The Ben Shapiro Show - The Greatest Scam in Modern America

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, folks, so you remember Ibram X. Kendi.

00:00:02.000 This guy is a genius.

00:00:03.000 How do I know that he's a genius?

00:00:05.000 He's such a genius that he actually won a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2021.

00:00:09.000 That was a $625,000 nose-strings-attached fellowship honoring his exceptional creativity, scholarly achievements, gift for communicating his anti-racist work and ideas with diverse audiences, and promise for further benefiting society.

00:00:22.000 That is Boston University that gave him this anti-racist grant.

00:00:28.000 That is super, Inspiring stuff.

00:00:30.000 Now, for those who have not followed the prodigious career of Ibram X. Kendi, the founder of the BU Center for Antiracist Research, he is the author of a bunch of really not very good books, and he speaks nonsense for a living.

00:00:44.000 The nonsense that he speaks is all about how America is deeply and irrevocably racist, He wrote, most famously, a book called Stamp from the Beginning, the definitive history of racist ideas in America about how America was literally racist in all of its iterations from the very beginning.

00:00:57.000 That is up to and including all of the constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights.

00:01:02.000 He also wrote a book called How to Be an Antiracist, and he now has a podcast called Be an Antiracist.

00:01:08.000 So what exactly does this genius say about racism?

00:01:11.000 Well, he can't really define the term.

00:01:13.000 He just knows that racism exists wherever there is a disparity. 1.00

00:01:16.000 The direct quote from him, as an antiracist, when I see racial disparities, I see racism, which is unbelievably stupid. 1.00

00:01:22.000 And you might think that it's genius. 1.00

00:01:23.000 It's really, really stupid. 1.00

00:01:25.000 Let me give you an example of how stupid that is. 1.00

00:01:26.000 The vast majority of the NBA is black. 1.00

00:01:28.000 That is a massive racial disparity. 0.84

00:01:30.000 Only 13% of the American population is black.

00:01:32.000 The vast majority of the NBA players are black.

00:01:35.000 Does this mean that there has been some sort of deep and abiding racism in the NBA to make all of that happen?

00:01:41.000 Conversely, in hockey, virtually all the players are white.

00:01:44.000 Does that mean there is a deep and abiding racism that exists at the root of hockey?

00:01:48.000 And that is why there are just not that many black hockey players playing at the NHL level?

00:01:52.000 Of course not. 0.99

00:01:53.000 It's incredibly silly. 0.92

00:01:55.000 If you see, for example, that 99% of people in prison for violent crime are men, Less than 2% are women. 0.94

00:02:03.000 Is that because of some deeply sexist root in society?

00:02:07.000 That if we were a non-sexist society, 50% of the people going to prison for a violent crime would be women, presumably? 0.62

00:02:13.000 The truth is, disparities exist across virtually every industry, across virtually every metric, in society, for all of time.

00:02:21.000 They're tied to everything from geography to environment.

00:02:24.000 The idea that if two groups by race do not stack up identically in any particular area, this is because of systemic and abiding racism is nonsense.

00:02:33.000 It's absolute nonsense.

00:02:34.000 In fact, it's unfalsifiable nonsense because, again, literally every arena of life is going to include group disparities.

00:02:41.000 Age disparities.

00:02:42.000 Height disparities.

00:02:43.000 Weight disparities.

00:02:45.000 These disparities exist literally everywhere.

00:02:46.000 But, Ibram X. Kendi's entire proposal, which was built up on the back of the BLM movement in 2020, is that he doesn't need to prove that racism is actually at the root of anything.

00:02:56.000 All he has to show is a disparity. 1.00

00:02:58.000 Which, again, is incredibly stupid. 0.99

00:02:59.000 It makes his job really easy, because I, too, can point to disparities in every arena of life. 0.99

00:03:04.000 But, unless I actually prove that the reason behind the disparity is some sort of evil, I've not proved anything.

00:03:11.000 But, Kendi, because in 2020 we decided as a society that you no longer had to prove that racism was at the root of, for example, crime statistics.

00:03:19.000 Instead, you could just simply claim that it was, and then everyone who said that it wasn't was deemed to be racist.

00:03:24.000 This is the magic of Kendi.

00:03:26.000 Kendi waved his magic wand, and suddenly everybody who was not racist before was racist.

00:03:31.000 He says that colorblindness is racist.

00:03:33.000 If you think That race shouldn't matter. 0.98

00:03:35.000 That's because you're a racist. 0.97

00:03:36.000 Race does matter.

00:03:37.000 And the way we know race matters is because of disparities.

00:03:40.000 And those disparities are evidence of racism.

00:03:42.000 And if you say, well, that's why race shouldn't matter, that's because you're a racist.

00:03:45.000 Don't you see?

00:03:45.000 Well, famously, Ibram X. Kendi, MacArthur Genius Grant Award winner.

00:03:50.000 Famously, Ibram X. Kendi was asked just a couple of years ago about how to define racism.

00:03:54.000 Here was this genius's definition.

00:03:57.000 So racism, I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.

00:04:10.000 Um, wait.

00:04:11.000 So, the way that he just defined racism is racist policies that lead to racial inequity.

00:04:18.000 You can't define a term by using the term.

00:04:21.000 That is not a possibility.

00:04:22.000 You can't do that.

00:04:23.000 I mean, you can try, but it doesn't work. 0.93

00:04:26.000 Again, just to read you the quote so you understand how dumb this is, quote, I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas. 0.81

00:04:36.000 The audience, by the way, watching this actually laughed out loud.

00:04:39.000 And then he reiterated his definition and he added, quote, an anti-racism is pretty simple using the same terms.

00:04:43.000 Anti-racism is a collection of anti-racist policies leading to racial equity that are substantiated

00:04:48.000 by anti-racist ideas.

00:04:50.000 Now, again, as I say, just textbook logic.

00:04:53.000 You cannot define a term by using the term.

00:04:56.000 If someone asks you to define an elephant, and you quickly explain that an elephant is an animal known as an elephant, that would not add any new information to the discourse. 0.83

00:05:04.000 If you said an elephant is an animal that looks exactly like an elephant and acts exactly like an elephant, people would laugh at you because it's ridiculous.

00:05:10.000 That's exactly what Ibram X. Kendi is saying so that he doesn't actually have to define the term. 0.91

00:05:15.000 Now remember, he was richly rewarded for all of this crap in the middle of the BLM scam that was happening in 2020. 0.92

00:05:20.000 Again, it was a scam. 0.99

00:05:21.000 The lie that American society rests in unidentifiable but ever-present racism is a lie.

00:05:28.000 The notion that disparities in crime statistics are caused by racist policing is a lie.

00:05:34.000 But that idea was very prominent.

00:05:35.000 It was particularly prominent among liberal white folks who felt that if they signed Ibram X. Kendi a check the same way that they would have back in the 1980s to Al Sharpton, then they could give basically Al Sharpton with a patina of intellectual legitimacy.

00:05:46.000 Some sort.

00:05:47.000 He would give a dispensation to them.

00:05:48.000 You sign a Mexican to get a check, and now you are an anti-racist. 0.76

00:05:51.000 It's magic how anti-racism works.

00:05:53.000 How do you show you're an anti-racist?

00:05:54.000 You become an anti-racist.

00:05:55.000 It's not enough to not be racist.

00:05:57.000 This is what Kennedy says.

00:05:58.000 If you say, I'm not a racist, I don't think that people should be judged on the basis of their race.

00:06:02.000 He says that's not enough.

00:06:03.000 You need to be actively anti-racist.

00:06:05.000 And the only way to be anti-racist is to fight racist policies, namely any policies that end in some sort of disparity.

00:06:11.000 And some sort of racial disparity.

00:06:12.000 And the best way to fight those policies is to give to Ibram X. Kendi.

00:06:16.000 How magical!

00:06:17.000 Which presumably is why Jack Dorsey in 2020 gave Kendi's new Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University $10 million.

00:06:25.000 The Vertex Foundation of Vertex Pharmaceuticals gave the Center $1.5 million over three years.

00:06:29.000 Bank of America brought in Kendi to deliver his message.

00:06:33.000 And the Boston Globe teamed with Kendi's Center to create a new media platform.

00:06:38.000 The Center for Antiracist Research has generated precisely zero research at this point, so far as anyone is aware.

00:06:44.000 So, why are we discussing Ibram X. Kendi today?

00:06:47.000 Because, hilariously, after BU set up an entire center in ode to this idiot, that after BU set up, with the Boston Globe, a media enterprise with Ibram X. Kendi, After all of this happened, it turns out that Boston University is now announcing an inquiry into the Ibram X. Kendi's Anti-Racist Center. 0.85

00:07:08.000 It turns out the whole thing is a scam. 0.93

00:07:11.000 Oh, no, you don't say.

00:07:12.000 Oh, that is a shock.

00:07:13.000 You mean a person who can't find the word racism, but was being paid not to define the word racism, and then the way that you actually become not racist, you mean that was a scam? 0.52

00:07:21.000 You mean just like any other cult, if the cult leader can't define the terms, but the terms involve you having sex with the cult leader, it's a cult? 0.51

00:07:27.000 Yeah, that's this. 0.72

00:07:28.000 That's this.

00:07:29.000 He'll get some more of this in just once. 0.99

00:07:31.000 If I'm a little bit gleeful about this is because idiocy that is clearly obvious to the human eye. 1.00

00:07:37.000 Ignored and metastasized will eventually take root and then come back to kill the host. 0.99

00:07:42.000 And that's precisely what has happened with regard to Ibram X. Kendi's version of anti-racism. 1.00

00:07:47.000 Everyone could see this as a scam, that it was idiocy, that it was emperor's new clothes garbage. 0.99

00:07:51.000 Everyone knew this at the time. 0.99

00:07:52.000 Anti-racism is a collection of anti-racist policies that target racist disparities backed by racist ideas.

00:07:59.000 Everyone could tell this is gobbledygook nonsense, but we all had to pretend not because black lives matter. 1.00

00:08:04.000 Now, how it protected black lives beyond anybody, no proof it does, but in fact, precisely the opposite. 0.58

00:08:09.000 It turns out the best way to alleviate disparities is to actually focus in on human behavior and focus in on the behavior that leads to those disparities.

00:08:15.000 But, Ibram X. Kendi got away with a lot of money for a long time.

00:08:18.000 We'll get into the details in just one second.

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00:09:20.000 Alrighty, so, Evermax Kendi, his center is now being investigated.

00:09:25.000 The predicate for this is that they laid off some 20% of their entire staff

00:09:31.000 following the fact that they had millions and millions and millions of dollars,

00:09:34.000 and it just randomly went for, it's just gone now.

00:09:39.000 Philippe Copeland is a former employee of the Boston University Ibram X. Kendi Center for Grift.

00:09:45.000 And here is what he posted recently on his social media, quote, I love it.

00:09:49.000 Oh, man.

00:09:49.000 It's an Ouroboros.

00:09:50.000 One of its premier senators ended up in this situation and how mass layoffs are anti-racist.

00:09:55.000 This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders.

00:09:58.000 It's about the culture and systems that allow it to occur.

00:10:00.000 I love it.

00:10:01.000 Oh man, it's an Ouroboros.

00:10:03.000 It's a snake eating its own tail here.

00:10:05.000 So you see, Ibram X. Kendi preaches the grift.

00:10:08.000 And then when he actually uses the grift to fire his own people, creating a disparity in outcome,

00:10:12.000 this means he is now violating his own anti-racist precepts.

00:10:16.000 It turns out if you hire a bunch of black people at the Boston University Center for Ibram X. Kendi's Grift, and then you fire a bunch of black people, and you now have created a disparity, then who's the anti-racist and who's the racist, Ibram X. Kendi? 0.68

00:10:28.000 Anti-racism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign, or path to self-promotion.

00:10:31.000 It is a life-and-death matter, says Philippe Copeland.

00:10:33.000 Too much of higher education responded to the so-called racial reckoning with theater, therapy, and marketing masquerading as institutional commitment.

00:10:40.000 Wherever this has occurred, it needs to be exposed for the obscenity it is.

00:10:44.000 There is too much at stake.

00:10:45.000 Those of us who believe in real anti-racism need to demand more from our colleges and universities.

00:10:49.000 Our students are watching.

00:10:50.000 To those of you laboring in institutions, the commitment to anti-racism is cosmetic and hypocritical.

00:10:54.000 I see you, I hear you, I am with you, says Philippe Copeland.

00:10:57.000 He says he has a story to tell.

00:10:58.000 During my time at the Center, I proposed and developed a new fellowship program called Designing Anti-Racist Curriculum.

00:11:04.000 This was a collaboration with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

00:11:08.000 All professional useless people.

00:11:09.000 We successfully launched this new program. 0.94

00:11:12.000 I decided I could no longer work at the Center due to the mismanagement I witnessed.

00:11:15.000 I was subsequently told I could no longer be part of the leadership of the fellowship I created.

00:11:19.000 The excuse for this was that I was leaving the Center and would be replaced by someone else.

00:11:22.000 This was in spite of the fact I said I was willing to continue serving without a course buyout or compensation.

00:11:28.000 The excuse made no sense.

00:11:29.000 There's already a faculty member serving on the leadership team with no affiliation with the center.

00:11:33.000 Taking a program from the black faculty member that created it is apparently what BU considers anti-racism. 0.96

00:11:38.000 So they fired a black guy. 0.99

00:11:39.000 This means that they are the true racists. 0.56

00:11:40.000 So now BU has launched a full-scale inquiry into the Ibram X. Kendi Center for Anti-Racist Research and Grift.

00:11:47.000 The assessment comes the week after Kendi Toll laid off more than half of the center's staff, not 20%,

00:11:53.000 50%, I'm sorry, the complaints, a BU spokesperson said, focused on the center's culture and

00:11:58.000 grant management practices.

00:12:00.000 The inquiry announced Wednesday represents a broadening of a previous examination of

00:12:02.000 the center's grant management practices, according to the spokesperson, Rachel LaPaul Cavaliero.

00:12:07.000 Kendi takes strong exceptions to the allegations made in recent complaints and media reports,

00:12:11.000 she said.

00:12:13.000 Since its announced launch in June of 2020, just days after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Center has raised tens of millions of dollars from tech entrepreneurs, Boston-area corporations, and thousands of small donors, according to the Boston Globe, which is one of the institutions that sponsored Kendi.

00:12:28.000 The money was meant to finance a range of ambitious projects, a database to track racial disparities nationwide, a graduate degree program, a media enterprise, and research teams studying the effects of systemic racism on health and society.

00:12:39.000 Some of those projects have come to fruition, including The Emancipator, a digital publication launched with the Boston Globe's opinion staff in 2021.

00:12:45.000 So in other words, the Boston Globe did its part, but nothing else happened with the money.

00:12:49.000 There is no racial data tracker.

00:12:50.000 That was supposedly the centerpiece of their research.

00:12:52.000 There is, in fact, no research.

00:12:55.000 What exactly is the list of the center's achievements?

00:12:57.000 Funding for numerous research projects, collaboration in a project launched by journalists at The Atlantic magazine.

00:13:02.000 So they paid The Atlantic to do what The Atlantic does. 0.61

00:13:05.000 And organizing two policy convenings.

00:13:07.000 Ooh, policy convenings.

00:13:09.000 So, where's the money?

00:13:11.000 It's just kind of gone, apparently.

00:13:14.000 So, Kendi has completed a number of personal projects since 2020, but in recent months he's been on leave from the Center.

00:13:21.000 He returned last week and in a series of Zoom meetings told approximately 20 of the Center's staffers they would be laid off, according to Spencer Piston, a BU professor and leader in the Center's policy conference.

00:13:31.000 The layoffs were initiated by Dr. Kendi, and they represented a strategic pivot, according to BU.

00:13:37.000 The sensor will now pursue a fellowship model, rather than its research-based approach.

00:13:40.000 There was no research!

00:13:41.000 Hard to have a research-based approach when you got no research.

00:13:44.000 So, again, y'all got scammed.

00:13:46.000 Y'all got scammed.

00:13:47.000 And that is the message here.

00:13:49.000 If you can't articulate why it is that somebody should give you money to do a thing, all you can do is threaten them that you will call them a racist or a bigot.

00:13:57.000 If they do not do the thing, this means that you are a cult leader and a scam artist.

00:14:01.000 And that is what happened right here with the Center for Anti-Racist Bigotry.

00:14:05.000 And this is indeed the greatest scam in modern America.

00:14:07.000 The DEI scam, the woke scam, it is a scam. 0.52

00:14:10.000 Wokeness, by the way, has an actual definition.

00:14:12.000 Wokeness springs from the writings of critical legal theory, It springs from the writings of Kimberlé Crenshaw.

00:14:18.000 The basic idea is Kennedy's idea that America is rife with institutional racism, that that institutional racism serves the purposes of white supremacy, and that any disparity is evidence of that racism.

00:14:30.000 That's Kennedy in a nutshell, and it's a scam.

00:14:32.000 Because the only way that you can escape this bind that they have created, this unfalsifiable, etheric racism that you're a part of, is to give them money.

00:14:40.000 And then they waste the money.

00:14:42.000 They spend it on themselves.

00:14:44.000 How many scams have to be uncovered before people realize it's a scam?

00:14:47.000 How many BLM leaders have to buy themselves houses like Patrisse Cullors with the cash before you realize that it is a scam? 0.91

00:14:54.000 Truly, it is an amazing, amazing thing.

00:14:56.000 It's like every other day, one of these scams is exposed for the scam that it is, and then people just keep on parroting the scam.

00:15:01.000 DEI is a scam.

00:15:02.000 It has been a scam for as long as it has been a major part of American life, and it continues to be a scam today.

00:15:08.000 Okay, in a second, we're going to get to the latest on Russell Brand.

00:15:11.000 Again, there's really no new information that has emerged about Russell Brand and the allegations against him yet.

00:15:16.000 But that's not stopping people from attempting to remove any livelihood you might have.

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00:16:20.000 Okay, meanwhile.

00:16:22.000 On the Russell Brand affront, I gotta say that we will see what happens with the allegations against Russell Brand.

00:16:27.000 The Metropolitan Police are soliciting accounts and evidence of the allegations that are made against Russell Brand for the possibility of prosecution of him if it turns out that these can be substantiated.

00:16:37.000 And we're gonna find out.

00:16:38.000 But that is not stopping people in the British government from immediately going after any ad revenue that Brand could be receiving from any outlets.

00:16:44.000 We talked yesterday about the fact that YouTube has now demonetized all of Russell Brand's videos.

00:16:49.000 On YouTube.

00:16:50.000 So allegations are tantamount to conviction in the world of YouTube.

00:16:53.000 Which is weird, because Cardi B literally has admitted to drugging and robbing men, but I see that her videos are earning tons and tons of cash. 1.00

00:17:00.000 Elijah Schaffer pointed that one out, by the way.

00:17:02.000 It's a good point, and it happens to be an obvious double standard.

00:17:06.000 Well now, the British government is literally sending letters to Rumble.

00:17:10.000 So Rumble is a video site that hosts Russell's show.

00:17:15.000 In the UK Parliament, they had a committee that sent a letter to the CEO of Rumble.

00:17:21.000 That letter, from Dame Carolyn Deninage?

00:17:25.000 The chair of the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee wrote this letter to Rumble saying,

00:17:28.000 quote, I'm writing concerning the serious allegations regarding Russell Brand in the

00:17:31.000 context of his being a content provider on Rumble with more than 1.4 million followers.

00:17:35.000 The Culture, Media, and Sport Committee is raising questions with the broadcasters and

00:17:38.000 production companies who previously employed Brand to examine both the culture of the industry in the

00:17:42.000 past and whether that culture still prevails today. However, we are also looking at his use

00:17:46.000 of social media, including on Rumble, where he issued his preemptive response to accusations

00:17:50.000 made against him by the Sunday Times and Channel 4's dispatches. While we recognize that Rumble is

00:17:54.000 not the creator of the content, we are concerned he may be able to profit from the content

00:17:58.000 We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Bran is able to monetize his content, including his videos related to serious accusations against him.

00:18:04.000 If so, we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Bran's ability to earn money on the platform.

00:18:10.000 We would also like to know what Rumble is doing to ensure creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior.

00:18:17.000 So you got the British government basically tacitly threatening Rumble with some sort of unspecified consequences for not demonetizing Russell Brain.

00:18:24.000 Now the government's working to push social media platforms to demonetize people on the basis of allegations that the British government has so far not yet prosecuted.

00:18:32.000 That's amazing.

00:18:33.000 Well, Chris Pavlovsky, who's the CEO of Rumble, issued a response, quote, While Rumble obviously deplores sexual assault, rape, and all serious crimes, and believes that both alleged victims and the accused are entitled to a full and serious investigation, it's vital to note recent allegations against Bran have nothing to do with content on Rumble's platform.

00:18:52.000 We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so.

00:18:59.000 Singling out an individual demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble.

00:19:05.000 We don't agree with the behavior of many of Rumble's creators.

00:19:07.000 We refuse to penalize them for actions that have nothing to do with our platform.

00:19:11.000 I mean, that should be patently obvious to anybody, but the fact that the UK Parliament is now unleashing committees to try to pressure social media companies to remove monetary compensation from Russell Brand's videos is totally crazy.

00:19:24.000 I mean, that is in fact a violation of every free speech principle.

00:19:27.000 If the government... I mean, understand what's happening here.

00:19:30.000 The government has not charged Russell Brand with a crime.

00:19:33.000 And yet they are now pressuring social media to remove monetary compensation from all of his videos.

00:19:38.000 They're writing open letters to places like Rumble about all of this.

00:19:41.000 That's wild.

00:19:42.000 That's wild stuff.

00:19:44.000 You want to talk about a true tyrannical kind of threats?

00:19:47.000 That's a tyrannical threat.

00:19:49.000 Let's assume that you got accused of something, not in court, not by the police.

00:19:53.000 You were accused publicly of a thing.

00:19:55.000 And the government then went to your employer and tried to get you fired on the basis of an allegation that has not yet been substantiated by the police.

00:20:03.000 That's scary stuff, and it's obviously ending around due process.

00:20:07.000 But, you know, this is the world in which we live, and that is a scary, scary world.

00:20:11.000 Okay, one second, we're gonna get to Merrick Garland.

00:20:12.000 Speaking of lawlessness, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General of the United States, appeared on the Hill yesterday.

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00:21:21.000 Okay, meanwhile, Republicans had Merrick Garland to the hill at the Judiciary Committee, and it didn't go amazing for Merrick Garland.

00:21:28.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, he stressed the independence of the DOJ's criminal case against Hunter Biden as Republicans accused him during a combative congressional hearing of showing leniency toward the son of the president who appointed him.

00:21:38.000 It was a six-hour hearing.

00:21:40.000 Republicans are ramping up their impeachment inquiry into President Biden, but it's not just targeting Hunter and Joe.

00:21:46.000 That inquiry obviously targets Garland as well, because Garland was presiding over a DOJ that attempted to cut an obvious sweetheart deal with Joe Biden's son, while Joe Biden is President of the United States.

00:21:55.000 Now Merrick Garland is denying having anything to do with this.

00:21:57.000 He's like, well, you know, it wasn't me.

00:21:59.000 I'm completely independent from Joe.

00:22:01.000 And then David Weiss, the prosecutor in this case, was completely independent from me.

00:22:04.000 But here is the magic of being a member of the DOJ.

00:22:07.000 It's very much like Henry III, will no one rid me of this troublesome priest, with regard to Thomas Beckett.

00:22:14.000 You don't have to say anything.

00:22:15.000 The President of the United States can basically say, I'm very sad that my son is being targeted, blah, blah, blah.

00:22:21.000 And Merrick Garland's like, oh, you don't even have to tell me what to do.

00:22:23.000 I know what to do.

00:22:24.000 I'll help quash that case.

00:22:26.000 And you know what?

00:22:26.000 I don't even have to act in order to quash that case.

00:22:28.000 All I have to do is not give David Weiss special counsel abilities.

00:22:32.000 I just won't give it to him.

00:22:34.000 Now, he claims, well, David Weiss never asked for it.

00:22:36.000 David Weiss doesn't have to ask for it.

00:22:38.000 You're supposed to give it, obviously.

00:22:40.000 It is up to you to give him that.

00:22:42.000 So all Merrick Garland had to do in order to effectuate this sweetheart deal, which had to have signed off at the DOJ for sure, is nothing.

00:22:49.000 That's all he had to do.

00:22:50.000 Just do nothing.

00:22:51.000 Don't intervene.

00:22:53.000 Don't give him special counsel status to David Weiss.

00:22:55.000 Don't do anything.

00:22:56.000 And then magically, a sweetheart deal would be cut.

00:22:59.000 That's the problem.

00:23:00.000 So Merrick Garland's like, I didn't actually... Yeah, we know.

00:23:02.000 We know you didn't actually have to do anything.

00:23:03.000 That's the beauty of being the head of the Justice Department.

00:23:08.000 So, he got grilled yesterday on the hill by a bunch of Republicans.

00:23:11.000 Here are a bunch of House Republicans peppering Garland with questions about Hunter Biden.

00:23:16.000 Mr. Weiss has been the lead prosecutor on the Hunter Biden case since 2018.

00:23:19.000 Now, here's the question.

00:23:20.000 He's been the lead prosecutor since he was appointed by President Trump.

00:23:24.000 Okay, why, let me ask you, why has the Justice Department dragged this investigation out for so long?

00:23:29.000 Does it really take years to determine if Hunter Biden lied on a federal form related to purchasing a firearm?

00:23:35.000 Mr. Weiss, You're not answering the question.

00:23:43.000 Is that standard procedure?

00:23:44.000 Should it take that long to make such a simple determination?

00:23:47.000 I'm answering the question.

00:23:48.000 Give me an opportunity to do so.

00:23:50.000 Okay.

00:23:52.000 He was charged with that investigation under the previous administration.

00:23:56.000 He's continued.

00:23:57.000 He knows how to conduct investigations, and I have not intruded or attempted to evaluate that because that was the promise I made He's been truly independent is what we've heard.

00:24:08.000 But again, here's the point.

00:24:09.000 He doesn't have to do anything.

00:24:12.000 All he has to do is come into office and not give David Weiss additional special counsel abilities.

00:24:16.000 Now, you can say David Weiss is appointed by Trump.

00:24:17.000 That's true.

00:24:19.000 It is also true that if you're looking for independence from a justice department run by the suspect's father, then maybe when you come in, you say, okay, well, yeah, I understand that the other party was in charge of the justice department.

00:24:29.000 Well, now I'm in charge of the justice department.

00:24:32.000 And that's kind of awkward since, you know, my boss is the dad of the guy that we're looking to prosecute.

00:24:36.000 So maybe I should give some semblance of independence to the special prosecutor.

00:24:41.000 That'd been the way to go about this.

00:24:42.000 Representative Jim Jordan went after Merrick Garland as well.

00:24:44.000 Here he was yesterday.

00:24:46.000 Quote, Mr. Weiss has full authority to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it's necessary.

00:24:52.000 That was your response, Attorney General, to Senator Grassley's question on March 1st, 2023.

00:24:57.000 He just referenced it when Mr. Bishop was questioning you.

00:25:01.000 Only problem is he'd already been turned down by the U.S.

00:25:03.000 Attorney in the District of Columbia, Mr. Graves.

00:25:06.000 So he didn't have full authority, did he?

00:25:09.000 I had an extended conversation with Senator Grassley at the time.

00:25:13.000 We briefly touched on the Section 515 question and how that process went.

00:25:18.000 My point's real simple, Mr. Garland.

00:25:21.000 You said he had complete authority, but he'd already been turned down.

00:25:24.000 He wanted to bring an action in the District of Columbia, and the U.S.

00:25:27.000 Attorney there said, no, you can't.

00:25:29.000 And then you go tell the United States Senate under oath that he has complete authority.

00:25:32.000 I'm going to say again that no one had the authority to turn him down.

00:25:36.000 They could refuse to partner with him.

00:25:39.000 They could not.

00:25:39.000 You can use whatever language.

00:25:41.000 Refuse to partner is turning down.

00:25:42.000 I mean, that clearly is true.

00:25:45.000 If you refuse to partner with somebody in prosecuting a case, that obviously is saying no to them, clearly.

00:25:52.000 So, again, what Merrick Garland is saying is, I'll intervene.

00:25:54.000 I didn't have to say anything.

00:25:55.000 Well, yeah, but if the message goes out that all of these other district attorneys all over the country They're better off not partnering with David Weiss in prosecuting these cases, then what do you think is going to happen?

00:26:07.000 Precisely.

00:26:08.000 Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky, he's saying the same thing.

00:26:13.000 When I said how many agents or assets of the government were present on January 5th and January 6th and agitating in the crowd to go into the Capitol and how many went into the Capitol, can you answer that now?

00:26:25.000 I don't know the answer to that question.

00:26:27.000 Last time, you don't know how many there were or there were none?

00:26:32.000 I don't know the answer to either of those questions.

00:26:34.000 If there were any, I don't know how many.

00:26:36.000 I don't know whether there are any.

00:26:39.000 I think you may have just perjured yourself that you don't know that there were any.

00:26:43.000 You want to say that again?

00:26:44.000 That you don't know that there were any?

00:26:45.000 I have no personal knowledge of this matter.

00:26:48.000 I think what I said the last time... You've had two years to find out, and the day... By the way, that was in reference to Ray Epps, and yesterday you indicted him!

00:26:57.000 Okay, so, again, that's about January 6th, but this is the whole point, is that Merrick Garland, as always, the accuser is so often the person who is doing the thing.

00:27:06.000 And that's particularly true when it comes to the DOJ.

00:27:09.000 For years, all we heard is that Bill Barr was somehow a tool of Donald Trump doing all the bidding of Donald Trump, which is weird because Bill Barr was at direct odds with Donald Trump over, for example, January 6th and all the election stuff that Trump was doing between the election and January 6th, to the point that Trump was starting to fire him, Barr was threatening to walk, and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:27:27.000 Meanwhile, you had Eric Holder, who's the Attorney General under Barack Obama, openly saying he was Barack Obama's wingman.

00:27:32.000 You had Loretta Lynch on the tarmac with the Clintons.

00:27:36.000 And meanwhile, you have now Merrick Garland doing the exact bidding of Joe Biden.

00:27:41.000 And we're supposed to believe that it's completely apolitical.

00:27:44.000 Garland did testify that he wouldn't even say if he had discussed the Hunter Biden probe with David Weiss.

00:27:49.000 Here he was.

00:27:50.000 This is a very weird answer.

00:27:51.000 This is Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana-Grillingham.

00:27:54.000 Can you tell us about any briefings or discussions that you personally have had with Mr. Weiss Regarding any and all federal investigations of Hunter Biden.

00:28:02.000 I'm going to say again, I promised the Senate that I would not interfere with Mr. Weiss.

00:28:07.000 So you have not, under oath today, your testimony is you have not had any discussions with Mr. Weiss about this matter?

00:28:13.000 Under oath, my testimony today is that I promised the Senate I would not intrude in his investigation.

00:28:21.000 I do not intend to discuss internal Justice Department deliberations, whether or not I had them.

00:28:28.000 Oh, okay, so your testimony today is you're not going to tell us whether you've had discussions with Mr. Weiss.

00:28:33.000 My testimony today is I told the committee that I would not interfere.

00:28:39.000 I made clear that Mr. Weiss would have the authority to bring cases that he thought were appropriate.

00:28:47.000 Okay, but he won't answer any specific questions about, you know, the exact content of conversations with David Weiss, which is weird.

00:28:54.000 And then Garland was asked, well, did you talk to anybody about the Hunter probe?

00:28:58.000 He's like, I don't remember.

00:28:59.000 I don't think this is true.

00:29:00.000 Do you think that's true?

00:29:01.000 That he doesn't remember if he had any conversations with anybody about the Hunter probe?

00:29:05.000 Have you had personal contact with anyone at FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation?

00:29:11.000 Uh, I don't, I don't, I don't recollect the answer to that question, but the FBI

00:29:20.000 works for the Justice Department.

00:29:22.000 I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

00:29:24.000 You don't recollect whether you've talked with anybody at FBI headquarters about an investigation of the President's son?

00:29:30.000 I don't believe that I did.

00:29:32.000 Okay, sure, sure.

00:29:34.000 Again, Merrick Garland, one of the most obviously corrupt bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and thanks to Mitch McConnell for not putting that guy on the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:29:46.000 Also, Merrick Garland was rigged over the coals about the DOJ's bizarre decisions over the course of his tenure, including multiple FBI field offices coordinating to prepare an anti-Catholic memo that happened, you'll recall, back in August.

00:29:59.000 When House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government Chairman Mike Johnson sent a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray revealing that the FBI Richmond Field Office coordinated with multiple FBI offices across the country to produce a memo targeting traditional Catholics as potential terrorists.

00:30:15.000 Well, Mayor Garland was asked about this and he denied that there was any religious discrimination at the DOJ, which I'm sure.

00:30:22.000 Through the Chair, I ask you, do you agree that traditional Catholics are violent extremists?

00:30:27.000 I have no idea what the traditional means here. 0.53

00:30:32.000 Catholics!

00:30:33.000 Catholics!

00:30:33.000 Go to church!

00:30:34.000 May I answer your question?

00:30:35.000 Yes, you may.

00:30:36.000 The idea that someone with my family background To discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd.

00:30:46.000 Mr. Attorney General, it was your FBI that did this.

00:30:49.000 It was your FBI that was sending, and we have the memos, we have the emails, we're sending undercover agents into Catholic churches.

00:30:58.000 Okay, now, what Merrick Garland is referring to there is the fact that he's of Jewish backgrounds.

00:31:01.000 The idea that he would never, ever engage in religious discrimination is crazy.

00:31:05.000 Well, that really isn't the question.

00:31:07.000 It's his religious background.

00:31:08.000 It's a question of perception.

00:31:09.000 If he believes... This is why he hesitated when he said, what are traditional Catholics?

00:31:12.000 What are we talking about here?

00:31:14.000 Because the reality is that it is very easy to believe that you are the good guy and that you are not engaged in a form of discrimination, even if your FBI field offices are engaging in discrimination against, for example, traditional Catholics.

00:31:27.000 Because you just say, well, they're not actually traditional Catholics.

00:31:29.000 Are they really traditional?

00:31:30.000 How are we defining traditional here?

00:31:32.000 And well, the Democrats came out in full scale defense of Merrick Garland, of course,

00:31:36.000 Jerry Nadler in particular went after Jim Jordan, suggesting that everything that Jim Jordan is

00:31:41.000 saying about Merrick Garland has already been refuted, which is weird because the whistleblowers

00:31:44.000 accusations that the independence that was sought by David Weiss was not granted by Merrick Garland

00:31:49.000 that has not been refuted in any serious way. At the outset, let me make two comments. One,

00:31:54.000 just about every assertion you made in your opening statement has been completely refuted

00:32:00.000 by witnesses who have testified before this committee.

00:32:04.000 Two, far from being favored, many commentators have noted that people accused of simple gun possession while under the influence of a drug, when that gun was not used in the commission of a crime, are rarely, if ever, prosecuted.

00:32:22.000 The way Hunter Biden is being prosecuted.

00:32:24.000 Hunter Biden is being persecuted, you see, according to Democrats.

00:32:28.000 And Merrick Garland, there are a bunch of administration officials who really should be on the table for impeachment, probably before Joe Biden.

00:32:34.000 Because if the idea of impeaching Joe Biden is based on some sort of connection of dots that supposedly has yet to take place, it's not too hard to connect the dots with regard to Merrick Garland's malfeasance.

00:32:44.000 We have whistleblowers.

00:32:45.000 Testifying to it.

00:32:47.000 Or with regard to, for example, Alejandro Mayorkas not doing anything remotely like his job at the Department of Homeland Security.

00:32:52.000 In one second, we're going to get to the UN, which hosted the Iranian president,

00:32:58.000 a genocidal, would-be genocidal president of a theocracy, of an Islamic theocracy. 0.98

00:33:04.000 We'll get there in just one second.

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00:34:06.000 Okay, meanwhile, over at the United Nations, which, as I always say, is the most isolated of international politics, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. 0.96

00:34:12.000 The United States allowed President Ibrahim Raisi, who is the leader of that terror state, to actually travel across the world, land in New York, and then yell about how terrible America is. 0.94

00:34:23.000 According to the UK Guardian, in a lengthy set piece to the UN General Assembly, he accused America of fanning the flames of violence in Ukraine, prompting protests from Israel's representative to the UN.

00:34:31.000 He claimed any Iranian-made drones hitting Ukrainian cities had been sold before the war started, and said he was in favor of peace in Ukraine.

00:34:37.000 That was on the same day that Tehran hosted a Russian defense delegation led by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, He said that the world is transitioning into a novel international order and the project to Americanize the world has failed.

00:34:48.000 He said the West was facing a crisis of identity and functionality and sees the world as a forest and itself as a beautiful garden.

00:34:54.000 He also accused America of stoking the war in Ukraine in order to weaken Europe.

00:34:58.000 Well, this caused the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, who I know personally, to walk out.

00:35:03.000 He accused the UN of rolling out the red carpet for the butcher of Tehran, which of course is exactly right. 1.00

00:35:08.000 And he held up a picture of Mahsa Amini, who's a Kurdish woman who died in police custody in Iran for not wearing hijab correctly.

00:35:16.000 He was then ejected, was the Israeli ambassador.

00:35:18.000 See, the rule is that you're allowed to be a terrorist dictator, but if you hold up a picture of a person that the terrorist dictator has helped to murder, then apparently you get kicked out of the UN.

00:35:28.000 Apparently, according to The Independent in the UK, there was indeed an incident when the permanent representative of Israel walked down the aisle and unfurled a photo during a speech by the President of Iran in the General Assembly.

00:35:37.000 UN Security spoke to him.

00:35:39.000 At no time was the ambassador detained in any way, shape, or form.

00:35:41.000 As far as we are concerned, the incident is closed.

00:35:45.000 Apparently, the caption on the photo said, Iranian women deserve freedom now. 0.99

00:35:50.000 And he wrote, did Erdan on X. When President Raisi of Iran, the butcher of Tehran, began his speech, I waved a picture of Masa Amini, the innocent Iranian woman who was brutally murdered by the regime one year ago for not wearing hijab properly.

00:36:01.000 Meanwhile, outside the UN, hundreds of Iranians were protesting, begging for help from the international community.

00:36:05.000 I'll never stop fighting for the truth.

00:36:06.000 I'll always expose the UN's moral distortions.

00:36:07.000 By the way, I'll just point out here that the media coverage of the number of protesters who are protesting, the Iranian dictator being in the United States and just speaking nonsense and garbage, That was dwarfed, the media coverage of that, by the coverage of like a few dozen protesters in the United States who are very anti-Benjamin Netanyahu, who's also visiting the United States and is having a sidebar with Joe Biden at this point.

00:36:30.000 Just again, the UN continues to be not only a useless, but a counterproductive organization.

00:36:36.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of useless and counterproductive organizations, you would imagine that the UN, these international organizations, these would be the places where negotiations would happen over, for example, Nagorno-Karabakh.

00:36:49.000 This is a very little noticed and little watched region of the world except by people who are sort of in the know.

00:36:54.000 It's a hotspot.

00:36:55.000 There are certain hotspots in the world.

00:36:56.000 Kashmir is a hotspot.

00:36:58.000 Say, the Gaza Strip is a hotspot.

00:37:01.000 areas of Jordan, Samaria are hotspot and Nagorno-Karabakh is a is a hotspot. The reason it's a

00:37:05.000 hotspot is because it is largely ethnically Armenian, but it is controlled by Azerbaijan.

00:37:11.000 And so for years and years and years, there has been an Armenian separatist attempt to take

00:37:16.000 Nagorno-Karabakh from the rule of Azerbaijan. Well, now Azerbaijani forces have assaulted the area.

00:37:24.000 They apparently report suggest that there are a lot of civilian deaths.

00:37:28.000 The Azerbaijani forces are suggesting they're telling people to get out in advance of their advance.

00:37:33.000 But apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh agreed on Wednesday to disarm and discuss reintegration with Azerbaijan following a swift but deadly assault by Azerbaijani forces, a capitulation signaling the end of decades of ethnic Armenian rule in the enclave and the rapid decline of Russian influence in the former Soviet Union territories.

00:37:50.000 It's a very complicated situation because Both Iran and Russia are supporters of the separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh.

00:37:57.000 Meanwhile, Turkey and Israel are supporters of the Azerbaijani forces.

00:38:00.000 The terms of the ceasefire lay groundwork that could bring to a close the autonomous rule by the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was won from Baku in a bloody years-long war after the fall of the Soviet Empire.

00:38:10.000 Fighting appeared to continue in parts of the enclave hours after the signing of the ceasefire.

00:38:13.000 The speed at which the Armenian separatists agreed to abandon their armed struggle underscores Moscow's waning power over events in the region as its forces are stretched in Ukraine.

00:38:20.000 It's been a frozen conflict.

00:38:23.000 And the Kremlin has used this as a lever to maintain over both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

00:38:27.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, over the years, Moscow sent both weapons and peacekeepers to the region while using diplomacy to retain its position as the ultimate arbiter over geopolitics there.

00:38:35.000 This obviously is another piece of evidence that Russia is weakening internationally, which is generally a good thing. 1.00

00:38:41.000 Russia's been a very powerful and aggressive force in the world, obviously, particularly along its old Soviet borders. 0.89

00:38:49.000 According to Thomas Duall, expert on Nagorno-Karabakh and senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, quote, Russia's leverage is much weakened by what's happening in Ukraine.

00:38:55.000 We see the Armenians moving away from Russia and Azerbaijan, having a relationship with Russia that is more on its own terms. 0.68

00:38:59.000 Nagorno-Karabakh said it lost 24 civilians and soldiers in the day-long conflict that began on Tuesday with artillery assaults on what Azerbaijan said were Armenian military targets in the breakaway region.

00:39:08.000 Locals posting on social media reported strikes on residential neighborhoods in the territory's main city of Stepanakert.

00:39:14.000 Russia's defense ministry said peacekeepers had come under fire and died during the violence.

00:39:17.000 They didn't specify how many were killed.

00:39:19.000 Azerbaijan says it plans to take back the enclave.

00:39:22.000 It's inside the borders of Azerbaijan.

00:39:23.000 It's populated almost entirely by ethnic Armenians who have ruled since the 1990s under the terms of a peace deal brokered by Russia.

00:39:30.000 Skirmishes erupted into conflict in 2020 when Azerbaijan reclaimed areas around the territory.

00:39:34.000 That battle ended, guaranteeing Armenian separatists control over that particular area.

00:39:39.000 But peace has remained shaky.

00:39:40.000 Armenia's leaders complained Russia wasn't able to enforce the deal.

00:39:44.000 Again, a complicated conflict in which the UN has been entirely absent.

00:39:49.000 The US, Russia, and EU all said they had made last-ditch efforts to dissuade Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev from attacking the territory.

00:39:55.000 Nagorno-Karabakh has relied almost solely on Armenia for links to the outside world.

00:40:00.000 Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia to express his concern over the escalation.

00:40:07.000 Again, one of the things that is amazing about these sorts of conflicts is that nobody notices them until they break into violence, and after that, like five minutes later, nobody notices otherwise.

00:40:15.000 This is why when it comes to American foreign policy, the amount of focus that actually is placed on American foreign policy around the world is actually fairly low by Americans.

00:40:23.000 It kind of bursts into the national consciousness for a hot second, and then it is just gone.

00:40:27.000 Okay, meanwhile, The Feds continue to debate the interest rates because our economy continues to stagnate.

00:40:34.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials are set to hold interest rates steady at their meeting on Wednesday while debating what it would take for them to lift borrowing costs again this year.

00:40:41.000 Their anticipated decision would mark the second time in six policy meetings this year the Fed has not raised rates.

00:40:47.000 The Fed has signaled it will hold rates steady and make no substantive changes to its post-meeting policy statement.

00:40:52.000 That doesn't mean that inflation has actually been solved.

00:40:55.000 Because, again, inflation in the United States remains almost double what we are supposed to be looking for right now.

00:41:02.000 Rate projections suggest the many Fed officials see a rising neutral rate, which keeps inflation and unemployment stable in the long run.

00:41:07.000 It just means that it's already baked into the cake.

00:41:11.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials surprised markets by signaling that interest rates will not fall as much as previously planned.

00:41:18.000 That tweak might be more important than it looks.

00:41:20.000 In their projections and commentary, some officials hint that rates might be higher, not just for longer, but forever.

00:41:25.000 For a very long time in the United States, you get a mortgage at 3-4%.

00:41:27.000 That is not going to be the case for a long time to come.

00:41:31.000 And that is because of the inflation that has been baked into the cake by the loose monetary and fiscal policy of the United States over the course of years.

00:41:38.000 One of the big problems here, and one of the things that creates inflation, is lack of labor productivity.

00:41:42.000 One of the things that brings down prices is additional labor productivity.

00:41:46.000 As Greg Ip writes for the Wall Street Journal, For the United Auto Workers, it makes perfect sense to demand more pay and better work-life balance from Detroit's three automakers.

00:41:52.000 After all, workers throughout this historically tight labor market are getting exactly that.

00:41:55.000 But what makes sense to striking factory workers makes no sense for manufacturing as a whole.

00:42:00.000 Pay is ultimately tied to productivity, the quantity and quality of products a company's workforce churns out.

00:42:04.000 And here, American manufacturing companies and workers are in trouble.

00:42:08.000 The issue is not with labor-intensive products like clothing and furniture, which offshored a long time ago.

00:42:12.000 It's in the most advanced products, electric cars and batteries, power generation equipment, commercial aircraft, semiconductors.

00:42:18.000 American companies still lead the world in design and innovation, but the resulting products increasingly are made abroad, especially in Asia.

00:42:25.000 Joe Biden, like Donald Trump, wants to reverse that through tariff subsidies and other government interventions.

00:42:29.000 But the problem is really not about that.

00:42:31.000 It's that Asian manufacturers have basically decreased cost, increased quality, and American counterparts have slipped.

00:42:38.000 When you look at manufacturing productivity growth from 2009 to 2022, Taiwan has had a

00:42:43.000 productivity growth annual average 4%, the UK 1.7%, Germany 1.4%, the US 0.2%.

00:42:49.000 In motor vehicle manufacturing, the picture is especially bad.

00:42:53.000 From 2012 through last year, productivity plummeted 32%.

00:42:57.000 That's not the fault of American workers.

00:43:01.000 As Greg points out, productivity depends on a bunch of factors, including management decisions, supply chain, public infrastructure, regulation.

00:43:07.000 For example, American manufacturers use far fewer robots than their competitors.

00:43:12.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:43:13.000 If you're not bringing up the productivity, that means that you are not going to be competitive on the world markets.

00:43:18.000 And so the UAW is striking for temporary gains in the face of what are going to be significant future losses.

00:43:25.000 Right now, the attempt to transition to electric vehicles by the big three, that's a very risky move considering that Ford is set to apparently lose $4.5 billion on electric vehicles this year.

00:43:35.000 That is not a good number, voting ill for the future of this UAW strike.

00:43:40.000 We'll get to more on all that in just one second.

00:43:42.000 First, in a time where different opinions are pretty much everywhere, it's vital to be able to find facts that you can rely upon.

00:43:48.000 This is where USAFact steps in.

00:43:50.000 It's a not-for-profit, nonpartisan civic initiative committed to breaking down complex government data, making it easily accessible and digestible for all Americans.

00:43:57.000 USAFact is more than just a source of information.

00:43:59.000 It's a tool that can help provide answers to pressing questions about the current state of the nation.

00:44:03.000 It offers a space where you can explore stats on key areas like education, crime, immigration, healthcare, empowering you to form your own opinions on whether the nation is thriving or struggling in these particular sectors.

00:44:12.000 Offering deep dives into U.S.

00:44:13.000 spending and outcomes, USAFacts can help provide the solid ground we need to base our public debates on facts, not fiction.

00:44:19.000 I very often am asked, like, where do you get the facts that you rely upon on the show?

00:44:22.000 USAFacts is one place I go.

00:44:24.000 This kind of transparency allows for clear, confident discussions about issues that matter most.

00:44:28.000 Before you jump into that next debate, visit USAFacts.org, equip yourself with the robust data and facts that can help guide your way

00:44:35.000 to more productive and factual discussions. Make your voice heard and backed by truth with

00:44:39.000 USAFacts.org. That's USAFacts.org today.

00:44:43.000 Well, despite the fact that the American car industry is about to face some very hard times

00:44:46.000 to do specifically to all these regulations and restrictions put on them by the Biden

00:44:51.000 administration, their push for electric vehicles, for example.

00:44:54.000 The UAW continues forward with its strike and Democrats are signaling their support.

00:44:57.000 Why?

00:44:58.000 Because again, the most corrupt bargain in American politics is union support for Democrats.

00:45:03.000 The way that this works... By the way, not all unions are bad.

00:45:05.000 There are unions that do good.

00:45:07.000 Go back to the coal miners unions. 1.00

00:45:08.000 There are plenty of unions that do good.

00:45:10.000 The point is that you're not supposed to kneecap workers as long as a union is just a voluntary association of men negotiating for pay.

00:45:16.000 Men and women, obviously.

00:45:17.000 Negotiating for pay?

00:45:18.000 No problem.

00:45:19.000 It's when you start kneecapping people or relying on the federal government to cram down solutions that you are now engaged in corporatism, which is a form of financial fascism, economic fascism.

00:45:28.000 Well, the Democratic Party knows this.

00:45:30.000 It's no wonder.

00:45:31.000 Whenever people talk about money in politics, they always neglect union money in politics because that might implicate the Democrats.

00:45:36.000 What is amazing is how the unions are now holding the Democrats to the wall.

00:45:40.000 Back in September, early September, Joe Biden said he thought that a UAW strike was unlikely.

00:45:44.000 Now, of course, we're in the middle of the end of week one of this thing.

00:45:47.000 When asked by CNN's Betsy Klein whether he believed a strike could happen in just less than two weeks time when the contract of the United Auto Workers expires, President Biden said he didn't think so.

00:46:04.000 He said, I'm not worried about a strike until it happens.

00:46:06.000 I don't think it's going to happen.

00:46:07.000 As always, Joe Biden is incredible at this.

00:46:09.000 Of course, the unions are holding him to the wall.

00:46:10.000 Why not?

00:46:11.000 They know that they own him.

00:46:13.000 Meanwhile, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, he is saying also that he stands with the UAW, because why not?

00:46:17.000 If you're a Democrat, what cost does it have to you to stand with the union, even if it ends up bankrupting the car industry a couple of years in the future?

00:46:23.000 You just blame capitalism.

00:46:24.000 After you regulate those car companies into the ground and then cram down crappy union deals on them, when the companies go under, well, that's when you blame capitalism, obviously.

00:46:31.000 Here's Josh Shapiro.

00:46:33.000 Bernie Sanders, though, says, you know, if the bosses are going to benefit from this better technology, the workers should, too.

00:46:38.000 They should have more time with their families, more time at home.

00:46:42.000 What do you think?

00:46:45.000 Look, I stand with the striking UAW workers.

00:46:48.000 They deserve to share in these record profits that the executives are taking home.

00:46:53.000 I think what we have seen is just a greater gap between what the executives are making in companies and what the workers who are putting the product and the services out in the field are earning.

00:47:06.000 We need to shrink that gap and I stand with the UAW striking workers.

00:47:11.000 Of course the Democrats are all in hock.

00:47:13.000 Meanwhile, they're helping to cram down all the regulations that are gonna make these car companies go bankrupt.

00:47:18.000 One of the things that's so irritating about watching politics is very often, it is government interventionism that skews the incentive structure for all these major companies, crams down bad contracts on them.

00:47:27.000 Then, when the companies go bankrupt, they blame capitalism for the failure, and then they bail out the companies, blaming capitalism all the while and saying, what we really need here is more government regulation.

00:47:36.000 That's the story of the 2007-2008 economic crash.

00:47:40.000 The government created incentive structures in which it was very obvious to everybody

00:47:44.000 that all of these companies were going to get bailed out, and so they took all sorts

00:47:47.000 of crazy risks.

00:47:48.000 The risks went south.

00:47:49.000 The government bailed them out and then blamed capitalism for that.

00:47:51.000 That's not capitalism.

00:47:52.000 That's corporatism, pretty obviously.

00:47:54.000 But again, the same time that they are now pressuring the car companies to capitulate

00:47:57.000 to the UAW.

00:47:58.000 Carbon disclosure rules are coming for U.S.

00:48:00.000 companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:48:02.000 Many big U.S.

00:48:02.000 companies have been fighting in Washington to block rules requiring them to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.

00:48:06.000 They picked the wrong fight.

00:48:07.000 Both California and the EU are poised to approve rules that require companies that do business to disclose their emissions.

00:48:13.000 The rules would apply to private as well as public companies and require businesses to calculate and disclose emissions from their suppliers and their customers, which goes beyond what was expected out of Washington.

00:48:22.000 This means that pretty much every major company in America is now going to be expected to disclose their carbon emissions, which is going to have some predictable downstream economic effect.

00:48:31.000 So, things are going incredibly, incredibly well.

00:48:33.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:48:39.000 So, John Fetterman hates pants.

00:48:40.000 I don't know why.

00:48:42.000 I'm confused why he hates pants, but apparently he really, really hates pants.

00:48:46.000 So much so, that the Senate of the United States, in order to apparently concede to this brain-damaged person, and I say that with, again, that's not an insult, that's just a reality, this person had a massive stroke.

00:48:59.000 So this apparently means that John Fetterman must be allowed to preside over the Senate Like my seven year old son going to going to camp or something like that.

00:49:09.000 That's what the Senate of the United States is.

00:49:10.000 So all the staffers still have to wear suits.

00:49:12.000 John Fetterman, however, he literally presided over the Senate wearing gym shorts and like a short-sleeve button-down shirt, looking as though he just emerged from a homeless shelter.

00:49:22.000 According to the Daily Wire, the senator from Pennsylvania took his turn sitting as the presiding officer, while some of his GOP colleagues, including Senators John Thune and Rand Paul and John Cornyn, delivered remarks on the Senate floor.

00:49:33.000 He said, This is what we deserve. 0.99

00:49:38.000 What we deserve is a country of absolute fools wearing garbage clothing onto the floor of the United States Senate. 1.00

00:49:47.000 I mean, honestly, why not? 1.00

00:49:50.000 At this point, why not?

00:49:51.000 Our standards for our politicians are so unbelievably low that we will elect the brain damage to high office.

00:49:55.000 Why shouldn't they be able to dress as though they're attending a preschool, as opposed to the Senate of the United States?

00:50:00.000 Chuck Schumer said in a statement to Axios, Senators are able to choose what they wear on the Senate floor.

00:50:03.000 I will continue to wear a suit.

00:50:06.000 So, I am declaring that all Republicans in honor of John Fetterman should declare Hawaiian Shirt Day at the U.S.

00:50:10.000 Senate.

00:50:11.000 It sounds more like the ugliest Hawaiian shirt that you could possibly find, along with cargo shorts, as well as socks with sandals.

00:50:17.000 That is what everyone should wear in the... Why not?

00:50:20.000 How about some flip-flops?

00:50:21.000 They should wear flip-flops, sunglasses... Susan Collins, by the way, is threatening to wear a bikini. 1.00

00:50:26.000 That's his joke.

00:50:27.000 By her, by the way, she actually is not going to do that, but...

00:50:30.000 Why not?

00:50:31.000 I mean, after all, if John Fetterman can wear whatever he wants because we have to make sure that we concede to the not qualified senator from Pennsylvania, why not at this point?

00:50:42.000 I suppose that it makes some sense.

00:50:43.000 The good news is, I guess, that the mask is off.

00:50:45.000 If the United States Senate is going to be a joke, I suppose that we can get rid of all the rules, pretending that it's not a joke.

00:50:49.000 Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

00:50:51.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:50:52.000 We'll be getting into some of the allegations that are now being made against Rudy Giuliani by Cassidy Hutchinson.

00:50:57.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:50:58.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 21, 2023

The Greatest Scam in Modern America

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