The economy stumbles towards stagflation as the Biden White House doubles down on stupid, another COID wave puts blue states on edge, and the media finally noticed Joe Biden was kind of lying about Hunter Biden and China. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that consumers with falling credit scores are falling behind on payments for personal loans, and a sign that the consumer lending environment is on record in the U.S. is on the verge of another subprime mortgage crisis. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Want your web activity protected from people who would like to grab a hold of it? Well, do the same thing I do. Use ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com at expressVPN.com slash Ben Shapiro on The Ben Shapiro Show to get 20% off your first month of service with discount code SHIPPERS20 at checkout. Go to PeerTalk.com, shop for the plan that s right for you, and you have nothing to lose. Head on over to Peertalk.com/BenShapiroShow and enter promo code Shapiro to save $50 off your very first month. You can keep your number or phone service, and get 50% off the latest iPhones and Androids you ve been wanting! by becoming a patron patron of the show! Ben Shapiro is a writer, editor, podcaster, and podcaster. . He also writes for the New York Times bestselling author, and hosts a podcast, and is a regular contributor for the Financial Times, The Financial Times. He can be reached at Ben Shapiro's new book, and is . Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s newest podcast, Ben Shapiro Podcast, and Ben Shapiro Reads the latest podcast, The Weekly Standard. and much more. He also tweets about all things Ben Shapiro does on his new podcast, The Real Housewife s Real Housewives on his podcast, Real Housekeeping Podcast, Real Estate Journalist, on the Real Estate Report on The Real Deal Podcast, and he also on his social media account, , and he is on The Cut. on Podchaser. , and he does his own podcast, Too Effedicated to the Real Deal with Ben Shapiro is a real estate agent, Ben is a friend of Ben Shapiro, and Ben is an expert on all things Real Estate Expert, and so much more! And Ben is also on the road in the real estate market.
00:00:25.000Use expressvpn.com at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
00:00:29.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
00:00:31.000First, let me remind you that you are spending way too much on your cell phone coverage.
00:00:35.000Not only that, you're giving a lot of money to people who really, really don't like your viewpoint in all likelihood.
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00:00:42.000They've made it clear through all of their social media marketing that they care a lot more about selling wokeness than they do about selling wireless to people who just want wireless service apolitically.
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00:01:17.000Switching to PeerTalk, it's incredibly simple. You can keep your number or your phone and get huge discounts on the latest iPhones and Androids. They even have a 30-day risk-free guarantee, so you have nothing to lose. Go to PeerTalk.com, shop for the plan that's right for you. Go to PeerTalk.com, enter promo code Shapiro, save 50% off your very first month of coverage. PeerTalk is simply smarter wireless. Again, head on over to PeerTalk.com, enter promo code Shapiro, save 50% off your very first month. All righty, so the economy is in serious, serious trouble.
00:01:45.000According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
00:01:46.000stocks and bond yields fell, with the S&P 500 flirting with a bear market and a continuing sell-off driven by investor fears that the economy could be pitched into a recession.
00:01:55.000The major indices dipped early in Thursday's session, a day after tumbling 4% before recovering ground.
00:01:59.000They ultimately finished lower, with all three on track for weekly losses of at least 2.9%.
00:02:03.000Concerns about consumer spending, which helped lift the market out of the pandemic lows, have weighed on stocks and bond yields as well.
00:02:10.000Bond yields, The Nasdaq Composite Index entered bear market territory early this year.
00:02:55.000But The number of sales is falling, so it looks as though we're about to experience a real problem in the real estate markets as well, which isn't a great shock.
00:03:02.000Again, the prices are so high in every other area of American life that you just don't have enough money left over to pay for the inflated real estate prices that we are seeing right now.
00:03:13.000Apparently, we are now on the verge of another subprime mortgage crisis.
00:03:16.000According to the Wall Street Journal, consumers with low credit scores are falling behind on payments for car loans, personal loans, and credit cards, a sign that the healthiest consumer lending environment on record in the U.S.
00:03:26.000Who could have predicted that when you make credit extraordinarily loose, that when you give a bunch of people who can't pay back their mortgages, mortgages, In the hopes that the market will continue to boost prices beyond what the mortgage is actually worth, and therefore the mortgages won't flip upside down.
00:03:41.000Who could have predicted that this sort of thing would have happened?
00:03:44.000I mean, it's not like this just happened in 2007-2008, well within living memory of all human adults.
00:03:50.000We're going to do the same thing again.
00:03:51.000The share of subprime credit cards and personal loans that are at least 60 days late is rising faster than normal, according to credit reporting from Equifax.
00:03:58.000In March, those delinquencies rose month over month for the eighth time in a row, nearing their pre-pandemic levels.
00:04:03.000Rising delinquencies were inevitable following their decline during the pandemic, many lenders and analysts said.
00:04:07.000Even so, the increase is getting attention from investors, partly because the Federal Reserve is about to Jack up the interest rates, which means you're going to see a lot more people defaulting on their mortgages.
00:04:17.000And that means that the prices of real estate are going to go down, which is going to flip even more people upside down on the mortgages that they have.
00:04:24.000So you could be watching the bursting of a real estate bubble here as well.
00:04:28.000Delinquencies on subprime car loans and leases hit an all-time high in February based on Equifax's tracking that goes all the way back to 2007.
00:04:36.000Many people, including those with less than perfect credit, paid off debts, built up savings during the pandemic.
00:04:40.000The government's response, including stimulus payments and child tax credits, boosted financial health.
00:04:43.000But now many of those benefits have run out.
00:04:46.000Subprime borrowers, who sometimes have lower incomes or less savings, are being hit hard.
00:04:49.000Inflation is also forcing many households to choose between paying for essentials and paying those monthly loans.
00:04:54.000Wells Fargo Chief Executive Charlie Scharf said Tuesday, higher prices for food and gas will constrain U.S.
00:05:11.000Well, people are now finally unretiring.
00:05:13.000Well, one of the stupidities of the American job market is that we assume that people are going to retire and should retire at the age of 65.
00:05:19.000When we made the national retirement age 65, when social security benefits kicked in at the age of 65, the average life expectancy in the United States was 63, which meant that you're really old.
00:05:31.000Well, now 65 is actually really, really young.
00:05:34.000You can expect, if you're born today, you can expect that you will live to at least 80 years of age.
00:05:39.000And that means 15 years in which you ain't getting paid to do a job.
00:05:42.000And for the vast majority of people, I mean, right now, the president of the United States is 80 years old.
00:05:47.000I mean, by this logic, he should have retired 25 full years ago if you're talking about 55 years old.
00:05:53.000The reality is that 65 is the new 55 and 55 is the new 45.
00:05:58.000Which makes sense, since we treat adults like children in this country.
00:06:00.000But instead, we have basically said to 65-year-olds, no, you have to be forced out of the job market.
00:06:04.000Well, now, because it turns out that inflation eats away at fixed incomes, things like Social Security, what that means is that people are going back into the job market after all, which maybe is a good thing, but it's not a good thing for the people who have to do it.
00:06:16.000According to the New York Times, When Kim Williams and millions of other older Americans lost their jobs early in the COVID pandemic, economists wondered how many would ever work again.
00:06:25.000Williams, now 62, wondered too, especially when she struggled for months to find work.
00:06:29.000But in January, she started a new job at a AAA near her home in Waterbury, Connecticut.
00:06:33.000I'm too young to retire, so I had to go back, she said.
00:06:36.000Whether by choice or financial necessity, millions of older Americans have made the same move in recent months.
00:06:40.000Nearly 64% of adults between the age of 55 and 64 were working in April, essentially the same rate as in February 2020.
00:06:46.000That's a more complete recovery than among most younger age groups.
00:06:50.000So the older people being smarter than the younger people are like, maybe I should go back to work.
00:06:54.000Meanwhile, you have people in other age brackets really lagging in terms of where they were As far as labor force participation rate.
00:07:03.000So, for example, if you take the group 20 to 24, that group is still lagging about 5% below where it was before the pandemic in terms of labor force participation.
00:07:13.000A bunch of people are basically just sitting out the economy right now thinking everybody's going to continue paying their bills.
00:07:18.000Those are the people who are going to come up short when it comes time to pay for their mortgage or when it comes time to pay for that car.
00:07:23.000Those are the people who are going to be defaulting.
00:07:26.000The rapid rebound has surprised many economists who thought fear of the virus would contribute to a wave of early retirements, but there is increasing evidence that early retirement narratives were overblown.
00:07:33.000The bottom line is that older workers have gone back to work, said Alicia Minnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
00:07:39.000So, maybe that's good in terms of bringing down the wages, because if you have a broader supply of labor, this does bring down the wages.
00:07:46.000But again, for a lot of people who are on fixed income, inflation is eating away at everything, and they are suffering, and they are feeling it.
00:07:52.000Which is, of course, why there's a new CNN poll showing that 86% of people are at least somewhat scared of how things are going in the United States.
00:07:58.000Here was CNN reporting that yesterday.
00:08:02.00065% of Americans in our brand new CNN poll tonight say they are concerned about how things are going in the U.S.
00:08:08.000Only 4% excited, 10% optimistic, even 1 in 5 say that they are scared.
00:08:15.000Okay, so those are really, really bad numbers.
00:08:18.000You're talking about, excited or optimistic, 14% of Americans.
00:08:22.000Going into a midterm election cycle for Democrats, that's really, really bad.
00:08:26.000It's particularly bad because we are now no longer just in an inflationary cycle.
00:08:30.000So the Biden administration, they kept saying, you know what, inflation is really, you're looking at the wrong side of the coin.
00:08:34.000Inflation, the other side of that coin is heavy consumer demand.
00:08:37.000And heavy consumer demand means people are doing great.
00:08:39.000Because after all, they're out there buying things.
00:08:41.000And if you're buying things, you're buying things because you have the money to buy things.
00:08:43.000And this means things are going Well, if you have a hot economy and inflation working in tandem, then it's not great, but it's not the end of the world.
00:08:52.000When you have stagflation, now you start to look at the end of the world.
00:08:54.000When you have economic stagnation and inflation, the prices are prices people cannot pay, and also nobody's buying anything.
00:09:00.000That's like the worst of all possible worlds.
00:09:02.000This is what happened during the Carter administration and the first couple of years of the Reagan administration before Paul Volcker jacked up the interest rates to like 20%.
00:09:09.000So Mohamed El-Erian, who is the head of Allianz and who is an excellent economic commentator, Yeah, we've had him on the program before.
00:09:19.000He's written very critically of how basically every major government in the world has delegated all financial responsibility to their central banks.
00:09:26.000They basically told their central banks, you're in charge of unemployment and you're in charge of the inflation rate.
00:09:31.000And they've given them too much to do.
00:09:32.000They've used them as the solution of first resort as opposed to the solution of last resort.
00:09:36.000And that means when things get ugly, there's not all that much that central banks can do.
00:09:41.000And central banks aren't always right.
00:10:07.000And the Fed is finally catching up to developments on the ground, but it still has some way to go.
00:10:14.000Hey, Mohamed El-Erian, very, very critical of the Fed's response in all of this, basically saying they overshot the mark and they've been slow off the ball every single time.
00:10:22.000Remember, Jerome Powell originally said inflation was going to be transitory.
00:10:25.000Then he was like, well, maybe it's not so transitory.
00:10:27.000Then it was, there will definitely not be a recession.
00:10:29.000Then it was, well, it's going to be kind of hard to avoid a recession.
00:10:32.000Maybe he's just really bad at his job.
00:10:33.000According to many, many investment fund managers, like 77% of them, They see an economic storm of slowing growth and high inflation taking hold over the course of the next year, according to Yahoo Finance and Fortune magazine.
00:10:45.000Top economists and money managers worldwide are warning that rising consumer prices and falling economic growth are combining to form a deadly recipe for the global economy, stagflation.
00:10:54.000Some 77% of investment fund managers say they see below-trend growth and above-trend inflation, that would be stagflation, as the most likely outcome for the global economy over the next year, according to a May survey from the Bank of America Global Research.
00:11:06.000That is the highest percentage seen since August of 2008, when the economy was pretty terrible.
00:11:11.000Still, despite these gloomy predictions about stagflation, most of the fund managers say that they believe we are past the worst spike in inflation.
00:11:17.000But being past the worst spike in inflation doesn't mean that inflation is going to be in good shape anytime soon.
00:11:57.000And it's bad news generated by bipartisan spending policies and an idiotic assessment by the Biden administration that the way that you get out of an inflationary spiral is apparently to punish businesses.
00:12:08.000That the best way that you can actually get out of an inflationary spiral is to deliberately seek stagnation.
00:12:15.000If you're going to get out of an inflationary spiral, what you have to do is jack up the interest rates, but free businesses at the same time, because that leads them to believe that their economic fundamentals are still sound.
00:12:24.000That if they do things right, if they run a tight ship, they will still not only survive, but thrive and get to keep the benefits of their own labors.
00:12:32.000But if you have an inflationary cycle combined with a bunch of bad regulation and high taxation, who in their right mind is going to invest into that market?
00:12:40.000And yet this is exactly what the Biden administration is openly pursuing at this point.
00:12:44.000So for example, you have the National Economic Council Director for the Biden administration openly saying that they want to raise taxes to cut inflation.
00:12:53.000So your solution is that you're going to disincentivize businesses from investing?
00:13:03.000Raising taxes is not going to markedly bring down inflation.
00:13:06.000The inflation rates are going to be markedly brought down by the increase in interest rates from the Federal Reserve.
00:13:11.000At the margins, you might see a minor decrease in inflation, thanks to raising the taxation on corporations, simply because they won't be able to afford to pay their workers, and so the wages are going to go down a little bit.
00:13:22.000So it'll have a little bit of a marginal effect on the wage price spiral.
00:13:26.000Because if wages go down, prices will have to go down in order to meet the dropping wages.
00:14:03.000That in 1981, when Paul Volcker began raising the interest rates, by 1982, Ronald Reagan had a pretty bad off-year election.
00:14:09.000By 1984, the guy was winning 49 states.
00:14:12.000So it is definitely possible to say to the American public, we're about to go through a rough time.
00:14:15.000There's something we have to do to get things back looking good again.
00:14:19.000We have plenty of room to ramp up the interest rates without completely sinking the economy, but you're going to have to bear with us and there will be some pain.
00:14:26.000You could do that, but they can't do that, because Joe Biden and the Democrats have a pathological aversion to taking blame for anything they themselves do.
00:14:33.000So instead, what they plan to do is raise taxes, punish corporations, force the corporations to fire people, and that will somehow, in a backdoor fashion, bring down wages, which will eventually bring down prices.
00:14:46.000So here is the head of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, talking about how the raising taxes is going to somehow solve this problem.
00:14:57.000If we can continue that deficit reduction, then we will continue from a fiscal policy perspective to reduce price pressures in the economy.
00:15:04.000And one of the most sensible ways to reduce the deficit right now is to enact corporate tax reform that would level the playing field, that would reduce the incentives for corporations to drive profits and production overseas, and would increase revenue to the federal government.
00:15:19.000So they keep going over and over to this idea.
00:15:21.000First of all, even the outcome of his own policies don't make sense.
00:15:24.000He's talking about how basically corporations are just being greedy and that's what's driving inflation.
00:15:29.000Did corporations suddenly become radically greedy?
00:15:32.000According to Democrats, they've been greedy the whole time.
00:15:33.000So what magically changed that made them greedy all of a sudden?
00:15:36.000Also, when he says at the very end of that clip that this is going to drive more revenues to the government, revenues to the federal government are at an all-time high right now.
00:17:24.000I think the price increases that we've seen in energy markets, we know why that is happening.
00:17:29.000And it's because Putin invaded Ukraine.
00:17:32.000The war has taken Russian supply of product, but also Russian refinery capacity off of the market.
00:17:39.000And that has put upward pressure on price.
00:17:41.000OK, so again, this is this is the way that they're going to get out of this, just blaming It isn't going to work.
00:17:46.000If Americans are disquieted about the economy and your plans are, let us raise taxes and yell at corporations and talk about Vladimir Putin, that is not going to do it.
00:17:54.000It's also not going to do it when you have no solutions to any of the problems that your own FDA created.
00:17:58.000When all of your regulatory agencies that work for you are so bad at their job that you end up with a serious baby formula shortage.
00:18:03.000And then you've got the White House legit telling people that the solution to this problem is to call your doctor to get free samples of baby formula.
00:18:11.000When all of this could have been handled, right?
00:18:13.000If you're going to use the FDA to shut down domestic production of this sort of stuff, at the very least, you need to relieve a lot of the regulations on bringing in foreign supply of baby formula, but they didn't do that.
00:18:23.000So instead, the White House has now put out a tweet.
00:18:27.000It says, guidance to follow if you're having trouble finding infant formula.
00:18:30.000Don't water down formula or try to make formula at home.
00:18:33.000Instead, call your OBGYN or pediatrician to see if they have in-office samples.
00:18:40.000So, great, that is what we have now been relegated to.
00:18:44.000I wonder why people are feeling really, really uncomfortable with the way this administration is addressing economic problems.
00:18:50.000The good news is that we have deployed the President of the United States, Jill Biden, to Central and South America to talk about the United States economy.
00:18:56.000I call her the President of the United States because Joe Biden clearly is not.
00:18:59.000We may have an Edith Wilson situation on our hands, where basically Woodrow became a meat puppet and Edith was standing behind him, moving his face like, And like weird sounds would come out and Edith would just basically define the policy.
00:19:10.000We may be almost there with Joe Biden and Joe Biden at this point.
00:19:13.000So Joe Biden was talking about how the real problem in America is income inequality and inequity.
00:19:20.000And she was saying this is what matters to people in Ecuador.
00:19:23.000I'm sorry, could you be any more disconnected from the American people at this point?
00:19:58.000Injustice and corruption, poverty and pollution, disease and despair, they aren't contained by any borders.
00:20:09.000If we learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, From these last few years of sickness and sorrow, it's how one deadly virus can move through the world.
00:20:32.000If we learned something from COVID, what we actually learned is that all of our elites are morons telling you that they can control your life top-down and wreck everything.
00:20:44.000First, Um, your gas, it's really, really expensive.
00:20:47.000I hate to break this to you, but you are spending so much money on gas right now.
00:20:50.000I mean, basically, I mean, I really didn't have to tell you because you had to sell a kidney the other day just to make sure that you could fill your tank.
00:20:55.000Well, one way that you could at least lower some of those costs, get that Upside app.
00:20:59.000My listeners are earning cash back for every gallon of gas every time they fill up.
00:21:02.000Just download the free Upside app in the App Store or Google Play right now.
00:21:06.000Use promo code SHAPIRO for 25 cents per gallon or more on your first fill up.
00:22:09.000Government employment means that being animate is no longer a requirement of the job.
00:22:13.000Rochelle Walensky, who has failed on every score, she says that as we see an uptick in the number of COVID cases across the country, maybe it's time to put back on the mask.
00:22:25.000In areas where community levels are high, everyone should be using prevention measures and wearing a mask in public indoor settings.
00:22:33.000In areas with medium COVID-19 community levels in yellow, individuals should consider taking prevention measures based on their own risk, like avoiding crowds, wearing a mask, increasing their testing, especially before gathering with others indoors.
00:22:47.000And in any COVID-19 community levels, individuals may always choose to wear a mask to protect themselves from infection.
00:22:56.000The experts, this is why you should listen to the experts, because they're so experts when they're doing their experting.
00:23:00.000Speaking of experts, we still have the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, saying the same thing.
00:23:49.000If you are in a region of the country that is in the yellow or orange, I would strongly recommend you consider wearing a mask, especially if you're at high risk or around people who are.
00:23:57.000Why are people in such a bad mood about this administration?
00:24:26.000It now turns out that, remember that time that he said that his son Hunter didn't take a bunch of money from the Chinese, like in open debate?
00:24:32.000In 2020, he said that, like to the entire American public.
00:24:55.000According to the New York Post today, Hunter Biden and a company he ran raked in around $11 million from his controversial business dealings while his dad served as VP and shortly thereafter, according to new scrutiny of the first son.
00:25:05.000An NBC News report found that President Biden's scandal-scarred son burned through cash at a rate of more than $200,000 a month.
00:25:14.000From October 2017 through February 2018, spending it on luxury hotel rooms, payments on a Porsche, and dental work, as well as making unexplained bank withdrawals.
00:25:26.000The eye-popping figures emerged from an analysis of information stored on the first son's laptop.
00:25:31.000Which of course the entire media pretended was Russian propaganda.
00:25:34.000And documents released by Senate Republicans.
00:25:36.000His river of income flowed from 2013 through 2018 as a result of ties to a Ukrainian natural gas company suspected of bribery and a since vanished Chinese tycoon accused of bribery and fraud as well.
00:25:47.000Former White House Chief Ethics Lawyer Richard Painter told the Post, This is an enormous amount of money for Hunter Biden, whom I don't believe is an experienced corporate transactional attorney.
00:26:11.000They do not seem to understand how out of touch they are on the issue of abortion.
00:26:14.000It really is amazing to listen to them talk about abortion as though this is what is going to save them.
00:26:18.000So Nancy Pelosi is now trying to recast abortion as a kitchen table issue, which is Weird imagery, because really, you shouldn't perform abortions on kitchen tables, just generally.
00:27:53.000I mean, when the history of this age is written.
00:27:56.000People will wonder, they will just stare agape at the video evidence that we ever experienced in order quite along the lines of the utterly sincere, totally articulate, unbelievably glib Kamala Harris.
00:28:36.000You know, when I want to be popular with my friends, I head on over to an abortion provider and I just hang out with the people who chop up unborn children all day.
00:28:45.000Kamala Harris, she says, the problem with abortion law, as promoted by the right, is that if we end Roe, it will stop self-determination.
00:29:43.000It involves not having your skull caved in and your brain sucked into a sink.
00:29:46.000Like, generally, if I had to put, like, the fundamental right to self-determination, like, the very, very first step, it's not having your brain sucked into a sink.
00:30:11.000At its core, this is about our future as a nation.
00:30:13.000About whether we live in a country where the government can interfere in personal decisions.
00:30:17.000Yeah, as Kamala Harris is very concerned about the government interfering in personal decisions, the Democrats hate when the government interferes in your life.
00:30:24.000Democrats are known for being unbelievably hands-off when it comes to how you operate economically, in terms of your family, in terms of your marriage, in terms of everything.
00:30:38.000The lack of connection, again, the lack of connection to reality here is just amazing stuff.
00:30:42.000Then, Kamala Harris has to do what the Democrats have been doing.
00:30:44.000So they think, okay, we won't talk about the economy, we'll talk about abortion.
00:30:47.000And they start talking about abortion about halfway through the sentence, they realize that what they're talking about is the sometimes gruesome, always deadly act of killing an unborn baby in the womb.
00:30:59.000And then they immediately switched to, OK, we can't talk quite about that.
00:31:02.000So what if we talk about contraception?
00:31:03.000So let's pretend that that for some reason, Republicans want to, you know, like ban the sale of condoms or something.
00:31:11.000The right to privacy that forms the basis of Roe is the same right to privacy that protects the right to use contraception and the right to marry the person you love, including a person of the same sex.
00:31:28.000Overturning Roe opens the door to restricting those rights.
00:31:33.000Okay, so, again, they're now going to try to broaden out, they're going to try to redirect, even from abortion.
00:31:44.000Again, they have to keep swiveling from their actual abortion argument, because their actual abortion argument is really, really ugly.
00:31:48.000Also, they're trying to misdirect from the fact that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, everyone knows that if there's violence, it's coming from the left.
00:31:54.000So, CBS Morning News actually attempted, I kid you not, Uh-huh.
00:31:58.000to suggest that if there is violence in the aftermath of a Roe vs. Wade striking down by the Supreme Court, that it could come from either side.
00:32:08.000The Department of Homeland Security is mourning about an increased threat of extremist violence after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion striking down the constitutional right to an abortion.
00:32:18.000The Associated Press obtained a memo to local government agencies.
00:32:22.000It says that violence could come from either side of the abortion issue or from other types of extremists seeking to exploit tensions.
00:34:14.000And if the money was to go tomorrow, if the fame was to go tomorrow, who are you then?
00:34:18.000And I had many times of being a rookie in the NBA, doing what I thought I needed to do and having fun, and then looking myself in the mirror and saying, who are you?
00:34:32.000Jonathan's story is courageous and inspiring.
00:34:34.000The Sunday special will be available this Sunday morning on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:34:40.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:34:44.000Meanwhile, Twitter is apparently now adding more content guardrails.
00:34:53.000According to the Wall Street Journal, this is a potential flashpoint with the company's prospective new owner, Elon Musk, who has said he wants the social media platform to dial back on moderating tweets.
00:35:01.000The company said on Thursday it plans to slow what it deems misinformation around crises including armed conflicts, natural disasters, and public health emergencies, and to elevate credible information.
00:35:12.000So when you can't win, rig the game, I guess is the idea.
00:35:16.000By the way, didn't we already see this?
00:35:18.000There's never been any problem with Twitter or social media restricting the free flow of information around controversial issues like public health emergencies.
00:35:25.000I mean, they would never get that wrong.
00:35:27.000It's not as though they would immediately just begin to censor people who had serious questions to ask about the age striation of COVID or the source of where COVID came from in the first place or lockdown policy.
00:35:37.000It's not as though they would ever just, you know, Censor people or ban them for making basic observations about that sort of stuff.
00:35:43.000Twitter said it defines a crisis as a situation in which there is widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence.
00:35:50.000The company said it would determine whether claims are misleading through verification from multiple credible publicly available sources, including evidence from conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, journalists, and others.
00:36:01.000Because all of those people are super duper trustworthy.
00:36:04.000I mean, you can listen to, like, Human Rights Watch, which is not, like, a wild left-wing source, and you can listen to, like, the journalists of the New York Times.
00:36:12.000Probably this will also—this will always be good.
00:36:15.000Hopefully, if Elon Musk does end up going through with his purchase of Twitter, then he will put a stop to that.
00:36:22.000Speaking of which, There's... Elon Musk suggested the other day that when he said he was not going to vote Democrat, there would be a wave of attacks on him.
00:36:31.000So according to The Verge, The Verge suddenly, within like a day of this, has come up with the news that SpaceX reportedly paid $250,000 to cover up Elon Musk's sexual misconduct.
00:36:41.000According to The Verge, SpaceX reportedly paid a flight attendant $250,000 to ensure she didn't speak out or sue the company after Elon Musk allegedly exposed himself and propositioned her for sex, according to a report from Business Insider.
00:36:53.000According to one of the flight attendant's friends, the alleged victim worked as a crew member on a SpaceX corporate flight.
00:36:57.000During one of the flights, the attendant told her friend Musk asked her for a full-body massage in his room.
00:37:02.000Reportedly, this was not unusual, and SpaceX had encouraged the attendant to get him a SUSE license.
00:37:06.000During the massage, Musk allegedly removed the sheet that was covering the lower half of his body, showing her his...
00:37:14.000While rubbing her leg, he reportedly offered to buy the attendant a horse if she would do more.
00:37:18.000The story notes the attendant rode horses.
00:37:20.000The allegations were relayed to Insider by one of the flight attendant's friends, who was asked by the attendant's attorney to sign a declaration backing up the claims in 2018.
00:37:27.000The friend told Insider the attendant refused to carry out any sexual acts on Musk, and that she was really upset following the flight.
00:37:32.000The friend also said SpaceX cut down on the number of shifts she was given following the incident, which the attendant saw as a sign of retaliation.
00:37:38.000Apparently, the attendant filed a complaint to the SpaceX HR department in 2018, saying her career with the company had suffered because of her refusal.
00:37:44.000The company took the complaint to a mediator, not a court or an arbitrator, and signed the attendant to a $250,000 severance agreement, barring her from saying anything bad about Musk or his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla.
00:37:54.000This included talking about the payment itself.
00:37:57.000Musk apparently said there was a lot more to the story.
00:37:59.000He said it was a politically motivated hit piece.
00:38:02.000He had warned that he would be the victim of such tricks.
00:38:09.000When you are talking about alleging that one of the richest people on planet Earth propositioned you for sex and then retaliated against you via his company?
00:38:22.000Just anybody who knows corporate law understands this.
00:38:25.000Just the legal bills on something like this outstrip $250,000 easily, by far.
00:38:31.000The bad publicity at a trial outstrips the cost of this, by far.
00:38:35.000And if she really had the goods, and if she had witnesses, and she had any evidence whatsoever, if any of that had been the case, you think that her lawyers would have told her to settle for a quarter million dollars from Elon Musk?
00:38:50.000Okay, what this really sounds like from outside indicators, the indicator mainly being the size of the settlement.
00:38:55.000Like, if he had settled for five million bucks, you'd be like, oh, that's pretty bad.
00:38:59.000Like, that's big enough that if it were untrue, he probably would have fought it.
00:39:04.000But a $250,000 settlement that she takes to walk away when she's alleging that he literally exposed himself to her and asked her to perform a sexual act on him and then retaliated against her in terms of her job.
00:39:16.000I have a hard time believing that that story would have held together in court.
00:39:24.000Because no one settles for a quarter million dollars with that fact pattern if that fact pattern has any evidence to it or if that fact pattern is true.
00:39:32.000It's... that is... that is weak... that is weak-tea.
00:39:36.000The friend of the flight attendant said that the attendant told her about the misconduct while they were on a hike together shortly after the London trip.
00:39:44.000The friend described the attendant as distraught and visibly shaken.
00:40:25.000Someone with that level of power causing that kind of harm and then throwing some money at the situation that's not accountability.
00:40:30.000There are predators all over the world.
00:40:31.000When someone is particularly wealthy and powerful, they literally have systems that are like a machine working for them to set them up to be able to do whatever they want.
00:40:38.000Remaining silent, said the friend, would make her complicit.
00:40:41.000You become part of the machine that allows someone like Elon Musk to continue to do the horrible things that he has done.
00:40:47.000The friend said her primary concern was clearly her client.
00:40:52.000She said before she reached out to the insider, she called the attorney who represented the victim, and the attorney told her that she was free to speak to the press, but sharing any documents could put the flight attendant at risk.
00:41:01.000She recalled the attorney saying the confidentiality provisions are BS, and that if any other women have been victimized by Musk, they ought to come forward.
00:41:08.000But the attorney urged the friend not to share the declaration.
00:41:12.000The attorney did not respond to requests for a comment.
00:41:15.000So, again, I find this highly non-convincing.
00:41:29.000The media do this sort of stuff all the time.
00:41:32.000They're trying to drag up allegations that there was sexual harassment at a Tesla factory where men at the factory ogled women and remarked on their clothes, according to complaints, leading some women to wear baggy outfits and use stacks of boxes to obstruct the views of leering co-workers.
00:41:47.000I don't even know, how do you evidence this?
00:42:40.000So Jeffries has now launched an aggressive effort to discredit a proposed congressional map that would divide historically black neighborhoods in New York, likening its configuration to Jim Crow tactics.
00:42:48.000Jeffries is spending tens of thousands of dollars on digital advertising as part of a scorched-earth campaign to try to stop New York courts from making the new map final without changes later this week.
00:42:58.000Jeffries said we find ourselves in an all-hands-on-deck moment.
00:43:01.000In his most recent ad, he says the changes took a sledgehammer to black districts.
00:43:06.000Amazing how Jim Crow has really evolved in America.
00:43:09.000Jim Crow went from, you know, black people not being able to vote and being prohibited from going to the same restaurants as white people and being prohibited from going to the same schools as white people and being prohibited from marrying white people.
00:43:18.000It went from that to People having to show ID in Georgia, and also districts not being drawn to Hakeem Jeffries' specific liking in the state of New York, an extraordinarily blue state.
00:43:29.000So Jim Crow is really morphing around here.
00:43:32.000After New York's highest court struck down Democrat-friendly maps drawn by the state legislature as unconstitutional last month, the judges have vested near total power in Jonathan Service, a New York court-appointed special master.
00:43:43.000Service's initial proposal unwound a map gerrymandered by the Democratic-led state legislature, creating new pickup opportunities for Republicans.
00:43:49.000But it also significantly altered the shapes of districts in New York City, carefully drawn a decade earlier by another court that reflected a patchwork of racial, geographic, and economic divides.
00:43:57.000Jeffries was far from alone in lodging last-ditch appeals.
00:44:00.000The court was inundated with hundreds of comments suggesting revisions from both Democrats and Republicans, from party lawyers pressing for more politically favorable lines to an analysis of the difference between Jewish families on the east and west sides of Manhattan.
00:44:12.000The proposed map would divide Bedford, Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and Brownsville, culturally significant black communities in Brooklyn, between the 8th and 9th congressional districts.
00:44:19.000Each neighborhood currently falls in one or the other.
00:44:23.000So, again, the Democrats tried to draw an extraordinarily corrupt map.
00:44:28.000They got stopped by a court, and now they are fighting against the court.
00:44:32.000So things are just going swimmingly for the Democrats here.
00:44:34.000Probably if they talk about racism and abortion more, then it'll go fine for them in 2022, probably, I think.
00:44:40.000Alrighty, we've reached the end of today's show.
00:44:42.000However, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
00:44:44.000First, you can't forget to end your week by checking out The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:44:55.000The 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 Cristina, Production Coordinator Jessica Kranz.
00:45:20.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.