The Ben Shapiro Show - March 12, 2024


Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow


Episode Stats

Length

51 minutes

Words per Minute

203.62805

Word Count

10,402

Sentence Count

707

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

25


Summary

Joe Biden is still running for re-election in November, but he's not going to get it, and it's not because he's dumb or dumb-minded. It's because he has dementia, and his policies are bad, and they're bad because they're dumb and dumb because they are bad. Joe Biden is a bad president, and he's going to be even worse if things continue along the path that they are currently moving, which is to say, Joe Biden's policies are a disaster. Today's episode is all about how bad they are, and why they're going to hurt his chances of getting re-elected in 2020 and beyond, and how we should all be worried about what's going on with the economy and the economy in general, not just in the short term, but also in the long term, because they don't seem to be getting any better, and in fact, they're getting worse, and that's a good thing, because the economy isn't getting any faster, and we're not getting any fatter, and the real estate market isn't any better either, and there's no signs that it's slowing down any time soon, which means that the housing market is going to have to get a lot worse, either. at least we can all agree that Joe Biden needs to go home and get some rest and recoup what he's lost in 2020, and maybe even a little bit more in 2020 and maybe a little more in the next election year in order to have a chance to get back on track or at least to have any chance of re-elect in 2020 at all things he s running for a chance at getting anything at all he s got going at all of his dreams of getting a shot of a shot at getting a chance of getting anything he s actually getting anything done at all after all he wants even if it s not getting anything going at it at all . this is not even close to what he s getting any of it, you know what? maybe not even getting much of what he needs to do, but it s getting worse than he s any chance at all, at least not much at all. -- it s going to happen, and I think he s not that bad, is he s just not that much better than he thinks he s gonna get any better than that, is it ? is this even possible, right?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Joe Biden is cruising for a bruising in 2024 in November if things continue along the path that they are currently moving.
00:00:08.000 He has two major problems on his hands.
00:00:09.000 One is that he has dementia and the other is that his policy basket is just filled with holes.
00:00:16.000 It is an awful set of policies from domestic to foreign policy.
00:00:19.000 We got the latest look Tremendous amount of things you can cut.
00:00:23.000 Let me be precise.
00:00:23.000 day Joe Biden was speaking. In the middle of one of his sentences, he just froze up.
00:00:27.000 Now, remember, Mitch McConnell just stepped down as the Senate minority leader because
00:00:31.000 everybody is worried about his health. He's the same age as Joe Biden. Here's Joe Biden
00:00:36.000 yesterday.
00:00:37.000 Tremendous amount of things you can cut. Maybe precise. Tremendous amount of things you can
00:00:47.000 do not cut.
00:00:50.000 But the bottom line is he's still at it.
00:00:54.000 Joe Biden is not with it.
00:00:55.000 He's not been with it for quite a while.
00:00:57.000 Him yelling at the moon during his State of the Union address didn't change that.
00:00:59.000 And the widespread perception of Americans, which is correct, is that Joe Biden is too old and too senile to actually do this job.
00:01:05.000 But that's only part of it.
00:01:07.000 If Joe Biden's policies were wildly popular, everybody would overlook the fact that the man walks into walls.
00:01:12.000 Everybody would be like, OK, fine.
00:01:14.000 So he walks into walls, but at least the policies are good.
00:01:16.000 The problem is the policies are really, really bad.
00:01:19.000 So a couple of pieces of news, economic news this morning.
00:01:22.000 Consumer prices rose 3.2% from one year earlier in February, which means that, remember, the inflation rate in the United States, we aim to keep that at 2%.
00:01:31.000 That's what the Federal Reserve aims at.
00:01:33.000 We are still clocking in at well above 3, so 50% higher than exactly what you would want.
00:01:39.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, an underlying measure of inflation was stronger than expected last month, introducing greater uncertainty over whether and when the Federal Reserve will lower the interest rates.
00:01:47.000 The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that its index of consumer prices rose 3.2% in February from one year earlier.
00:01:53.000 Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected 3.1%.
00:01:56.000 Prices actually rose 0.4% from the previous month.
00:02:00.000 That was, in fact, in line with economists' expectations.
00:02:03.000 Core prices rose 0.4% from January.
00:02:06.000 That's more than what economists expected.
00:02:07.000 Core prices were up 3.8% from one year earlier.
00:02:11.000 So that core price inflation is 3.8% again.
00:02:14.000 Remember, we aim for 2%, so that's almost double what you are looking for.
00:02:18.000 Okay, and what that means is that all of the interest rates are going to remain high for the foreseeable future.
00:02:24.000 So the Federal Reserve tries to combat inflation by increasing interest rates, which is the overnight rate at which the Federal Reserve lends to banks, and the banks lend to one another, and that is then passed on to the consumer.
00:02:34.000 The basic idea is that when you tighten up the credit, that means that fewer people are borrowing, less money flowing around the economy, means the prices tend to decrease.
00:02:41.000 That's the reason you increase the interest rates.
00:02:44.000 The Federal Reserve wanted to decrease the interest rates in advance of the election to get that money flowing again, to heat up the economy, to make sure that hiring stays at really high levels leading up to Biden's re-elect effort in November.
00:02:55.000 The problem is that inflation is just not cooperating.
00:02:59.000 And that means the interest rates are likely to stay high, which is why a few years ago you could get a mortgage for 3%, and now your mortgage is costing you like 7%.
00:03:06.000 Which, by the way, is leading to the bizarre situation in the real estate markets right now.
00:03:11.000 The stickiness in the real estate markets is created not by demand for single-family housing.
00:03:16.000 The stickiness is created by the lack of actual supply.
00:03:19.000 No one can sell their very high-priced house right now, because if they did, they would have to buy a new house And their interest rate would go from the mortgage they have now, which they took out five years ago, at 3%, and they would have to get a mortgage at 7%.
00:03:31.000 So nobody's actually selling right now.
00:03:33.000 So you have a very sticky real estate market that is cruising for a bruising all on its own.
00:03:37.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, President Biden signaled optimism during a campaign event last week that the Federal Reserve was going to cut interest rates soon.
00:03:44.000 The economic forecast in his budget released on Monday, however, offer a different message, curb your enthusiasm.
00:03:49.000 Economic forecasts released Monday as part of the White House's 2025 budget proposal assume that three-month Treasury bill rates will average 5.1% this year, that's the same as in 2023, before declining to 4% next year and 3.3% in 2026.
00:04:02.000 The White House last year projected a somewhat lower path for interest rates in part because it assumed a meaningful slowdown in growth in 2023 that didn't actually materialize.
00:04:11.000 Now, the biggest problem with these high interest rates is that that actually means the way that works, because they are connected to, for example, the bond market, The way that works when the interest rates are high is that if you sell a bond and the interest rate is, say, 7% or 8% or, in this case, 5%, that means that the U.S.
00:04:28.000 government is going to have to pay that off down the road.
00:04:30.000 And that means that when you take new debt, new debt is more expensive.
00:04:33.000 And that's a big problem because we are blowing out the spending like nobody's business.
00:04:38.000 Joe Biden, again, is not on solid footing in this election cycle.
00:04:40.000 And that means that he has a plan.
00:04:42.000 His political plan is twofold.
00:04:43.000 One, promise to spend as much money as anybody has in human history, more than anybody has in human history.
00:04:49.000 And second, try to soak the rich.
00:04:51.000 That's going to be his two pronged economic plan.
00:04:53.000 And that's nothing new.
00:04:54.000 I mean, we've seen that pretty much for every Democrat since Bill Clinton.
00:04:58.000 The idea was that you would just promise the world to voters, we're going to spend money that does not exist and we're going to do so by borrowing and by taxing.
00:05:07.000 And the taxes never actually materialized because as it turns out, tax revenue is not capable of sustaining the kind of spending we are doing, not unless you decide to really tax the middle class.
00:05:17.000 What Democrats want is a Norwegian standard of living.
00:05:21.000 Without the kind of oil wealth provided by the Norwegian oil industry.
00:05:27.000 And without taxing the middle class in the way that Norway does.
00:05:30.000 The dirty secret of living like Scandinavia is they gotta tax everybody who makes about $60,000 a year the same rates that you're taxing people who are making like $500,000 a year.
00:05:40.000 Again, America has an incredibly progressive tax system.
00:05:43.000 People at the top of the income spectrum pay nearly all net taxes in the United States.
00:05:47.000 That is not true in the social democracy European countries.
00:05:50.000 Those countries start taxing people at exorbitant rates when they hit like the lower middle class.
00:05:56.000 But that's something Democrats don't want to do because they understand that if they do that, they'll be politically unpopular with many of the people who are going to vote for them.
00:06:01.000 So instead, they decide that they're going to promise extraordinary levels of spending, and then they're going to force Republicans into the corner because Republicans are going to say, we can't spend that much.
00:06:11.000 This is why Joe Biden has now released his fiscal 2025 budget.
00:06:15.000 Now this budget has no chance of passage.
00:06:17.000 All these budgets do, Trump used to do this too, all these budgets do is they serve as the basis for all political debate for the next year.
00:06:25.000 So basically it's a list of priorities for Joe Biden.
00:06:28.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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00:07:28.000 So what exactly are Joe Biden's priorities?
00:07:31.000 Well, I mean, his priorities apparently are taxing people a lot of money, cutting military spending in the face of the most chaotic world situation of the modern era.
00:07:41.000 He wants to cut military spending because effectively that's what he does.
00:07:45.000 He wants to maintain the spending trajectory of Social Security and Medicare.
00:07:50.000 And somehow, he says this is going to lower the deficit.
00:07:52.000 How's it going to do that?
00:07:54.000 Well, he's assuming that he can radically increase taxes without that affecting the economy.
00:07:57.000 Which, of course, is not the way any of this works.
00:08:00.000 If you radically increase taxes, then people spend less money.
00:08:04.000 That's the way that it tends to work.
00:08:05.000 You can tax something to death.
00:08:07.000 You can't tax something into prosperity.
00:08:10.000 The Wall Street Journal goes through Joe Biden's proposed budget.
00:08:13.000 He's proposing a $7.3 trillion budget.
00:08:17.000 Now, this is patently insane on the face of it.
00:08:20.000 First of all, during the pandemic, we did not spend that much money.
00:08:23.000 In 2021, the United States government spent about $6.8 trillion.
00:08:28.000 The same was true in 2020.
00:08:29.000 That was during a full-scale pandemic when people were literally told to stay home and the federal government paid everyone's bills for a year.
00:08:37.000 In this particular case, we are not in the middle of an actual fighting war in which American soldiers are directly involved.
00:08:44.000 It's not World War II, so these levels of government spending are not justified.
00:08:48.000 We're not even in the middle of a pandemic.
00:08:49.000 These levels of spending are clearly unjustified.
00:08:52.000 Joe Biden wants to spend.
00:08:54.000 He wants to spend more money than any president has ever spent at any time.
00:08:59.000 So what exactly would his budget do?
00:09:01.000 It would raise taxes on wealthy people and large corporations.
00:09:04.000 Now remember, when you tax a corporation, that cost is passed on to the people who work for the corporation.
00:09:11.000 If you tax Daily Wire at a higher rate, that means we have less money to pay our employees.
00:09:15.000 That's the way that works.
00:09:17.000 He says this will somehow trim the deficit and lower the cost of prescription drugs, childcare, and housing.
00:09:22.000 Now, when he says lower the costs of things like this, what he really means is that the federal government is going to subsidize things.
00:09:27.000 There has yet to be a product developed by human beings that when subsidized by the federal government, the cost does not go up.
00:09:33.000 That's the way that works.
00:09:34.000 That is why colleges now cost way more than they used to.
00:09:37.000 When the federal government signs a check to somebody, people raise the price of the thing.
00:09:43.000 Literally every product the federal government has ever gotten involved with has gotten more expensive over time, as opposed to the free market, where competition brings the price down on things.
00:09:52.000 So when people say that Joe Biden is going to somehow lower the cost of prescription drugs or childcare or housing or all the rest of this stuff, that is incorrect.
00:10:00.000 Lower the cost to whom?
00:10:02.000 You might say that he lowers the cost to some private consumers, but that's only in the short term.
00:10:06.000 In the long term, the costs are going to go up, and they will certainly go up for taxpayers who are actually going to foot the bill.
00:10:10.000 Somebody has to pay the bill.
00:10:14.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, the proposal is not expected to gain momentum in Congress.
00:10:17.000 It will be a cornerstone of Biden's re-elect campaign.
00:10:20.000 Now, supposedly, the fiscal 2025 budget would cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade.
00:10:27.000 How would it possibly cut the deficit?
00:10:28.000 The answer is, he would tax the living hell out of everything that moves.
00:10:33.000 So, he proposes spending $895 billion on military programs in the coming fiscal year.
00:10:38.000 Now, if you said to me, we need to increase military spending, I would say we absolutely do.
00:10:41.000 It's a dangerous world out there.
00:10:43.000 The American military shield is what keeps the world order from breaking down, as we have seen.
00:10:48.000 America in retreat leads to a vacuum in which chaos predominates.
00:10:53.000 But Joe Biden actually isn't even increasing military spending.
00:10:57.000 The spending is all on things like child tax credits, which are not actual tax credits.
00:11:03.000 They're going to people who, for example, don't pay taxes.
00:11:06.000 He also wants to spend an awful lot of money on shoring up Social Security.
00:11:12.000 There's no plan.
00:11:12.000 He just wants to spend money on it.
00:11:14.000 He wants to extend tax cuts for most households after 2025, but he doesn't detail how that would be paid for.
00:11:20.000 So he likes the Trump tax cuts, but only for the people he thinks he can pay off.
00:11:25.000 The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out the giant failures of this budget.
00:11:30.000 They say, start with the proposal for national defense, which would increase a mere 1% to $895 billion next fiscal year.
00:11:36.000 That number includes various and sundry energy department programs related to national security.
00:11:40.000 The Pentagon gets only $850 billion.
00:11:42.000 That is a real cut in military muscle after inflation.
00:11:46.000 That part of the deal was part of a budget deal with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
00:11:50.000 The number is inadequate.
00:11:52.000 Biden would spend only 3.1% of GDP on defense in 2025, and then it would continue to fall for the rest of the 10-year budget window to 2.4% of the economy in 2034.
00:12:04.000 So, obviously, folks in Beijing are going to be super happy about that if the United States continues to cut its own military budget in the middle of a chaotic world situation.
00:12:14.000 Biden is proposing spending $7.3 trillion in 2025.
00:12:15.000 That is an increase of $1.1 trillion in just two years.
00:12:21.000 Remember, he says he's fiscally responsible.
00:12:24.000 He wants to spend 24.8% of the entire national economy.
00:12:30.000 By way of contrast, from 1974 to 2023, the average was 21%.
00:12:35.000 So he wants to spend more money than we have for the last 50 years on average in the middle of a non-pandemic non-war.
00:12:43.000 He also says that he wants to increase tax revenue So he's playing with the tax numbers because in order for you to actually suggest what tax revenue will be, you have to forecast economic growth.
00:12:58.000 Again, Joe Biden is going to stagnate the economy.
00:13:01.000 He is already stagnating the economy.
00:13:02.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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00:14:08.000 The real threat to the American economy in the long term here, I've been saying this for two years, is not actually inflation.
00:14:12.000 Inflation will come back down under control by hook or by crook.
00:14:15.000 The Federal Reserve will do that.
00:14:16.000 The real danger is a stagnating economy for the foreseeable future, sort of Japan path for the 1990s.
00:14:23.000 According to Biden's budget, he foresees that debt held by the public will rise to 102.2% of the economy in 2025.
00:14:31.000 In 2019, it was 79% of the economy.
00:14:33.000 That means that more money, we'll be spending more money in terms of servicing our national debt than we spend on our military budget every year in the very near future.
00:14:45.000 Public debt in his budget keeps growing to 106% of GDP in 2030.
00:14:50.000 Interest on the debt will surpass defense spending this year when it hits $890 billion.
00:14:55.000 It keeps climbing to $1.57 trillion over the next decade.
00:14:59.000 That's how much money we'll just be spending on the interest payments on the debt that Joe Biden is proposing right now.
00:15:06.000 And again, none of this makes any fiscal sense because when he says, for example, he's going to tax the rich to get out of this, that's not true.
00:15:13.000 Even Axios is pointing this out.
00:15:16.000 The simple fact of the matter is that there is no way to tax the rich enough to pay for the kinds of things that Joe Biden wants to pay for.
00:15:23.000 He doesn't really want to pay for them because he knows this is not going to pass.
00:15:26.000 The Biden budget is premised on steady non-recessionary GDP growth and a continued low unemployment rate at or just below 4%.
00:15:32.000 So again, these are numbers that make no sense.
00:15:40.000 It's amazing to me that Democrats continue to trot this sort of stuff out.
00:15:43.000 But again, he's trying to pick fights with Republicans.
00:15:45.000 That's really what this is all about.
00:15:46.000 This is what Politico points out.
00:15:48.000 So, for example...
00:15:50.000 The other day, Donald Trump was asked about entitlements.
00:15:51.000 Now, one of the things that Donald Trump has done is, for political reasons, he has suggested over the course of his career in presidential politics that he will not touch entitlements.
00:16:00.000 He won't touch Medicare, he won't touch Medicaid, he won't touch Social Security, and all the rest.
00:16:03.000 And I've pointed out, that's fiscally unsustainable.
00:16:06.000 Now, on a political level, it's smart.
00:16:08.000 Because the truth is, Americans like status quo, and every major economy has effectively run directly into austerity measures and or riots at a certain point with regard to this.
00:16:19.000 So it's all kicked the can down the road from political level.
00:16:22.000 If you're a politician, you want to kick the can down the road on social security and Medicare.
00:16:26.000 Anybody who attempts to change the status quo on social security and Medicare, say George W. Bush in 2005, after he won reelection, he said he wanted to fix social security by privatizing it.
00:16:37.000 Privatizing in that sense meant the federal government would still make you pay a social security tax, But instead of that going into a government quote-unquote lockbox, or instead of that money simply being paid out the back door, that would instead go into a privately held savings account.
00:16:52.000 That would accrue interest, and that would actually go into the stock market, for example.
00:16:56.000 It made a lot of sense, but everybody fussed about it, and Democrats demagogued it, so it went to death.
00:17:01.000 So Donald Trump has avoided that.
00:17:02.000 Well, yesterday, Donald Trump was on CNBC, and because Donald Trump is a people pleaser, he was asked Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlement, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President?
00:17:13.000 into the possibility of changes to the entitlement programs.
00:17:16.000 And Joe Biden leapt on that with both feet.
00:17:18.000 Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlement, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President?
00:17:27.000 It seems like something has to be done or else we're gonna be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.
00:17:34.000 So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,
00:17:41.000 and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.
00:17:47.000 Tremendous bad management of entitlements.
00:17:50.000 There's tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.
00:17:54.000 So I don't necessarily agree with the statement.
00:17:58.000 Okay, so that's really not a lot of daylight in terms of, you know, he's gonna make wholesale changes to Social Security or something.
00:18:04.000 It's enough for Biden to try and press him on it.
00:18:06.000 So according to Politico, After committing during a State of the Union address to stop anyone in Congress who tries to raise the retirement age for Social Security benefits, Biden's budget instead calls for raising taxes on high earners to keep Social Security and Medicare from hitting insolvency within the next decade.
00:18:20.000 Now again, realistically speaking, that's not going to save anybody.
00:18:23.000 The population is aging way too fast for that.
00:18:25.000 There are not enough high-income taxpayers even to pay for the kinds of bills that Joe Biden wants to pay for here.
00:18:32.000 And let's be real about this.
00:18:33.000 It's insane that we haven't raised the retirement age in the United States.
00:18:35.000 It's totally crazy.
00:18:38.000 If that were the case, Joe Biden should not be running for president.
00:18:40.000 Joe Biden is 81 years old.
00:18:41.000 The retirement age in the United States at which you start to receive Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare is 65.
00:18:47.000 Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and Medicare for 16 years, and he wants to continue in office until he is 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible for retirement.
00:18:59.000 No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old.
00:19:02.000 Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem.
00:19:06.000 Everybody that I know who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years.
00:19:11.000 And if you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, things go to hell in a handbasket real quick.
00:19:19.000 But put all of that aside, just on a fiscal level and on a logical level, When Franklin Delano Roosevelt established 65 as the retirement age, the average life expectancy in the United States was 63 years old.
00:19:32.000 Today, the average life expectancy in the United States is close to 80.
00:19:36.000 It's totally insane that you believe that you should be able to work from the time that you are essentially 20 to the time that you are 65, which is a 45-year period.
00:19:45.000 Pay in and then you'll receive social security benefits sufficient to support you and your family, you and your wife or whatever, for like another 20 years.
00:19:56.000 That's crazy talk.
00:19:57.000 That is not fiscally sustainable.
00:20:00.000 The notion that if you have to raise the retirement age to 67 or 68 that everyone is going to fall apart.
00:20:04.000 My parents are that age.
00:20:05.000 My parents are not retired.
00:20:07.000 And they shouldn't retire.
00:20:08.000 It would be very bad for them to retire.
00:20:10.000 By the way, it's disrespectful to people who are 67, 68, 69 years old to suggest that they are in the same shape as people who are 65 were in 1940.
00:20:18.000 It's not true at all.
00:20:21.000 Have you met a 65-year-old lately?
00:20:24.000 65-year-olds are not old in the United States.
00:20:26.000 They're not.
00:20:28.000 68-year-olds are not old in the United States.
00:20:31.000 Again, Joe Biden thinks he's not old, and that dude is running for president again, and that dude actually is old, and he's 81.
00:20:38.000 I failed to see how a country in which our entire leadership class is 80 plus is telling you that we should have a retirement age of 65.
00:20:44.000 It makes no sense at all.
00:20:45.000 We'll get some more on this in just a moment.
00:20:47.000 First, without partners like Stamps.com, we would not be one of America's fastest growing media companies.
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00:21:45.000 Not just that, Joe Biden is also trying to pick a fight with regard to food aid for low-income families.
00:21:51.000 His budget proposes $7.7 billion into fully funding nutrition assistance for women, infants, and children through the WIC program.
00:21:58.000 Now again, there are a lot of studies on the WIC program and how effective it actually is.
00:22:02.000 But the realistic answer to how effective all of this is, is that it should be done at the state and local level.
00:22:08.000 That when you have the federal government subsidizing this stuff to the tune of billions of dollars, most of it ends up going in the trash.
00:22:17.000 Also, Joe Biden wants to pick a fight on student debt, he wants to pick a fight on rural energy costs, and he says he wants to pick a fight on deficit reduction, as though Joe Biden is fiscally responsible, which is totally insane, of course.
00:22:27.000 Joe Biden does not want- no one cares about deficit reduction.
00:22:31.000 Also, deficit reduction, the very term, is so loosely used as to mean nothing.
00:22:36.000 When Joe Biden says that he has reduced the deficit, he is talking about what the deficit was last year being reduced From the year before, for example.
00:22:45.000 So, let me take an example.
00:22:48.000 From personal finance.
00:22:49.000 If you, last month, ran a deficit of $3,000, meaning that you, say, earned $4,000, but you spent $7,000, and then next month you spend $6,000, so your deficit is now $2,000.
00:23:00.000 Are you now fiscally responsible?
00:23:02.000 Or are you just less fiscally irresponsible, slightly, than you were last month?
00:23:07.000 People tend to think that deficit reduction means debt reduction.
00:23:10.000 It does not.
00:23:11.000 The debt keeps piling up.
00:23:13.000 You can lower the deficit and still increase the debt massively and that's exactly what Joe Biden is proposing to do.
00:23:18.000 Now again, he's not spending money on the things that actually matter.
00:23:21.000 This is the part that's amazing.
00:23:24.000 So when it comes to what the United States' actual Responsibilities are on a federal level.
00:23:29.000 They do not include things like aid to dependent women and children.
00:23:33.000 Those are not the fundamental responsibilities of the federal government.
00:23:36.000 You can make a case for it at the local and state level.
00:23:38.000 The federal government was not established to do these things.
00:23:41.000 In fact, I have an entire list of the things that the federal government was established to do.
00:23:44.000 It's called the Constitution of the United States and it includes none of these things.
00:23:49.000 The federal government was in fact established in order to provide for the common defense and security of the United States.
00:23:54.000 That is the number one task of the federal government.
00:23:58.000 And yet the federal government is actually underfunding defense at this point.
00:24:02.000 According to Politico, The Pentagon has sent $10 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine that it still does not have the money to replace due to congressional gridlock, according to a top Defense Department official.
00:24:12.000 By the way, regardless of whether you actually like the war in Ukraine, whether you think we should fund the war in Ukraine, whether we should fund the Ukrainians against the Russians.
00:24:20.000 And again, my opinion on this is that we should be funding the Ukrainians against the Russians to the extent necessary to push them back from their invasion.
00:24:28.000 But unless the Ukrainians have some sort of plan that we haven't heard about, funding the Ukrainians to the tune of trying to take back the Donbass region or Crimea doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
00:24:37.000 But preventing Ukraine from being taken over wholesale by Russia is in America's interest.
00:24:41.000 And by the way, degrading Russia's military capacity is also in America's interest.
00:24:44.000 But put even that aside, even if you disagree with all of that, America should be replenishing its stockpiles.
00:24:50.000 The fact that the Biden administration has not been able to achieve even that is really quite pathetic.
00:24:55.000 If DoD does not get the funding to backfill its stocks, the impact of that ongoing hole will ultimately be felt by the United States' own military forces, according to a senior DoD official.
00:25:05.000 The official said, we've not been able to, with the funding we have to date, replenish everything we've given to Ukraine.
00:25:09.000 It will come back on our own readiness, on our own stockpile, to a certain extent, if we can't get new funding.
00:25:15.000 Now, again, it would be worthwhile to make sure that in a very chaotic world, the United States military is prepared for eventualities.
00:25:26.000 For their part, by the way, we should mention at this point that Europe is starting to pick up the pace.
00:25:30.000 Donald Trump got a lot of flack for suggesting that NATO members need to pay up, that they need to pay a certain share of their GDP toward the common defense.
00:25:37.000 He was right about that.
00:25:39.000 Actually, even the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, is saying so.
00:25:45.000 He says that, you know, when people say that Donald Trump is trying to take apart NATO or something, that's not true.
00:25:50.000 He just wants people to pay their fair share, which, by the way, is correct.
00:25:54.000 Are you concerned about the direction the political debate is headed in the United States regarding NATO?
00:26:03.000 I expect the United States to continue to be a staunch NATO ally, also after the elections in November, because it is in the US interest to have a strong NATO.
00:26:16.000 NATO is a good deal for the United States.
00:26:19.000 Because together we represent 50% of the world's military and economic might.
00:26:24.000 It makes also the United States safer.
00:26:27.000 Second, it is broad political support for NATO in the US Congress.
00:26:34.000 I visited Washington just a couple of weeks ago and that was the message from both the Republican and the Democratic side.
00:26:42.000 And thirdly, The criticism has not mainly been against NATO, but the criticism coming from former President Trump has been against NATO allies not spending enough on NATO.
00:26:55.000 Okay, he's right.
00:26:58.000 He's correct.
00:26:59.000 By the way, the war by some people on NATO is totally ridiculous.
00:27:02.000 It's truly crazy.
00:27:04.000 When you look at the history of NATO, why NATO was originally established, all the rationales for the establishment of NATO still hold.
00:27:12.000 NATO was meant, according to the first Secretary General of NATO, to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out.
00:27:18.000 That was the original purpose of NATO.
00:27:20.000 What that meant, and if you look at European history, it makes a lot of sense, is that a unified Germany has historically been a threat to its neighbors.
00:27:28.000 That Germany, as a national power, is easily the strongest power on the continent.
00:27:32.000 Whenever you have one very strong power on the continent of Europe, it has tended to threaten its neighbors.
00:27:38.000 And we've been living in the end of history for a very long time here in the West, in the post-World War II era.
00:27:43.000 But the reality is, for a vast majority of people on Earth, history didn't stop.
00:27:47.000 And that's particularly true with regard to Russia.
00:27:49.000 We'll get to more on this momentarily.
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00:29:07.000 So I've heard a lot of loose talk recently about people saying, well, you know, Russia did want to join NATO.
00:29:10.000 Yes, Russia wanted to join NATO to destroy NATO.
00:29:12.000 That was the entire purpose.
00:29:14.000 Once Russia is part of NATO, if the United States and NATO had accepted Russia as part of NATO in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's fall, then when Russia attacked another NATO member, Article 5 could not be invoked.
00:29:25.000 That'd be the entire purpose, is to destroy NATO from within.
00:29:27.000 You think Vladimir Putin doesn't know that?
00:29:29.000 That he's just a good-hearted guy who wanted to join NATO in the aftermath of NATO taking the other side of what Russia wanted in the war in Serbia, for example?
00:29:37.000 One of my favorite things about foreign policy is when people assume that the United States is the only country with agency.
00:29:42.000 And Vladimir Putin doesn't have his own motivations and geopolitical rationales for things.
00:29:46.000 NATO was constructed in order to maintain a balance of power on the European and Eurasian continent.
00:29:52.000 That's what it was meant to do.
00:29:53.000 Those rationales still exist.
00:29:56.000 Again, in the absence of NATO, what you would see is many nations in Europe pursuing their own independent security policy.
00:30:03.000 That sounds like fun and games until you revert to the pre-WWI and WWII period in which pretty much everybody arms up with nuclear weapons.
00:30:12.000 There is no unified foreign policy.
00:30:14.000 There is no American control of that foreign policy, which means less world peace.
00:30:18.000 That's just the way it works.
00:30:21.000 Again, go to Eastern Europe and ask them how they feel about the absence of NATO.
00:30:25.000 Do they feel not threatened by the Russians?
00:30:27.000 I keep hearing that the Russians are of no threat to their neighbors.
00:30:30.000 Talk to the people in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.
00:30:33.000 Do they feel a little threatened?
00:30:35.000 In Poland, do they feel a little threatened?
00:30:37.000 The answer is yes, because they can read a history book.
00:30:41.000 And with all of that said, Donald Trump is not anti-NATO.
00:30:43.000 The attempt to turn Donald Trump into an anti-NATO force is silly.
00:30:47.000 Donald Trump is very pro-NATO, so much so that he wants the other countries in NATO to up their defense spending for the collective defense.
00:30:54.000 And the United States maintains tremendous control over the activities of NATO itself.
00:30:59.000 The idea that it's some sort of European conglomerate that the U.S.
00:31:01.000 has no control over is very silly.
00:31:03.000 That's not how NATO actually works on a day-to-day level.
00:31:05.000 The United States has tremendous control over what happens with NATO.
00:31:09.000 Which is a good thing, because historically speaking, when the United States reverts to policy only within its own borders and leaves Europe to its own devices, we end up having to, you know, go over there and help out from time to time and expend hundreds of thousands of American lives in the process.
00:31:22.000 You know what we haven't had to do in Europe since the advent of NATO?
00:31:25.000 Any of that.
00:31:26.000 Which is a very good thing.
00:31:28.000 In any case, The foreign policy of the United States should be a muscular foreign policy in which we actually support our allies.
00:31:37.000 The Biden administration has foregone all of that.
00:31:39.000 The reason you're seeing chaos everywhere is because America's enemies are pushing where there's mush, as I have said.
00:31:45.000 And the more mush the Biden administration shows, the worse things get.
00:31:49.000 This is not a giant shock.
00:31:50.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, authorities in Europe now say they have foiled several terror plots, some involving suspects posing as refugees, raising alarm about a growing array of threats from extremists.
00:31:59.000 In one previously unreported investigation last December, police in Austria and Bosnia arrested two separate groups of Afghan and Syrian refugees who carried arms and ammunition, including Kalashnikov assault rifles and pistols.
00:32:11.000 Investigators found pictures of Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe on some of the suspects' mobile phones, which they said were suggested were motivated by the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.
00:32:21.000 That followed the arrest late last year of a group of Tajik nationals suspected of planning attacks on the Cologne Cathedral in Germany and St.
00:32:28.000 Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna around Christmas.
00:32:30.000 Both churches filled with hundreds of visitors for the holiday season.
00:32:34.000 Then on Monday, Italian authorities said they had detained three Palestinians suspected of being members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, designated as a terror group by the U.S.
00:32:41.000 and European Union.
00:32:42.000 The three were preparing to attack civilian and military targets in Europe, according to Italian national police.
00:32:48.000 Investigators say that the separate incidents suggest Europe's terror threat isn't only growing, but also coming from new sources, complicating the work of security agencies.
00:32:55.000 A wave of attacks that hit the continent starting in 2015 was largely inspired and in parts erected by ISIS.
00:33:00.000 Now the threat is coming not just from the Islamic State Khorasan, Islamic State's Afghanistan-based successor organization, but also from Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
00:33:10.000 Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, warned late last year these and other actors were being galvanized by the war in Gaza and that Jews and Jewish institutions across Europe were among the potential targets.
00:33:21.000 But obviously, not the only targets.
00:33:22.000 You're seeing cathedrals being targeted.
00:33:24.000 You're seeing targets, civilian targets, being targeted that have nothing to do with Jews in Europe.
00:33:28.000 Why?
00:33:28.000 Because the war that is being fought by Islamic terrorists is not just against Jews.
00:33:33.000 The reason they hate Israel is not because Israel is filled with Jews only.
00:33:36.000 That is certainly one reason.
00:33:37.000 It is because they see Israel as a colonialist outpost of the West, which means that the real reason they hate Israel is because they hate the West.
00:33:45.000 They do not like the West.
00:33:47.000 They believe that the West is an imperial occupier of its own land, by the way.
00:33:52.000 The people who believe in Islamic Sharia law believe that Spain is still Muslim land.
00:33:56.000 They believe that half of Europe is still Muslim land.
00:33:59.000 And that means that they're a war with actually large swaths of the West.
00:34:04.000 So what is the Biden administration doing?
00:34:06.000 They're attempting to pretend that none of this is actually happening.
00:34:10.000 There was an astonishing exchange yesterday between The Pentagon Press Secretary in the press.
00:34:17.000 Just an astonishing exchange.
00:34:18.000 This is the Pentagon Press Secretary, Major General Pat Ryder.
00:34:22.000 So apparently he was asked, does the Department of Defense anticipate that Hamas will try to fire on Americans who are trying to build a pier in Gaza?
00:34:30.000 Again, this is a super stupid idea.
00:34:32.000 Why are we deploying American troops to build a pier On the beach in Gaza.
00:34:36.000 Are we under the weird misimpression that, like, magically the aid, if unloaded at the pier, is going to get to the people who are in need of the aid?
00:34:46.000 Somebody's gonna have to drive the truck from the pier into Gaza.
00:34:48.000 That's gonna have to happen.
00:34:49.000 And you know what'll happen to those trucks?
00:34:51.000 The same thing that's happening every time a truck goes through the Kerem Shalom crossing.
00:34:55.000 Which means it'll be hijacked by Hamas, of course.
00:34:58.000 Anyway, General Ryder was asked about this, that will Hamas try to fire on the operation?
00:35:03.000 And he said, look, that's certainly a risk again.
00:35:05.000 But if Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people, then again, one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered.
00:35:14.000 Do you know how insane and stupid that is?
00:35:16.000 That's like the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
00:35:19.000 They truly don't!
00:35:21.000 What more evidence do you need?
00:35:23.000 They literally use the Palestinian people as human shields.
00:35:26.000 They hide behind women and children.
00:35:28.000 They've systematically shot at people who are attempting to get aid.
00:35:32.000 Hamas has.
00:35:33.000 They kill people, like civilians, who are trying to get the aid.
00:35:36.000 They hijack the aid.
00:35:37.000 They literally used billions of dollars flowing into the Gaza Strip over the last 20 years to build terror tunnels and military capacity instead of feeding their own people.
00:35:45.000 They don't have potable water over there because Hamas stole all the aid.
00:35:49.000 And the Pentagon is still out there saying, well, if they really care about them, that fundamental misconception, which is that the people of Hamas, the people of Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror groups, these are all reasonable people can be talked to.
00:36:00.000 After all, they care about, they care about humanity.
00:36:03.000 They care about their children.
00:36:04.000 They're just like you.
00:36:05.000 This is so insane and crazy, but it leads to bizarre and evil foreign policy ramifications for the United States, like telling American allies like Israel, they shouldn't kill terrorists.
00:36:15.000 Maybe better if they don't kill terrorists somehow for the United States.
00:36:19.000 Which is weird, because it seems to me, as an American, that'd be very good if American allies spent a lot of time killing terrorists.
00:36:23.000 That's great, we don't have to do it then.
00:36:25.000 That's good.
00:36:25.000 We'll get some more on this in just one second.
00:36:30.000 First, the iconic Leftist Tears tumbler.
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00:37:26.000 Only that delusional view of the world would lead to the conclusion that America has an interest in hampering Israel going into Rafah, for example.
00:37:32.000 Rafah is chock-filled with Hamas terrorists.
00:37:34.000 It is, in fact, the last stronghold of the Hamas terrorists.
00:37:37.000 And yet Joe Biden yesterday suggested that he would condition aid to Israel On them not going into Rafah.
00:37:45.000 Which again, for a historical comparison, would sort of be like the Allies approached the gates of Berlin during World War II.
00:37:51.000 And suddenly it's like, well, no, we can't go in.
00:37:53.000 You know, guys, we gotta stop here.
00:37:54.000 We gotta stop here.
00:37:54.000 That's where the terrorists are.
00:37:56.000 It's what Israel has been doing this whole time.
00:37:58.000 They've been condensing the terrorist population Block by block down to particular areas that they can finish them off.
00:38:05.000 And now the Biden administration is like, no, no, no.
00:38:06.000 Now, what's amazing about that is the Biden administration has tried to cram down every ceasefire proposal it can on Israel.
00:38:11.000 And Israel has accepted a bunch of them.
00:38:13.000 Hamas rejects all of them.
00:38:14.000 Why?
00:38:15.000 Because they know that effectively Joe Biden is now doing PR for them.
00:38:18.000 That's the part that's truly insane.
00:38:20.000 While Bibi Netanyahu is not caving in the face of this, the Prime Minister of Israel, the Biden administration is trying to do this ridiculous two-step, this PR two-step, where they suggest that their disagreements are just with Bibi, not with Israelis.
00:38:31.000 And in fact, they talk about the Netanyahu government the same way they talk about Hamas.
00:38:35.000 It's totally wild.
00:38:37.000 They will say, well, Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.
00:38:39.000 The Palestinian people are good and kind.
00:38:42.000 They're not represented by Hamas in any way.
00:38:43.000 Now, in reality, Hamas was, in fact, originally elected.
00:38:47.000 By every available poll, Hamas is still popular inside the Gaza Strip and way more popular inside the West Bank.
00:38:52.000 But that's the lie that the Biden administration will tell.
00:38:55.000 Then they tell another lie, which is they suggest that the government of Israel is entirely run in authoritarian fashion by Bibi Netanyahu, which is crazy on every level.
00:39:03.000 They have elections like every five minutes in Israel.
00:39:05.000 The last election was held in 2022.
00:39:07.000 It ended with a coalition government that involves a bunch of parties.
00:39:10.000 And by the way, the coalition government that is currently running things, the war cabinet, is representative of something like 90 seats?
00:39:20.000 In the current Knesset, because it includes a bunch of opposition parties who didn't actually originally join with Netanyahu, but did after the war.
00:39:29.000 Again, if Bibi Netanyahu disappeared from the face of the earth today, Benny Gantz would be the prime minister and Benny Gantz would immediately pursue exactly the same policy.
00:39:36.000 So basically it's a lie.
00:39:37.000 When Joe Biden says this is about Netanyahu and me and we're not getting along, that is an excuse that he can use for his liberal Jewish donors.
00:39:44.000 So that he can tell them that it's not that he's anti-Israel, it's just that he's anti-Bibi.
00:39:47.000 Which is so stupid, it doesn't make any sense at all.
00:39:49.000 Netanyahu rebutted that yesterday.
00:39:51.000 He refuted Biden's criticism of him personally, and he's correct on this.
00:39:56.000 That's exactly what the President meant.
00:39:57.000 But if he meant by that that I'm pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of Israel, then he's wrong on both counts.
00:40:08.000 Number one, these are not my private policies only.
00:40:12.000 They're policies supported by the overwhelming majority of the Israelis.
00:40:16.000 They support the action that we're taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Hamas, They say that once we destroy the Hamas, the last thing we should do is put in Gaza, in charge of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority that educates its children towards terrorism and pays for terrorism.
00:40:36.000 And they also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state.
00:40:44.000 That is something that they agree on and it's something that I think is also for the interest of Israel because The majority of Israelis understand that if we don't do this, what we'll have is a repetition of the October 7th massacre, which is bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians, bad for the future of peace in the Middle East.
00:41:04.000 So, the attempt to say that my policies are my private policies that are not supported by most Israelis is false.
00:41:11.000 The vast majority are united as never before, and they understand what's good for Israel.
00:41:17.000 And by the way, the deep state under the Biden administration is now purporting that they're pushing for just insanity.
00:41:23.000 So there was an annual threat assessment that was published by Washington and it compiled U.S.
00:41:27.000 intelligence and its conclusions are totally crazy.
00:41:29.000 So one of them is not crazy.
00:41:31.000 That conclusion is that Israel will probably face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come.
00:41:35.000 I'm sure that's true.
00:41:36.000 Hamas has many people who are terrorist adjacent who will attack Israeli forces for years to come because that's what Israel has been undergoing in the West Bank for legitimately decades at this point.
00:41:45.000 But the conclusion also is that Iranian leaders did not orchestrate or have foreknowledge of the Hamas attack against Israel.
00:41:52.000 And that Iran is attempting to avoid all-out war, although conflict against Hezbollah could escalate, which is an easy way for the Biden administration to pretend that Iran isn't the actual head of the Hydra here, even though Iran is clearly the head of the Hydra.
00:42:04.000 The Houthis aren't doing this on their own.
00:42:05.000 Hamas isn't doing this on their own.
00:42:07.000 Hezbollah's not doing this on their own.
00:42:09.000 The craziest part of the report, though, is the language that they use with regard to an allied, democratically elected government.
00:42:15.000 They would never use this language about, say, Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine, by the way, who has delayed elections.
00:42:21.000 Vladimir Zelensky is currently delaying elections indefinitely while the war in Ukraine goes on.
00:42:24.000 They never use this sort of language.
00:42:26.000 But with regard to Netanyahu, they do.
00:42:27.000 quote, distrust of Netanyahu's ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public
00:42:31.000 from its already high levels before the war and we expect large protests demanding his
00:42:35.000 resignation in new elections. A different, more moderate government is a possibility.
00:42:38.000 So you have the intelligence apparatus talking about regime change in Israel.
00:42:43.000 That's the part that's totally crazy.
00:42:44.000 By the way, there will be elections.
00:42:45.000 And you know what will happen?
00:42:47.000 Somebody else will be prime minister and that person will still go into Rafa if elections were held today.
00:42:51.000 That's the way all of this works.
00:42:52.000 But again, all of this is just cover for Joe Biden pandering to the Hamas, Nixon, Dearborn.
00:42:57.000 That's all this is.
00:42:59.000 And all you have to know about that is that Bernie Sanders is representative of this pathetic left-wing worldview that suggests that Israel is somehow indiscriminately bombing civilians and that Joe Biden is committing a sin by allowing Israel to kill terrorists.
00:43:16.000 The number of lies that Bernie Sanders is able to tell, I mean, I suppose that makes sense.
00:43:19.000 He's been a useless person his entire career.
00:43:21.000 Literally his entire career.
00:43:23.000 He's a useless derelict leech on the body politic.
00:43:25.000 The fact that he's been elevated inside the Democratic Party just demonstrates that the single greatest way to gain power in the United States is to run in an election against Hillary Clinton.
00:43:33.000 Here's Bernie Sanders.
00:43:35.000 President Biden was heard on a hot mic after the State of the Union address saying he has to have a come to Jesus talk with Netanyahu about letting humanitarian aid into Gaza.
00:43:47.000 Have you spoken to President Biden about whether he's had this conversation?
00:43:52.000 If he hasn't, what is he waiting for?
00:43:54.000 And if he already had it, has it made any difference?
00:43:59.000 Well, I've spoken to people very high up in his administration.
00:44:02.000 Here's the bottom line.
00:44:04.000 Margaret, what we are seeing in Gaza today is literally an unprecedented crisis.
00:44:09.000 It's not just the 30,000 people, two-thirds of them are women and children have already been killed.
00:44:15.000 We are looking at the possibility of hundreds of thousands of children starving to death.
00:44:23.000 The United States of America cannot be complicit in this mass slaughter of children.
00:44:30.000 I mean, Bernie may as well just be on Hamas's payroll at this point with that kind of crap.
00:44:33.000 But, you know, he has never found an authoritarian dictatorship that he doesn't love, so long as it opposed Western interests.
00:44:40.000 He's a guy who, you know, honeymooned in Moscow, so there you have it.
00:44:43.000 Meanwhile, bizarre coalitions forming over whether to ban TikTok in the United States.
00:44:47.000 Let me be clear, TikTok should in fact be banned if they will not divest of their Chinese ownership.
00:44:52.000 It is a Chinese social media apparatus.
00:44:55.000 That is what TikTok is.
00:44:56.000 And again, we're on TikTok because that's where the kids are and we will continue to post on TikTok and on every other outlet where the kids are because I think it's important for people to hear messages that are not actually just left-wing messages.
00:45:08.000 With that said, TikTok is a Chinese intelligence gathering tool.
00:45:13.000 TikTok is also a viral sickness in the United States.
00:45:17.000 The kinds of mental illness that are being spawned by TikTok are quite real.
00:45:21.000 And if you ever take a look at Chinese TikTok versus American TikTok, you can see the difference.
00:45:26.000 American TikTok is all about transing the kids.
00:45:28.000 Chinese TikTok is all about doing math problems because China is not interested in transing its own children.
00:45:35.000 So there's a big battle that's now broken out between people on the right over whether to ban TikTok or to force TikTok to divest of its Chinese ownership.
00:45:45.000 According to the New York Times, House Republican leaders are moving this week to pass legislation that would force the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the platform or face being barred in the United States.
00:45:54.000 That's even after Donald Trump came out against targeting the popular social media app he once vowed to ban.
00:46:00.000 Representative Steve Scalise, who's the majority leader, said on Monday that the House would try to speed the bill to passage under special procedures reserved for non-controversial legislation.
00:46:08.000 There's a 13-page bill.
00:46:10.000 It's the product of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is a bipartisan committee.
00:46:16.000 We have friends on that committee, including Mike Gallagher, who's an excellent congressperson.
00:46:20.000 Trump issued an executive order that tried to do this, but now he's changed course.
00:46:25.000 In an interview on CNBC recently, Trump said he considered TikTok a national security threat, but that banning it would make young people go crazy.
00:46:32.000 And he said that any action harming the platform would benefit Facebook, which he called an enemy of the people.
00:46:36.000 Now, I think two things can be true at once.
00:46:39.000 Facebook can also have serious problems.
00:46:41.000 Also, it's not owned lock, stock and barrel by the Chinese government, and it is not being used as an intelligence gathering tool by the Chinese.
00:46:49.000 The fact that kids would go crazy over a thing does not mean that you shouldn't do it.
00:46:51.000 My kids go crazy over stupid crap all the time and I say no to them all the time because that's my job as a parent.
00:46:57.000 The legislation is one of several efforts over the past year aimed at curtailing TikTok because of concerns that ByteDance's relationship with Beijing poses risks to national security.
00:47:05.000 President Biden, for his part, has said that he would sign it.
00:47:07.000 There was Joe Biden saying that he would sign the ban on TikTok as long as it's still under Chinese ownership.
00:47:15.000 Do you still support banning TikTok when you sign that bill?
00:47:20.000 If they pass it, I'll sign it.
00:47:22.000 So the question is why Trump has flipped on it. So Trump was very much in favor of going after TikTok
00:47:27.000 not all that long ago. And let's be realistic, Donald Trump at this point should be in favor
00:47:33.000 politically speaking.
00:47:34.000 Forget about the morality of it, or the national security of it.
00:47:37.000 Both have good reasons to actually curb TikTok's Chinese ownership, because the CCP is a really nefarious force in the world.
00:47:43.000 On a political level, TikTok is pushing leftism.
00:47:46.000 Not sure why Donald Trump would want to stand with an outlet that pushes leftism harder than any outlet that currently exists on social media.
00:47:53.000 So why exactly is Trump flipping on this sort of thing?
00:47:58.000 Not particularly clear.
00:48:01.000 Apparently, according to Axios, neither Trump nor his campaign posts on TikTok, but the shift in position is a sign the former president recognizes the platform's massive appeal to younger voters, many of whom are disenchanted with Biden.
00:48:14.000 It's a bunch of prominent MAGA figures, conservative comedians, everyone else are highly active on TikTok.
00:48:19.000 Listen, again, we are active on TikTok.
00:48:21.000 That does not change the reality, which is that TikTok legitimately should be separated from its Chinese ownership.
00:48:27.000 Just last year, Donald Trump Jr.
00:48:29.000 ripped the idea of a TikTok ban.
00:48:30.000 Now, let me just... Tucker Carlson suggested there was a hidden agenda, saying it's a creepy, low-IQ Chinese plot that doesn't mean people trying to ban TikTok have your interests in mind.
00:48:39.000 One potential factor at play that people are pointing out is Trump's repaired relationship with a billionaire named Jeff Yass, who has a huge financial stake in ByteDance and has spent millions backing lawmakers who support TikTok.
00:48:49.000 Just a few days before the TikTok reversal, Trump publicly praised Yass for inviting him to a retreat held by the Club for Growth.
00:48:57.000 Yassin previously donated almost $5 million to Vivek Ramaswamy, who also shifted on TikTok, right?
00:49:02.000 He went from wanting to ban it, he called it digital fentanyl, to then being in favor of TikTok.
00:49:09.000 Now again, this has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
00:49:12.000 Forcing China to divest its ownership stake in TikTok is not, in fact, a First Amendment issue.
00:49:18.000 TikTok can still exist.
00:49:20.000 TikTok can just have American ownership, or foreign ownership that is not, in fact, the Chinese Communist Party.
00:49:26.000 That'd be the basic idea here.
00:49:28.000 I don't think that legislators, by the way, have to have your best interest in mind in order for the legislation to be good.
00:49:33.000 In order for a piece of legislation to be beneficial.
00:49:34.000 I think legislators very rarely have your interests in mind.
00:49:37.000 They generally have their own interests in mind.
00:49:39.000 That doesn't mean that the legislation emanating wouldn't be good.
00:49:41.000 And I am bewildered as to why there are so many people who are shifting on this topic just because Donald Trump said so.
00:49:48.000 TikTok is literally putting out ads right now demanding that people call their representatives.
00:49:54.000 They put out an ad saying, this Wednesday, the House of Representatives will vote to ban TikTok, which means the creativity, inspiration, and communities you love will end with it.
00:50:02.000 Together, we can work to help the communities you love.
00:50:04.000 Call your representative today.
00:50:06.000 Or, alternatively, you could get the Chinese party out of the business of TikTok.
00:50:11.000 That would be the alternative.
00:50:13.000 You know, things don't just magically become decent or conservative because Donald Trump and company endorse them.
00:50:19.000 Conservatives were engaged in the most effective boycott In modern history, against Bud Light, until it was undercut by Donald Trump Jr., until it was undercut by the UFC, until it was undercut by Tucker Carlson, suddenly there are a bunch of people who randomly came out and said that the boycott against Bud Light had to end.
00:50:37.000 That didn't mean that was a conservative policy.
00:50:40.000 You should assess whether you think the policy is good or bad based on the policy, not based on who tells you that the policy is good or bad.
00:50:46.000 Hell, if I tell you a policy is good or bad, that doesn't mean that you should simply accept it.
00:50:49.000 You should actually determine whether you like the policy or not.
00:50:53.000 Alrighty, coming up, we are going to get into a horrific story from Missouri.
00:50:58.000 That would be a national news story if it involved people of different races.
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