Ben Shapiro explains why Democrats are so obsessed with Omicron and why it s a good thing it s spreading fast. Plus, Bill de Blasio announces a vaccine mandate for all private employees and kids 5+. Plus, Joe Biden faces up to several simultaneous foreign policy crises. Today s show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your data from big tech with the VPN I Trust. Visit expressvpn.org/Itrust to get 20% off your first month with discount code SHAPIRO. That s $5 or more when you use promo code SHOPIRO and save an additional $50 off your very first month! Shoppers can get a new iPhone 12s starting at $479 through the end of the year, and they even have 13s as well! That s a great way to save money on a new phone, and you can get the iPhone 12 for just $479. Shopping for the plan and phone right for you, then you get an additional 50% off for the first month and save $500! That is PureTalk. Head on over to puretalk.com/SHAPIRO to save $50 and get an iPhone 12 with a 5Ghz upgrade for $479 starting at just $99.99. And if you want to be a hero for the holidays, then get your loved one a $479 iPhone 12 s starting at only $99, you can make the switch to a new plan and save over $30 a month and get FREE 3GB of data, you have nothing to lose! PureTalk is a great deal! You can get unlimited talk, 6GBs, unlimited talk and unlimited data, and as I said it works for me! See site for details here. Ben Shapiro's show is all about saving money on the holidays! The average family saves over $800 a year, save $800 in the holidays with Pure Talk USA, and get the best deal on the best service in the best possible place to save the best of the best deals on the cheapest possible deal possible. The best deal in the cheapest cheapest possible place in the world. It ssssssss on the whole place to get the most bang for the most amazing places to live the best experience in the most affordable possible place and the most convenient way to do the most of your time and the cheapest experience possible for you and I ll tell you how to be the best holiday season possible.
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00:01:56.000It's like they were selling you a brand new hoverboard or something.
00:01:59.000No, that was not the thing about Omicron that was supposed to scare you.
00:02:03.000Then it was, it spread super fast in the population.
00:02:05.000You're like, well, yeah, but Delta also spread super fast in the population.
00:02:08.000At no point did they ever say that Omicron was more virulent, meaning more deadly, meaning more damaging.
00:02:14.000Instead, the early data seemed to suggest that it was very infectious and not particularly virulent, sort of like a cold, that it was like a really, really mild case of the flu, actually.
00:02:23.000In fact, to date, I'm unaware of a single report anywhere that anyone has died of Omicron.
00:02:30.000And now, I can name you, like, almost 800,000 Americans who died of COVID, and some 5 million people worldwide, which is a low-end estimate, who have died of COVID, but if no one has died of Omicron, and it's spreading really fast, and it's crowding out Delta, that's a good thing.
00:02:45.000It is a good thing if people are getting Omicron versus Delta if Omicron is milder, because then they get natural immunity via a much milder infection.
00:02:54.000And yet, and yet, the Democrats have decided that they are going to go absolutely ballistic ape bleep over Omicron.
00:03:01.000It's not just Democrats and liberals here in the United States.
00:03:06.000The entire world, which has been incentivized over the past year and a half to push the lie that they can control the spread of Delta and spread of COVID generally, they continue to double down on stupid.
00:03:17.000And now the data continues to drip out.
00:03:21.000The New York Times today, quote, Oh, Macron is fast moving, but perhaps less severe.
00:03:31.000Oh, like you mean like all the data said at the very beginning, like the South African doctor who discovered Oh, Macron said at the very beginning, but we all ignored her because we were too addicted to panic.
00:03:41.000According to the New York Times, the COVID-19 virus is spreading faster than ever in South Africa, the country's president said on Monday, an indication of how the new Omicron variant is driving the pandemic.
00:03:52.000But there are early indications that Omicron may cause less serious illness than other forms of the virus.
00:03:59.000Researchers at a major hospital complex in Pretoria reported their patients with COVID are much less sick than those they've treated before, and that other hospitals are seeing the same trends.
00:04:08.000In fact, they said, most of their infected patients were admitted for other reasons.
00:04:14.000The New York Times has to hedge its bets.
00:04:16.000They say, scientists cautioned against placing too much stock in either the potential good news of less severity or the bad news, like early evidence that prior coronavirus infection offers little immunity to Omicron.
00:04:26.000The variant was discovered just last month.
00:04:28.000More study is needed before experts can say much about it with confidence.
00:04:31.000Beyond that, the true impact of the coronavirus is not always felt immediately.
00:04:34.000There could be hospitalizations and deaths that lag.
00:04:36.000Yes, but normally the hospitalizations and deaths lag by like two to four weeks.
00:04:43.000In the absence of more hard information, says the New York Times, governments have reacted to Omicron with sharp restrictions on international travel and new vaccination requirements.
00:05:43.000And yet, there's a competition, a race now, a frenetic race of people throwing up their hands like Kermit the Frog, racing to try and lock things down.
00:05:53.000So New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who for some odd reason, this big, giant, weird-ass, Frankenstein-like communist, thinks that he's going to run for governor of New York.
00:06:01.000Good luck to him after his failed presidential campaign.
00:06:03.000I mean, they can barely stand him in the city of New York.
00:06:06.000So he announced on Monday that he would be requiring on-site employees at all private businesses, all of them, from bodegas to multinational banks to get vaccinated in order to work inside the city.
00:06:19.000The mandate would apply to about 184,000 businesses.
00:06:23.000De Blasio said this is a pre-emptive strike designed to stall another wave of virus cases amid rising concerns about Omicron.
00:06:31.000By the way, this thing is set to take effect December 27th.
00:06:34.000That's like four days before Bill De Blasio is no longer mayor of New York.
00:06:39.000So on his way out, he's just leaving you a sweet goodbye cookie, New York City.
00:06:43.000And it'll be fun to see whether Eric Adams, the incoming mayor, decides to double down on that and just continue with such policies or whether to the cheers of the throngs, he decides to repeal Bill de Blasio's insane order.
00:06:54.000I would bet that he decides to maintain it because he can always say that de Blasio put it in place and he didn't actually have to do anything.
00:07:00.000And the way that it works apparently in blue areas is the more crazy you are about COVID, the more you are rewarded.
00:07:05.000This is why people on the left made Jacinda Ardern the Prime Minister of New Zealand into some sort of heroine for locking down the island completely.
00:07:14.000This is why people on the left seem okay with Australia welding people in their houses, essentially.
00:07:19.000It seems like you are rewarded by the political calculus of the moment by the left, the more harshly you crack down.
00:07:25.000And what starts in one of the big blue cities never ends up there.
00:07:28.000Eventually, you'll see it in San Francisco, you'll see it in New York, you'll see it in Chicago.
00:07:32.000And this will exacerbate the population separation we've seen in the United States, because I promise you, if you're a business in New York, and let's say that 10% of your iBankers don't actually want to get vaxxed, are you just going to sit there and fire them all?
00:07:44.000Or are you just going to move your headquarters outside the city?
00:07:48.000Real estate in Florida ain't going down, guys.
00:07:51.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:07:53.000First, let's talk about keeping your home safe and secure this holiday season.
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00:08:10.000So whether you're running across town or across the country this busy season, you and your loved ones can rest easy knowing your home is protected.
00:08:32.000I love my ring alarm because every time I'm out of town, I can check in on the house and I can see what crazy stuff my kids are doing around the premises.
00:08:38.000In fact, even when I'm home, I was in the backyard the other day and I was supposed to be watching the baby, got caught up on my phone, looked around, baby's gone.
00:09:03.000Bill de Blasio announces on his way out that he is going to be putting down these new mandates.
00:09:08.000Here was Bill de Blasio yesterday on MSNBC.
00:09:12.000We in New York City have decided to use a preemptive strike to really do something bold to stop the further growth of COVID and the dangers it's causing to all of us.
00:09:23.000So, as of today, we're going to announce a first-in-the-nation measure.
00:09:27.000Our health commissioner will announce a vaccine mandate for private sector employers across the board.
00:09:34.000All private sector employers in New York City will be covered by this vaccine mandate as of December 27th.
00:09:40.000We're going to have some other measures as well to really focus on maximizing vaccination quickly so we can get ahead of Omicron and all the other challenges we're facing right now with COVID.
00:09:54.000And then de Blasio decides that he is going to extend this.
00:10:07.000Now, your 5-year-old wasn't going to die of COVID.
00:10:10.000Statistically speaking, the number of children under the age of 18 who have died of COVID being perfectly healthy beforehand is vanishingly low.
00:10:19.000But according to Bill de Blasio, if your kid is 5 to 11, they now must vax in order to go to a Broadway show with you.
00:10:25.000Remember how, it's incredible how fast, remember there were people at the beginning of this thing who said it's a slippery slope.
00:10:30.000And I sort of resisted that idea, to be honest with you, that this was a slippery slope.
00:10:33.000I thought, okay, well, you know, we can still make policies that are geared towards saving lives and geared toward protecting the elderly.
00:10:41.000We can do all of that in a rational way based on the data.
00:10:44.000And there were people from the very beginning who expected the worst and who started arguing this was going to be a slippery slope to full authoritarian tyranny from people like Bill de Blasio.
00:10:58.000It seems to be that populations, large swaths of people, will not only stand for this, they will cheer for this.
00:11:04.000How else could you have a mayor of the biggest city in America making the argument that five-year-olds must be vaccinated in order to go to a bodega with you?
00:12:16.000By the way, I'm looking right now at the vaccination by demographic group in the city of New York.
00:12:21.000So right now in the city of New York, about 55 percent, this is according to New York City's government website, About 55% of black New York City residents have one dose of the vaccine.
00:12:34.000Only 49% of black New York City residents, 49%, less than half, are double-vaxxed for COVID.
00:12:42.000None of them will be able to work in the city if Bill de Blasio has his way, if they work in the private sector.
00:12:48.000Only 62% of Latinos living in the city of New York, or Latinxs, as Bill de Blasio might put it, Only 62% are fully vaccinated in the city of New York.
00:12:59.000By the way, only 56% of white people in the city of New York are double-vaxxed.
00:13:05.000So, like, a huge percentage of people in the city of New York are apparently not double-vaxxed.
00:14:11.000But I guess the idea is that no one must ever blow their nose again.
00:14:15.000The Wall Street Journal went after Bill de Blasio this morning.
00:14:18.000He says this will yield diminishing public health benefits while making it harder for the city to recover economically from his and former New York Governor's Andrew Cuomo's destructive lockdowns.
00:14:28.000De Blasio has already required vaccines for city government workers, teachers, anyone who wants to eat at a restaurant, use a gym, or see a show.
00:14:34.000This has harmed small business and tourism.
00:14:36.000And apparently these mandates are not coercive enough for his honor.
00:14:38.000So now he's giving the unvaccinated an ultimatum.
00:14:40.000Get one shot by December 27th, leave the city, or stay unemployed.
00:14:44.000New York City still has a 9.4% unemployment rate in October, and businesses can't find enough workers.
00:15:21.000Well, she issued a statement on New York City's announcement, quote, I support a vaccine mandate with a testing option, but why are we still doing this piecemeal?
00:15:27.000A mandate alone won't get us out of the crisis, particularly when it's implemented without input from employees and employers.
00:15:33.000Science tells us we need everyone to wear masks in public settings, accessible at-home testing, and real public health outreach to our communities.
00:15:40.000This cannot be done municipality by municipality.
00:15:44.000They are stampeding to the left in that New York governor's race.
00:15:47.000The reason Kathy Hochul is getting wildly restrictive is because she's hoping to outflank Letitia James, who's hoping to outflank Bill de Blasio, who's hoping to outflank both.
00:15:57.000The authoritarianism is no longer the bug.
00:16:01.000We sure move fast from mask up to protect grandma when there are no vaccines available to make sure that you get your five-year-old double vaxxed so you can see a Broadway show.
00:16:11.000By the way, in Oregon, they're doing the same thing.
00:16:13.000Oregon has now begun drafting forever rules for masking.
00:16:17.000According to KGW8, in Oregon, quote, the Oregon Health Authority's Rules Advisory Committee met last Thursday to begin the process of drafting a permanent set of rules for the state's indoor mask requirement.
00:16:28.000OHA lifted Oregon's outdoor mask mandate last week.
00:16:38.000But separate mask rules for indoor spaces, schools, and healthcare settings all remain in place.
00:16:43.000Oregon's first mask mandate was imposed May 2020, lifted in June 2021.
00:16:46.000The more virulent Delta variant arrived in late July, and health leaders reimposed the mask mandate in August.
00:16:53.000The current indoor mask mandate is temporary.
00:16:55.000It's set to expire in February, so Oregon health leaders want to be able to switch to a permanent rule.
00:17:01.000The permanent rule could still be ended once COVID-19 recedes to a safe level, but it could remain in place indefinitely.
00:17:07.000And it won't expire prematurely while case numbers are still dangerously high.
00:17:11.000So in Oregon, they are now talking about a draft permanent rule that allows the state to mask you up at will under all circumstances.
00:17:20.000Meanwhile, by the way, if you're the Oregon governor, you're good to go.
00:17:22.000If you're the Oregon governor, no need to worry.
00:17:24.000You can just go to public places and take your mask off.
00:17:27.000Because after all, you are one of the specials.
00:17:30.000According to the Daily Wire, John Rigalizzo reporting.
00:17:33.000Democratic Oregon Governor Kate Brown was spotted maskless at a gala event in Washington, D.C., even as she pushes for permanent mask mandates in her state.
00:17:40.000She was the featured guest at the LGBTQ plus IA, greater than sign, less than sign, question mark, backslash, double quotation mark, semicolon, 30th anniversary gala in Washington, D.C.
00:17:52.000Brown was also one of the four LGBTQ, at sign, hashtag, dollar sign, percentage sign, caret.
00:17:59.000Victory Hall of Fame inductees, from a pro-LGBTQ, open parenthesis, closed parenthesis, open bracket, closed bracket, colon, PAC.
00:18:10.000A Twitter user posted a photo of himself standing with Brown and David Gins, Deputy Director of Operations for Vice President Kamala Harris, who by the way has been making a lot of appearances recently in the media.
00:18:20.000You'll remember that it was yesterday that David Gins, the Deputy Director of Operations for Vice President Harris, put out a photo of himself, very excited about his job, staring Desperately into nothingness.
00:18:31.000With a tweet saying how much he loved Kamala Harris.
00:18:59.000For the left, COVID has basically become a pagan god.
00:19:02.000And if you appease the pagan god by pushing mask mandates, you can do whatever you want.
00:19:05.000You have bought yourself an indulgence.
00:19:08.000If you believe in government top-down control, you don't have to wear a mask.
00:19:10.000If you believe in government top-down control, you can come vacation in Florida.
00:19:14.000If you believe in government top-down control and lockdowns, then you get to be as reckless as you want to be, and no one will ever blame you because you have come out and you have said all of the right things.
00:19:24.000In the media, by the way, they are mirroring this perspective.
00:19:26.000Mehdi Hassan, the terrible host on MSNBC, he yesterday was saying, we need harsher measures on COVID.
00:20:53.000So here's Sunny Hostin, well behind the times and also unable to pronounce the name of this particular variant of the virus.
00:20:59.000Well, you know, it was interesting to me that the argument was being made, if you're vaccinated, why do you care about me being vaccinated?
00:21:55.000And if some people got COVID, they were fine because everybody had the choice to get vaccinated already.
00:21:59.000Or they were small children, so no one cares.
00:22:02.000If you choose to be miserable, in the misery lies the happiness.
00:22:06.000It really is not that they think that if we do X, Y, and Z, we'll get out of the pandemic.
00:22:09.000It's that they kind of revel in the pandemic.
00:22:11.000The people who revel in this stuff most are the white-collar idiots who are sitting up there in their air-conditioned offices with their laptops or on camera all day, telling you how terrible Omicron is.
00:22:20.000Everybody else in the country is like, eh.
00:22:23.000And all these guys are like, oh my God, I'm so worried.
00:22:25.000I'm so deeply worried that I'm going to die.
00:22:31.000If I have to hear one more person who makes $500,000 a year complain about how their two-year-old might get sick from Omicron when there's no evidence that your two-year-old was ever going to die of COVID, it's just sick-making.
00:22:45.000The most risk-averse people on planet Earth are now controlling the entire discourse and celebrating themselves as moral actors for it while they put a bunch of low-income people who already had COVID out of jobs for not getting vaxxed.
00:22:59.000We'll get some more on this in just one second.
00:23:01.000First, it is the holidays, and that means it is time for you to get yourself a gift.
00:23:06.000So you're at the office, many hours a day, got that backache, sitting in one of those uncomfortable office chairs that you inherited from the guy who had the job before you.
00:23:13.000Why not get yourself the Chair of Gods, my friends, the Throne of Joy.
00:23:23.000We actually have actual fight club fist fights in the break room to see who gets to sit in the X-chair each day.
00:23:28.000It's the most entertaining part of the day.
00:23:30.000Not only is X-chair the world's greatest office chair, with its patented Elemax technology, it doubles as a massage chair and It can either cool or warm your back.
00:25:11.000They believe that only by By attempting sort of paganistic sacrifices, if they wear the mask, and if they dictate that you wear the mask, if they offer their children up on Mount Moriah as sacrifices to COVID, mask up the five-year-old, and make sure that this kid cannot go to Aladdin unless this kid is double, triple, quadruple, octuple-vaxxed, then this will somehow prevent the wrath of COVID, right?
00:25:43.000COVID has constructed an alternative universe where they get to do whatever they want, where they get to dictate all the terms of engagement, where people have been more willing to give up power to government than any time in American history.
00:26:04.000Please tell us what jobs we can and cannot work.
00:26:06.000Please tell us whether we can open our business, whether we can't open our business.
00:26:10.000And if we fear COVID and we love COVID enough, it will usher in a new kingdom of COVID glory upon Earth, where we build back better, where we wreck all the institutions, where we get rid of logic, where we get rid of data, and we live solely on faith.
00:26:29.000And that's why you end up with idiotic pieces of culture like Jimmy Fallon cutting songs for Christmas with Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion.
00:26:48.000You, my friend, are Thee Stallion, because it's T-H-E-E.
00:26:51.000Megan Thee Stallion, with Ariana Grande, singing with Jimmy Fallon, who's aging like a bad piece of cheese over here.
00:27:00.000I gotta say, I remember when Jimmy Fallon was young and he's now reaching the age where this is just kind of creepy and odd and sort of yucky.
00:27:10.000Here he is singing a song with Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion about masking up for Christmas.
00:27:15.000And they're so, here's the thing, they're playing it as parody, but they're actually kind of comfortable with it.
00:27:25.000What sort of sacrifices you should perform?
00:27:27.000Sure, Christmas is supposed to be a time for Christians where you celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but for Jimmy Fallon and Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion, all of whom are definitely, I would say, excellent advocates on behalf of traditional Christian worldview, what Christmas is truly about is COVID masks and shots and sitting by the fire wearing odd accoutrements.
00:27:57.000Her fingernails are syringes, in case you can't see.
00:28:00.000on the couch, this year hang that mistletoe.
00:28:04.000Her fingernails are syringes, in case you can't see.
00:29:31.000Because, according to Dr. Anthony Foucher, by the way, even if you're fully boosted, you should still mask up when you are in the presence of others.
00:29:36.000In fact, there's an entire article in the Atlantic.
00:29:38.000It is titled, How to Socialize Safely in the Booster Era.
00:29:41.000Okay, so I have a recommendation as to how to socialize safety in the booster era.
00:29:46.000Get a booster or don't, and then do whatever the hell you want because it's a free country and shut the f*** up.
00:30:42.000vaccinated. Jessica Mladie Rivera, a research fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, told me she wouldn't feel safe spending time with an unvaxxed person indoors. If she saw them at all, the meetup would be outside and with masks. Outside and with masks? But she's vaxxed and probably boosted. Like, what? It's so tiresome. It's tiresome. But again, all of this makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them feel self-righteous.
00:31:09.000Just like all other virtue signaling from the left, it is all about doing irrelevant things that have no impact on the real world and then saying that your friends aren't doing it so you're better than they are.
00:31:18.000It's like composting, or recycling, or in a big city where they take all your recycling and they toss it into the same landfill as your garbage.
00:31:25.000They're like, oh well, did you fully use your recyclables?
00:33:40.000Head on over to AmericanFinancing.net or give them a call at 866-721-3300.
00:33:44.000Okay, we're going to get to Joe Biden's foreign policy crises because he is a disaster on all fronts.
00:33:51.000First, it has never been more important that Americans get their news from objective voices who value the truth, which is why we created our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
00:33:59.000Morningware has been topping the Apple and Spotify charts since its release.
00:34:02.000We're continuing our commitment to bring you the news without a hidden agenda.
00:34:10.000And while we are working overtime to bring you the news you need to know, we need your help to keep those facts trending toward number one.
00:34:16.000Start listening right now to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:34:20.000Leave a five-star review if you like what you hear.
00:34:23.000Also, if you haven't heard, Matt Walsh is now an honorary member of the LGBTQ plus star sign, open parentheses, closed bracket, weird carrot thingy.
00:34:33.000Weird squiggly thing that goes over Spanish letters.
00:34:38.000Hey, he's a member of that community now.
00:34:39.000Because his best-selling new book, Johnny the Walrus, did not only sell out immediately after its release, it's now the number one LGBTQ+, I-A-A, blue, color purple, print sign, bestseller on Amazon's charts.
00:34:54.000Matt Walsh is not just a beloved children's book author, he's now a best-selling LGBTQ+, minus, multiplication sign, division sign, long division sign, square root, imaginary number sign author.
00:35:07.000And don't worry, you can reserve your copy at johnnythewalrus.com.
00:35:10.000Get your hands on the next batch, shipping out soon.
00:35:13.000It's the exhilarating tale of a young boy who pretends he's a walrus.
00:35:16.000And it is all pretend, until the internet tells Johnny's mommy that Johnny is actually a walrus and she must uphold his trans walrus identity.
00:35:22.000If you know Matt's brain, you'll laugh your butt off reading this to your kids or to yourself.
00:35:26.000So, head on over to johnnythewalrus.com, reserve your copy of Matt's timely masterpiece, Johnny the Walrus, today.
00:35:31.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:35:34.000All right, so meanwhile, we have our doddering old fool of a president who has somehow pulled defeat from the draws of victory with the economy, pulled defeat from the jobs of victory, the draws of victory with regard to COVID.
00:35:53.000And now he's pulling defeat from the draws of victory with regard to foreign policy.
00:35:57.000So he already did this in Afghanistan.
00:35:58.000He literally just surrendered Afghanistan to a bunch of eighth century tribal barbarians who stuff women into bags and then stuff them into the basement and starve children and marry off those children for an actual fee.
00:36:10.000He just gave up a country to those people.
00:36:12.000And now he is facing down other crises from Russia, from China, from Iran.
00:37:26.000The Democracy Summit that will happen later this week is an opportunity to bring together U.S.
00:37:33.000officials, civil society leaders, and foreign leaders who represent a diverse array of experiences to talk about strengthening democracy, defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights.
00:37:49.000Inclusion or an invitation is not a stamp of approval on their approach to democracy, nor is exclusion a stamp of the opposite of that, of disapproval.
00:38:00.000They're still strong on human rights this administration?
00:38:02.000Man, I think that they've got a handle on all of this.
00:38:06.000So when it comes to China, China is now building military bases in the Pacific.
00:38:12.000They're seeking their first military base on Africa's Atlantic coast, according to U.S.
00:38:17.000According to the Wall Street Journal, classified American intelligence reports suggest that China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S.
00:38:28.000The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings, but they said the reports raised the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the east coast of the United States, a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and the Pentagon.
00:38:42.000So, Heming in China, that's going really well, particularly after we surrendered in Afghanistan and made clear that we are a complete and utter paper tiger.
00:38:52.000The great power skirmishing over a country that rarely draws outside attention reflects the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:38:58.000The two countries are sparring over the status of Taiwan, China's testing of a hypersonic missile, the origins of COVID-19, and other issues.
00:39:05.000Worldwide, the United States finds itself maneuvering to try to block China from projecting military power from new overseas bases, from Cambodia to the United Arab Emirates.
00:39:14.000In Equatorial Guinea, the Chinese likely have an eye on Bata, according to a U.S.
00:39:18.000Bata already has a Chinese-built deepwater commercial port on the Gulf of Guinea.
00:39:21.000Excellent highways link the city to Gabon and the interior of Central Africa.
00:39:26.000The most significant threat from China would be a militarily useful naval facility on the Atlantic coast of Africa, said General Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S.
00:39:34.000By militarily useful, I mean something more than a place they can make port calls and get gas and groceries.
00:39:38.000I'm talking about a port where they can rearm with munitions and repair naval vessels.
00:39:43.000So things are going really well with the Chinese.
00:39:46.000Meanwhile, Jen Psaki and the Biden administration, they are taking the overwhelmingly brutal move of saying they won't send official representatives to the Beijing Olympics.
00:39:54.000Ooh, I'm sure that Xi Jinping is just quaking in his boots.
00:39:58.000I mean, after all of the harsh treatment we gave them for unleashing a virus on the world that killed upwards of five million people, I'm sure that he's quaking in his boots that we won't be sending an undersecretary of state from Tony Blinken's Coffee break room over to Beijing for the Winter Olympics.
00:40:14.000Probably Xi Jinping is like, Oh my God, that's crazy.
00:40:17.000Except for everything we were going to do before.
00:40:19.000Here was Jen Psaki announcing this massive move.
00:40:22.000The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, given the PRC's ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.
00:40:39.000The athletes on Team USA have our full support.
00:40:43.000We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home.
00:40:46.000We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games.
00:40:51.000Okay, and I'm sure that the China... So basically what we've now achieved by not sending a diplomat to China is to piss off the Chinese without actually doing anything.
00:41:10.000According to the Washington Post, reporter Isabel Kursugian and Paul Sohn, with Russian troops massed along the border with Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin is expected to issue President Biden an ultimatum during a video meeting on Tuesday.
00:41:24.000Wait, I was told that Hillary Clinton was going to hit the reset button.
00:41:26.000Russia might soon launch an offensive against its neighbor.
00:41:29.000The Kremlin has said it wants written guarantees from the United States and allies in NATO that the military alliance will not expand east, both in terms of membership and Western forces.
00:41:37.000The video call comes during an unprecedented low point in U.S.-Russia relations, especially over Ukraine.
00:41:42.000Wait, I was told that Hillary Clinton was going to hit the reset button.
00:41:45.000I was told that Joe Biden was a masterful manipulator of the international scene.
00:41:50.000By the way, anybody who told you that's an idiot.
00:41:52.000It was Barack Obama who famously said, don't underestimate Joe Biden's ability to F things up.
00:41:57.000It was Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense under both Obama and under Bush, who said, yeah, this guy has never made a right decision on foreign policy.
00:42:07.000The White House has threatened Russia with serious consequences.
00:42:13.000Those sanctions, they've done wonders for our anti-Russian position.
00:42:17.000Those sanctions on particular figures inside the Russian national system.
00:42:22.000So they just use a bunch of cutouts to move their money.
00:42:24.000It's obviously really deterred the Russians.
00:42:27.000Putin plans to outline Russia's proposal to Joe Biden.
00:42:29.000Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, their talks are expected to be quite long and substantive.
00:42:35.000I'm sure that that is going to be by quite long and substantive.
00:42:39.000They mean that Joe Biden is going to fall asleep 10 minutes into the conversation.
00:42:42.000And then Vladimir Putin is just going to threaten him for a while.
00:42:45.000And then Joe Biden, his unconscious face is going to slam into the hang up button on the phone.
00:42:49.000That's how that's how World War Three starts is with the president slipping into unconsciousness and his hand hitting the nuclear button.
00:42:55.000That seems like how this is going to work out.
00:42:58.000Meanwhile, over at the White House, they're trying to struggle for like, what do they do here?
00:43:03.000So a reporter asked the White House, you know, Joe Biden was vice president when Vladimir Putin took over Crimea and he did a bad job then.
00:43:08.000So why are we supposed to believe he's going to do a good job now?
00:43:12.000You mentioned that Biden was obviously deeply involved with the Ukraine in 2014.
00:43:17.000And I'm wondering if you could talk about what his takeaways are from that experience, because a lot of the things that he's saying this time, supporting NATO allies on the eastern flank, sanctions, those sound like the same things that you guys tried to do in 2014, and it didn't stop Russia from taking Crimea.
00:43:33.000So why does he think this will be different?
00:43:36.000Well, I think first, our objective at this point, Mara, is of course to prevent them from moving forward.
00:43:58.000According to the Washington Post, Biden plans to make clear to Putin what costs the United States and its allies will impose on Russia if an invasion occurs, but also will offer a diplomatic pathway that could address Russian concerns about NATO activities, as well as U.S.
00:44:10.000and European concerns about Russian activities.
00:44:12.000The official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
00:44:15.000Still, the official suggested a written guarantee from Washington that NATO will not expand to include Ukraine was a non-starter, noting the United States believes every sovereign nation should have the right to make its own decisions about its security.
00:44:27.000Putin has to know that the West is not going to give him a written guarantee that NATO will never include Ukraine, which means that he's basically just looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine.
00:44:37.000Now, this seems like it's not a big deal up until the point where Putin crosses that border with 100,000 troops.
00:44:42.000At that point, this becomes a very serious situation indeed.
00:44:45.000Because what exactly is the West prepared to do?
00:44:48.000We obviously are not prepared to put a trigger force in there that would prompt a wider fight back against the Russians.
00:44:55.000We've given the Ukrainian military under President Trump, we've given them some javelin missiles, but they have not been rearmed under Biden to any serious extent.
00:45:15.000And then you dare the West to do anything about it.
00:45:17.000And given what we did over Georgia, given what we did over Crimea, the answer is probably the West does nothing over it.
00:45:22.000And Vladimir Putin just goes home, notches another win.
00:45:26.000And the West once again just starts taking Russian oil.
00:45:31.000There's a famous quote attributed to Stalin.
00:45:34.000That you basically push where there's mush, meaning that wherever the other side is willing to give, that's where you push.
00:45:41.000Vladimir Putin has yet to discover the hard core of the West.
00:45:44.000And it is questionable as to whether there is a hard core in the West anymore.
00:45:49.000When we said that there was a mistake for the Biden administration to randomly pull out of Afghanistan because it conveyed weakness, there are consequences to that weakness.
00:45:57.000And that is the exacerbated chances of a great power conflict, for sure.
00:46:02.000Meanwhile, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, he points out, and he is correct, there is no appetite for U.S.
00:46:15.000The way deterrence works is the more, right, strength, peace through strength, the Reagan-esque slogan, was designed to mean, we will show you that we are willing to go to war so we don't have to.
00:46:26.000It seems that the new American style is.
00:46:28.000We will show you that we are never willing to go to war.
00:46:30.000And then war is somehow randomly thrust upon us.
00:46:32.000Here's CNN's Jeff Zeleny pointing out the obvious here.
00:46:36.000There is no appetite here for military intervention.
00:46:40.000On a briefing earlier with a senior administration official, there was several moments of silence when that question was asked about a military solution to all of this.
00:46:52.000So, of course, they're not ruling anything out, but they simply do not want to add another thing, which would be a significantly dangerous thing to the plate of this Biden administration, which is already quite full, quite frankly.