his progressive base.
00:34:51.000But the truth is that if Joe Biden actually wanted it to happen, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel this month if Joe Biden actually wanted that to happen.
00:34:59.000Well, maybe I can ask you to give you a preview of what to expect on that, exactly on the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
00:35:06.000Well, that's going to take a long time.
00:35:07.000But increasing the relationship in terms of acceptance of each other's presence, the working together on certain things, it all makes sense to me.
00:35:18.000No, actually, it's not going to take all that long.
00:35:20.000All it takes is a little bit of a push.
00:35:21.000And it takes Joe Biden actually standing up to his progressive wing.
00:35:24.000And what this trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia demonstrates is that if Joe Biden actually embraces the moderation that was supposedly his program in 2020, he will actually be a much more successful president.
00:35:35.000But that requires him to abandon this notion that he has always held very deeply.
00:35:39.000That he is going to reflect the center of the Democratic Party.
00:35:41.000So when that moves to the left, he's going to reflect them.
00:35:43.000There are a few core areas where Joe Biden refuses to go all the way.
00:35:46.000And those happen to be the areas where he's more popular.
00:35:48.000Joe Biden is more popular than the progressives are when it comes to economic planning and when it comes to the police and crime and when it comes to the Middle East.
00:35:56.000It's when Joe Biden tries to cater to the progressives, or when he agrees with the progressives, like pulling out of Afghanistan for no apparent reason, that things really go to hell in a handbasket.
00:36:04.000Joe Biden as a moderate would have been a lot more successful.
00:36:06.000Joe Biden as a progressive has been a giant failure.
00:36:08.000Sadly, he is no longer with us and also has been acting like a progressive and thus has been a failure.
00:36:13.000There's one thing in your life that you just can't afford to fail right now, and that of course is your car.
00:36:17.000Getting your car parts replaced is a giant pain in the neck with all the supply chain bottlenecks, with the fact that all the big box stores, they rarely have the part anyway, they're ordering it online.
00:37:47.000So why not head on over to DailyWirePlus?
00:37:49.000Right now, just eight bucks a month gives you access to the full sum of the Jordan Peterson experience.
00:37:54.000That includes the Dragons, Monsters, and Men.
00:37:56.000It's a four-part mini series on men, masculinity, and the pursuit of greatness.
00:38:00.000It's been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people already.
00:38:02.000Not to mention everything else we are doing with Daily Wire Plus to unwoke the country through fearless documentaries, gripping movies, and coming soon, kids content.
00:38:10.000Take advantage of our $8 a month special membership.
00:38:21.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:38:24.000Meanwhile, there are a series of hearings that are going on the Hill with regard to abortion law.
00:38:34.000And the left seems to think that since the overruling of Roe versus Wade in Dobbs, that the winds of change are with them.
00:38:41.000They seem to think that the American people have sided with them on the question of the morality of abortion, and they are not reading the room correctly.
00:38:47.000Most Americans have a sort of wishy-washy, in-the-middle opinion on abortion.
00:38:51.000It seems to be what all the polling shows.
00:38:52.000Americans want heavy restrictions in the last trimester.
00:38:54.000They want some restrictions in the second trimester.
00:38:56.000They don't want nearly as many restrictions in the first trimester.
00:38:58.000That seems to be what the polling shows.
00:39:00.000None of that suggests that women have a right to choose from point of birth all the way backwards.
00:39:08.000That is a that is a position held by a vast minority of the American population.
00:39:11.000And yet that's precisely the argument Democrats are making.
00:39:14.000Democrats, all they have to do is say that there is a tradeoff in development and that you have this would not be an intellectually honest argument, but it would be a politically effective one.
00:39:22.000There's a tradeoff in the development of The of the human embryo from an embryo to a fetus.
00:39:27.000And as the child grows more developed, it now has more of an interest in life that has countervailing interest against the choice rights of the mother.
00:39:34.000And thus, as you grow later in the pregnancy, there should be more restrictions.
00:39:37.000But earlier in the pregnancy, when the child is not as developed, then we should be less restrictive.
00:39:41.000And that seems to be what what Americans feel, even if it isn't particularly coherent.
00:39:44.000But Democrats can't make that argument.
00:39:46.000And so instead, what they have decided is that it is a fundamental equality principle that women be able to abort kids at whim all the way up until birth.
00:39:57.000And if you deny this, this is because you are denying women.
00:40:00.000And as they now call them, pregnant people or people capable of being pregnant.
00:40:04.000And so you've seen Democratic witness after Democratic witness get up there in front of Congress and just make fools of themselves.
00:40:10.000Sound demonic in the way that they describe pregnancy and the way that they describe the treatment of pre-born children.
00:40:17.000So for example, one abortion witness was named Sarah Lopez.
00:40:19.000She was testifying in front of the Senate hearing on abortion and women's health care.
00:40:23.000And she described the abortion that she got.
00:40:26.000And this is just It sounds like direct from the mouth of Satan.
00:40:30.000I mean, that is what this sounds like.
00:40:32.000And I'm not a person who invokes Satan a lot, but this sounds satanic.
00:40:35.000What these restrictions are intended to do is try and stop people from having abortions, but abortion is healthcare.
00:40:43.000My abortion was the best decision I ever made.
00:40:45.000It was an act of self-love, and I'm here today to make sure that everybody who currently needs an abortion, who has had an abortion, or will need an abortion, is not alone, no matter what the state tries to force upon us.
00:41:33.000It was an act of other hate, but it was also an act of self-love because it was really about loving yourself at the expense of an actual other human being.
00:41:41.000Earlier, producer Bradford was asking me, do these people even hear themselves?
00:41:45.000And the answer is they do, but they think that no one else hears them.
00:41:51.000Other than, like, they think, in their bubble, they believe they are the greatest people who have ever lived, and therefore, everyone else must hear them that way, because all they've gotten for years is validation by other people who agree with them about this perverse cultish view.
00:42:05.000When she talks about abortion there, she sounds horrific.
00:42:10.000I mean, name a person who has committed an evil act of death upon another person who didn't believe that it was an act of good for them.
00:43:11.000And if Democrats really want to run on this nationally, they're going to get clocked and they should be clocked.
00:43:15.000Meanwhile, the president of the National Women's Law Center I was hoping that you could define what a woman is for us in this committee hearing.
00:43:21.000Well, as the president of the National Women's Law Center, you can imagine I say woman a lot in my day job.
00:43:26.000literally run a thing called the National Women's Law Center.
00:43:52.000But I wonder, however, if in part the reason that you're asking a question is that you're trying to suggest that people who don't identify as women can't define it.
00:44:00.000I am simply asking the question and I simply want an answer.
00:44:03.000And so I think it's actually really important to be very clear here that there are people who identify as non-binary, I think about 5% of young people.
00:44:16.000I was hoping that maybe you would say something that maybe we learned in high school biology that has to do with X and Y chromosomes, which define male and female, but I guess we're not going to get there.
00:44:27.000Okay, and of course we're not going to get there, because these witnesses have no relationship with reality.
00:44:33.000She says, I say the word women a lot, it has to define it.
00:44:40.000What is it you would say that you do around here?
00:44:43.000Now, in the end, When they're really confronted with these questions, Democrats then have to go to their fallback argument, which is that if you dare question why a woman would have an abortion, it's because you have a low opinion of women.
00:44:55.000Either it's worth celebrating and it's an act of self-love, or it's something you ought to be anguished over, in which case there should be restrictions on it.
00:45:00.000This is how you end up with the fallback sort of position of Georgia State Representative Renita Shannon.
00:45:06.000Here she is trying to explain that if you believe that some women Starting with Ms.
00:45:13.000Lopez, I assume you agree with infanticide, the killing of a child, a perfectly healthy child at birth?
00:45:17.000of pregnant women, which again is a mutually exclusive argument with the idea you ought to celebrate abortion.
00:45:24.000I assume you agree with infanticide, the killing of a child, a perfectly healthy child at birth?
00:45:32.000I don't accept the basis of that question, but I do believe abortion is health care.
00:45:37.000I'm talking about do you agree, I know, I get that, but do you agree, I mean, are you in, do you support infanticide, killing a child after he's born?
00:45:46.000I do not agree with the basis of that question.
00:46:31.000Okay, so, we now need to correct the record.
00:46:33.000So, there was a story that was going around, and it was called into question by a variety of sources, including the Attorney General of the state of Ohio.
00:46:41.000It was the rape of a girl in Ohio, a 10-year-old girl, and she supposedly was referred across state lines to go get an abortion in Indiana.
00:46:49.000And there were a lot of questions about this, because there was no record, at the time, of any of this Having happened or having been reported.
00:46:56.000Well, it turns out that on deep investigation, the Washington Post, by the way, said there was no evidence that this had happened, but then reported it that it was fact because so many people have said it.
00:47:03.000Well, it turns out that the case actually did happen and it is real.
00:47:06.000And the person who raped this little girl was arrested, but only on Tuesday.
00:47:13.000Only on Tuesday, which seems sort of strange to me, like after all of these reports.
00:47:17.000Here's the Columbus Dispatch reporting.
00:47:18.000A Columbus man has been charged with impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl who's traveled to Indiana to seek an abortion, led to international attention following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and activation of Ohio's abortion law.
00:47:29.000Gershon Fuentes, 27, whose last known address was an apartment on Columbus' northwest side, was arrested Tuesday after police say he confessed to raping the child on at least two occasions.
00:47:37.000He's since been charged with rape, a felony of the first degree in Ohio.
00:47:40.000Columbus's police were made aware of the girl's pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children's Services that was made by her mother on June 22nd, according to detective Jeffrey Hunn.
00:47:50.000He testified Wednesday morning at Fuentes-Zarayman.
00:47:52.000On June 30th, the girl underwent a medical abortion in Indianapolis.
00:47:56.000So first of all, it looks as though the mother made the police report.
00:48:00.000It does not look as though we have any information about the doctor who this girl saw making a police report, which is actually required by law.
00:48:09.000Hoon also testified that DNA from the clinic in Indianapolis is being tested against samples from Fuentes as well as the child's siblings to confirm a contribution to the aborted fetus.
00:48:19.000Franklin County Municipal Court Judge Cynthia Ebner said the case did not warrant Fuentes, who is believed to be undocumented, to be held without bond.
00:48:27.000So this story is likely not to be covered for very much longer, because as it turns out, the rapist in this particular case seems to be an illegal immigrant.
00:48:35.000Which means that then we're going to have to get into a broader discussion that the left really doesn't want to have about the damage that illegal immigrants sometimes do when you have no idea what their criminal background is and they are just living willy-nilly in the United States.
00:48:49.000Ohio law enforcement has said that it's possible that this girl could have gotten an abortion even in the state of Ohio, because there's an exception for the life of the mother, and typically 10-year-old girls are not capable of bringing children to term without endangering their own lives.
00:49:01.000That is at least what the law in the state of Ohio says.
00:49:03.000Now, when it comes to the question of edge cases like this, I mean moral edge cases, ones that are really, really sympathetic, obviously.
00:49:11.000All you can have is sympathy for a girl who was raped.
00:49:15.000And the rapist should be castrated or killed, obviously.
00:49:19.000When it comes to edge cases like this, the left likes to argue the edge cases because arguing the edge cases allows them not to argue the central case.
00:49:25.000Arguing the case of the 10-year-old girl who was raped and now wants an abortion, and apparently she was raped when she was 9, arguing that case does not justify the other 99.99% of abortions which do not involve 10-year-old girls being raped.
00:49:39.000And the reality is, of course, that if many Republicans, including Mitt Romney, if many Republicans were to suddenly come out and say, listen, there should be a rape exception for abortion, that would not solve the problem for the left, because the left's answer is that there should be abortion across the board.
00:49:53.000Instead, the media like to focus in, Joe Biden likes to focus in on these edge cases because they don't want to argue the main case.
00:49:58.000It's the same thing as Alexander Ocasio-Cortez arguing about ectopic pregnancy.
00:50:02.000They like to pick edge cases or cases that actually don't fit the fact pattern and then pretend that that is the central case when it comes to abortion in order to try to grant that moral high ground that they were unable to achieve on its own.
00:50:14.000According to the Columbus Dispatch, the criminal charges and testimony from the Columbus detective further confirmed the disturbing story.
00:50:20.000The Indianapolis Star, again its sister paper of the dispatch, first reported this particular story.
00:50:26.000It appeared in outlets around the globe.
00:50:27.000It became a top talking point for abortion rights supporters, including President Joe Biden.
00:50:31.000Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost questioned the validity of the count during an appearance on Fox News this week.
00:50:36.000He told Fox News host Jesse Watters his office had not heard a whisper of a report being filed for the 10-year-old victim.
00:50:41.000He says we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs, not a whisper anywhere.
00:50:45.000Yost doubled down on that in an interview with USA Today Network Ohio Bureau on Tuesday, saying the more time passed before confirmation made it more likely that this was a fabrication.
00:50:54.000During Wednesday's hearing, the Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Dan Meyer requested that Fuentes be held without bond.
00:50:58.000He said Fuentes is not believed to be in the country legally.
00:51:00.000There are questions about his identity.
00:51:03.000Apparently, Fuentes admitted to having sexually abused the girl.
00:51:07.000He would face a potential life sentence in prison.
00:51:11.000So, you know, all of the, um, this is likely to reignite the debate over edge cases, but it really doesn't change the underlying logic when it comes to pro-choice versus pro-life.
00:51:21.000It just happens to be an incredibly sympathetic and horrifying case.
00:51:24.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration pushing forward full scale with its plans to make abortion as prevalent as humanly possible.
00:51:31.000According to Politico, senior Biden administration officials announced on Wednesday they're reminding tens of thousands of pharmacies around the country they risk violating civil rights laws if they refuse to fill orders for contraception or abortion medication or discriminate based on a person's pregnancy status.
00:51:45.000So if a nine-month pregnant woman comes into a pharmacy and asks for a really, really big dose of abortion pill, you're supposed to just give it to them, according to Joe Biden.
00:51:54.000The action comes a few weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and gave more than a dozen states a green light to ban abortion and aims to respond to a wave of reports that pharmacies in those states are refusing to not only fill prescriptions for abortion and contraception pills, but also other medications they speculate could be used off-label to terminate a pregnancy.
00:52:10.000The new guidance from the DHHS sent to 60,000 retail pharmacies says, quote, Well, I mean, federal civil rights law means that you're not supposed to fire women for being pregnant.
00:52:19.000past pregnancy, potential or intended pregnancy, and medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.
00:52:23.000Well, I mean, federal civil rights law means that you're not supposed to fire women for being pregnant.
00:52:28.000It doesn't mean that you are not supposed to have a law that prevents women from terminating their pregnancies.
00:52:32.000The civil rights laws that they are talking about, like the Civil Rights Act, that's the federal Civil Rights Act of the United States.
00:52:38.000Roe v. Wade didn't become law until 1973.
00:52:43.000Citing provisions in the Affordable Care Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the memo argues that pharmacies that receive federal funding can't discriminate based on their views on contraception and abortion in regard to supplying medications.
00:52:54.000The guidance includes several examples of situations that could be a legal violation, including a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for the abortion pill Myfpristone for someone experiencing the kind of early miscarriage that the pill is used to treat.
00:53:08.000On Monday, the White House sent memos to hospitals around the country warning that failure to provide an abortion for a patient in a medical emergency could violate the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
00:53:15.000But of course, that is a moot point anyway, because virtually all pro-life laws around the country guarantee the life of the mother.
00:53:22.000The fact that the White House is focused Like a laser beam on guaranteeing more abortions demonstrates where their head is at.
00:53:29.000And it really is not about 10-year-old girls who, God forbid, get raped and then get pregnant.
00:53:34.000That is not the central case here that the left wants to focus on.
00:53:37.000It's just their fallback position when it turns out they're wrong-footed on the morality.
00:53:42.000Meanwhile, Elon Musk is being sued by Twitter.
00:53:46.000The question, of course, is whether Twitter is going to be able to sue Elon Musk into buying it.
00:53:51.000Heaton and M. Todd Henderson, Over at the Wall Street Journal.
00:53:55.000Keaton being a managing member of an investment research firm in Henderson, a law professor at the University of Chicago, Twitter's going to have a real tough time forcing Musk to buy the company.
00:54:02.000They write, Twitter has sued Elon Musk, seeking to compel him to buy the company for $54.20 a share.
00:54:06.000Many observers think the company will prevail, or that Musk is likely to pay at least a billion-dollar breakup fee.
00:54:11.000He's likely to walk away largely unscathed, a belief reflected in Twitter's stock price.
00:54:15.000This case will be a good lesson on the limits of boilerplate merger agreements and the difference between a corporation and shareholders.
00:54:20.000The merger agreement in this case could be read in a way that permits a court to order Musk to buy Twitter through a remedy known as specific performance.
00:54:27.000Specific performance is you and I sign a contract, and I say that I'm going to provide a service for you, and then I abrogate the contract.
00:54:32.000A court could make me provide the service for you.
00:54:35.000Although litigation is always uncertain, it is difficult to imagine a court would force the purchase of a $44 billion corporation.
00:54:41.000Specific performance is generally used fleetingly, and for good reason.
00:54:45.000It makes sense only when there's no alternative.
00:54:47.000If one agrees to sell Hearst Castle, but tries to back out when a higher bid emerges, a court may specifically enforce the contract.
00:54:52.000There's only one Hearst Castle, and no other remedy can make the jilted buyer whole.
00:54:56.000But where alternatives exist, other remedies usually make more sense.
00:54:59.000Imagine the contract was to paint Hearst Castle, and the painter walked away.
00:55:02.000A court would be reluctant to force the painter to go ahead and do the job.
00:55:05.000No one wants to have his house painted by someone under court order.
00:55:08.000For this reason, Delaware courts rarely order specific performance in merger agreements.
00:55:12.000If Musk doesn't want to buy Twitter, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a court to make him do it.
00:55:15.000Twitter might be worse off under his ownership at that point.
00:55:18.000There are other potential buyers for Twitter.
00:55:20.000What happens if the court orders specific performance and Musk just says no?
00:55:24.000Well, the only means the court has to compel him to line up financing and affix his signature is by holding him in contempt.
00:55:29.000But it isn't Mr. Musk that promised to buy Twitter, but two entities that are actually under his control.
00:55:33.000The court could theoretically hold the entities in criminal contempt, but as Lord Thurlow observed, corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned.
00:55:40.000Mr. Musk promised to cause these entities to consummate the deal, but a court is unlikely to jail him if he shirks or refuses.
00:55:47.000Mr. Musk could play a high-stakes game of chicken that ultimately reveals that courts are extremely limited in cases like this.
00:56:12.000Twitter could have raised the stakes for Musk by including a requirement he pay damages to the shareholders if he walked away, but they didn't actually do that.
00:56:18.000So the only thing left really on the table here is the billion-dollar breakup view for Musk.
00:56:22.000Courts will be much more likely to make Musk pay to walk away than force him to walk down the aisle, but it isn't clear he's going to have to pay that much.
00:56:27.000Because breakup fees are supposed to reflect the damages caused by the breach of contract.
00:56:30.000They aren't supposed to act as a penalty.
00:56:33.000Twitter isn't obviously worse off by a billion dollars, if at all, so it's possible a court might balk at imposing that high fee in the first place.
00:56:39.000So bottom line here is that it looks like, again, Musk has Twitter over a barrel here.
00:56:44.000I mean, he had Twitter over a barrel basically from the point that he made the offer.
00:56:49.000So either he is playing 4D chess, or he has just played himself into a winning hand again.
00:56:56.000To the consternation of all the members of the media, by the way.
00:56:59.000Which is, again, going to remain a hilarious aspect of Elon Musk just trolling the media.
00:57:06.000The left hatred for Musk is one of the most bizarre aspects of modern American media life, considering the fact that he is the founder of the largest electric vehicle company on planet Earth.
00:57:15.000But, you know, the minute you say that you're willing to tolerate the presence of the right, this apparently makes you a rabid right-winger who must be destroyed.
00:57:21.000Alrighty, we'll be back here today with more content.
00:57:24.000In the meantime, go check out the Michael Molls show that's available right now.
00:57:27.000The 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 Ciewiec, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Cristina, Production Coordinator Jessica Kranz.
00:57:51.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.