The Ben Shapiro Show - August 09, 2022


The FBI Raids Trump | Ep. 1552

Topics
FBI Rating Mar-a-Lago green energy transition gas prices and oil production
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Joe Biden Donald Trump Vladimir Putin Hillary Clinton Ben Shapiro Show Good Ranchers Keystone XL Steele Michael Schellenberger Jennifer Granholm James Comey Christopher Wray Merrick Garland Barack Obama Seema Shah Al Gore Supervising Producer Mathis Glover Savannah Dominguez-Morris Bradford Carrington Gabrielle Hoffman and 16 more
Yes, Democrats Are To Blame For Inflation | Ep. 1551 Who Trusts Joe Biden on Foreign Policy? | Ep. 1553

Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

200.8

Word count

7,801

Sentence count

515

Harmful content

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The FBI raided the safe at Trump's Mar-A-a-Lago resort on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter. This is an insane thing to do, and one that requires extraordinary institutional trust. The FBI raided a home belonging to the former president of the United States, and seized boxes of documents. What could possibly be the reason for this? And why should we trust the FBI with this sort of thing? Is there any doubt that the FBI has a solid, solid, underlying rationale for doing so? Or is there some sort of cover-up going on, or is there something more sinister at work here? Or is this all part of a larger conspiracy against the President, and the President himself, by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to smear and smear him as a crook and smear the President as a racist and a leaker. And, of course, it's all a whole lot more complicated than that, because it's the work of a man named Christopher Wray, the former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, who served under President Bill Clinton and was part of the Hillary campaign to smear President Donald Trump and his campaign to make him look like a crooper and smear President Trump as a liar and leaker and a fraud and a criminal. And he did it all on the basis of a dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, written by an ex-British spy. Welcome to the dark side of the intelligence community, where trust is at its lowest ebb and flow, and there's nothing you can trust, and everything you need to know about it to find out the truth about what's going on in order to get the whole thing, even if you're looking for it even if it doesn't make you feel like you're not sure it's true and you don't have any proof of anything or it's really, really, it really matters at all it's not even . in fact, it matters ... is it really even ? really matters? or isn't it? in other words, is there any truth about it in any of it ? or is it really anyway? and it's just real just a story if it s really or not a story about the truth or after it s true?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:00.000 Hey folks, I was supposed to take this week off completely for the first time in like five years, but due to the breaking news on the FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago, the biggest news in years, I'm now signing in to comment reporting live here from Israel.
00:00:13.000 So, according to the New York Times, former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the FBI had searched his Palm Beach, Florida home and had broken open a safe, an account signaling a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency.
00:00:25.000 The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House.
00:00:34.000 Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar This is an insane thing.
00:00:39.000 It is just an insane thing.
00:00:40.000 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action to retrieve them.
00:00:47.000 The case was referred to the Justice Department by the Archives early this year.
00:00:51.000 This is an insane thing.
00:00:52.000 It is just an insane thing.
00:00:53.000 So here is the bottom line here.
00:00:56.000 The FBI is not trusted by many, many Americans.
00:00:59.000 I mean, a majority of Republicans do not trust the FBI, according to polling data.
00:01:02.000 A majority of independents do not trust the FBI, according to polling data.
00:01:06.000 What the FBI just did requires extraordinary institutional trust.
00:01:11.000 This is an FBI under the auspices of a current administration raiding the home of the leader of the last administration and the likeliest potential nominee for the opposition come 2024.
00:01:24.000 It seems like, on the face of it, banana republic type stuff.
00:01:27.000 It seems like, on the face of it, pretextual.
00:01:29.000 Especially because, if you're gonna do something like this, there had damned well better be a crime.
00:01:34.000 The crime can't be something like, the President of the United States, when he left office, he brought with him stuff.
00:01:40.000 Bill Clinton brought half the White House with him when he left office.
00:01:43.000 He was never raided.
00:01:45.000 It can't be the President of the United States has a battle with the National Archives over material.
00:01:51.000 It can't be about the National Archives.
00:01:53.000 It's got to be more than that.
00:01:55.000 It can't be something like the National Archives is just mad that they don't have a full record of everything that went on, especially if what we are talking about here is not particularly important material.
00:02:04.000 Then there's the problem that the last president of the United States, while he was in office, has plenary authority to declassify anything he wants.
00:02:11.000 So all the other cases that people are talking about today with regard to situations in which people have mishandled classified material, we're talking about people who are not the president of the United States.
00:02:20.000 You're talking about, for example, the former Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who in 2015 received a misdemeanor charge for stuffing classified documents down his pants.
00:02:29.000 You're talking about in 2016, the FBI investigating Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified documentation.
00:02:34.000 She could not declassify things.
00:02:35.000 She was the Secretary of State.
00:02:37.000 She was not the President of the United States.
00:02:38.000 And by the way, she was never actually raided.
00:02:41.000 Remember, they grabbed Anthony Weiner's laptop.
00:02:43.000 You remember that they went...
00:02:45.000 in a variety of directions trying to garner Hillary Clinton's emails.
00:02:47.000 But despite the fact that James Comey announced that it was actually, quote, possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account because of her mishandling of the classified documents, her house was never raided.
00:03:00.000 Her offices were never raided by the FBI.
00:03:03.000 And then you have several years under President Trump of the FBI attempting to undermine the President of the United States on pretextual information provided by the Clinton campaign on the basis of the Steele dossier.
00:03:14.000 You had James Comey, the former head of the FBI, when he was head of the FBI, approaching Donald Trump to launder into the press the Steele dossier.
00:03:22.000 Knowing that there was nothing in the Steele dossier that had been verified, he went to Donald Trump, he told him about it, simply so that the media could then run with the story that the Steele dossier had been presented to President Trump, and therefore it was newsworthy, and BuzzFeed could run all of that material, for example.
00:03:37.000 And then we got years and years of investigations down rabbit holes that led nowhere with regard to Russiagate.
00:03:43.000 In other words, trust in the FBI is at an all-time low, and yet it's the FBI under Christopher Wray, apparently with a warrant that had to be signed off on by the DOJ and Attorney General Merrick Garland, now initiating a raid into the former President of the United States.
00:03:58.000 So here's the thing.
00:03:59.000 Could there theoretically, in some world, be a rationale for this sort of activity?
00:04:03.000 Sure.
00:04:04.000 Sure there could. 0.95
00:04:05.000 But is that going to have to be a damned, extraordinarily Solid, like rock solid, bedrock solid rationale with serious underlying evidence. 0.94
00:04:15.000 It had better be or what we are looking at is a political crisis. 0.90
00:04:18.000 When you have current administrations investigating, former administrations to the point of sending the FBI into their homes to pick up documents on the basis of, well, you know, you didn't hand it over to the National Archives, even though we were negotiating, you didn't hand it over when we wanted you to.
00:04:31.000 That's not.
00:04:32.000 That's Banana Republic type stuff.
00:04:34.000 And it looks more like an attempt to take Donald Trump out of the running come 2024 than anything else.
00:04:38.000 Or maybe, nefariously, it's an attempt to elevate Trump for 2024.
00:04:41.000 We don't know.
00:04:42.000 But here is what we do know.
00:04:44.000 Here is what we do know.
00:04:45.000 If there is no extraordinary basis for this raid, then what we are looking at is a crisis in American governance right now.
00:04:53.000 It looks like the intelligence apparatus being weaponized against the opponents of a political administration.
00:04:58.000 Which is insane.
00:05:00.000 And what it also means is that down the road, let's say that Donald Trump runs, let's say this comes to nothing and Donald Trump runs, and let's say that Donald Trump loses.
00:05:09.000 Do you think that there are going to be a lot of people who are going to trust that he actually lost?
00:05:13.000 Again, the trust in our institutions is so low right now that they're actually activating, they're exacerbating all of the worst possibilities in American politics.
00:05:21.000 If you don't trust any aspect of how the system works, if it feels like the FBI is rigged against the President of the United States when he's Donald Trump, and then rigged against him again when he is candidate Trump come 2024.
00:05:32.000 If it feels as though all the institutions are set up in opposition to one political party and to one guy, How do you think that's going to work out?
00:05:40.000 And I'm amazed to see so many people on the left today, people who are highly critical of the cops normally, Pramila Jayapal, the progressive caucus, out there saying things like, well, you know, they wouldn't do this without a basis.
00:05:51.000 Really?
00:05:52.000 You guys were doing defund the police five seconds ago, but now when they're targeting your political opponents, you're all in favor of it.
00:05:52.000 Wouldn't they?
00:05:59.000 Listen, I'm here on the conservative side of the aisle, and I was willing to let the FBI have a lot of rope when it came to, for example, Russiagate at the very beginning.
00:06:07.000 And then it became clearer and clearer and clearer that the whole thing was a farce.
00:06:11.000 And my trust in that institution was undermined, just as many Americans' trust in that institution was undermined.
00:06:16.000 And now I'm sitting here with some very serious questions as to what the hell they think they're doing.
00:06:21.000 So they'd better get out there with the evidence, with the warrant.
00:06:24.000 The people who are doubtful, the people who think this is a crisis, they are not wrong so far, until you show the evidence.
00:06:29.000 No one is taking this one on faith.
00:06:31.000 No one.
00:06:32.000 So you'd best get out there, if you're Christopher Wray of the FBI, and show us what you are doing.
00:06:37.000 If you're Merrick Garland, you better be out there showing us what you're doing, considering that you've spent your presidency going after police departments for no reason, suggesting you're gonna go after states, if those states don't cram down gender-affirming healthcare, i.e.
00:06:48.000 sex changes on small children.
00:06:50.000 That you're going to go after parents.
00:06:51.000 Why exactly would I trust you?
00:06:53.000 According to the New York Times, the law governing the preservation of White House materials, the Presidential Records Act, lacks teeth, but criminal statutes can come into play, especially in the case of classified material.
00:07:03.000 Criminal codes which carry jail time can be used to prosecute anyone who willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States and anyone who willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys government documents.
00:07:14.000 This is such an amazing thing.
00:07:16.000 The statute that Hillary Clinton was investigated under did not suggest that she needed to have intent to, for example, give the documents to a foreign adversary or something.
00:07:24.000 All it suggested is that negligence in the handling of the documents was criminal.
00:07:28.000 James Comey, because it was politically sensitive, went out of his way, completely rewrote the statute.
00:07:32.000 Why?
00:07:33.000 Because he didn't want to indict The actual nominee of the Democratic Party at the time.
00:07:37.000 So now you have somebody who's just as important as Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
00:07:41.000 More important because this guy's been President of the United States.
00:07:44.000 And you're trotting out the Presidential Records Act here?
00:07:48.000 According to the New York Times, the items in the boxes seized by the FBI included documents, mementos, gifts, and letters.
00:07:53.000 The archives did not describe the classified material it found, other than to say it was classified national security information.
00:07:58.000 The question of how Trump handled classified material is complicated because as president, he has the authority to declassify any government information.
00:08:05.000 It is unclear whether Trump, before leaving office, had declassified the materials the archives discovered in the boxes.
00:08:12.000 They don't even know whether he declassified this stuff?
00:08:15.000 And they're still raiding him?
00:08:17.000 If that is what this boils down to, some sort of miscommunication in which the FBI goes after the former president of the United States for a raid on his home because there was some miscommunication about the identification of documents, there's going to be hell to pay.
00:08:32.000 There really will be.
00:08:34.000 The adjudication of how this is going to work in our politics going forward, when it feels like, correctly, if this is nothing, if it feels like all of the institutions of our government have been mobilized against one side, things are going to get really, really, really ugly.
00:08:51.000 Alrighty, folks.
00:08:52.000 As I said, I'm actually on vacation.
00:08:53.000 I signed in just to give you an update on this particular topic because it's so unbelievable and insane.
00:09:00.000 Now, onto a special episode of this podcast focusing on just why Joe Biden is to blame for your high gas prices.
00:09:05.000 He's trying to shy away from that.
00:09:07.000 He is lying.
00:09:08.000 He is to fault for his bad environmental policies which led to your high prices at the tank.
00:09:12.000 We'll get to that right now.
00:09:16.000 As gas prices remain near record highs, we examine the long-term democratic policies that led to gas shortages around the country.
00:09:23.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:09:23.000 Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:09:27.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:09:32.000 Thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data.
00:09:34.000 Join them at expressvpn.com.
00:09:37.000 Joe Biden and team, they're out there bragging about what amounts to a somewhat minimal decrease in the price of gas over the course of the last 60 days or so.
00:09:45.000 When I say somewhat minimal, I mean compared to the rise in gas prices that we have seen thus far.
00:09:50.000 Gas has now decreased in price from somewhere around the $5 per gallon mark.
00:09:54.000 to somewhere closer to the $4 per gallon mark that is still way too high for the vast majority of Americans.
00:10:00.000 And Joe Biden has suggested that this was all due to supply chain issues.
00:10:03.000 It was all due to Vladimir Putin.
00:10:05.000 But the reality is that the high gas prices that we have seen under Joe Biden are not a coincidence.
00:10:09.000 In fact, if you look at the gas prices under Joe Biden, what you see is a consistent increase month over month, pretty much the entire time up until the recent decrease in gas prices.
00:10:22.000 And this is not any sort of wonder.
00:10:24.000 The American Action Forum put out a chart showing exactly what gas prices have done under Joe Biden when Joe Biden took office.
00:10:31.000 The gas prices were $2.25 a gallon.
00:10:33.000 So when you're talking about, you know, oh, wow, they've gone down a lot.
00:10:36.000 Well, now they're $4 a gallon.
00:10:37.000 That's still almost twice as high as they were when Joe Biden took office.
00:10:43.000 And he took a bunch of measures, almost immediately, that exacerbated the price of oil and made it much, much higher.
00:10:49.000 And to understand what exactly he did and why he did it, you have to understand that this was all part of the plan.
00:10:54.000 So one of the big things that the left has said for years and years and years and years is that carbon-based fossil fuels are the worst thing in the world.
00:11:00.000 They are just terrible.
00:11:02.000 They're ruining everything.
00:11:03.000 They're leading to climate change.
00:11:04.000 And climate change is going to devastate the planet.
00:11:06.000 It's going to lead to hundreds of millions of people dead, billions of people displaced.
00:11:11.000 It's gonna be an absolute Al Gore-like hellscape in which the polar bears are drowning in the oceans and all the rest of it.
00:11:16.000 Now, all the predictions Al Gore made so far have been wrong.
00:11:20.000 All of the talk about how the Arctic ice would just be gone, how all the ice in Greenland would be melted, all of that is just untrue.
00:11:27.000 The notion that tens and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by predominantly climate change, that's not the reality.
00:11:33.000 The reality is that the number of people who are dying thanks to natural disasters is down wildly over the course of the last 100 years.
00:11:39.000 As Michael Schellenberger says, deaths from natural disasters have declined over 90% over the last 100 years.
00:11:45.000 Neither the International Panel on Climate Change nor any other reputable scientific body predicts that that trend is going to reverse itself.
00:11:53.000 We now produce 25% more food than we consume, and experts agree surpluses will continue to rise so long as poor nations gain access to fertilizer irrigation roads and other key elements of modern agriculture.
00:12:04.000 So sure, it'd be great if the climate remained stable, but if the cost of keeping the climate the same right now is no more carbon use, what you will get is actually massively more death.
00:12:14.000 You'll get starvation.
00:12:15.000 You'll get serious problems in particularly third world countries. 1.00
00:12:19.000 And here is the thing.
00:12:20.000 Human beings are pretty good at adaptation.
00:12:23.000 We are good at building seawalls, for example.
00:12:24.000 We are good at hardening our infrastructure.
00:12:27.000 We are also, as it turns out, good at innovating.
00:12:29.000 As Schellenberger points out, carbon emissions have been declining in the United States for nearly a decade and a half thanks to cheap natural gas, which made electricity cheaper than it otherwise would have been.
00:12:36.000 That would have been the fracking boom that you constantly hear about.
00:12:39.000 In fact, says Schellenberger, experts have long recognized that while the early stages of a nation's industrialization can increase air pollution, later stages can lower it through cleaner burning coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy.
00:12:50.000 Those technologies and others allowed conventional air pollutants to peak in developed nations in the 60s and 70s.
00:12:56.000 A new report by the International Energy Agency, the IEA, forecast carbon emissions in 2040 to be lower than in almost all of the current IPCC scenarios.
00:13:05.000 So what you see very often, the headlines from the IPCC are, climate is going to rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, vast wildfires, everything burns, no mitigation tactics, no adaptation tactics, and that just isn't true.
00:13:18.000 So again, the simple fact of the matter is that innovation is the way out of this.
00:13:21.000 Adaptation is the way out of this.
00:13:23.000 But the left doesn't like those things.
00:13:24.000 And one of the reasons the left doesn't like those things is because the left sees global inequality as a moral issue.
00:13:29.000 And so the idea is that economic growth by quote-unquote first world nations is unjust.
00:13:33.000 And therefore the only way to fix this is by those first world nations paying exorbitant sums of money to third world countries.
00:13:41.000 And then also simultaneously telling those countries that they have no ability to industrialize.
00:13:45.000 They need to cut down on their industrialization, or that we need to radically ratchet back our own economic power in order to make room for those non-industrialized nations to industrialize. 0.90
00:13:55.000 And somehow we're supposed to get China and India on board for this, which of course is not going to happen in any way, shape or form.
00:14:00.000 What this boils down to, in sort of practical domestic terms, is an attempt to cut off The oil supply of the United States in order to ratchet up the cost of oil, thus to make it more comparatively advantageous to engage in green energy generation.
00:14:15.000 The idea is that carbon-based fossil fuels are extraordinarily efficient.
00:14:19.000 They're very, very cheap.
00:14:20.000 And other forms of alternative energy are not nearly as cheap and not nearly as effective.
00:14:23.000 That's true of wind.
00:14:24.000 It's true of solar.
00:14:25.000 It's true of pretty much everything except for nuclear.
00:14:27.000 You can't power your car with nuclear energy.
00:14:30.000 So, what they're attempting to do is, this is part of the goal.
00:14:34.000 The goal is to artificially raise the price of oil and natural gas.
00:14:36.000 This is why they've talked, for example, about a global carbon tax.
00:14:39.000 A global carbon tax means it will cost you more to fill up your car.
00:14:43.000 They're trying to push you toward the quote-unquote green transition.
00:14:45.000 This is part of the plan.
00:14:46.000 This is not part of like some sort of giant unexpected event that occurred.
00:14:51.000 Part of the plan is drive up the price of oil.
00:14:53.000 And so then when the price of oil goes up and people get mad, then the Biden administration tries to blame it on something else.
00:14:59.000 But the reality is, again, like inflation, this is part of the plan.
00:15:02.000 They're okay with high gas prices.
00:15:04.000 High gas prices are good.
00:15:05.000 They force you to think about getting a Tesla, even if you can never afford a Tesla.
00:15:10.000 They force you to think about driving less than taking a bicycle.
00:15:12.000 This is something the left really wants.
00:15:15.000 And Joe Biden has been on this hobby horse for a long time.
00:15:17.000 Here's a flashback to Joe Biden in 2019 talking about how he wants to end drilling on federal land.
00:15:22.000 I've argued against any more oil drilling or gas drilling on federal lands and to stop that.
00:15:31.000 I think we should in fact be looking at what exists now and making a judgment whether or not those in fact that are there, those wells that are there, Whether or not they're dangerous, whether or not they've already done the damage, and what we can do from there by trying to change the attitude of the members of the governors of the various state and state legislatures.
00:15:54.000 So he's trying to cut down on, I mean, he's openly saying this stuff in 2019.
00:15:57.000 What if we just stopped drilling on federal lands?
00:15:59.000 Get the states to stop the drilling in their states?
00:16:02.000 In September 2020, Joe Biden, then candidate Biden, made a major policy speech about climate change.
00:16:08.000 And he suggested that it was incumbent on America to take a leadership position.
00:16:11.000 Now, this is something that you hear a lot from people on the left.
00:16:13.000 So I have a lot of friends on the left who tend to be pretty hawkish on climate change.
00:16:18.000 And what they are constantly saying is, well, sure, it's true that China and India are the biggest world emitters.
00:16:22.000 And sure, it's true that the emissions in the United States are going down.
00:16:24.000 But unless we take a leadership position, are those other countries really going to get on board?
00:16:29.000 And the answer is, they're not getting on board even if we take a leadership position. 0.97
00:16:32.000 They just look at us like we're suckers. 0.99
00:16:34.000 Obviously. 0.97
00:16:35.000 But the idea here for Joe Biden is that he promotes this big lie.
00:16:38.000 And the big lie with regard to climate change is if we engage in all sorts of massively expensive environmentalist transactions and regulations, that this somehow is going to be a boon for the American economy.
00:16:49.000 He never explains how this is so.
00:16:50.000 But here is Joe Biden saying just that in September of 2020.
00:16:53.000 The unrelenting impact of climate change affects every single solitary one of us.
00:17:01.000 But too often, The brunt falls disproportionately on communities of color, exacerbating the need for environmental justice.
00:17:09.000 Sorry, that's a bug.
00:17:11.000 Speaking of the environment.
00:17:13.000 These are interlocking crises of our time.
00:17:16.000 It requires action, not denial.
00:17:18.000 It requires leadership, not scapegoating.
00:17:22.000 It requires the President to meet the threshold duty of the office.
00:17:26.000 To care.
00:17:27.000 To care for everyone.
00:17:29.000 It's about caring, guys.
00:17:30.000 It's about caring.
00:17:31.000 You have to pay higher gas prices so that Joe Biden can be perceived as a caring person while he's attacked by bugs in a field in Delaware.
00:17:39.000 And here's the thing.
00:17:40.000 He's pretty clear about what this means.
00:17:41.000 He says that the entire electricity sector has to stop producing carbon-based energy.
00:17:47.000 I mean, I don't know how he intends to effectuate this change other than by crushing the American economy and by making carbon-based energy more expensive.
00:17:55.000 Transforming the electrical sector power To produce power without carbon pollution will be the greatest spur to job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st century, not to mention the positive benefits to our health And our environment.
00:18:12.000 This is the same garbage that Joe Biden was pitching, that Barack Obama was pitching back in 2008.
00:18:17.000 He was saying, well, if we just dump money into green subsidies, then we'll have green jobs and those green jobs will spur economic growth. 0.96
00:18:22.000 Nope.
00:18:23.000 It turns out, Solyndra, it turns out that when you dump billions of dollars into bad boondoggle projects, it doesn't create jobs.
00:18:29.000 It just wastes an enormous amount of money and makes everything more expensive for people.
00:18:32.000 But this is all part and parcel of the plan.
00:18:34.000 Again, the plan is you subject the American economy to the headwinds of terrible environmental policy.
00:18:41.000 And all of this is good, because it shows American leadership, Powerful economic force and third world countries, which are backwards in their economies and in their fuel production. 0.99
00:18:54.000 And so what this means is that we, he said over and over, I mean, this is not a secret.
00:18:57.000 Joe Biden over and over has been a critic of drilling, of new energy production.
00:19:01.000 He's shut down all of the investments that are directed at refineries.
00:19:05.000 Like this is a thing that Joe Biden does.
00:19:06.000 It's something he's interested in doing.
00:19:08.000 So here is Joe Biden talking about how he wants to essentially end as much drilling as he can, circa 2020.
00:19:15.000 No more subsidies for fossil fuel industry.
00:19:17.000 No more drilling on federal lands.
00:19:19.000 No more drilling, including offshore.
00:19:21.000 No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill.
00:19:24.000 Period.
00:19:25.000 Ends.
00:19:26.000 OK, well, again, he says it over and over again.
00:19:29.000 I mean, this is not a secret.
00:19:30.000 They're not they're not hiding the ball on this stuff.
00:19:30.000 This is the part.
00:19:32.000 Biden 2020.
00:19:33.000 We're going to end fossil fuels.
00:19:35.000 I want you to just take a look, OK?
00:19:37.000 You don't have to agree, but I want you to look in my eyes.
00:19:42.000 I guarantee you.
00:19:43.000 I guarantee you.
00:19:44.000 We're going to end fossil fuel and I am not going to cooperate with you, okay?
00:19:48.000 He guarantees they're going to end fossil fuel.
00:19:51.000 Might that involve a higher price for you as you look into his bleary old eyes right there?
00:19:55.000 In May 2020, he vowed that he was going to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, which was going to ship a lot of natural gas and oil down from Canada.
00:20:03.000 And he said this, quote, Biden strongly opposes the Keystone pipeline.
00:20:08.000 And so what exactly did Joe Biden do when he got into office?
00:20:10.000 Obama and Secretary Kerry to reject it in 2015, and will proudly stand in the Roosevelt room again as president and stop it for good by rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit, said Steph Feldman, Biden's policy director.
00:20:21.000 Again, none of this was any sort of shock.
00:20:24.000 And so what exactly did Joe Biden do when he got into office?
00:20:26.000 Well, he pursued exactly all of these policies, right?
00:20:29.000 He pursued all of them.
00:20:30.000 So according, again, to that chart from the American Action Forum, which is a really good chart showing what exactly happened with the oil and gas prices.
00:20:38.000 So again, the price of oil and gas, the gas prices per gallon, $2.25 as of January 4th, 2021.
00:20:46.000 Joe Biden enters office.
00:20:48.000 The first thing he does is he issues a memo suspending the authority of local Bureau of Land Management offices to approve leases, drilling permits, and mining operations and cancels Keystone XL.
00:20:59.000 Just a couple of days later, he signs an executive order to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, quote-unquote, and to halt oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
00:21:07.000 And then, by like March 4th, he has updated the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions.
00:21:13.000 Okay, so by now, the prices of gas are about $2.60 a gallon, so it's risen $0.35 in like the first month of his administration.
00:21:22.000 Then if you fast forward to June of 2021, he suspends oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
00:21:29.000 And gas is already at three bucks a gallon at this point.
00:21:32.000 By August of 2021, he's calling on OPEC producers to increase the supply because it turns out that people are feeling the pain and feeling the pressure.
00:21:41.000 It's amazing.
00:21:42.000 So all of his policies have now wildly exacerbated oil prices.
00:21:45.000 There's been an increase of almost a buck in the gas prices by the time we hit August.
00:21:50.000 And as we see, it's all because of the policies that he has pursued, and he blames everybody else.
00:21:56.000 Like everyone, he blames.
00:21:58.000 It's just an amazing, amazing thing.
00:22:01.000 If you continue along the timeline...
00:22:03.000 In November of 2021, he announced new regulations for methane emissions that of course increased the price of natural gas.
00:22:10.000 And then, a few days later, he sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission encouraging investigation into oil and gas companies and retail gasoline prices.
00:22:17.000 So at the same time that he's jacking up all the preconditions for producing and refining oil, he is also blaming them for the rising oil and gas prices.
00:22:26.000 In December, by now the price is almost $3.50 a gallon.
00:22:29.000 He's proposing increasing royalty rates on domestic oil production and limiting available areas for development.
00:22:35.000 He also acknowledged that he was studying shutting down the Michigan Line 5 pipeline.
00:22:41.000 By the time we hit February of 2022, we've now hit $3.50 a gallon, and he has indefinitely delayed planned oil and gas leases on public land.
00:22:49.000 By March, the DOJ is declining to appeal court rulings vacating oil and gas lease sales, and you're starting to see the spike.
00:22:56.000 You're now about, you're at $3.60 a gallon.
00:22:57.000 So remember, it was $2.25 a gallon when he entered office.
00:23:00.000 Okay, this is about the time, like beginning of March, when you start to see a major spike in gas prices.
00:23:07.000 But again, remember, you've already had an increase from $2.25 to about $3.60 without Putin.
00:23:11.000 Then Putin invades Ukraine.
00:23:14.000 And one of the reasons that that exacerbated the oil and natural gas prices is because when you cut off domestic oil production, it makes you more dependent on foreign sources of oil and natural gas.
00:23:23.000 And when you declare that you're not going to buy the foreign oil and natural gas, the prices go up.
00:23:26.000 You have restricted supply.
00:23:28.000 Thus, when you further restrict supply, the prices go up even more.
00:23:32.000 So, all of this was part and parcel of the plan. 0.70
00:23:35.000 I mean, this notion that it wasn't part of the plan is ridiculous.
00:23:38.000 By the way, long-term policies have long-term effects.
00:23:42.000 Gabrielle Hoffman has a good piece over at RealClearEnergy talking about this.
00:23:46.000 She says inflation has emerged as the top issue for most Americans ahead of the midterm elections rising labor cost energy prices interest rates are increasingly adding to inflationary woes and much to the Biden's administration's chagrin the 1.9 trillion dollar American rescue plan is the largest driver of inflation.
00:24:00.000 Additionally, Democrats refuse to admit their push for environmental, social, and governance, especially in energy policy, in both the public and private sectors is also a major problem.
00:24:08.000 This is correct, right?
00:24:10.000 Of the three ESG prongs, the E-factor, which accounts for environmental stewardship and natural resources development in business practices, is primarily contributing to inflation.
00:24:18.000 As it turns out, when you, in the stock market, basically dictate that in order to invest, you must abide by ESG diktat, And those ESG diktats require you to not invest in oil and natural gas.
00:24:30.000 Why do you think refineries are shutting down?
00:24:32.000 Why do you think long-term drilling operations are not taking place despite the increase in the price of oil?
00:24:36.000 Normally, when you have a supply-demand curve, when the demand radically outpaces supply, you have an increase in supply to meet it.
00:24:44.000 But what happens when there's a ramp-up period between when there's an imbalance between supply and demand and when the demand can actually start to meet, when the supply can actually start to meet the demand?
00:24:55.000 Well, when it comes to oil and natural gas, there's an actual delay period, right?
00:24:59.000 You can't immediately just increase the oil and natural gas.
00:25:01.000 You have to build new wells.
00:25:02.000 You have to refine.
00:25:03.000 You have to create all this infrastructure.
00:25:04.000 That takes years of investment.
00:25:07.000 What if you spent years telling people they're not allowed to invest in this stuff because of ESG?
00:25:11.000 And what if you tell them, okay, well, we're having a current price spike.
00:25:13.000 We need new production.
00:25:14.000 And they say, well, yeah, that takes five years.
00:25:17.000 And I know that in three years, you guys are just going to shut this stuff down again because of ESG.
00:25:20.000 Forget three years.
00:25:21.000 In six months, you're going to shut this stuff down again because of ESG.
00:25:24.000 We'll get some more on this in just one second.
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00:26:37.000 Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Global, calls this phenomenon greenflation.
00:26:41.000 In fall 2021, Shah warned how the push to transition away from fossil fuels, notably in the form of advancing net-zero policies, quote, created a chain reaction resulting in higher energy prices and ultimately higher consumer costs.
00:26:52.000 She also explained how N-inflation, like environmental inflation, is adding to uncertainty by way of carbon credits, harsh penalties for companies that fail to meet UN climate targets, and increased investment in technology, along with R&D, for instance.
00:27:05.000 American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Summers blamed the Biden administration's misguided energy policies, namely their decarbonization push for compounds and inflationary pressures.
00:27:14.000 Ultimately, consumers will be burdened by this inflation because costs are passed down to them.
00:27:18.000 Columbia University's Lucas Toe explains the transition to 100% wind and solar energy will be expensive, writing, quote, The reality is that wind and solar are only cheap during the early stages of the transition.
00:27:29.000 Currently, states with existing renewable portfolio standards paid $125.2 billion more in electricity costs compared to states without them.
00:27:38.000 So much for fossil fuel investments being lucrative.
00:27:41.000 As a result, some corporations are recommitting to oil and gas.
00:27:44.000 Earlier this year, BlackRock modified its interpretation of the E-prong by supporting fossil fuel investments to not jeopardize business opportunities in Texas.
00:27:53.000 So again, the E here is having significant ramifications for the ability to even produce the kinds of things that you need to produce in order to make gas prices go down, in order to ramp up the possibility of doing this sort of stuff.
00:28:08.000 And this is why, for example, you have seen a lack of refinery production.
00:28:13.000 Joe Biden keeps yelling at the refiners.
00:28:15.000 He keeps yelling at the oil companies.
00:28:17.000 But the simple fact is that they can't really lower the prices by themselves, because oil refineries across the country, according to the Washington Post, are being retired and converted to other uses, as owners balk at making costly upgrades, and America's pivot away from fossil fuels leaves their future uncertain.
00:28:33.000 Five refineries have shut down in the United States in just the past two years, reducing the nation's refining capacity by about 5%, eliminating more than 1 million barrels of fuel per day from the market, leaving the remaining facilities straining to meet demand.
00:28:46.000 So, how can they reopen when there is no long-term prospect of actually profitability, thanks to Joe Biden and Democrats intervening in this sort of stuff?
00:28:55.000 Joe Biden, meanwhile, he's been blaming the gas companies, but the gas companies are pointing out, you're making it really, really difficult for us.
00:29:01.000 You make it difficult, and then you whine when we can't produce the stuff that you want us to produce.
00:29:06.000 According to upstreamonline.com, in a letter sent in June to a list of companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum, and BP, Biden chastised the companies.
00:29:17.000 He said at a time of war, historically high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable.
00:29:23.000 But Chevron called for policies that underpin continued investment in oil and gas rather than the obstructive approach that Joe Biden has been using thus far.
00:29:33.000 The oil companies then sent a written statement out.
00:29:38.000 They said, we want to underscore that U.S.
00:29:40.000 refineries are running at high utilization rates.
00:29:42.000 Refinery capacity expansion is a long-term proposition given permitting, engineering design, capital cost estimates, and equipment procurement.
00:29:51.000 So the idea that they can just ramp up production is not true.
00:29:55.000 But Joe Biden has to find somebody to blame for his own bad policy.
00:29:57.000 And so, of course, he has spent the last several months, up to a year, blaming everybody but himself.
00:30:05.000 In October of 2021, remember, as of October of 2021, we were already looking at gas prices that were hovering just under $3.50 per gallon.
00:30:16.000 And so it had already risen by well over a dollar under Joe Biden.
00:30:20.000 At that point, Joe Biden said the gas prices would come down.
00:30:22.000 They did not.
00:30:24.000 Do you have a timeline for gas prices and when you think they may start coming down?
00:30:28.000 My guess is you'll start to see gas prices come down as we get by and going into the winter.
00:30:35.000 I mean, excuse me, end of next year in 2022.
00:30:38.000 Oh, midwinter to next.
00:30:41.000 Oh, uh-huh.
00:30:42.000 Is that been happening right now?
00:30:44.000 Then Joe Biden blamed OPEC for the high gas prices.
00:30:46.000 This is November of 2021.
00:30:48.000 If you take a look at gas prices and you take a look at oil prices, that is a consequence of, thus far, the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil.
00:31:09.000 Oh, by the way, that was in November.
00:31:11.000 That was well before the Ukraine war.
00:31:13.000 He's blaming OPEC.
00:31:14.000 Okay, so now fast forward to March, and you've seen a gas spike again.
00:31:17.000 And he says, well, we can't really do much because Russia's responsible. 0.51
00:31:19.000 Well, you could have done something about the more than a dollar increase in gas prices before Russia invaded Ukraine.
00:31:24.000 And as it turns out, You can't have it both ways.
00:31:26.000 Joe Biden both wants to quote unquote, fight the war in Ukraine, but also blame the war in Ukraine for the high gas prices.
00:31:31.000 Well, which is it?
00:31:32.000 Because if you believe that the war in Ukraine is causing the high gas prices, why don't you open up the gas production and lower the amount of money that we're paying for the oil and natural gas right now?
00:31:41.000 Because his real priority is the environmental component of the left-wing agenda.
00:31:45.000 So here's Joe Biden in March, blaming of course, Russia.
00:31:48.000 Gonna go up.
00:31:48.000 Can't do much right now.
00:31:52.000 Russia's responsible. 0.99
00:31:55.000 Russia's responsible. 0.99
00:31:56.000 He said the same day.
00:31:57.000 He's doing everything he could to minimize Putin's price hike.
00:31:58.000 That's not true.
00:31:59.000 If that were true, then he would have been loosening all of the leases and regulations that are necessary in order to actually do this stuff.
00:32:08.000 He'd be allowing us to drill.
00:32:09.000 He'd be encouraging oil companies to invest.
00:32:13.000 But he's not.
00:32:14.000 Here Joe Biden was in March of 2022 saying that he was going to do everything possible to fix this thing.
00:32:18.000 Putin's war is already hurting American families at the gas pump.
00:32:22.000 Since Putin began his military build-up on Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of the gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents.
00:32:31.000 And with this action, it's going to go up further.
00:32:34.000 I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home.
00:32:38.000 Oh, well then you didn't.
00:32:40.000 So by June, he was just mocking the oil companies.
00:32:42.000 It was their fault.
00:32:43.000 So we've got Russia, OPEC, the oil companies, everybody except for the person who's putting restrictions on energy supply in the United States.
00:32:49.000 Here's Joe Biden in June.
00:32:50.000 You said that your administration has largely criticized the oil and gas industry and at times vilified it and that the administration would need to take a change in approach in order to make progress on reducing energy prices and to increase supply.
00:33:04.000 Do you have a reaction to that, sir?
00:33:05.000 It's mildly sensitive.
00:33:10.000 Look, we need more refining capacity.
00:33:16.000 This idea that they don't have oil to drill and to bring up is simply not true.
00:33:21.000 This piece of the Republicans talking about Biden shutdown feels wrong.
00:33:27.000 9,000 of them, okay?
00:33:29.000 Okay, no, what's wrong is that everybody understands that you prevented more drilling from taking place, more long-term investment.
00:33:36.000 He says, we need more refinery capacity.
00:33:37.000 The refineries were operating at 94, 95% capacity already. 0.97
00:33:42.000 Where do you think that flex capacity is going to come from, you dolt? 0.94
00:33:46.000 They actively pursue these policies. 0.89
00:33:47.000 And then, of course, there are unintended consequences.
00:33:49.000 And this, of course, leads to humiliating moments like Joe Biden having to fist-bump Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman, begging him for oil because, as it turns out, your bad long-term environmental policy actually has some pretty significant ramifications for the American people.
00:34:02.000 So here's Joe Biden fist-bumping the Saudis.
00:34:05.000 is after declaring them the world's worst human rights violators and all the rest of this stuff.
00:34:09.000 And there he is sort of staggering out of his car and fist bumping Mohammed bin Salman and begging him for oil.
00:34:13.000 Oh, by the way, he also relieved sanctions on Venezuela.
00:34:16.000 So you got Nicolas Maduro, one of the world's worst dictators, and he's begging him for oil.
00:34:19.000 Now, here's the thing.
00:34:20.000 Why doesn't he just change tactics, right?
00:34:22.000 Why doesn't he change?
00:34:23.000 If this is all about making sure that Americans are actually able to get the oil that they need, the gas that they need, the energy that they need, then why doesn't he change tactics?
00:34:31.000 After all, Europe kind of is.
00:34:33.000 If you look at what Europe has been doing, Europe has actually been reclassifying green to include natural gas.
00:34:38.000 Joe Biden isn't doing any of that.
00:34:40.000 And the answer is, because again, this is part of the agenda.
00:34:42.000 Pretending it's not, this is the goal.
00:34:45.000 The goal of raising prices is a goal.
00:34:47.000 It is not an accidental byproduct.
00:34:48.000 They want the prices higher.
00:34:50.000 They say it openly.
00:34:51.000 Here's Jennifer Granholm, the Energy Secretary in May of 2021, saying, you know what?
00:34:55.000 Sure, we're having some gas shortages, but it is pushing us toward a green transition.
00:34:58.000 We obviously are all in on making sure that we meet the president's goals of getting to 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
00:35:10.000 And, you know, if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you, clearly.
00:35:17.000 So, if you were driving an electric car, right, if you just bought yourself a $100,000 electric car, then everything would have been totally fine.
00:35:22.000 This administration, this is what they actually think.
00:35:24.000 Here's Joe Biden in March of 2022.
00:35:26.000 He says, we're moving away from fossil fuels.
00:35:29.000 He says this in the middle of that price hike that he's blaming on Vladimir Putin.
00:35:32.000 We can't keep the combustion engine the way it has been.
00:35:36.000 It's even, you see what's happening in locomotives now, you know, and you see what's happening just across the board.
00:35:46.000 So and I think it presents an enormous opportunity, enormous opportunity to improve the health of the public overall.
00:35:54.000 Number one, because we're moving in the direction and we don't need to propel most of what we have in the future by with regard to oil products.
00:36:06.000 Tremendous opportunity.
00:36:07.000 Jennifer Granholm, one week later, again, this in the middle of Putin's price hike, saying this is great.
00:36:11.000 We're transitioning green energy.
00:36:12.000 What's the problem?
00:36:13.000 The reduction of supply of natural gas and oil from Russia creates a moment that we should be acting.
00:36:22.000 I mean, we heard President Zelensky.
00:36:24.000 We do not want to see any country that is held hostage to Vladimir Putin.
00:36:31.000 And this is a moment for Congress to be able to act.
00:36:35.000 There can be a compromise.
00:36:37.000 There can be movement on this.
00:36:40.000 And whether it's, you know, I mean, what the form is and sponsors are and all of that, that's a that's a conversation that's happening.
00:36:48.000 But the bottom line is, this is a moment to have this happen.
00:36:52.000 It's an urgent moment.
00:36:53.000 It's an urgent moment.
00:36:54.000 It's great.
00:36:55.000 By the way, Joe Biden says in May of this year, when this is over, we'll have transition agreement.
00:36:59.000 It'll all be great.
00:37:00.000 Everything's awesome.
00:37:01.000 And when it comes to the gas prices, We're going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger, unless we rely on fossil fuels when this is over.
00:37:17.000 Oh, well, then it seems like this was part of your agenda all along, sir.
00:37:21.000 So you get to blame it on everybody else when this is part of your agenda, making the gas more expensive.
00:37:26.000 And of course, this month, literally this month, Jennifer Granholm was bragging that Joe Biden is pursuing the most ambitious green climate push in human history.
00:37:33.000 This is amidst the push that we're having right now for a $433 billion green energy boondoggle.
00:37:36.000 These geniuses.
00:37:40.000 We are pursuing these very ambitious goals, most ambitious in history, which is to reduce our CO2 emissions in half by 2030, 100% clean electricity by 2035, and net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
00:37:50.000 That's what it is.
00:37:55.000 Okay, so let's stop pretending that this wasn't part of the agenda.
00:37:58.000 It is part of the agenda.
00:38:00.000 So when they say that it's everybody else's fault, that the gas prices are high, nope, this is a goal.
00:38:04.000 This is an explicit goal of the environmentalist movement.
00:38:06.000 It is something Joe Biden has been pushing for literally years.
00:38:09.000 And so don't try to let Democrats get away with the idea that this is anyone's fault, but theirs.
00:38:13.000 This was part of the plan.
00:38:15.000 A lot of things Democrats do that have bad unintended consequences.
00:38:18.000 This is not one of them.
00:38:19.000 This was one of the intended consequences.
00:38:21.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.
00:38:24.000 more, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:38:25.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Sajevitz, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Christina, Production Coordinator Jessica Kranz.
00:38:49.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.