The Ben Shapiro Show - The Biden Economy Hits The Skids | Ep. 1422

00:00:00.000 Investors begin dumping stocks as the Federal Reserve announces a rate hike.

00:00:04.000 Joe Biden plans cryptocurrency regulations.

00:00:06.000 And the media tries to pretend that Joe Biden's black female Supreme Court pick isn't about race or sex. 0.96

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:25.000 Slash Ben, we'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:32.000 Alrighty, so the Biden economy is now hitting the skids.

00:01:35.000 It is hitting the skids because we had a superheated economy in which we were pouring Trillions of dollars on top of an economy that really didn't need it.

00:01:42.000 And the fact is that when the pandemic first started and the government told everybody to go home from work, there was a case to be made that the government had essentially driven a Ford F-150 into your business.

00:01:51.000 And now they had to pay recompense for that.

00:01:54.000 But as it became quickly clear, what the government really needed to do was first take the Ford F-150 out of the front of your business and allow you to reopen your business.

00:02:02.000 It became just as clear that what the government shouldn't do is, after rectifying the expense, continue to pay you just so that they could leave the Ford 150 directly in the middle of your business.

00:02:11.000 Once it was clear that businesses ought to be reopened and that young, healthy people were going to be generally fine from COVID, the government ought to have gotten out of the business of, quote-unquote, stimulating the economy.

00:02:20.000 Instead, the Federal Reserve bought up every asset it could find and started injecting trillions of dollars into the economy.

00:02:26.000 Many people finished the pandemic with more in savings than they had at the beginning.

00:02:30.000 Which is amazing since a huge number of people went completely unemployed during that time.

00:02:34.000 But again, the government was literally paying people to stay home for large periods of time.

00:02:38.000 This led to overheated inflation, dramatic lack of supply, and tremendous price squeezes.

00:02:44.000 Well, now the Federal Reserve is about to end America's era of easy money, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:02:49.000 That is prompting investors to reverse course on two years of investing strategies kicking off this month's broad market route, the worst sell-off since the early days of the pandemic.

00:02:57.000 Major U.S.

00:02:58.000 stock indices have dropped between 6% and 15% in January through Thursday, with some investor favorites during the pandemic, like Moderna, Peloton, and Netflix, falling around two or three times as much.

00:03:08.000 Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index, of expected market swings has almost doubled this year.

00:03:14.000 Some well-known hedge funds are down 10% or more, said people familiar with the results.

00:03:18.000 Driving the tumult are expectations the Fed will raise interest rates for the first time since 2018, likely setting off a series of increases over the next couple of years.

00:03:26.000 On Wednesday, Fed officials gave their clearest indication they could boost rates in March and beyond.

00:03:30.000 At the same time, government policies to put money in the pockets of consumers are waning.

00:03:35.000 In response, investors are changing strategies.

00:03:37.000 They've ridden hard for almost two years, rattling stocks, bonds, and cryptocurrencies, all of which soared during the age of pandemic stimulus.

00:03:44.000 And you can see why.

00:03:45.000 People really had no place to be.

00:03:47.000 If you left your money in the bank, this was a complete waste of time.

00:03:49.000 So people started buying stocks like crazy.

00:03:51.000 They started putting their money in bonds to a lesser extent, and they started putting their money in crypto to hedge against that inflation.

00:03:57.000 Girding themselves against the impact of tighter money, investors are shifting to investments that feel safer, such as dividend stocks and gold exchange traded funds.

00:04:04.000 Indeed, some high dividend funds have outperformed this year, including the Invesco High Yield Equity Dividend Achievers ETF, which is flat so far in January.

00:04:12.000 Individuals who are big purchasers of hot stocks and bullish call options, which gave holders the right but not the obligation to buy shares at a certain price, are also reversing their approach.

00:04:20.000 Some are dabbling in broad market index funds, As well as bearish put options, which confer the right to sell shares at a stated price by a specified date.

00:04:27.000 So people are banking on the idea that the stock market is now going to correct and stabilize or go down over the course of the next few months.

00:04:34.000 While higher interest rates as the Wall Street Journal aren't likely to seriously crimp economic growth, at least over the next few months, a turnaround in investor attitudes is already being felt and is likely to continue to ripple through markets in unpredictable ways.

00:04:46.000 People's bank accounts surged.

00:04:47.000 Many put that money into the market.

00:04:48.000 The stimulus has ended.

00:04:49.000 Rising rates are likely, said Rob Arnott, founding chairman of Research Affiliates, an asset management firm based in Newport Beach, California.

00:04:56.000 This week, hedge fund investor William Ackman said his firm had acquired 3.1 million shares of Netflix after the stock's recent tumble.

00:05:03.000 Mr. Arnott and others urged caution, said sell the surges, don't buy the dips.

00:05:08.000 Okay, but here's the reality.

00:05:09.000 If you've lost money on your stocks, hold on to them.

00:05:11.000 If you can, right?

00:05:12.000 Don't sell them as long as you can.

00:05:15.000 Never sell when the market is going down is, you know, the first rule of investing.

00:05:19.000 But with that said, the S&P 500 and the Dow are now on track for their fourth weekly loss.

00:05:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, futures for the S&P 500 wavered, falling 0.5%.

00:05:28.000 The benchmark gauge of large-cap stocks has fallen 1.6% for the week, putting it on course for its longest losing streak since September of 2020.

00:05:36.000 Futures for the technology-focused NASDAQ 100 slipped 0.1%.

00:05:40.000 Contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6%.

00:05:44.000 Chevron reported its most profitable year since 2014, said it would raise capital expenditures by 20% to $15 billion this year.

00:05:50.000 Shares fell 1.6% in pre-market trading anyway.

00:05:54.000 Caterpillar edged down after the company reported a surge in costs, offsetting a jump in revenue.

00:05:59.000 Apple shares did rise 4.1% ahead of the bell after the biggest U.S.

00:06:02.000 company by market cap posted record revenue and profits.

00:06:05.000 Shares of Robinhood Markets, which reported a quarterly loss of $423 million, dropped 14% in pre-market trading.

00:06:12.000 And of course, Chairman Jerome Powell added to expectations the central bank will start a series of interest rate increases in March.

00:06:19.000 Now, here is the thing.

00:06:21.000 The U.S.

00:06:21.000 economy is experiencing very strong growth.

00:06:24.000 However, that growth is paired with extraordinary inflation.

00:06:27.000 And that, again, is because of government policy.

00:06:30.000 Inflation, as Milton Friedman once said, is anywhere and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

00:06:35.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.

00:06:36.000 economy grew rapidly in the fourth quarter of last year, advancing to a 6.9% annual rate.

00:06:42.000 A growth has run into obstacles that could lead to more modest growth this year, say economists.

00:06:46.000 So you're looking for a slowing economy this year.

00:06:47.000 GDP, the broadest measures of goods and services in the fourth quarter, accelerated from the third quarter's growth of 2.3% adjusted for inflation.

00:06:55.000 The gain reflected solid spending by households, much of it occurring early in the quarter.

00:06:59.000 Output grew 5.5% in all of 2021.

00:07:03.000 When comparing the fourth quarter to the same period a year earlier, the economy has not grown that fast since 1984.

00:07:08.000 There's only one problem.

00:07:09.000 Inflation has not grown this fast since 1982.

00:07:11.000 So all of the gains have basically been eaten up by the inflationary numbers.

00:07:17.000 Andrew Hunter, Chief U.S.

00:07:18.000 Economist at the Research Firm Capital Economics says the headline 6.9% figure is probably a bit overly optimistic in terms of the underlying strength of demand.

00:07:26.000 We do think it's increasingly clear that the case that the economy is essentially at or rapidly approaching that capacity constrained potential level, the speed limit is lower now than it was before the pandemic.

00:07:36.000 Two factors that helped drive last year's expansion, the torrents of cash sent from Congress to households, and the ultra-low borrowing costs stoked by the Fed are fading.

00:07:44.000 Households have spent down some of their stimulus money.

00:07:46.000 And again, it's the underlying economic activity that matters.

00:07:48.000 Because when you decide that the economy is basically about how the Federal Reserve is going to take in money and then Gush out money.

00:07:55.000 That is not about underlying economic activity.

00:07:57.000 The underlying economic activity has to be based on innovation.

00:08:01.000 It has to be based on people creating new services and products and selling those and competing.

00:08:06.000 This is how economies grow.

00:08:07.000 They don't grow just because the Federal Reserve takes in money and then breathes it back out again in a sort of reverse osmosis osmosis process with regard to the monetary supply.

00:08:17.000 It happens to be the case, according again to the Wall Street Journal, that the cost of hiring new employees and retaining existing ones in the nation's tight labor market is now growing at nearly its fastest pace in a generation.

00:08:28.000 That's helping to fuel inflation as employers pass labor costs to customers. 0.96

00:08:31.000 At the U.S.

00:08:32.000 Employment Cost Index, a quarterly measure of wages and benefits paid by employers is expected to show that costs continue to rise at the highest rate in two decades of available records.

00:08:41.000 So it could be even more, because this only goes back a couple of decades.

00:08:44.000 Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expect a seasonally adjusted increase of 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 over the prior three months, which experienced a similar increase.

00:08:53.000 The third quarter gain, when compared with the same quarter from a year earlier, rose 3.7 percent.

00:08:59.000 Labor costs are a significant contributor to rising prices.

00:09:01.000 The current tight labor market is encouraging many workers with bargaining power to switch jobs and demand more pay, raising the risk of a destabilizing inflation dynamic known as a wage-price spiral, in which the prices go up, so people need more money for their wages, and then the wages go up, so the producers have to charge more money for the product.

00:09:19.000 And her as an executive director at IHS markets as quote, inflation has fundamentally picked up.

00:09:24.000 I think it's fair to say price gains are feeding back into wage gains.

00:09:27.000 There's a lot of pressure on the supply side on both commodities and labor.

00:09:31.000 Investors and the Federal Reserve now consider the labor market to be at or near full employment, despite the fact that the economy has only recovered about 84% of the jobs it had before the pandemic.

00:09:40.000 So, 16% of the jobs we had before the pandemic are still gone.

00:09:44.000 The labor force has dramatically shrunk.

00:09:45.000 With the unemployment rate now below 4%, the Fed is shifting gears from providing stimulus to the economy to fighting inflation while trying to maintain the labor market recovery.

00:09:55.000 Jerome Powell says we are attentive to the risks that persistent real wage growth in excess of productivity could put upward pressure on inflation.

00:10:02.000 So as the Wall Street Journal points out, none of this was necessary.

00:10:05.000 We could have just had a normal economic recovery and everything would have been fine if Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve had left everything alone, but they didn't.

00:10:13.000 As the Wall Street Journal editorial page points out, imagine if the Biden administration had focused primarily on the pandemic as it took power a year ago.

00:10:20.000 Get the vaccines out, accelerate COVID therapies, let an economy poised to soar take off on its own.

00:10:24.000 No $1.9 trillion relief bill in March, no threat of new tax increases and spending to quote-unquote transform American society.

00:10:30.000 Would the economy now be healthier with much less inflation, fewer shortages, and more consumer and business confidence?

00:10:35.000 We'll never know, but there's a strong case for thinking so.

00:10:39.000 The Bureau of Economic Analysis says the GDP expanded 5.7% in 2021, which is the fastest annual growth since the 80s.

00:10:45.000 But the recovery from the pandemic was always going to take off.

00:10:48.000 Politicians shut the economy down for much of 2020 and poured cash into consumer pockets to compensate.

00:10:52.000 And the Federal Reserve flooded the economy with more money.

00:10:55.000 A boom for the ages was poised to happen in 2021.

00:10:58.000 No doubt the Biden administration would take credit.

00:11:00.000 In the event, the economy in 2021 did not grow nearly as fast or in as healthy a fashion as it should have.

00:11:05.000 That is clear from the details of growth in the fourth quarter.

00:11:08.000 Top-line growth of 6.9% was robust, accelerating from 2.3% in the third quarter.

00:11:13.000 But, by far, the biggest contributor to GDP, 4.9 percentage points, was a buildup of inventories.

00:11:18.000 This means retailers and other businesses were restocking empty shelves, not making sales.

00:11:24.000 There's probably more inventory buildup to come due to shortages across the economy, but that fourth quarter increase is unsustainable.

00:11:29.000 In other words, what happened is there was a backlog of products.

00:11:31.000 Okay.

00:11:32.000 And so everybody produced in order to put those products on the shelves, but that pace is not going to continue because now everybody's got their product, right?

00:11:39.000 It's going to come off the shelves and people don't need the second product.

00:11:42.000 They already got the first product.

00:11:44.000 So all that happened is there was a massive buildup of economic growth that happened to sort of materialize in the fourth quarter.

00:11:50.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, editorial board consumer spending contributed 2.25% percentage points.

00:11:55.000 Much of that came from spending down accumulated savings from the government largesse.

00:12:00.000 The personal savings rate fell to 7.4% from 9.5% in the third quarter.

00:12:05.000 Real disposable income after inflation fell 5.8% in the fourth quarter after falling 4.3% in the third.

00:12:12.000 Real disposable income is down 5.8% in the fourth quarter after falling 4.3% in the third.

00:12:17.000 Okay, that means that people are spending down all the money that they got from the government and they're going to run out soon.

00:12:21.000 The White House hailed the GDP growth figure, but if times are so good, why do the polls give the economy low marks and Biden little credit?

00:12:28.000 The best explanation is inflation running at 7% in the consumer price index.

00:12:33.000 Even the Fed's preferred inflation measure, personal consumption expenditures, rose at an annual rate of 6.5% in the fourth quarter, accelerating from 5.3% in the third quarter.

00:12:42.000 This is where focus on COVID's strategy would have helped.

00:12:45.000 The March spending blowout caused a surge in demand that met with a historic supply shortage.

00:12:49.000 And then the uncertainty from the proposed Build Back Better tax increases and vows to punish businesses with new regulation added to the supply problems.

00:12:55.000 Because why would you invest into a market that was going to tax the living hell out of you?

00:12:59.000 None of this was necessary.

00:13:02.000 So, what is the Biden administration going to do about all of this?

00:13:05.000 Their plan, apparently, is to regulate Bitcoin.

00:13:08.000 Not kidding.

00:13:09.000 So, to understand what Bitcoin and crypto are, essentially, Bitcoin and crypto have a couple of main purposes.

00:13:16.000 One is financial security that does not require verifiability from a financial institution.

00:13:21.000 Normally, when you use your credit card, there are like seven or eight actual layers, intermediaries, between the person to whom you are giving the money and you.

00:13:29.000 There are a bunch of verifiability companies.

00:13:32.000 Companies that verify that your credit card transaction is correct.

00:13:34.000 The credit card company having to deal with your bank in order to actually convey the money, right?

00:13:39.000 The credit card company doesn't just have all of your money on hand.

00:13:42.000 The bank has to pay the credit card company.

00:13:43.000 The credit card company then pays the person to whom you're paying, etc.

00:13:46.000 Okay, there are like seven or eight intermediaries.

00:13:49.000 What the financial innovation part of Bitcoin is, what cryptocurrencies do, is they cut that out.

00:13:54.000 They create a trustless system.

00:13:56.000 Because what cryptocurrency does, it creates something called the blockchain.

00:14:00.000 The blockchain...

00:14:02.000 There's a bunch of people who are sitting in rooms cracking codes.

00:14:05.000 The reason that they are cracking the codes is when they crack a code they have verified that your exchange is proper.

00:14:09.000 So they can trace every dollar that is being sent via cryptocurrency from one place to another place and verify that it's not just fake money that's being made up and transferred.

00:14:19.000 That is what the blockchain is.

00:14:20.000 This is what cryptocurrency miners do.

00:14:22.000 What they do is they just verify the blockchain.

00:14:24.000 All day long.

00:14:24.000 That's all they do.

00:14:25.000 So that's one purpose.

00:14:26.000 The other purpose is that cryptocurrencies have a limited amount of supply, meaning that it's not affected by the Federal Reserve.

00:14:34.000 It's not the Federal Reserve saying, we need a hotter economy.

00:14:37.000 Just pump some money into crypto.

00:14:38.000 That is not how that works.

00:14:39.000 Cryptocurrency has a set amount of supply.

00:14:41.000 This is the magic of cryptocurrency.

00:14:43.000 Just like gold or silver, just like any other hard asset, cryptocurrency cannot be manipulated by outside forces who just blow up the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation and therefore devalue the cryptocurrency that you have in your pocket.

00:14:56.000 Now the catch with cryptocurrency is that the value of cryptocurrency is largely dependent on how many people are into it.

00:15:03.000 It's like stocks.

00:15:04.000 It depends on how many people want it at any given time.

00:15:07.000 So when the dollar seems more solid, fewer people are going to invest in cryptocurrency, which is what you've been seeing over the last couple of months as cryptocurrencies have seen a bunch of people sell off.

00:15:15.000 And you've seen it go from a high of 65,000 down to the mid 30s.

00:15:18.000 There's a lot of volatility in the crypto market because there are not enough players in the crypto market as of yet.

00:15:24.000 So what this means that basically cryptocurrency is good for two purposes one as a repository of value and second as a as an actual currency that can be used in exchange the problem with using it as a currency is in exchange is that when the value of cryptocurrency varies that widely would you as a as a Say car dealership owner wants to take crypto in payment for your car when that crypto could be worth half of what it is today, tomorrow.

00:15:47.000 And the answer generally is no.

00:15:48.000 As crypto gains broader and broader market acceptance, however, that could change.

00:15:52.000 And as blockchain technology gains broader and broader usage, that's going to cut out a bunch of those intermediaries that we've been talking about.

00:15:58.000 The biggest victims of cryptocurrency are centralized government bureaucracies.

00:16:02.000 The Federal Reserve hates cryptocurrencies.

00:16:04.000 The reason that the Federal Reserve hates cryptocurrencies is because they provide a hedge against the federal government being able to inflate and deflate your savings.

00:16:12.000 Because again, unlike the Federal Reserve, there is no centralized power that is in control of the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation.

00:16:18.000 When the Federal Reserve wants to decrease the value of the dollar, all they have to do is buy up a bunch of assets from the market and inject money into the circulation flow of the economy.

00:16:29.000 And when they want there to be less money in circulation, they attempt to sell off as much as they possibly can, which is what you are seeing right now.

00:16:35.000 They can also monkey around with the overnight interest rates that banks charge to other banks when they have to fill in their ledgers.

00:16:42.000 None of that happens with cryptocurrency.

00:16:43.000 So what this means is that if you're Joe Biden and you are heavily reliant on government manipulation of the currency markets in order for you to be able to pursue your agenda, if you want the government to have complete control over everybody's savings, what you really want to do is centralize more of that control.

00:16:58.000 Crypto is a threat to that.

00:16:59.000 And this is why the Biden administration, in the middle of economic turmoil, is now talking about heavy regulations on crypto.

00:17:04.000 Because what they don't want is a parallel shadow economy arising that they cannot control.

00:17:09.000 So this is why today the White House announced that they want crypto rules as a matter of national security.

00:17:13.000 They're calling it a national security issue.

00:17:15.000 The claim being that because they're usually banks that are intermediaries between payments, this allows them to, for example, monitor terrorist transactions.

00:17:23.000 And if you get rid of all the intermediaries, then terrorists can transfer money across borders without having to worry about any of those institutions verifying the transaction.

00:17:31.000 But that's not all they're trying to regulate here.

00:17:33.000 This really is not about national security.

00:17:35.000 Again, one of the things about cryptocurrencies that's kind of amazing is you can actually trace every single dollar because the blockchain is accessible.

00:17:42.000 You can see how these transactions work.

00:17:45.000 According to Behrens, the Biden administration is preparing to release an executive action that will task federal agencies with regulating digital assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a matter of national security.

00:17:55.000 A person familiar with the White House's plan tells Behrens.

00:17:58.000 Only the federal government can send pallets of cash to Iran.

00:18:01.000 You, however, cannot conduct a cross-border transaction in crypto to buy a product from, say, Mexico.

00:18:07.000 The National Security Memorandum, expected to come in the next few weeks, would task parts of the government with analyzing digital assets and assembling a regulatory framework that covers cryptos, stablecoins, and NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, this person said.

00:18:19.000 The person said this is designed to look holistically at digital assets and develop a set of policies that give coherency to what the federal government is trying to do in this space.

00:18:26.000 The State Department, Treasury Department, National Economic Council, and Council of Economic Advisors would be involved in this initiative.

00:18:33.000 The White House National Security Council would also be involved, the person said, since crypto has economic implications for national security.

00:18:38.000 Along these lines, the administration would instruct agencies to work on harmonizing regulations of digital assets between countries.

00:18:45.000 So they're looking for an international regime of cryptocurrency control.

00:18:48.000 If you think that these governments are deeply concerned about the passage of money for terrorist purposes, you got another thing coming.

00:18:54.000 That's not what this is about.

00:18:55.000 First of all, the number one asset that people actually use to conduct black market transactions is cold, hard cash.

00:19:02.000 They actually use just American dollars, for example.

00:19:05.000 Which is why in every crime movie you've ever seen, somebody shows up with a briefcase full of actual cash.

00:19:10.000 So maybe they should crack down on American dollars and the usage of cash.

00:19:12.000 By the way, they are attempting to do this because they actually want to trace all your transactions as well.

00:19:16.000 The White House wouldn't issue recommendations.

00:19:18.000 Agencies would be given three to six months to come up with proposals.

00:19:20.000 As the White House would act as a policy coordinator, the White House declined to comment.

00:19:25.000 The White House aims to bring order to the haphazard approach that the government is now using to regulate crypto, the person said.

00:19:30.000 Various agencies oversee the industry, including the SEC, the Commodities Future Trading Commission.

00:19:35.000 There's no consensus on matters such as whether some tokens should be registered as securities or how to oversee exchanges, stable coins and high yield lending products.

00:19:44.000 The Biden administration wants Congress to draft rules.

00:19:47.000 The White House released a report on stable coins in November, recommending that Congress act promptly to regulate the industry.

00:19:52.000 The Federal Reserve is also weighing in on digital currencies.

00:19:54.000 There's a shock.

00:19:55.000 The Fed released a report on a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, earlier in January that laid out the pros and cons of digitizing the dollar.

00:20:02.000 The report said the Fed could start working on the project with support from the White House and Congress.

00:20:05.000 Here's the problem.

00:20:06.000 Once the Fed digitizes the dollar, they can inflate or deflate the currency with literally the push of a button.

00:20:11.000 They can just push a button, and they can make money appear or disappear.

00:20:14.000 And if you start to have the Federal Reserve acting as your banker, and you're going to store your digital money with the Federal Reserve, do you really want Jerome Powell and control that directly of your assets?

00:20:25.000 And you want them regulating crypto so that you are forced into the Federal Reserve currency?

00:20:29.000 They get rid of things like Bitcoin and instead they choke it off and instead they say, if you want to be involved in a digital currency without the market transactional cost of using a credit card, then what you really need to do is you need to head on over to the Federal Reserve so they're in complete control of your savings.

00:20:45.000 There's a reason they're doing this.

00:20:46.000 It is always and forever about control.

00:20:48.000 In just one second, we'll get to the proof of that. 1.00

00:20:50.000 When Paul Krugman endorses an idea, that's how you know it's a stupid idea. 0.99

00:20:53.000 We'll get to that in just one moment. 0.98

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00:21:57.000 Alrighty, so Paul Krugman is coming out strong against cryptocurrencies, which is not a shocker.

00:22:01.000 Paul Krugman suggests that it's just like a subprime mortgage.

00:22:04.000 It's not just like a subprime mortgage.

00:22:06.000 Subprime mortgages were subsidized by the federal government.

00:22:09.000 The subprime mortgage industry arose because the federal government essentially said they were going to backstop a bunch of mortgages they knew were going to go broke.

00:22:17.000 And then they were hoping that the market just kept increasing so that people could sell off their houses if they did go broke.

00:22:23.000 The subprime mortgage crisis was created by government policy designed to make sure that people who could not pay their mortgages got mortgages.

00:22:30.000 This was the explicit goal of the subprime mortgage market.

00:22:33.000 And then the market started playing with those and packaging the subprime mortgages with other mortgages and mixing in toxic assets with non-toxic assets.

00:22:41.000 And creating all sorts of derivative arrangements.

00:22:44.000 And those derivative arrangements then had infectious effects throughout the economy in 2007-2008.

00:22:49.000 But the key problem with subprime is that there were a bunch of people who could not afford houses, who were being granted subprime mortgages on the basis of zero or no credit history because the federal government was subsidizing that.

00:23:00.000 Paul Krugman, however, is trying to compare crypto to subprime, which again makes no sense.

00:23:04.000 Crypto is based on you literally taking your money and buying a product.

00:23:08.000 And now you own the product.

00:23:09.000 The product is crypto.

00:23:11.000 It is not a loan.

00:23:12.000 It is not government subsidized.

00:23:13.000 In fact, the government very much tries to shut down crypto.

00:23:16.000 But according to Paul Krugman, they're exactly the same.

00:23:18.000 Why?

00:23:18.000 Because anything that he can use as an excuse to crack down on a particular practice, he will.

00:23:24.000 So never mind that Paul Krugman had nothing to say about the real estate bubble that was being created by the Federal Reserve and the federal government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, during the 2000s, so far as I'm aware.

00:23:35.000 And it doesn't matter that he's very much in line with the idea that the federal government should be subsidizing low-rate mortgages to people of minority backgrounds who can't actually pay those mortgages.

00:23:47.000 He says this is just like crypto, because if subprime is bad and crypto is bad, this means they're the same.

00:23:52.000 So Paul Krugman, who is just, it's insane this guy won a Nobel Prize.

00:23:55.000 I mean, he won a Nobel Prize for trade policy, and then he proceeded to just blabber about everything else that he has no idea what he's talking about.

00:24:01.000 It's really incredible.

00:24:04.000 It's amazing.

00:24:05.000 The ultra crepedarianism, the speaking out of turn by Paul Krugman on these issues is pretty astonishing.

00:24:10.000 He says, if the stock market isn't the economy, which it isn't really, then cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin really, really aren't the economy.

00:24:15.000 Still, crypto has become a pretty big asset class and yielded huge capital gains to many buyers.

00:24:20.000 By last fall, the combined market value of crypto had reached almost $3 trillion.

00:24:24.000 Since then, however, prices have crashed, wiping out around $1.3 trillion in market capitalization.

00:24:30.000 As of Thursday morning, Bitcoin's price was almost halfway down from its November peak.

00:24:33.000 So who's being hurt by this crash and what might it do to the economy?

00:24:36.000 Well, first of all, anytime the economy goes down, the people who are at the margins of the economy do the worst.

00:24:41.000 This is true in the stock market.

00:24:42.000 The stock market has taken a dump over the last month.

00:24:45.000 The people who are hurt the worst are the people in pension funds, the people who have taken their little bit of savings and put it in the stock market.

00:24:53.000 If people have a lot of money in the stock market, they're fine.

00:24:54.000 They'll just ride it out.

00:24:56.000 So I'm not sure why Paul Krugman thinks that crypto is any different.

00:24:59.000 And I own crypto.

00:25:00.000 I'm fine.

00:25:01.000 I'll just wait. 0.92

00:25:02.000 I won't sell it right now because I'm not an idiot.

00:25:04.000 I basically bought it around where it is right now.

00:25:07.000 So I'll just wait for it to go back up again.

00:25:09.000 But according to Paul Krugman, crypto innately targets the most vulnerable, which he's going to have to explain.

00:25:15.000 He says, I'm seeing uncomfortable parallels with the subprime crisis of the 2000s.

00:25:19.000 No, crypto doesn't threaten the financial system.

00:25:21.000 The numbers aren't big enough to do that.

00:25:23.000 But there's growing evidence the risks of crypto are falling disproportionately on people who don't know what they are getting into and are poorly positioned to handle the downside.

00:25:30.000 My favorite thing about Paul Krugman is that he thinks that if the government tells you what to do with your money, you will do better.

00:25:34.000 And then after the government tells you what to do with your money and sponsors financial products like subprime mortgages and everything goes south, the solution is the government needs to step in and do something about it.

00:25:44.000 There is no falsifiability to any of Paul Krugman's theses about exactly how the government's involvement in the economy is good.

00:25:51.000 He says, what's this crypto thing about?

00:25:52.000 There are many ways to make digital payments from Apple Pay and Google Pay to Venmo.

00:25:56.000 Mainstream payment schemes, however, rely on a third party, usually your bank, to verify you actually own the assets you're transferring.

00:26:01.000 Cryptocurrencies use complex codings to supposedly do away with the need for these third parties.

00:26:05.000 Not supposedly, they do.

00:26:06.000 I mean, the cryptocurrencies have been used all over the world.

00:26:11.000 Skeptics wonder why this is necessary and argue that crypto ends up being an awkward, expensive way to do things you could have done more easily in other ways, which is why cryptocurrencies still have few legal applications 13 years after Bitcoin was introduced.

00:26:21.000 Well, no, the real reason that they have few legal applications is because the government actively discourages people from investing in Bitcoin.

00:26:27.000 And until Bitcoin reaches critical mass or a huge number of people own it.

00:26:32.000 It's going to be very difficult to use it as an actual asset that is tradable on markets.

00:26:37.000 There are certain countries like El Salvador, which has started using crypto as a medium of exchange.

00:26:41.000 They're first into the ballgame.

00:26:43.000 But the reality is that as long as crypto is this volatile, again, people are not going to use it as a medium of exchange.

00:26:51.000 So says Paul Krugman, crypto has crashed now.

00:26:52.000 Maybe it will recover and soar to new heights as it has in the past.

00:26:55.000 For now, however, prices are way down.

00:26:56.000 Who are the losers?

00:26:58.000 As I said, there are disturbing echoes of the subprime crash 15 years ago.

00:27:01.000 Crypto is unlikely to cause an overall economic crisis.

00:27:04.000 It's a big world out there.

00:27:05.000 Even $1.3 trillion in losses is only about 6% of U.S.

00:27:09.000 GDP.

00:27:09.000 A hit that's an order of magnitude smaller than the effects of falling home prices when the housing bubble bursts.

00:27:14.000 And activities like Bitcoin mining, while environmentally destructive, are economically trivial compared with home building, whose plunge played a large role in causing the Great Recession.

00:27:22.000 Still, some people are being hurt.

00:27:23.000 Who are they?

00:27:25.000 According to a survey by the research organization NORC, 44% of crypto investors are non-white, 55% don't have a college degree.

00:27:32.000 This matches up with anecdotal evidence that crypto investing has become remarkably popular among minority groups and the working class.

00:27:37.000 You want to know why?

00:27:38.000 Because there are a bunch of people who can't actually open bank accounts because they don't have enough assets.

00:27:42.000 So instead, they take their money, they put it in crypto, and then they can actually transfer money between themselves using crypto wallets.

00:27:48.000 That's why.

00:27:49.000 They don't wish to pay the credit card intermediaries, so instead, they use crypto.

00:27:53.000 Okay, that is why.

00:27:55.000 What crypto does, it alleviates the need to have an actual bank account.

00:27:59.000 This is why there are people living in Afghanistan right now who are using crypto in order to trade currency, in order to pay for things.

00:28:06.000 Nork says this is great.

00:28:07.000 The cryptocurrencies are opening up investing opportunities for more diverse investors.

00:28:10.000 But I remember the days when subprime mortgage lending was similarly celebrated and when it was hailed as a way to open up the benefits of home ownership to previously excluded groups.

00:28:17.000 Yeah, the difference is, again, the federal government was subsidizing the subprime mortgages.

00:28:21.000 It was the federal government and people like Paul Krugman pushing it.

00:28:24.000 Saying that this is good.

00:28:26.000 Crypto isn't good because more minorities are participating in it. 1.00

00:28:28.000 Crypto is good so more minorities are participating in it.

00:28:32.000 So he's afraid that people are getting into crypto not understanding what it is.

00:28:35.000 Okay, well, how many people understand the stock market super well?

00:28:38.000 Really?

00:28:39.000 How many people?

00:28:40.000 How many people understand what the Federal Reserve does?

00:28:42.000 If you took a poll of the average American, do you think they understand what the Federal Reserve does?

00:28:47.000 Or the relationship between the Federal Reserve and quantitative easing?

00:28:50.000 And the buying and selling of bonds via the Treasury?

00:28:53.000 Like, how many people do you think actually understand that, Paul?

00:28:55.000 And yet people are invested in the dollar and the stock market.

00:28:57.000 The proof is in the pudding.

00:28:58.000 People invest in products when they think that they will make money from those products.

00:29:02.000 And Paul Krugman's assessment that people don't have enough information about crypto, and so crypto is bad, really is because Paul Krugman has trust in government officials to control the currency.

00:29:12.000 He says, maybe those of us who still can't see what crypto cryptocurrencies are good for other than money laundering and tax evasion are just missing the picture.

00:29:19.000 You are.

00:29:19.000 You don't know anything.

00:29:20.000 Does maybe the rising valuation of Bitcoin and its rivals represent something more than a bubble in which people buy an asset simply because other people have made money off that asset in the past?

00:29:28.000 It's OK for investors to bet against skeptics, but these investors should be people who are both well equipped to make that judgment and financially secure enough to bear the losses.

00:29:35.000 If it turns out the skeptics are right.

00:29:37.000 He says, regulators have made the same mistake they made on Subprime.

00:29:40.000 They failed to protect the public against financial products nobody understood.

00:29:43.000 Everybody understood Subprime.

00:29:44.000 They just didn't think that the market was going to go down.

00:29:47.000 And I love the innate racism of Paul Krugman here. 0.99

00:29:50.000 He's like, you know that there are a bunch of minority people who have this crypto thing and they shouldn't be allowed to have those crypto things now that the government getting involved because they're stupid and they don't know things. 1.00

00:29:59.000 I mean, he literally says 44% of crypto investors are non-whites. 1.00

00:30:03.000 And then he's like, also, we need to regulate crypto because stupid people are getting involved in crypto. 1.00

00:30:07.000 Dude, that's kind of racist. 1.00

00:30:09.000 That's a little racist.

00:30:11.000 But again, what this comes down to when it comes to crypto, when it comes to economic control, If the Biden administration gave up economic control, if they got over their build back better nonsense, if they got over the idea that the Federal Reserve is supposed to be the economic fixer of first option, then the economy would do a lot better.

00:30:29.000 If the Federal Reserve was just there to provide essentially a 2% monetary increase every year, which by the way, I'm opposed to as a general matter, because it means that over the course of 25 years, half of your savings is gone.

00:30:40.000 But with that said, the basic Notion that the Federal Reserve is there to serve as sort of a backstop in case of a run on the banks is not a bad idea, but that's not what the Federal Reserve is anymore.

00:30:52.000 There's a point that the head of Allianz, Mohamed El-Erian, has made over and over and over.

00:30:57.000 He says that basically the Federal Reserve and centralized apparatuses, apparati, like the Federal Reserve control too much of our markets, and this is a bad thing.

00:31:05.000 The left likes that.

00:31:06.000 They want that.

00:31:07.000 They don't trust the market.

00:31:09.000 And that's what this comes to.

00:31:10.000 And when you don't trust the market, the market doesn't trust you.

00:31:12.000 And this is why you have an economy that is performing at less than stellar.

00:31:16.000 Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden's Supreme Court pick, because Justice Breyer did announce his retirement yesterday.

00:31:23.000 Basically, they had one of those shepherd's crooks, and Justice Breyer was just sitting there at the Supreme Court, and they went, and they just kind of pulled him directly off of the Supreme Court. 0.99

00:31:32.000 He went along with it because he understands the Democrats are about to be wiped out in the Senate.

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00:32:41.000 Alrighty, in just one second we'll get to Joe Biden's totally not racist, totally not affirmative action black female pic. 1.00

00:32:47.000 We'll get to that in one second first.

00:32:48.000 If you didn't catch it yet, latest episode of Adam Carolla's DailyWare exclusive comedy series Truth Yeller is streaming right now.

00:32:53.000 It might be the best one yet.

00:32:55.000 Adam takes on Hunter Biden, is joined by comedian T.J.

00:32:57.000 Miller, who dropped some comedy gold, and proves that he is the real deal.

00:33:01.000 What does that mean?

00:33:01.000 Well, head on over to DailyWire.com slash watch right now to find out.

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00:33:22.000 Also, if there's anybody in the Biden administration, mainstream media, Big Pharma, don't want you to hear, it is the voice of Dr. Robert Malone.

00:33:28.000 He was the guy who was on Joe Rogan, and you will remember that they basically banned him from social media, even though he's an American virologist, immunologist, and pioneer of mRNA vaccines.

00:33:37.000 That is because of his public skepticism of the total efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.

00:33:42.000 He went viral for that Rogan podcast.

00:33:43.000 In any sane society, his background would qualify him as an expert whose opinions should at least be heard, but we are not living in a sane society, and so he is being censored.

00:33:51.000 Which is why our very own Candace Owens sat down for a three and a half hour interview with Dr. Malone, does not leave any stone unturned.

00:33:57.000 Together, they touch on some of the most alarming stats, questions, and trends mainstream media and big tech do not want to acknowledge.

00:34:03.000 It's an incredibly important interview.

00:34:04.000 It'll be available exclusively at dailywire.com this Tuesday, February 1st.

00:34:08.000 If you don't already have a Daily Wire membership, join now to catch the newest episode of Candace, premiering this Tuesday, 9 p.m.

00:34:13.000 Eastern, 8 p.m.

00:34:15.000 Central.

00:34:15.000 Also, tune in this Sunday for a brand new episode of the Sunday Special featuring my interview with First Amendment Attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

00:34:22.000 Harmeet represented us at the Supreme Court with regard to the COVID vaccine mandate pushed by the Biden administration, and she fights with conservative lawfare all of the predations of the left on a daily basis.

00:34:33.000 It's fascinating.

00:34:34.000 It is a must-listen interview.

00:34:36.000 You can check it out at dailywire.com slash watch or on my YouTube channel, Ben Shapiro.

00:34:40.000 you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:34:43.000 All righty, meanwhile the The Biden administration is pushing forward with its Supreme Court pick yesterday.

00:34:53.000 Justice Breyer officially announced his retirement.

00:34:55.000 This is after he was basically approached from behind by Joe Biden and company and pushed down a flight of stairs.

00:35:01.000 Here was Justice Breyer announcing that he will go just in time for the Democrats to replace him because he can read the tea leaves.

00:35:07.000 I mean, he sees that in November, Democrats are just gonna get skunked.

00:35:10.000 So here he was yesterday.

00:35:12.000 Of course, people don't agree, but we have a country that is based on human rights, democracy and so forth.

00:35:21.000 But I'll tell you what Lincoln thought, what Washington thought, and what people today still think.

00:35:26.000 It's an experiment.

00:35:28.000 It's an experiment that's still going on.

00:35:30.000 And I'll tell you something.

00:35:32.000 You know who will see whether that experiment works?

00:35:35.000 It's you, my friend.

00:35:38.000 It's you, Mr. High School Student.

00:35:40.000 It's you, Mr. College Student.

00:35:42.000 It's you, Mr. Law School Student.

00:35:44.000 It's us, but it's you.

00:35:46.000 It's that next generation.

00:35:48.000 The one after that.

00:35:49.000 There he goes.

00:35:50.000 One of the least consequential Supreme Court justices in American history.

00:35:52.000 You cannot name a single decision with Justice Breyer's name on it that was of any consequence.

00:35:56.000 He was just a reliable vote for the left, which is all Democrats are looking for anyway.

00:35:59.000 Well, that and a black woman. 1.00

00:36:01.000 So Joe Biden continued to reiterate that he will pick a black woman, which again is kind of insane. 0.98

00:36:05.000 The reason it's insane is because in any other context, that would just be racist. 0.97

00:36:09.000 If you said I need a white male, that would be racist. 0.86

00:36:11.000 If you said I need an Asian transgender little person, that would also be sort of strange. 1.00

00:36:18.000 Labeling people not by their belief system about the Constitution, but by their race and sex seems kind of counterintuitive when your entire schtick is that you're supposedly an anti-racist.

00:36:27.000 But of course, we know that the Ibram X. Kendi anti-racist folks are the most racist people in America today.

00:36:33.000 Here is Joe Biden pushing this.

00:36:35.000 The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity.

00:36:44.000 And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. 0.86

00:36:50.000 It's long overdue in my view.

00:36:52.000 I made that commitment during the campaign for president, and I will keep that commitment.

00:36:56.000 Now, I'm just going to point out right here that Joe Biden did vote against Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court on the basis of the ridiculous Sidney DeHill accusations.

00:37:04.000 Also, his party filibustered the woman who certainly would have been the first black woman on the Supreme Court, Janice Rogers Brown, when George W. Bush wanted to nominate her for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:37:13.000 It was the Democrats who attempted to filibuster Janice Rogers Brown. 0.97

00:37:16.000 They did the same thing with Hispanic American Miguel Estrada when it came to the D.C.

00:37:20.000 Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:37:21.000 So all of their affirmative action nonsense to the side, the reality is that what they mean is a person who believes like we believe, but also is going to fulfill certain intersectional checkboxes so I can go back to my constituents and I can pretend that I care deeply about them.

00:37:36.000 That's what this is really about.

00:37:37.000 Now, the amazing thing is that the media immediately went into full spin mode, and you could see that this was going to happen because as soon as Joe Biden had said, I need a black woman, everybody on the right went, OK, that's affirmative action and a violation of basic equal protection standards.

00:37:48.000 Again, employment.

00:37:49.000 If I just said today, I'm only hiring a producer who is a white male.

00:37:52.000 I will not look at any other candidates.

00:37:54.000 This would be a violation of equal protection.

00:37:55.000 It would also be a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

00:37:59.000 I'm not a government actor, so it wouldn't technically be an equal protection violation.

00:38:02.000 It would be a Civil Rights Act violation.

00:38:03.000 Okay, but he is a government actor, which means he's violating both.

00:38:06.000 It doesn't matter.

00:38:07.000 The media immediately has jumped into action to suggest that Republicans are pouncing.

00:38:13.000 It's just it's all about Republicans pouncing.

00:38:14.000 So you have Aaron Blake writing for the Washington Post.

00:38:16.000 Here's the title.

00:38:17.000 The very selective effort to cast Biden's Supreme Court pick as an affirmative action hire.

00:38:22.000 Wait, hold on.

00:38:22.000 I don't have to cast it as that.

00:38:24.000 He said it.

00:38:25.000 He literally said it.

00:38:27.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:38:28.000 How else am I supposed to take? 0.95

00:38:29.000 I need the first black woman. 1.00

00:38:31.000 Am I supposed to take that? 0.99

00:38:32.000 Like, does he not need the first black woman? 1.00

00:38:35.000 You'll notice that at the beginning of this particular episode, I put the phrase black woman in air quotes.

00:38:40.000 The reason I put that in air quotes is because that's a Joe Biden quote.

00:38:44.000 Like it is affirmative action.

00:38:45.000 I don't know what else to tell you.

00:38:46.000 I mean, they quote me saying it is definitionally affirmative action and race discrimination, which of course it is. 0.97

00:38:55.000 But then Aaron Blake goes on and he says, well, you know, there have been other presidents who have done this.

00:38:58.000 Yes, and it was bad when they did it.

00:38:59.000 Ronald Reagan promised you to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court in the 1980 presidential campaign.

00:39:04.000 And then he ended up appointing Sandra Day O'Connor, who was a joke and a terrible justice. 1.00

00:39:09.000 George H.W.

00:39:10.000 Bush picked Clarence Thomas, but Clarence Thomas happens to be a really, really good justice. 0.86

00:39:15.000 And the fact that we have these sort of designated seats is ridiculous. 0.97

00:39:18.000 It's ridiculous on its face. 1.00

00:39:20.000 It's really stupid. 1.00

00:39:22.000 And meanwhile, Jen Psaki is suggesting that the GOP is obliterating their own credibility by criticizing Biden's pick. 1.00

00:39:27.000 Well, no, we are criticizing him for saying that he will only look at the race and sex of a person as a as a predominant characteristic.

00:39:35.000 And also, we think that you're just going to select a Democratic apparatchik who's going to do whatever you want, because that's what you guys do.

00:39:40.000 Again, Democrats never miss on this stuff because they just find somebody who agrees with them politically and then appoint that person to the Supreme Court knowing they don't care about the Constitution.

00:39:49.000 We have not put out a list.

00:39:51.000 The president made very clear he has not made a selection.

00:39:55.000 If anyone is saying they plan to characterize whoever he nominates after consideration with both parties as radical before they know literally anything about who she is, they just obliterated their own credibility.

00:40:07.000 Oh man, talk about obliterating your own credibility.

00:40:09.000 Jen Psaki, every single, that should be the title of her autobiography, Obliterating My Credibility, Jen Psaki Story. 0.99

00:40:16.000 Wow.

00:40:17.000 And by the way, speaking of obliterating your credibility, it is fairly incredible that they are now attempting to go after Ilya Shapiro.

00:40:23.000 He's been a guest on this program, of course.

00:40:24.000 He is from Cato Institute.

00:40:27.000 And now he is about to be a lecturer at Georgetown University.

00:40:31.000 What did he do wrong?

00:40:32.000 He said, quote, Objectively, best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is a solid progressive and very smart, even has identity politics benefit of being the first Asian slash Indian American.

00:40:42.000 But alas, doesn't fit into the latest intersectional hierarchy.

00:40:44.000 So we'll get a lesser black woman. 1.00

00:40:46.000 Thank heavens for small favors. 0.98

00:40:47.000 The fact that he used lesser black woman. 0.75

00:40:49.000 They're now saying that he's racist. 0.96

00:40:50.000 What he meant is a black woman with lesser credentials. 0.95

00:40:53.000 Obviously, obviously. 0.97

00:40:56.000 But none of it matters.

00:40:59.000 They're trying to basically oust him from his position over at Georgetown anyway.

00:41:03.000 So you have a guy named Mark Joseph Stern, who's tweeting out, he says that Georgetown law has hired him, so I feel an obligation to condemn him as a staff writer at Slate trying to get Ilya Shapiro canceled from his job because he is making clear that the Biden administration is picking somebody who's less qualified, at least, than the person that he described there.

00:41:26.000 Again, affirmative action for Democrats. 0.80

00:41:27.000 It only works one way.

00:41:29.000 It's not affirmative action when they do it, even if they say it's affirmative action.

00:41:31.000 Meanwhile, we all know the real reason, by the way, that they somehow convinced Justice Breyer to step down.

00:41:36.000 The real reason they convinced him to step down is because they're about to get walloped.

00:41:39.000 There's a brand new poll out of Georgia today from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, and it finds Governor Brian Kemp right now up on Stacey Abrams by seven points, despite all the controversy surrounding Kemp.

00:41:52.000 Even Senator Perdue, the ex-Senator, he beats Stacey Abrams by four. 0.97

00:41:56.000 Meanwhile, in the Senate, Herschel Walker is up three on Senator Raphael Warnock, 47 to 44.

00:42:02.000 And according to polling data, actually, only 21% of Georgians say that an endorsement from Trump would make a candidate more attractive to them.

00:42:11.000 Only 21%, 49% say that it would make a candidate less attractive to them.

00:42:16.000 Now you assume that that includes, you know, all the Democrats, but here's the bottom line.

00:42:20.000 If you look at the approved versus disapproved ratings for various members of the Georgia delegation, they're not great for the Democrats.

00:42:28.000 Ossoff is at 43, Warnock is at 44, Biden is at 34.

00:42:33.000 So things are likely to get extremely ugly for Raphael Warnock in Georgia before things are over.

00:42:37.000 Meanwhile, in Nevada, it looks like things are really ugly.

00:42:40.000 By the way, it is also true that the Democrats have now engaged in precisely the same strategy that Donald Trump engaged in the Georgia election earlier this year.

00:42:49.000 So you remember, Donald Trump, after he did not win Georgia, after that happened, he came out and he said that was because of voter fraud and your vote really doesn't count in Georgia.

00:42:57.000 And a bunch of Republicans stayed home for the Senate elections, which is why you have now two blue senators from a red state.

00:43:03.000 And that was because Donald Trump intervened and people from the rural areas did not vote in that senatorial election, which is a foolish move.

00:43:09.000 Now Democrats are like, hey, let's do it too.

00:43:11.000 Apparently, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, 45% of black voters in Georgia think it will be somewhat or very difficult to vote.

00:43:20.000 Hey, now, how many believe that in 2020?

00:43:22.000 7%.

00:43:22.000 7% of black Democrats, sorry, not black Democrats, 7% of black voters in Georgia total Said that they thought it was very difficult to vote in 2020.

00:43:35.000 Now 45% say it is very difficult to vote.

00:43:37.000 How many of those people are going to stay home just because they believe it's difficult to vote?

00:43:40.000 So brilliant strategies here from the Biden administration.

00:43:44.000 Just genius, genius stuff.

00:43:47.000 It is incredible how this administration just keeps shooting itself directly in the foot over and over and over again.

00:43:55.000 You know, if you shoot yourself in the foot, you shouldn't be surprised when your foot hurts.

00:43:57.000 And that's exactly what is happening right now.

00:44:00.000 And they can't stop, won't stop.

00:44:01.000 I mean, Biden's Surgeon General literally came out yesterday and said that he wants Joe Rogan censored by big tech.

00:44:06.000 Like, I'm sorry, this is not the way you win hearts and minds here, gang.

00:44:10.000 We've got to do several things.

00:44:11.000 Number one, we've got to recognize that our technology platforms, particularly social media, these have an important role to play.

00:44:18.000 These are the predominant places where we're seeing misinformation spread.

00:44:22.000 These platforms have still not stepped up to do the right thing and do enough, I should say, to reduce the spread of misinformation.

00:44:28.000 This is not just about entertainment.

00:44:30.000 It's not just about garnering clicks.

00:44:32.000 This is about people's lives.

00:44:33.000 And we have seen time and time again that misinformation costs people their lives.

00:44:38.000 So you have the Surgeon General of the United States calling for censorship of Joe Rogan.

00:44:42.000 Keep going with this, guys.

00:44:43.000 You have your narratives.

00:44:43.000 Your narratives are completely at war with the experience of the American people.

00:44:46.000 Keep trying to convince them not to believe the evidence of their own eyes.

00:44:49.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today for an additional hour of content.

00:44:52.000 First, you can't forget to end your week by tuning in to The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:44:55.000 Bruce shows every Friday.

00:44:56.000 He's got an exciting evening planned for you.

00:44:57.000 So head on over to dailywire.com, 7 p.m.

00:45:00.000 Eastern, 6 p.m.

00:45:00.000 Central, and tune in.

00:45:01.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:45:02.000 Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:45:11.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:45:13.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:45:15.000 And our Production Manager is Paweł Łydowski.

00:45:17.000 Associate Producer Bradford Carrington.

00:45:19.000 Editing is by Adam Sajewicz.

00:45:21.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:45:23.000 Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Christina.

00:45:25.000 Production Assistant Jessica Kranz.

00:45:27.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:45:29.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:45:32.000 Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:45:35.000 You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.

00:45:41.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 28, 2022

The Biden Economy Hits The Skids | Ep. 1422

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