O.J. Simpson was a murderer, but he spent the last half of his life being treated by some in the media as though he was instead a controversial figure. And yet, to the celebration of a wide swath of the American population, he will be remembered as a person who really widened the gap between the races in the United States in a dramatic way, and in a way that, in some ways, has never been fully closed. Today, we remember him as a double murderer who got away with it for racial political reasons, and who left in his wake one of the signal events in truly American history: the acquittals of OJ Simpson in the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and the acquittal of her husband, Ron Goldman, in the 1994 murder of Nicole and her friend, Nicole's ex-husband, O J. Simpson. This episode is brought to you by the National Museum of American Indians and Torres, and edited and produced by Annie-Rose Strasser. The opinions expressed here are our own, not those of our employers. We do not claim any responsibility for the opinions expressed by our employees, employers, suppliers, or clients. Thank you for your support and condolences to the families affected by this difficult and sad news. We understand that this is a difficult and difficult time, and we appreciate the outpouring of love and support that has been shown by the people who shared it with us in this episode. Rest in Paradise, Los Angeles, California. Our hearts and prayers go out to the family, friends, family, and supporters, and all the many more who lost a loved one in this tragic day in history. RIP, OJ and may you rest in peace, Oj Simpson, my brother and sister in heaven. -Eugene Simpson, you will always be in our hearts. Love always, always, forever. -Amen and sister. -John Singleton -PATREON BONUS CONTENT: This episode was written by a good friend of mine - John Rocha . - John R. Simpson - Thank you, my sister - John and I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast, John, I am so sorry for all the love and respect you're listening to this podcast - I know you'll miss this, I love you, I'll see you next week - - and I'm going to miss you.
00:00:10.000And everyone knows that he was a murderer, but he spent the last half of his life being treated by some in the media as though he was instead a sort of controversial figure.
00:00:19.000A headline from the Washington Post sort of sums this up.
00:00:26.000The answer, for everyone who remembers the O.J.
00:00:28.000Simpson murder trial, is he will be remembered as a person who very obviously murdered his ex-wife and a person named Ron Goldman, and then who proceeded to be alleviated of the criminal responsibility for that double murder by a jury of people who were politically motivated.
00:00:43.000To the celebration of a wide swath of the American population, he will be remembered as a person who really widened the gap between the races in the United States in a dramatic way, and in a way that, in some ways, has never truly closed.
00:00:55.000It seemed like between OJ Simpson and the election of Barack Obama, America was becoming more racially reconciliatory.
00:01:02.000And then Barack Obama opened those gaps wide again in 2010, 2011, 2012.
00:01:07.000But the OJ Simpson trial was the moment when Americans realized that the attempts of the 1960s and the 1970s to move beyond America's terrible history of racism That that had some pretty impactful consequences, and that there were two sides to the racial conflict in the United States.
00:01:24.000Because up until the Civil Rights Movement, there really was only one side.
00:01:28.000That side was American white supremacists treating black people as chattel, and then American white supremacists treating black people as trash.
00:01:35.000And then after the Civil Rights Movement, the idea was, okay, we're going to put all of that behind us.
00:01:38.000We're now going to move forward in a country that tries to actually meet the guarantees of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal.
00:01:47.000And then in the OJ Simpson trial, it became very clear to a lot of Americans that the standard of equal justice for all, it was not only a matter of, could that be reached?
00:01:57.000It was a matter of, did everyone want that standard to be reached?
00:02:01.000That's what the OJ Simpson trial meant for a lot of people.
00:02:04.000And that's what he will be remembered for as a double murderer who got away with it for racial political reasons.
00:02:10.000So as I say, he died yesterday at the age of 76.
00:02:17.000Still, the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown, without obviously members of their families, who he had brutally slain.
00:02:25.000Not just that, he still owed more than $100 million to their families because they won civil trials against him after losing the criminal trial in favor of convicting him.
00:02:35.000The evidence against OJ, for those who weren't alive for this, was overwhelming.
00:02:38.000And if you weren't alive for the OJ Simpson trial, if you were born afterward, or if you don't remember it very well, it was one of the signal events in truly American history.
00:02:48.000Like, there are very few places in your memory that you can remember where you were when the thing happened.
00:02:53.000For people who are older than I, Pearl Harbor or the moon landing.
00:02:57.000For people of my age, the two events that come to mind, where you knew where you were when it happened, We're the O.J.
00:03:06.000Those were the two events where you really know where I was in a classroom in Los Angeles, where the trial was taking place, and they actually wheeled a television into the classroom, the public school classroom I was attending.
00:03:16.000And I remember vividly that as they announced the verdict on the TV, in the public school classroom, where I was going to school, the racial breakdown in the class was perfectly obvious.
00:03:27.000Every kid who was not white was celebratory about the verdict, and every kid who was white was sort of shocked by the verdict.
00:03:37.000No one legitimately believed that OJ was innocent.
00:03:40.000It was just a question of whether you wanted to see him acquitted because of racial reasons and those racial reasons were explained at the time and even now by people who believe that somehow some sort of revenge was deserved for America's terrible racial history by allowing a black man who had largely traveled in white circles.
00:03:59.000OJ Simpson was seen as someone who did not want to be seen as a black person in the United States for large parts of his career.
00:04:05.000He wanted to be seen as just a famous person, as an athlete.
00:04:08.000He didn't live in the black areas of Los Angeles.
00:04:10.000He lived in Brentwood, which is a very white area of Los Angeles.
00:04:14.000And yet, after he killed two white people, suddenly his cause became a quote-unquote racial cause.
00:04:20.000And that racial logic has kept up even until today.
00:04:24.000I think the single best take on this In terms of clarifying where people stood on OJ, and still, in some sense, stand on racial politics, particularly on the left, was from Mark Lamont Hill.
00:04:36.000So Mark Lamont Hill, of course, a very radical person.
00:04:39.000Mark Lamont Hill is a true believer in the perverse ideology of diversity, equity, inclusion, critical race theory.
00:04:48.000He's a really true believer in the idea that if you are a member of a quote-unquote victimized group, that you are now absolved from all responsibility because of the evils of the society that surrounds you.
00:04:59.000And that evidence of your membership in a victimized group is the underperformance of that group.
00:05:04.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:06:05.000tweeted out yesterday, quote, OJ Simpson was an abusive liar who abandoned his community long
00:06:09.000before he killed two people in cold blood. His acquittal for murder was the correct and necessary
00:06:14.000result of a racist criminal legal system. But he's still a monster, not a martyr.
00:06:18.000Now, if you read the first sentence and the last sentence of that tweet, they go together, right?
00:06:25.000Simpson was an abusive liar, and also he was a monster, not a martyr.
00:06:30.000But the middle sentence, where he says that his acquittal was necessary, it was correct, it was the result of a racist criminal legal system, is the truly astonishing part.
00:06:41.000Simpson murdered two people in cold blood, and that he was a monster, but he still deserved to be acquitted.
00:06:49.000No country, obviously, can survive for very long on the basis that as long as you are a member of a particular race, that you deserve to be acquitted for the murder of somebody else of another race.
00:07:02.000That sort of pure, unbridled hatred and racism wrecks societies.
00:07:08.000And it was made very clear that that was the case in 1995, when the verdict came down.
00:07:12.000And it was made very clear that that was, in fact, the case.
00:07:15.000Today, for a lot of people on the political left, unfortunately.
00:07:18.000I just want to go through this for a moment, because again, a lot of people don't remember.
00:08:29.000And both gloves also had Simpson's genetic markers as well as markers from Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
00:08:37.000Hairs that were similar to OJ's hair were found in a knit cap at the crime scene.
00:08:41.000Strands of hair were covered from Ron Goldman's shirt.
00:08:44.000They were also identical to Simpson's head hair.
00:08:47.000There were bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene, matching, very famously, size 12 Bruno Magli shoes.
00:08:54.000That shoe is a unique Italian-made model, and they were Simpson's shoes.
00:09:00.000Bloody socks were found in Simpson's bedroom, and that blood had both his genetic markers and Nicole Brown Simpson's genetic markers on them.
00:09:07.000So, I mean, this was an open and shut criminal case.
00:09:09.000And everybody who has tried to make this into the failures of lawyering on the part of the prosecution, it's a whole series that was made on FX where it was all about the errors of lawyering.
00:09:17.000This case was lost, as it turns out, the minute that the jurisdiction over the case was transferred from Brentwood to downtown Los Angeles.
00:09:25.000Which was, in fact, the fault of Gil Garcetti, the father of the future mayor Eric Garcetti.
00:09:29.000Gil Garcetti was the DA at the time, and he moved the case from Brentwood, which was a largely white area where OJ undoubtedly would have been convicted, correctly, to downtown Los Angeles, where the jury pool was significantly more black.
00:09:41.000And the jury that ended up acquitting OJ Simpson was, in fact, majority-minority.
00:09:49.000Simpson story is a reminder that criminal justice can be used as a piece of a movement.
00:09:56.000One of the things that's so obvious about O.J.' 's guilt, and we see this now, is that political movements, when they pick their victims, according to the political left, the true victim of the O.J.
00:10:10.000had been wrongfully targeted by the police.
00:10:11.000We'll go through some of the evidence in a minute and what happened at trial and the attempts to basically say that because one police officer said racist things, therefore O.J.
00:10:19.000could be acquitted for murdering two people.
00:10:22.000But the reason that so many members of the political left and the racial left glommed on to the O.J.
00:10:28.000And sometimes it's hard to understand in American politics why it is that certain cases become national stories while other cases don't.
00:10:35.000There are undoubtedly cases that we never hear of, of actual crimes in which a racist police officer harms a black person.
00:10:43.000And then is convicted and then goes to jail.
00:10:45.000And we never hear those cases when the evidence is clearly against the officer.
00:10:49.000The cases we always hear are the cases of bad examples.
00:10:52.000Michael Brown, who tried to grab a gun off a police officer.
00:10:56.000Or Breonna Taylor, who was staying at her boyfriend's apartment when she was accidentally shot by police after they warned that they were coming in the door.
00:11:04.000Or George Floyd, who was high as a kite and saying he couldn't breathe before he was even taken out of the car and no allegations were even made at trial against Derek Chauvin.
00:11:14.000Bad examples must be picked and sides must be taken based on the bad examples.
00:11:18.000Because as in every political context, showing that you have political fealty to a particular position requires you to take positions that are untenable.
00:11:28.000The more faith you show in the political narrative, the more you're willing to pick a bad example and say, even this bad example applies to my narrative.
00:11:38.000was not somebody who had historically associated himself with the race question in America.
00:11:43.000O.J., historically, was not somebody who had drawn particularly close to black activism, for example, so he wasn't targeted for his politics.
00:11:51.000happened to be unbelievably clearly guilty of a double murder.
00:11:56.000And it was precisely because of that that he became such a cause celeb, particularly in the black community.
00:12:02.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:13:04.000A little bit of a blast from the past here for those who remember.
00:13:08.0001994, Nicole Brown Simpson's body being removed from the Brentwood estate where she had been murdered along with Ron Goldman.
00:13:16.000Ron Goldman, of course, had just been a person working at a local restaurant, who kind of tangentially knew Nicole Brown Simpson, and was bringing her glasses that she had forgotten at the restaurant.
00:13:35.000was going to be arrested, and he decided that he was going to try to get away from the police in what is the most famous boring car chase of all time, the White Bronco chase.
00:13:45.000I remember it was during the 1994 NBA Finals, and they put this on full screen in the NBA Finals in the corner of the screen.
00:13:50.000I remember being pretty ticked because I used to watch the NBA Finals a lot more.
00:13:53.000And OJ was going down the highway and supposedly threatening to kill himself in the back of the Ford Bronco as a bunch of people stood on overpasses in Los Angeles with giant signs reading, Run OJ Run.
00:14:07.000So this was the beginning of celebrity, modern celebrity crime culture.
00:14:12.000And also, the beginning of this kind of perverse movement where ideology trumped fact to the extent that you could actually go out on an overpass with a sign encouraging a double homicide perpetrator to run from the police.
00:14:27.000When they got to the trial, all this broke out into the open.
00:17:10.000This was the argument, and it was a stupid argument at the time, but it was turned into a supposedly interesting argument, specifically because of all the racial connotations around the case.
00:17:19.000And those racial connotations came to a head over the testimony of Mark Fuhrman.
00:17:23.000Mark Fuhrman was an evidentiary expert for the LAPD.
00:18:44.000And you say on your oath that you have not addressed any black person as a s*** or spoken about black people as s*** in the past ten years, Detective Furman?
00:18:55.000So that anyone who comes to this court and quotes you as using that word in dealing with African Americans would be a liar, would they not, Detective Furman?
00:19:34.000The reason he was lying about using the N-word on the stand is because it was embarrassing.
00:19:38.000You can't lie about something like planting OJ's blood all over everything, everywhere.
00:19:42.000And so, in any case, the verdict gets read, and you can see the reactions as the OJ Simpson verdict was read in court.
00:19:52.000Here is a flashback to the reactions as the OJ verdict was read.
00:19:56.000We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being, as charged in count two of the information.
00:20:12.000We, the jury in the above entitled action, further find the special circumstance that the defendant, Orethal James Simpson, has in this case been convicted of at least one crime of murder of the first degree and one or more crimes of murder of the first or second degree to be not true.
00:20:29.000Signed this second day of October 1995, juror 230.
00:20:34.000Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your verdict?
00:20:42.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:22:36.000Now, that is a big difference, obviously.
00:22:38.000As I said, as time went on, as this became not the center of racial focus in the United States, more black Americans were willing to admit that he was guilty, because the reality, of course, is that he was totally guilty.
00:22:49.000So by 2015, a majority of both whites and blacks said O.J.
00:22:54.000But the point is, why should there be a racial differential when it comes to the guilt of a person who is very, very obviously guilty?
00:23:00.000And if you go back to the time, again, you can see how black people and white people responded incredibly differently to the verdict, acquitting a double murderer.
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00:27:43.000In the Washington Post, of course, Eugene Robinson is a black columnist for the Washington Post.
00:27:47.000And here's what he writes, quote, Has theater and his legal circus, Simpson's murder trial has never been surpassed or even equaled.
00:27:52.000Its characters were vivid to the point of being indelible.
00:27:54.000Eager to please Judge Lance Ito, dutiful but overmatched prosecutors, Marsha Clark and Chris Darden, slick and razor sharp defense lawyers, Johnny Cochran and Effley Bailey, house guests, Brian Kato Kaelin, Simpson's friend and counselor, Robert Kardashian, progenitor of all things Kardashian, racist detective Mark Furman, in a non-speaking role, the bloody glove.
00:28:11.000Faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, OJ embraced his blackness.
00:28:15.000His professed new racial consciousness allowed some black Americans to at least consider the possibility that he was yet another black man being brutalized by a racist justice system.
00:28:23.000After all, the trial was taking place just three years after the LA riots sparked when the police officers who savagely beat Rodney King were judged to have done nothing wrong.
00:28:30.000The evidence against Simpson was overwhelming, even though the murder weapon and knife was never found.
00:28:34.000It took the jury less than four hours to reach its shocking verdict, not guilty.
00:28:38.000And then Eugene Robinson writes this, and it's fascinating.
00:28:40.000He says, I have not a scintilla of doubt that he committed the murders.
00:28:43.000In 2007, Simpson even had the gall to write a book, If I Did It, which he said was a hypothetical narrative of how he would have committed the crime, wink, but of course he didn't.
00:28:50.000He often blathered on about how police should be out there looking for the real killer who was supposedly still out there somewhere.
00:28:55.000In 2008, Simpson was convicted in Las Vegas of armed robbery and other charges and given a harsh 33-year prison sentence.
00:29:02.000But he was released on parole in 2017 and he spent the rest of his healthy years playing golf.
00:29:53.000When social justice, which is what we're talking about here, trumps individual justice, when the idea is that a racial narrative about, a true racial narrative about black victimhood in America is supposed to trump the fact that a black man killed two white people, you have lost the threat of decency and morality.
00:30:08.000Justice cannot work under these circumstances.
00:30:10.000It is a perfect encapsulation, the O.J.
00:30:12.000Simpson case, of why social justice is a lie and individual justice is true, and why it was so wildly unjust for O.J.
00:30:19.000Simpson to be let off the hook for the murder.
00:30:24.000It's, again, incredible that this was controversial at the time.
00:30:28.000Do you think that there are members of the jury that voted to acquit O.J.
00:31:10.000Okay, if your answer to is it right to acquit a double murderer because a few years earlier there was a controversial case in which white police officers beat a black man and then ended up being acquitted of particular charges.
00:31:27.000If your answer to is that morally right is That makes you the villain in this story.
00:31:32.000If you were the juror who let off O.J.
00:31:34.000Simpson, you're the villain in this story.
00:31:37.000The proper answer comes courtesy of all people, from Stephen A. Smith.
00:31:41.000Stephen A. Smith had this exactly right.
00:32:01.000I believe he was guilty, but I don't know.
00:32:04.000I'm talking about based on the evidence that was placed before us.
00:32:07.000During the trial, overseen by Judge Lanzito, this is what we saw on national television, and by most accounts, you found yourself believing he was guilty as hell.
00:32:18.000And in the end, that's what this comes down to.
00:32:23.000Unfortunately, that is not what it came down to.
00:32:26.000The question is, if you're going to have a good and righteous America, questions of individual justice must take precedent over foolish narratives about the evils of one group or the evils of another group.
00:32:39.000If anything else is the prevailing moral standard, society will break apart.
00:32:45.000Simpson trial should have taught us, and we should have remembered it.
00:32:48.000Alrighty, in just one second we'll talk about Joe Biden's flagging campaign.
00:32:52.000First, ladies and gentlemen, the verdict is in.
00:32:53.000The new courtroom comedy series Judge by Matt Walsh on Daily Wire Plus is in fact a hit.
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00:33:36.000Also, We had the opportunity this week to sit down with the brand new president of Argentina, Javier Mille.
00:33:42.000He's a transformative figure, a fascinating figure.
00:33:46.000Faced with a country on the verge of fiscal collapse, he took over and actually fulfilled his campaign pledge to take a chainsaw to the size and scope of government and get that country's fiscal house back in order.
00:34:00.000How come My approval ratings have gone up, and the intention of people to vote for me has also increased.
00:34:13.000It means that the culture battle is bearing fruit, and the Argentine people have decided to mature, put on long pants, do things right, once and for all.
00:34:27.000It goes well beyond the individual Javier Millet.
00:34:31.000This means that the Argentine people have decided to espouse freedom and that is the best message.
00:34:42.000That is some of our Sunday special that is coming out on Sunday.
00:34:46.000One of the most important people on the planet right now, not just because he's the leader of a relatively large country, but also because he happens to be an example that the West is going to follow to success or ignore to its own perils.
00:34:59.000Also, by the way, if you want to watch that a day early, head on over to DailyWirePlus and become a member.
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00:35:05.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to lag in the polls.
00:35:08.000He has had a little bit of a momentum builder with regard to the national polling data.
00:35:12.000In fact, five out of the last Eight polls have Joe Biden either tied or ahead in the polling data.
00:35:19.000Reuters Ipsos now has him up 41-37 over Donald Trump.
00:35:22.000INI and TIPP has Biden up 43-40 over Trump.
00:35:28.000So whatever you say, this is a very, very close election by every shape or measure.
00:35:33.000That in and of itself is a referendum on how bad a president Joe Biden is.
00:35:37.000And the economy now seems to be going the wrong way on him again because inflation is in fact an embedded fact of life under Joe Biden.
00:35:43.000Mortgage rates, according to the Wall Street Journal, Again, rose to nearly 7%, which is incredibly high for most of my lifetime.
00:35:49.000Mortgage rates you could get at like 3, 4%.
00:35:50.000Now you're talking about mortgage rates at 7%, which is a giant chunk of your money over a long period of time.
00:35:57.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the average rate on the standard 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 6.88% according to a survey of lenders released on Thursday by Freddie Mac.
00:36:08.000So, once again, those rates are really, really high.
00:36:11.000It makes it very difficult not only for somebody to get a new loan, but also makes it very difficult for somebody to sell their current house and get a loan to buy another house, which means that the stock of housing on the market is peculiarly sticky.
00:36:21.000There's not enough housing on the market because I'm not going to sell my house to get a new one when my 30-year Fixed rate is at three and a half percent.
00:36:28.000And in order for me to sell and get a new house, I'm going to have to jump to a seven percent rate.
00:36:32.000Now, Fed rate cuts are being called into question.
00:36:35.000So all this year, we've been told by the Biden administration and by the press that the rate cuts are coming because inflation will be tamed.
00:36:41.000And then finally, the money will flow freely, loosely, easily again.
00:36:45.000IPOs will start to be successful again.
00:36:47.000New investments will be made possible and all the rest.
00:36:50.000And it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime in the very near future, according to The Wall Street Journal.
00:36:55.000Another firmer-than-anticipated inflation report delivered a meaningful setback Wednesday to the Federal Reserve's hope that it could buoy prospects of a so-called soft landing by dialing back on some of the past year's interest rate increases.
00:37:05.000Solid hiring and the prospect that inflation might settle out closer to 3% than 2% could call into question whether the central bank will be able to cut rates until much later in the year without evidence of a sharper slowdown in the economy.
00:37:16.000This is the third straight month in which prices were hotter than expected.
00:37:19.000And it sends officials back to an uneasy holding pattern, where they wait several more months for either better inflation data or the type of evident economic weakness that they were hoping to avoid.
00:37:29.000So Joe Biden's economy continues to superheat.
00:37:33.000That is because, again, he tossed too much money into an already overheated economy that was already plagued by supply chain problems.
00:37:38.000Too much money following too few goods equals inflation.
00:37:42.000And this is having significant dire ramification for his polling.
00:37:45.000So Roy Tishera, who is the most prescient commentator on the left when it comes to elections, Reuters shares most famous for his theory back in 2004 that Democrats would be able to build a majority-minority coalition and then lead that coalition to victory.
00:37:59.000And then it turns out he had to dissociate himself from his own theory because it turns out it wasn't true in 2016 or even in 2020.
00:38:05.000He doesn't think it'll be true in 2024 either.
00:38:07.000So now he is saying to Democrats, you guys are way too far out on the left on pretty much every issue.
00:38:11.000He says, if you want to win, you have to do three things.
00:38:13.000One, you have to move to the center on culture issues.
00:38:16.000Two, you have to promote what he calls an abundance agenda.
00:38:18.000And three, you have to embrace patriotism and liberal nationalism.
00:38:22.000But the second one is the one that really Joe Biden was supposed to be able to do well with, and he's just not.
00:38:28.000Everybody knows he's too radical for the American public on social issues, like way too radical, and particularly for minorities, who are not actually socially radical on a lot of these issues.
00:38:35.000But the bigger problem for Joe Biden is that a stagnating economy is going to sink him.
00:38:40.000A really burning great economy under Joe Biden, where people felt great about the economy, might make up for his cultural shortcomings.
00:38:48.000But if the economy is stagnating and He is way out of touch with the American public, particularly minorities, Hispanic, black minorities, with regards to social issues.
00:38:59.000As Roy Teshara points out, the left has been talking about the economy as though the American people are just nuts, that they've made some sort of huge mistake, the American people.
00:39:08.000But the reality is that there is something else going on here.
00:39:11.000Roy Tishera says, Given all this, why do voters still believe the economy is so bad?
00:39:14.000to the bleak record on the abundance front.
00:39:15.000The first is what I call the deluded ungrateful wretches theory.
00:39:18.000The idea here is that the economy's recent record has been stellar.
00:39:21.000Low unemployment, strong job creation, smartly rising wages and inflation
00:39:24.000that has declined sharply from recent highs.
00:39:27.000Given all this, why do voters still believe the economy is so bad?
00:39:31.000But, he says, there's quite a strong case that in terms of the lived experience
00:39:34.000of voters, particularly working class voters, things have not, in fact, been great.
00:39:37.000The primary suspect, of course, is inflation, which is still relatively high, and in June of 2022 reached 9%, the highest inflation rate the country had experienced since 1981.
00:39:45.000People absolutely hate inflation, since it directly undercuts living standards, and they're reminded of this fact every time they go to the grocery store.
00:39:52.000Heather Long of the Washington Post recently collected data on changes in inflation, hourly earnings, and household purchases since Joe Biden took office.
00:39:59.000What she found is that cumulative inflation has outpaced average hourly earning growth, and the rise in many consumer prices has been even larger than overall inflation.
00:40:16.000Meanwhile, average hourly wages are up only 15%.
00:40:18.000So if inflation outpaces all of those things, then you feel like the economy is getting worse for you.
00:40:26.000Roger Lowenstein, an economics commentator, points out that the median household income went up 10.5% under Donald Trump before the pandemic.
00:40:33.000However, under Biden, inflation has snatched away the gains from even a very strong labor market over his first two years, as price hikes outran wages.
00:40:40.000Real median household income actually fell 2.7%.
00:40:44.000The census hasn't reported median income for 2023, but given that real wages were up about 1% through November, the cumulative change in household median income adjusted for inflation over Biden's first three years is likely to be in the range of mildly negative to very mildly positive.
00:40:57.000In other words, the country did not make progress in improving living standards under Joe Biden.
00:42:04.000Instead, they're going to go with the first theory that Tishera mentioned, the ungrateful wretches theory.
00:42:08.000Here's Whoopi Goldberg doing that routine saying, guys, inflation is not Joe Biden's fault.
00:42:12.000You guys just don't understand economics like Whoopi Goldberg does.
00:42:16.000What I hear when I talk to undecideds is the grocery bills are- But if people knew civics, they would know that that's not- Listen, he doesn't- There are absolutely things that Biden can do to address it, and grocery prices have jumped 25% over four years.
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00:45:27.000Joe Biden has a stated policy now of not allowing American allies to win wars, to not even define victory in a way that would allow for the winning of wars.
00:45:36.000So Joe Biden has put forward a completely discombobulated policy with regard to Ukraine.
00:45:40.000He slow-walked weapons in the early days when, actually, Ukraine had the opportunity to push back against Russian aggression far more aggressively before they could become totally entrenched, building World War I lines in Donbass and Crimea, for example.
00:45:53.000Now he sent out his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to try the Ukrainians for hitting Russian oil refineries in the middle of a war because apparently that's going to impact world oil prices.
00:46:02.000So he'd really prefer that they hit military targets.
00:46:04.000When you're fighting a war, you have to hit the targets that are available, including, for example, the source of Russia's actual wealth, its oil refineries.
00:46:12.000But meanwhile, the Biden administration is chiding the Ukrainians about all of that.
00:46:16.000So completely discombobulated policy when it comes to Ukraine.
00:46:19.000Even more discombobulated policy when it comes to Israel defeating the terrorist group Hamas.
00:46:24.000Iran, for its part, is feeling its oats at this moment.
00:46:27.000Iran is now suggesting that they are going to attack Israel, perhaps directly,
00:46:30.000over the course of the next couple of days, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:46:33.000Israel is preparing for a direct attack from Iran on southern or northern Israel as soon as Friday or Saturday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
00:46:39.000A person briefed by Iranian leadership said, while attack plans are being discussed, no final decision has been made, but Americans in Israel are now being restricted from any personal travel outside of central Israel, which is like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Beersheba.
00:46:57.000Which means that the Americans think that Iran is going to, perhaps, directly strike Israel.
00:47:01.000Now, if that happens, then Israel will directly strike Iran.
00:47:04.000And that will have been brought about by a policy of weakness by the United States.
00:47:07.000Again, when you draw lines, and those lines are perfectly obvious to everyone, third-rate nations like Iran, in terms of military power, do not violate those lines.
00:47:16.000But the Biden administration is much more focused on limiting Israel and trying to create daylight between Israel and itself, for the voters in Dearborn, Michigan, than they are in actually allowing Israel to win its war.
00:47:26.000In any war, you want your allied forces to defeat and destroy the enemy as fast as humanly possible because that sends the message to all of the enemy nations that if they mess with you or your allies, they will lose.
00:47:39.000But when you create all this vast daylight over supposed lack of humanitarian aid in an area that is currently a war zone, then what you are doing is you're saying to Iran, you can basically do what you want and you can count on those voters in Dearborn, Michigan to pressure Joe Biden to do nothing.
00:47:55.000Meanwhile, you have members of the Democratic coalition like Nancy Pelosi out there still talking about conditioning aid to Israel as Iran threatens direct strikes on Israel.
00:48:04.000Well, I think that is a very contained requirement until you have an investigation of how this happened with cars that are marked very clearly.
00:48:18.000Marked very clearly to be humanitarian assistance.
00:48:21.000So, Israel says that they are going to have an investigation.
00:48:25.000They've begun such a thing, fired a couple of people.
00:48:27.000But I think we have to have also an independent commission.
00:49:17.000I'm just not going to go into back and forth.
00:49:19.000Okay, well, you're not going to because the answer is that Joe Biden does not have credible threats in his arsenal.
00:49:24.000He is the most uncredible president on American foreign policy.
00:49:28.000I would say in my lifetime, Barack Obama was in my lifetime as well, and so was Bill Clinton.
00:49:31.000So he's just as non-credible on foreign policy threats as other Democratic presidents, it turns out.
00:49:36.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration putting pressure on Israel to somehow come to a deal with Hamas, despite the fact that Hamas doesn't even tell Israel how many live hostages it currently has, has demonstrated no willingness to come to the table on anything remotely resembling a reasonable proposal.
00:49:50.000Israel is about to give up Or would give up.
00:49:52.000Literally hundreds of murderers in favor of whatever remaining women, children, and men are alive under Hamas hostage negotiations.
00:50:41.000Our hostage exchange people now have been held under terrible conditions for months, and Israel has a right to demand their release.
00:50:50.000And that has got to be part of any package.
00:50:52.000Israel has a right to demand their release, but Bernie will then call on Israel's aid to be cut off in its attempt to extirpate the group that took the hostages in the first place.
00:51:00.000No wonder Iran feels that it can get away with pretty much anything.
00:51:04.000Meanwhile, the Republican caucus continues to descend into further chaos, this time over a FISA renewal bill.
00:51:11.000So the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as we discussed yesterday on the program, Section 702, allows for the surveillance of foreign intelligence data.
00:51:19.000So a foreigner is using his phone and you can now use surveillance methods
00:51:25.000from the intelligence community to look at things like phone calls and metadata,
00:51:28.000not the actual content of the phone calls, for example, but where the phone calls are being made to,
00:51:32.000where they're being made from and all the rest.
00:51:35.000Well, there's been a lot of Republican angst over section 702 because there were not protections in
00:51:39.000place that prevented the abuse of the FISA process
00:51:42.000Carter Page was a low-level foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign in 2015-2016, who was then targeted with a false FISA warrant and wiretapped.
00:51:52.000And that became a cause celeb on the right for good reason because the warrant that was originally given was predicated on nothing.
00:51:59.000It was predicated basically on a bunch of false statements by the Hillary Clinton campaign that was then laundered via the CIA and FBI into a FISA warrant that led to a wiretapping of Carter Page.
00:52:08.000So the question is, how do you stop all of that?
00:52:11.000Well, the Republican proposal in the House that they want is a warrant for every search of American data inside that FISA surveillance network.
00:52:19.000So you have a low-level guy, he wants to type in an American name, and now they need a warrant in order to type in the American name.
00:52:25.000That would be the change that Republicans are seeking.
00:52:27.000Which is fine, except for the fact that apparently Getting a warrant in the FISA process via FISA court is really, really easy.
00:52:34.000So easy that one could be gotten on Carter Page on the basis of nothing.
00:52:36.000The alternative proposal is that any such search has to be elevated up the chain of command up to the deputy FBI director.
00:52:43.000And basically you have to have eyes on and explicit approval of any search for an American name in the FISA intelligence database.
00:52:50.000That's the debate right now happening between some Republicans and other Republicans.
00:52:53.000The stakes are that FISA as a whole expires.
00:52:56.000If FISA as a whole expires, America will no longer have eyes on foreigners with terror connections.
00:53:02.000This is why Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has been pushing for what he calls a compromise proposal until Republicans actually have control of, you know, the other two elected parts of the government, the Senate and the presidency.
00:53:12.000What he keeps saying is, listen, you keep telling me you want to go for broke on this bill and you're willing to let FISA expire in order to do that.
00:53:18.000Well, I'm just telling you, if you do that, it will expire because the Senate will not approve any such bill and the president will not approve any such bill and FISA will expire.
00:53:26.000And then, God forbid, there's a terror attack and Americans get killed.
00:53:29.000The Republicans for letting FISA expire.
00:53:32.000So here is Mike Johnson explaining why he used to be for stricter requirements on FISA warrants, for example, and why he has flipped on this.
00:53:41.000I saw the abuses of the FBI, the terrible abuses over and over and over, the hundreds of thousands of abuses.
00:53:46.000And then when I became Speaker, I went to the SCF and got the confidential briefing from sort of the other perspective on that to understand the necessity of Section 702 of FISA and how important it is for national security.
00:53:56.000And it gave me a different perspective.
00:53:58.000So I encourage all the members to go to the classified briefing and hear all that and see it so they can evaluate the situation for themselves.
00:54:06.000Some opinions have changed both ways, but that's part of the process.
00:54:10.000Former Attorney General Bill Barr spoke about what exactly these FISA surveillance processes look like, how they're used, why they're important.
00:54:19.000We're faced with probably the greatest threat to the homeland from terrorist attack, and our primary means of defending against that is FISA.
00:54:34.000And to take that tool away, I think, is going to result in a successful terrorist attack and a loss of life.
00:54:46.000Well, Johnson took a while in negotiating this.
00:54:50.000He didn't have the votes inside the Republican caucus because Marjorie Taylor Greene has been threatening that she's going to push forward a motion to vacate and try to actually push that to its conclusion if he were to push forward a bill on the FISA surveillance.
00:55:03.000Again, he's being held hostage by a very small minority of his coalition.
00:55:07.000But because those negotiations were taking place, that gave President Trump a chance to sign into the chat.
00:55:12.000President Trump then did, and he put out on Truth Social, quote, kill FISA.
00:55:15.000It was illegally used against me and many others.
00:55:19.000OK, well, that is not an actual proper solution.
00:55:21.000Killing FISA altogether is something that pretty much no Republicans are in favor of, because killing FISA altogether means that if you have Al Qaeda members or ISIS members in the United States, you can't actively use electronic measures of surveillance like their metadata.
00:55:33.000in order to track who they are talking to, which is a major problem.
00:55:35.000Instead, Johnson is now proposing a compromise solution, which would allow the extension of FISA 702 to be reauthorized
00:55:42.000for two years, rather than for five. And then he's saying when Trump gets
00:55:45.000elected, and when we have a larger House majority and a Senate
00:55:48.000majority, then we can make exactly the kind of changes that we want.
00:55:51.000In the meantime, we can't let FISA expire.
00:55:53.000So let's make the changes that we can make for the moment.
00:55:55.000Now again, this goes to the job of what the Speaker is supposed to do.
00:55:59.000The Speaker is supposed to cobble together the best deal possible, not the magical utopian deal that doesn't exist in reality where, you know, Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader, thanks in part to the intervention of Donald Trump in two Georgia Senate races that should have been Republican.
00:56:13.000Not to mention the fact that the President of the United States is currently a Democrat.
00:56:16.000Johnson is faced with the unenviable task of trying to explain reality to a fringe group of Republicans who actually do not seem to care about reality and are posturing for, what, limelight and glory?
00:56:35.000I think he's a really good principled conservative.
00:56:37.000Chip Roy spends his political capital trying to make specific changes to bills as a general rule.
00:56:43.000And he may disagree with Johnson on where the leverage points are, or disagree with McCarthy on where the leverage points are, but he's trying to make specific changes to specific things.
00:56:51.000That is not the case with part of the Republican caucus, which is why the place is so damned unworkable.
00:56:56.000Here are a bunch of Republicans in the House lamenting the unworkability of the current very, very slim Republican majority.
00:57:02.000Bitter GOP infighting derailing the GOP agenda and now threatening Speaker Mike Johnson's job as he weighs major decisions over the FBI spying power and providing billions in aid to Ukraine, all as the threat to oust him continues to loom as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalates her attacks.
00:57:55.000And by the way, that group of Republicans, that spans from very moderate Republicans
00:58:00.000in New York, if you couldn't recognize their voices, because they're not particularly famous.
00:58:04.000One is from New York, one is from Ohio, one is from Texas.
00:58:06.000That spans the entire Republican caucus.
00:58:08.000Everybody believes the conference is unworkable, which is why, presumably, Senators are not
00:58:12.000Speaker Johnson is meeting with President Trump.
00:58:14.000He wants to do an appearance with Trump because that shows the fellow Republicans that he is not anti-Trump and that Trump is in fact on his side.
00:58:19.000And then he needs to kill the motion to vacate.