Disney employees at an all-hands meeting talked about indoctrinating their kids in leftist sexual values, according to a leaked document obtained by the New York Times. The Florida Parental Rights and Education Act, which was passed by the Florida Supreme Court last week, would ban the use of the word 'gay' in public school textbooks, and require teachers to teach their children about sexual issues such as 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transphobic ideas' in order to make sure they learn these ideas in a safe and culturally appropriate way. This sheds a new light on the opposition from the left to the "Don't Say Gay" bill, and how they are willing to go to war with their own children to protect them. The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro breaks it all down and explains why the Biden administration should be worried about the growing number of LGBTQ children in America. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Get ExpressVPN, a VPN service that allows you to connect to the internet anonymously, securely, without the need for a VPN. Use the promo code: "ExpressVPN" to receive $10 off your first purchase and get 10% off your entire purchase when you sign up for ExpressVPN when you become a patron. You'll get 20% off the first month, plus an additional $5 off your next month when you upgrade your membership when you get a VPN trial when you start getting a free trial offer from ExpressVPN! Subscribe to the show! Learn more about your ad-free version of the show, "The Ben Shapiro Show. Subscribe here. Become a supporter of The Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire here! Ben Shapiro is a writer, editor, podcaster, and podcaster. His latest book is out now! Get a copy of his latest book, "Ben Shapiro's New book "The Devil Wears No Pants." Ben's New Book: The Devil Knows What He's Good at It's Good, Too Good, by Ben Shapiro, by becoming a Friend of Ben Shapiro on Amazon Prime Day, by clicking HERE. Watch the show on Audible, wherever you get your own copy of the book? Subscribe to Ben Shapiro Is Good, Subscribe to his newest novel "The Dark Side of the Mind? by clicking here. FREE FASTEST & Great at Amazon Prime Video, wherever else is Best, Ben Shapiro Read the book is Good? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts?
00:00:00.000We here at The Daily Wire are ready to go to war with Disney to protect children.
00:00:03.000The Biden administration sees record low approval ratings as the economy teeters on the brink of recession and America prepares for a new border crisis.
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00:00:27.000We'll get to the news in just one moment.
00:00:28.000First, you may have noticed that inflation is taking a rather large toll on your paycheck.
00:00:33.000In fact, the average American family, according to Bloomberg, is going to spend over $5,000 extra this year compared to what they spent last year because of inflation.
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00:01:34.000Well, as we've been talking about, the employees at Disney are apparently ready to indoctrinate your kids in queer theory and wokeness and sexual indoctrination.
00:01:50.000There was an all-hands meeting over at Disney in which multiple employees talked about spooning a bunch of left-wing sexual values into children's programming.
00:01:59.000They said, in fact, that this was their goal.
00:02:01.000They talked about how when you go to Disneyland, from now on, we have to be very, very careful that you don't label little girls princesses because they might be insulted.
00:02:09.000You can no longer say things like, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
00:02:13.000Not only that, they say that they want to make this according to the corporate president of Disney, who has two queer children.
00:02:18.000She says one pansexual child, nobody knows what that means, and one trans child, which seems to be kind of a coincidence.
00:02:24.000I mean, it's amazing all of the genetic variation in one family there.
00:02:27.000But this Disney corporate president said that she wants 50% of all characters at Disney to be LGBTQIA plus minus divided by sign, fractional sign, Percentage sign.
00:02:42.000She wants half the characters to be that or people of color.
00:03:04.000They just listened to all the advocacy groups who said that the bill was called Don't Say Gay, and they literally thought, because some of them do, that the bill banned the word gay in the state of Florida, which clearly it does not, since I've now said the word gay several times in the course of this program, and I've said it many times over the course of the past couple of weeks, and not once has someone broken down the door to haul me away.
00:03:22.000So obviously it was not a don't-say-gay bill, nor does the bill say that if there is a kid who has two gay parents, that if this kid says, my dads took me to Disneyland the other day, that the kid would be sued.
00:03:32.000What it did say is that teachers were not allowed to indoctrinate children on these issues without parental permission, K-3, or as age appropriate beyond that.
00:03:45.000So originally I thought that it was just a misinterpretation.
00:03:46.000Maybe it was just that the left didn't understand the bill.
00:03:49.000Then you see the footage from the Disney employees who are saying overtly that they wish to convert your children to a particular way of thinking about sexual mores and about gender identity and about boys being girls and girls being boys.
00:04:18.000It would be conspiracy theory if I said it.
00:04:20.000If they say it openly, to each other, on tape, that's no longer a conspiracy theory.
00:04:25.000It's just the thing that they are saying out loud.
00:04:27.000And so you have to wonder at this point, the reason that they're opposing the bill in Florida, is it because they misconstrue the bill or because they actually understand the bill?
00:04:34.000And they oppose the bill on its merits.
00:04:36.000They want small children indoctrinated with their values, which is, of course, why it is a priority to them to put in animated shows for small children.
00:04:46.000Lesbian couples making out and why it's important for there to be trans and non-binary and non-cis characters in children's cartoon programming.
00:05:04.000When we here at The Daily Wire, for months and months and months, we have been talking and putting into plan and putting into place a plan to do children's content.
00:05:12.000Because the simple fact is that we've known for a long time that the left has been skewing children's content.
00:05:18.000But we announced yesterday that over the next three years, we would be investing $100 million here at The Daily Wire into making children's entertainment content.
00:05:33.000And it used to be that I could turn on Disney Plus and feel relatively safe that if my five-year-old grabbed ahold of their remote and hit anything, that it would be okay.
00:06:19.000My sisters and I, we didn't grow up a particularly rich family.
00:06:23.000We grew up in a two-bedroom home in Burbank, California.
00:06:25.000Until I was about 11 years old, I shared a bedroom with three of my siblings.
00:06:29.000And all three of my siblings and I, when it was time to go to bed at night, my dad would put on a tape of Beauty and the Beast, and we would listen to the score, and we'd go to sleep.
00:06:40.000I know Disney lyrics better than pretty much anyone else I know.
00:06:42.000We're Disney annual pass holders in California.
00:06:44.000It makes me incredibly sad that Disney has decided to cave to the woke, and not just cave to the woke, to echo the woke, to become a woke machine.
00:07:02.000We can say that it's really bad that Disney is doing this, and of course it's really bad that Disney is doing this.
00:07:05.000In fact, it's perverse that Disney is doing this.
00:07:07.000It's perverse that Disney wants to leverage its own values on sex.
00:07:12.000into its programming to five, six, seven, eight-year-old kids.
00:07:16.000That is screwed up in every possible way.
00:07:18.000We can complain about it or we can build an alternative.
00:07:20.000So we here at The Daily Wire, we are dedicating $100 million over the next three years to making children's programming so that you have a space where if you give your kid the remote, you're not going to have to worry that we're going to crap on your values because we reflect your values.
00:07:45.000They are not sexual beings in waiting.
00:07:48.000They are children whose innocence needs to be maintained, needs to be protected.
00:07:53.000That is why we're... This is not just a monetary play, although we think that Disney has now opened up a market, because the woker the left gets, the more markets they open up for people who are willing to compete.
00:08:03.000But this is not just a monetary play for us.
00:08:06.000It is a monetary play because we believe in capitalism, but it is more than that.
00:08:10.000We think that you, people like you, parents who are listening to this program, that you are not willing to risk your kids and their future and the way that they think about the most important issues in life simply because Disney has a license to use Star Wars.
00:08:24.000We don't think that that is who you are as parents.
00:08:26.000And so we are going to produce an alternative.
00:08:28.000It's not just enough to say that people should not consume Disney product because, I mean, listen, I won't.
00:08:32.000And when it comes to the new light-year movie, I have no intention of showing my five-year-old boy a light-year movie in which there are lesbians making out.
00:08:46.000Because it's one thing to say that you're going to temporarily pull your dollars from Disney, or that you're going to pull your dollars from a particular Disney movie.
00:08:52.000It's another thing to start building alternatives.
00:08:54.000Places where you know that your values won't be pissed and spit upon.
00:08:58.000Places where you know that the left is not going to prey upon your children.
00:09:03.000And that's what we're intending on building here at Daily Wire.
00:09:05.000So as I say, yesterday, The Daily Wire co-CEO, Small G, Small K, God King, Jeremy Boring, announced that we here at the Daily Wire would be dumping $100 million into development of television shows for kids at DW Kids.
00:09:21.000Because of the great reporting of Chris Ruffo, we got to see leaked footage from inside Disney of high up Disney employees saying things like, we have a not so secret gay agenda.
00:09:34.000Saying things like, we insert, we, we, uh, Make sure I get this quote right.
00:09:40.000We're adding in queerness wherever we can.
00:09:44.000And that, quote, no one is trying to stop the producer who is doing so.
00:09:48.000Another executive within the company said, if anything, we don't have enough LGBTQIA representation in content made for very small children.
00:10:34.000About a family of homeschooled chinchillas.
00:10:36.000Again, appropriate for children of all ages.
00:10:38.000And another one called Doodles with Noodles that centers on a man and his puppet giving drawing lessons.
00:10:43.000When you describe stuff that way, it sounds silly, of course.
00:10:46.000But all children's programming sounds silly.
00:10:48.000The thing about this is that we are deadly serious that we mean to provide a safe alternative for your kids.
00:10:54.000Where you are not going to have to worry that if you leave the room for five minutes, your kid is being told that he can be a she.
00:10:59.000You're not going to have to worry about that.
00:11:00.000You're going to have to worry about answering questions about the morality of various forms of marriage when you come back into the room after leaving your kid watching the latest episode of Paw Patrol.
00:11:10.000You're not going to have to worry about that sort of stuff.
00:11:12.000And we are willing to sink serious money into this.
00:11:14.000In fact, we've committed to sinking serious money because we know that you're going to help us.
00:11:32.000And we've done all these things because you guys help us.
00:11:35.000And we need your help because here's the thing.
00:11:37.000Has tens, maybe hundreds of millions of subscribers at this point.
00:11:41.000Disney spends $25 billion a year on exactly the kind of programming that they claim they are going to use as a political weapon against you and your children.
00:11:50.000And we are committing $100 million over the next three years.
00:11:55.000I'm just gonna put it right out there.
00:11:56.000Hey, obviously we make money from this because we believe there's a market out there.
00:11:59.000We believe every time Disney spends a buck attempting to push its woke agenda, it is pushing more people into our corner.
00:12:06.000But we are also first movers in the space, which means that we have to sink an enormous amount of time and money into the project to build an alternative.
00:12:14.000And for us, kids content is a loss leader until it's not.
00:12:17.000You're going to help us make it profitable, because if you do, we will provide an alternative.
00:12:23.000And by the way, if we provide an alternative, it will force Disney to take you seriously.
00:12:26.000It is not just that you will actually have something to show your kids where you can feel safe.
00:12:30.000It is also that Disney might have second thoughts about caving to the most pathetically woke people on planet Earth, the people who want to hijack your kids.
00:12:38.000They might start looking at that profit margin shrinking and think to themselves, hey, maybe we shouldn't make a story about a panda bear who happens to be a pansexual lesbian gymnast.
00:12:50.000Maybe instead we should make something that appeals to five and six year olds, maybe.
00:12:53.000And doesn't crap all over the parents.
00:13:24.000You get all sorts of good stuff anyway when you go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code buildthefuture.
00:13:29.000You're helping us build the future on an ideological level.
00:13:31.000You're going to get our kids content as soon as that is available in the next few months.
00:13:34.000You're also going to get Terror on the Prairie with Gina Carano.
00:13:36.000You're going to get access to the other movies that we've made ranging from Shut In to Run Hide Fight to the Hyperions.
00:13:42.000You're gonna get all access with Maisie and hang out with me on just random nights and watch me answer questions about my kids and my life.
00:13:49.000And I'll hang out with you and we'll get to know one another.
00:13:51.000You can do all those things when you go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code buildthefuture.
00:13:54.000You get 45% off your subscription today when you do that to help us provide your kids with the content they need to protect themselves against the nastiness of multi-billion dollar corporations that wish to weaponize your kids against you.
00:14:09.000Well, if it feels like in American society, your house is burning down, you might want to actually think about insuring your actual house.
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00:16:21.000Now this is nightmare territory for Democrats because inflation is not going away.
00:16:26.000As we'll get to in a second, the economy is on a razor's edge right now.
00:16:29.000The invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that Joe Biden says that he has rallied the world behind his cause, he has not actually ended the war in Ukraine.
00:16:37.000And when it does end, it is likely to end with Vladimir Putin in a strengthened position with regard to, for example, oil fields in eastern Ukraine, as we'll get to in just a moment.
00:16:44.000Immigration is the one that really is lurking here, because if you think that the immigration issue is dead, it is not dead by half.
00:16:50.000As we'll explain in a second, we are about to see a massive, unprecedented wave of illegal immigration over the course of the next couple of months, facilitated by this administration.
00:16:59.000Even Chuck Todd on MSNBC, he's saying this administration is just cratering.
00:17:56.000Wanna win those big Midwestern states.
00:17:58.000So you pick the bluest city in the entire Midwest that is rife with crime and run by one of the most unpopular mayors in all of America, Lori Loughlin.
00:18:28.000And on the economy, they're in even worse trouble than I think they know.
00:18:31.000So Larry Summers did an interview with Ezra Klein, formerly a Vox now of the New York Times.
00:18:35.000Summers has been predicting for a year that serious inflation was on the way.
00:18:39.000Now remember, the entire Democratic Party had gotten so far beyond the point where they thought inflation was a real thing, that they had embraced something called modern monetary theory.
00:18:47.000Their theory was you could literally just spend money for the rest of time with no limit whatsoever.
00:18:53.000Which meant, according to the modern monetary theorist, people like Elizabeth Warren, that the only thing separating America from greatness was just the willpower.
00:19:01.000There was no reality where if you spent too much money, you'd inflate the economy and you would end up with massive price increases that take a chunk out of American savings and act as a giant tax on Americans.
00:19:16.000And now, as our client over at the New York Times, who was very critical of Larry Summers, he was like, yeah, it turns out that that might've been wrong.
00:19:22.000Turns out that Larry Summers was right.
00:19:24.000So now, Larry Summers is going further.
00:19:25.000He's saying this is not just a problem of inflation.
00:19:29.000He's saying that we are basically going to fall into recession at this point.
00:19:34.000I think the likelihood is that we will not return to 2% inflation without having at least a mild recession.
00:19:43.000I think that the magnitude of the imbalances and excess demand in the labor market are sufficiently great that the odds are probably three and four that we will not get inflation down without running a recession.
00:20:01.000Well this is a disaster area for the Democrats.
00:20:33.000According to one Bloomberg economist, Americans are having to spend, the average American household is spending $5,200 more compared to just last year.
00:20:46.000$433 per month more on the same goods and services last year.
00:20:58.000These economists say accelerated depletion of savings will increase the urgency for those staying on the sidelines to join the labor force.
00:21:04.000The resulting increase in labor supply will likely dampen wage growth.
00:21:08.000So people will need to go back to work.
00:21:09.000Employers may be able to lower the wages when that happens.
00:21:13.000In the meantime, inflation is going to maintain.
00:21:16.000So, speaking of inflation, that rapid inflation that is driving people out of their homes, now would be an excellent time for you to refinance.
00:21:23.000Like, if you're thinking about that home, you're thinking about that mortgage, that is your biggest monthly bill, and you should just be prepared.
00:21:28.000Just know that in five months, it's not going to be as good a time to refinance as it is right now because the interest rates are just going to go up.
00:21:34.000I mean, the Federal Reserve has announced this already.
00:21:36.000So, take advantage of a free mortgage review from American Financing today.
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00:22:01.000Think of the difference that can make and then give them a call.
00:22:10.000Now, you might think, at this point, that the Biden administration would do something differently.
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00:22:21.000Now you might think at this point that the Biden administration would do something differently.
00:22:25.000I mean, after all, the alarm bells should be going off.
00:22:28.000According to MarketWatch.com, a closely watched measure of the yield curve that serves as one of the bond market's most reliable recession indicators inverted on Tuesday, underlining fears about the economic outlook as the Federal Reserve considers aggressively hiking interest rates.
00:22:40.000you The widely-followed spread between two-year bonds and 10-year Treasury yields intermittently dipped below zero.
00:22:47.000It's down from more than 160 basis points a year ago.
00:22:51.000The last time the spread inverted was August 30, 2019.
00:22:55.000Traders are responding to the likely need for Fed policymakers to deliver a larger-than-normal half-point rate hike, and possibly more soon.
00:23:01.000In order to combat inflation, Jerome Powell had opened the door to that a little bit earlier this month.
00:23:07.000According to Mark Haefeli, a chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, the risk of an abrupt slowdown or recession has increased, along with the prospect of a swifter sequence of rate rises from the Federal Reserve and disruptions due to the war in Ukraine.
00:23:20.000They were too slow to hit the interest rate increase button.
00:23:23.000And so now they're going to have to slam on the brakes and people's face is going to hit the steering wheel.
00:23:28.000That would be what that recession feels like right there.
00:23:30.000Meanwhile, even Biden's own economic advisors are saying, you know what we need to lower the gas price?
00:23:35.000Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.
00:23:43.000This administration has no intention of increasing oil supply.
00:23:47.000We need more supply of oil in the short term so that we can bring down prices because it is the case that the gas is up about a dollar because we have shut off access to Russian oil to the global market.
00:24:17.000Because according to WorldOil.com and Bloomberg, the Biden administration doesn't anticipate selling offshore drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico through at least October 2023, effectively stretching a delay in that activity to a third year according to economic projections included in its newly released budget proposal.
00:24:36.000The numbers show expected revenues from offshore oil auction bids and annual rental payments on existing leases are set to plummet in fiscal 2023 by about $370 million to just $25 million.
00:24:46.000That reflects the government's typical haul from two auctions of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:24:51.000The anticipated offshore leasing pause comes despite the war in Ukraine and high costs for oil, gas, and gasoline that have prompted administration officials to implore energy companies to pump more crude.
00:25:01.000The Gulf of Mexico generates about 15% of the nation's crude production.
00:25:05.000Based on the revenue projections in the Biden budget, there could be at least a three-year gap in the sale of new offshore oil and gas leases, according to Eric Milito, the head of the National Ocean Industries Association.
00:25:18.000He said, it's pretty clear there are no new lease sales on the horizon in their mind from a budgeting standpoint until fiscal year 2024.
00:25:26.000So they're not even selling new leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:25:30.000So if you're a company and you're looking to invest, are you going to invest in that oil and gas company that can't even buy a lease in the Gulf of Mexico because of this administration?
00:25:37.000So at the same time, they're saying, you know what we need?
00:25:47.000Interior Department officials have maintained there is no longer a leasing pause.
00:25:50.000Under a court order, the Interior Department sold oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico last November.
00:25:55.000But a federal judge later invalidated the auction after finding regulators didn't analyze its climate impacts.
00:26:00.000Though required by federal law, a new five-year plan for selling leases is not on track to be in place by June 30th, when the current Obama-era program expires.
00:26:08.000This would translate into reduced oil and gas production of about 500,000 barrels per day between 2022 and 2040, according to an analysis released by the American Petroleum Institute.
00:26:19.000So they are actively preventing new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time that gas prices are spiking.
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00:27:43.000Our number two issue is the situation over in Ukraine.
00:27:46.000The problem with the situation over in Ukraine is it doesn't look like there is any sort of wonderful off-ramp that is available right now.
00:27:52.000A lot of mixed signals coming out of Russia at the moment.
00:27:55.000So on the one hand, according to the Jerusalem Post, Russia and Ukraine are in the midst of productive negotiations.
00:28:01.000The Jerusalem Post says, Russia and Ukraine will resume their peace talks online on April 1st, a senior Ukrainian official said on Wednesday, after the latest round of negotiations ended in Turkey.
00:28:10.000Ukrainian negotiator David Arakamia said in an online post that Ukraine had proposed the country's two leaders should meet.
00:28:16.000Russia responded by saying more work needed to be done on a draft treaty.
00:28:21.000A possible peace deal between Ukraine and Russia will be put to a national referendum in Ukraine as soon as Russian troops withdraw to their positions from before the invasion, according to Ukrainian negotiator Mikhailo Podolya.
00:28:31.000Which is sort of an interesting thing.
00:28:32.000So they want to sign some sort of peace deal with the Russians, in which the Russians retreat and withdraw, and then they'll put it to a referendum to see whether the Ukrainians go for it?
00:28:40.000That sounds weird, and it would be strange if Putin went for that.
00:28:45.000Podoliak said he was optimistic after the talks in Istanbul, as did the presidential advisor Alexey Aristovych, who claimed Ukraine had improved its negotiating position since before the start of the invasion on February 24th.
00:28:56.000According to Aristovych, Ukraine is pushing to secure neutral status, but with external security guarantees.
00:29:00.000So in other words, they won't join NATO, but NATO will kind of support them if things go real wrong.
00:29:06.000According to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Bereshchuk, three humanitarian corridors from the Zaporozhye region were negotiated.
00:29:14.000It's currently unclear when an official meeting between Putin and Zelensky would happen.
00:29:18.000Podoliak said, noting that Russia has to respond to Ukraine's proposal and figure out logistics.
00:29:23.000While Ukraine seems optimistic, Russia is differing.
00:29:26.000According to Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, he said, quote, the positive thing is the Ukrainian side, at least, has begun to formulate concretely and put down what it proposes on paper.
00:29:34.000As for the rest so far, let's say we cannot state anything very promising.
00:29:36.000So Russia is sending some pretty mixed signals here.
00:29:40.000On the one hand, Russia is saying that they are withdrawing troops, but the reality is they're not really withdrawing the troops.
00:29:46.000They've done this sort of thing before.
00:29:48.000According to John Kirby over at the Pentagon, Russia is repositioning, they are not withdrawing.
00:29:53.000Has there been some movement by some Russian units away from Kiev in the last day or so?
00:30:04.000But we believe that this is a repositioning, not a real withdrawal.
00:30:09.000and that we all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine.
00:30:14.000Okay, meanwhile, again, Moscow's chief negotiator Vladimir Budinsky had described proposals from Kiev in the negotiation as a constructive step, but Dmitry Peskov, that Kremlin spokesperson, he said, no one said the sides have made headway. We can't point to anything particularly promising at this point. Meanwhile, the White House is trying to put a happy face on this.
00:30:34.000They say, well, you know, probably the problem here is that Putin is just being misinformed by his advisors.
00:30:37.000They think that everybody around Putin is just lying to him about the situation on the ground.
00:30:42.000Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership.
00:30:48.000We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisors about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth.
00:31:25.000And if this is the case, then this is a big win for Putin.
00:31:27.000Here's what he says, quote, Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he's no longer in control of events.
00:31:34.000They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself.
00:31:38.000Hence the almost universal scorn poured on Joe Biden for saying in Poland, for God's sake this man cannot remain in power.
00:31:43.000The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible.
00:31:45.000It has the benefit of vindicating the West's strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively.
00:31:49.000And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving exit, additional Ukrainian territory, the Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some sanctions.
00:31:58.000But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?
00:32:00.000What if the West is only playing into Putin's hands again?
00:32:03.000The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminisce from The Times' Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia's siege of Grozny during the First Chechen War in the mid-90s, says Brett Stevens.
00:32:13.000In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade stunning Moscow.
00:32:17.000The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar using artillery and air power.
00:32:21.000Russia's operating from the same playbook today.
00:32:23.000When Western military analysts argue that Putin cannot win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is he can't win clean.
00:32:29.000Since when has Putin ever played clean?
00:32:30.000Gall writes, there's a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens.
00:32:44.000So Brett Stevens says, suppose for a moment Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine.
00:32:48.000That from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine's east, which contain Europe's second largest known reserves of natural gas after Norway.
00:32:56.000Combine that with Russia's previous territorial seizures in Crimea, which has huge offshore energy fields, and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which contain part of an enormous shale gas field, as well as Putin's bid to control most or all of Ukraine's coastline, and the shape of Putin's ambitions become clear.
00:33:11.000He's less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia's energy dominance.
00:33:17.000Canadian energy expert David Knight-Legg says under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist.
00:33:23.000As for what's left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine's refugees to new homes outside of Russian control.
00:33:32.000In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine's presidency imitating the strongman style of politics Putin prefers in his neighbors.
00:33:38.000If this analysis is right, Putin doesn't seem like the miscalculating losers his critics make him out to be.
00:33:45.000It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians.
00:33:48.000More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russia's troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along, territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality.
00:33:59.000Within Russia, the war has already served to Putin's political purposes.
00:34:02.000Many in the professional middle class have gone into self-imposed exile.
00:34:05.000The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good.
00:34:07.000To the extent that Russia's military has embarrassed itself, says Brett Stevens, is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below.
00:34:18.000So if that's right, then Putin is actually not in nearly as bad position as everyone says that he is.
00:34:25.000And right now, he is putting significant pressure on the West to get Ukraine to make these sorts of concessions, obviously.
00:34:31.000Which is what happens when deterrence fails.
00:34:34.000German leaders have now triggered the first phase of an emergency plan aimed at preparing for a possible halt to gas deliveries over a dispute with Moscow about payment in rubles.
00:34:43.000The move by Germany's Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action to initiate the early warning phase of its emergency gas plan was precautionary.
00:34:50.000But they might have to actually implement gas rationing, which is disastrous domestically for Germany, obviously.
00:34:59.000Putin knows this, so he's been sort of playing around with the ultimatum of forcing Germany to pay for its gas in rubles as opposed to in dollars, which could theoretically be frozen.
00:35:10.000Meanwhile, Russia has now built a parallel payments system successfully.
00:35:14.000According to the Wall Street Journal, there are roughly 197 million MasterCard or Visa cards in Russia at the end of 2020, but behind the scenes, the cards don't rely on U.S.
00:35:23.000network systems to process payments in Russia.
00:35:25.000For years, they've used a homegrown system overseen by Russia's central bank.
00:35:28.000The National Payment Card System, known as NSPK in Russian, runs the financial plumbing that underpins card transactions in Russia.
00:35:36.000That system was part of Moscow's eight-year effort to insulate the Russian economy from Western financial pressure.
00:35:43.000The resilience of Russia's payment system is a rare win for Putin in his financial war with the West.
00:35:48.000We provided for our national security in the payments space, said Oma Obayeva, the head of the National Payments Council, a Russian trade association.
00:35:55.000So what this may mean is that Putin has helped his goal, which was to create some sort of financial autarky independent of Western payment systems, may have been facilitated by this war.
00:36:30.000Issue number three, according to this Quinnipiac poll, is immigration.
00:36:33.000We'll get to that one in just a moment because that's a disaster too.
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00:39:10.000And now we have a massive, massive border crisis that is about to hit.
00:39:15.000So yesterday, a bunch of GOP senators got together to talk about the simple fact that the Democratic Party and Joe Biden have facilitated a massive influx of illegal migration, and it's going to get a lot, lot worse.
00:39:24.000Here's Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas talking about it.
00:39:28.000They're now presenting their plan to us of what they're going to do when they take Title 42 off.
00:39:33.000Their plan is to move people into the country faster.
00:39:38.000For all practical purposes, this White House has turned our Border Patrol into ushers.
00:39:43.000A maitre d' saying, come on across the border.
00:39:46.000And in many Border Patrol sectors, you're seeing them understaffed by about 40% because they simply can't do their job.
00:39:55.000So that would have been James Langford, as well as Roger Marshall, as well as John Cornyn talking about the simple fact they are understaffed on the border.
00:40:02.000Tom Cotton points out that the border records that have been set by this administration in terms of the amount of illegal immigration, which has not wavered really throughout the course of this administration, it's about to get a lot, lot worse.
00:40:13.000Apparently Joe Biden is not resting on his laurels after setting the record last year.
00:40:16.000He wants to break his own record in 2022.
00:40:19.000We might have more than 2 million illegals crossing our border this year.
00:40:23.000And as you said, Harris, those are not people seeking asylum from persecution.
00:40:35.000Hey, how do they know that Joe Biden will let them in?
00:40:38.000Because according to the Los Angeles Times today, the Biden administration has reportedly drafted a plan to end a controversial border policy by late May that has prevented most migrants from seeking humanitarian protections at the U.S.
00:40:51.000The decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not yet final, according to people familiar with the matter, but it would give officials time to prepare at the border before taking effect.
00:40:58.000Department of Homeland Security officials have been in talks for weeks over how to respond to the potential influx of asylum seekers if the Trump-era policy known as Title 42 ended.
00:41:07.000The policy invoked a 1944 public health statute to quickly remove migrants either to Mexico or to their home countries in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
00:41:15.000The CDC reassesses the need for the policy every two months and is expected to issue its latest decision this week.
00:41:21.000Now, I'd just like to point out here that according to the Biden administration, the CDC has the power to issue eviction moratoria.
00:41:28.000They believe that the CDC has the power to force employers to vaccinate their employees, or at least OSHA does.
00:41:37.000But they're really skittish on whether we can bar people who might be COVID positive from crossing the border.
00:42:03.000But now, Biden is preparing an end to the policy.
00:42:07.000Noah Gottschalk, Global Policy Lead for Oxfam America, which is challenging Title 42, said, quote, Without Title 42, migrants would once again be able to seek asylum in the United States.
00:42:15.000Before the policy was enacted, asylum seekers were screened to determine whether they could stay in the U.S.
00:42:21.000while simultaneously removing COVID restrictions across the country.
00:42:24.000Without Title 42, migrants would once again be able to seek asylum in the United States.
00:42:29.000Before the policy was enacted, asylum seekers were screened to determine whether they could stay in the U.S. while their cases moved forward.
00:42:39.000The impact is going to be absolutely earth-shatteringly dramatic.
00:42:44.000According to CBS News, DHS is now developing contingency plans for several possibilities, including worst-case scenario in which 12,000 to 18,000 migrants would enter U.S.
00:43:23.000border officials who reported a record 2 million migrants arrested in 2021 are currently encountering an average of 7,100 migrants per day, which is still an extraordinary number.
00:43:31.000If pandemic-era capacity limits are eased, CBP short-term facilities across the border would be able to hold about 16,000 migrants on any given day, but they're not processed inside of one day.
00:43:40.000So they'd be overwhelmed inside of, like, a day.
00:43:44.000The government would need to expand Border Patrol's holding capacity to accommodate between 25,000 and 30,000 migrants in the U.S.
00:43:51.000custody on any given day if the worst-case scenario is materialized.
00:43:56.000Such a scenario would also require the government to dispatch up to 2,500 law enforcement officers, 2,750 support staff, and 1,000 medical personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border.
00:44:06.000A DHS official said that the worst-case scenarios are not government projections.
00:44:09.000They said that we have to be prepared for the worst.
00:44:11.000But if they even increase by a factor of 50%, you're talking about 10,000 migrants every single day, 300,000 migrants a month.
00:44:20.000You spread that over the course of, say, six months, and you are talking about 1.8 million.
00:45:19.000If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the show.
00:45:27.000Help spread the word about The Ben Shapiro Show by giving us a 5-star review and sharing the show with a friend.
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00:45:39.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliot Feld, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our production manager is Pavel Lydowsky.
00:46:03.000Hey there, this is John Bickley, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief and co-host of Morning Wire.
00:46:08.000On today's episode, the Federal Reserve warns of a possible housing bubble as prices skyrocket, leaked video of a Disney company-wide meeting sparks more controversy, and China locks down Shanghai.