The Ben Shapiro Show - September 14, 2023


The “No Evidence” Lie

Topics
Mitt Romney Senate Record Republican loyalty standards
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Hunter Biden Joe Biden Donald Trump Kevin McCarthy Mitt Romney Merrick Garland Sam Harris Barack Obama Mother Nature David Weiss John McCain Innovation Refunds Caitlin Collins Hillary Clinton Jimmy Raskin Matt Gaetz Ian Sams Marjorie Taylor Greene Vladimir Zelensky Tony Bobulinski and 48 more
Joe Biden’s 9-11 Debacle Is Hunter Going To Jail?

Episode Stats


Length

50 minutes

Words per minute

209.23

Word count

10,601

Sentence count

772

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Toxicity

26

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Joe Biden and Hunter Biden have been accused of corruption and abuse of power by the Department of Justice, but there is no evidence of any such thing. In fact, there's no evidence at all that Joe Biden was involved in any corruption, and there's not one shred of evidence to suggest that Hunter Biden was either involved in corruption or abused power by his father, former Vice President Joe Biden. But that doesn't stop the media from covering them as if there were any evidence of corruption at all, and the media are completely ignoring the overwhelming amount of evidence that has been presented to the public in order to paint a picture of Joe Biden as someone who should be impeached and removed from the White House because of his own corruption. But there's nothing there. No evidence, no evidence, nothing. And yet, the media won't even admit that there's any evidence. Is it possible that Joe is a crook? And if so, what does that mean for the possibility of an Impeachment of the Vice President? And why is that even a possibility? And why isn't there an impeachment inquiry launched by the Republican Party? And what would that impeachment inquiry even be about? And what will happen if it does end in an impeachment? And is it even a real impeachment inquiry at all? Well, the answer to that question is simple: it's not going to end in impeachment, and it's going to be a big one. impeachment, which means impeachment will not end with an inquiry that does not actually end with impeachment, but in a pratfall, and that means we are steadily moving toward that . an impeachment and we re all going to have to an impeachment, not an inquiry or an inquiry, which would mean we re moving toward impeachment, right? and so on and so forth, right ? ...and so on, right?? The answer to the question: What s the point of an impeachment investigation, you ask the question, right here, and what s the purpose of an inquiry and what will be the process? ? and ? Well, what s there to an inquiry? ... What s our impeachment inquiry? What s ? And what s our country s purpose in an inquiry into Joe Biden s role in all of this? , right here in this whole thing? And is there any evidence in any of this ? And...

Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:00.000 Well, it's pretty obvious that Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry are going to end this process with an impeachment.
00:00:05.000 There is no purpose for an impeachment inquiry if it does not end in an impeachment.
00:00:08.000 That would just be a giant pratfall by the Republican Party to launch an inquiry that does not actually end with an impeachment, which means we are steadily moving toward that.
00:00:16.000 And so the question becomes, what exactly must be proved in order for an impeachment to be pursued with vigor and alacrity?
00:00:23.000 And the answer is Pretty much whatever Democrats did in the last few years of the Trump administration.
00:00:28.000 So apparently, that means you don't have to watch a crime.
00:00:30.000 It means that you don't actually have to provide evidence that a crime was full-on committed.
00:00:34.000 All you have to show is that there was corruption or abuse of power enough for your own party.
00:00:39.000 That's basically all you need.
00:00:40.000 And to this point, we've already shown that when it comes to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the DOJ.
00:00:45.000 All that material is already public.
00:00:48.000 One of the biggest gaslighting episodes I've ever seen is happening right now in real time.
00:00:52.000 As the media determined that actually there's no evidence whatsoever that anything is wrong with Joe Biden or Hunter Biden, that effectively these people are just as clean as the driven snow.
00:01:03.000 For example, entire media montage last night of the media claiming there is no evidence of Joe's connection with Hunter Biden's corruption, which is a lie.
00:01:11.000 It is an absolute overt lie.
00:01:14.000 Not only do we have two separate business partners of Hunter Biden's saying that Joe was involved in the business, that'd be Devin Archer and Tony Bobulinski, We have them both testifying that Joe Biden would stop by meetings or call into meetings having to do with his son's business.
00:01:27.000 We have direct texts from Hunter Biden to his own daughter suggesting that he paid daddy's bills.
00:01:30.000 We have WhatsApps from Hunter Biden's computer to foreign...
00:01:34.000 So yeah, I mean there's a little bit of evidence.
00:01:37.000 When I say a little, I mean a lot of evidence.
00:01:38.000 to him and will wield his outsized political power in order to punish said companies.
00:01:43.000 We have tens of millions of dollars moving around from foreign forces sources into a
00:01:47.000 variety of shell companies and then into companies and people connected with Hunter Biden.
00:01:52.000 And we have Hunter Biden living in Joe Biden's house.
00:01:54.000 Well, a lot of this stuff is happening.
00:01:56.000 So yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of evidence.
00:01:58.000 When I say a little, I mean, a lot of evidence.
00:02:00.000 The only thing that is missing is like an actual transaction wire showing money moving
00:02:05.000 directly from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden.
00:02:08.000 But let me just make something pretty clear.
00:02:10.000 When it comes to parents and kids, that sort of stuff doesn't have to happen in order for the bill to get paid.
00:02:14.000 I'm just pointing this out.
00:02:15.000 It's pretty obvious.
00:02:16.000 Have you ever gone out to dinner with your parents and then you pick up the tab?
00:02:19.000 You picked up the tab, right?
00:02:21.000 Well, does that mean that your parents did not benefit from you picking up the tab?
00:02:25.000 Or do you have to actually transfer the money to your parents' accounts and then they pick up the tab in order for it to be considered a benefit for your parents? 0.99
00:02:32.000 Idiocy. 0.97
00:02:33.000 Anyway, here are the media denying, denying, denying. 0.98
00:02:36.000 Again, remember, these are the people who for four long years, every single day on CNN, remember, I'd be at the gym, which is the only place that CNN has ever appeared in my life, and CNN would unfortunately be on the wall.
00:02:46.000 And every single day, Wolf Blitzer would be talking about how a new bombshell was emerging and the Russia investigation is going to blow this thing wide open.
00:02:53.000 It was going to destroy the Trump presidency.
00:02:55.000 For four long years, we heard all of that.
00:02:58.000 And it never emerged.
00:03:00.000 Adam Schiff is still sitting in the House, an honored member of the Democratic caucus.
00:03:03.000 The media went crazy over things like the Steele dossier for years on end.
00:03:06.000 But here, there is no evidence, none, not a whit, not a scintilla, not an iota of evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt in any way.
00:03:14.000 Just listen to our vaunted media.
00:03:17.000 Having months and months of conversation and hearings and news coverage of, well, what exactly did go on with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's business dealings.
00:03:26.000 And as we've all said, no evidence yet has been presented that the Bidens have made a lot of money, so on and so forth.
00:03:33.000 Again, no evidence that we have seen.
00:03:35.000 Even some House Republicans say they're not convinced evidence exists.
00:03:41.000 Plus, Republicans insinuated they might not back the move.
00:03:46.000 They might not vote for it, given the lack of evidence to support such a drastic action.
00:03:52.000 But House Republicans have so far not provided evidence that Biden directly profited off his son's business deals or made any decisions as vice president because of them.
00:04:03.000 Okay, so here's the thing.
00:04:04.000 The media are relying on a very, very broad definition of evidence here in order to escape the reality.
00:04:11.000 So they're saying, well, there's only circumstantial evidence.
00:04:13.000 So let me first point out that circumstantial evidence includes things in court, like, for example, fingerprints on a weapon.
00:04:20.000 That is circumstantial.
00:04:21.000 The definition of circumstantial evidence is evidence that indirectly points to an outcome but doesn't directly attest to the outcome.
00:04:28.000 So direct evidence is I, a witness, saw O.J.
00:04:30.000 Simpson murder his ex-wife. 0.80
00:04:32.000 That would be direct evidence.
00:04:33.000 Indirect evidence would include things like blood all over O.J.
00:04:37.000 Simpson's bronco, blood all over the crime scene, all of that matching.
00:04:40.000 Right, that would all be indirect evidence.
00:04:42.000 That would be circumstantial evidence.
00:04:43.000 When you hear people say, well, there's only circumstantial evidence that Joe and Hunter were involved together.
00:04:47.000 Circumstantial evidence like Joe Biden directly saying that he threatened the Ukrainians with a billion dollars and removed withdrawn aid if they didn't fire the prosecutor overseeing the prosecution of his son's company.
00:04:58.000 Well, yes, that is circumstantial.
00:05:00.000 Also, it's pretty indicative.
00:05:02.000 It's pretty indicative.
00:05:03.000 I mean, again, if the standard now on impeachment is effectively that if a party doesn't like another member of another party, they just get to impeach him.
00:05:11.000 They don't have to allege a crime.
00:05:13.000 And you don't even have to define the crime.
00:05:14.000 I just got to tell you, if what I have stacked up here is Donald Trump impeached in 2019 for the great crime of calling up Vladimir Zelensky and allegedly threatening to withdraw military aid if Vladimir Zelensky did not dig up dirt on the Bidens.
00:05:29.000 And then on the other hand, I have Joe Biden being impeached for an ongoing scheme with his son to clear tens of millions of dollars By essentially using his influence as vice president of the United States.
00:05:40.000 Or by the way, even allowing his son to purport to use his influence as vice president of the United States.
00:05:45.000 And clearing, like, actual money that way.
00:05:47.000 And shaping U.S.
00:05:48.000 policy that way.
00:05:50.000 Because, I mean, why else does Joe Biden care about Viktor Shokin?
00:05:53.000 Why is he in charge of Ukraine policy in the first place?
00:05:54.000 Why is he squiring his son around to China on Air Force Two?
00:05:58.000 Well, I mean, those seem like those stack up at least fairly evenly, at the very least.
00:06:03.000 And yet we're told there's no evidence whatsoever.
00:06:04.000 None.
00:06:05.000 No evidence.
00:06:06.000 That's a lie.
00:06:07.000 There is, in fact, evidence.
00:06:08.000 But the media are going to continue along these lines.
00:06:10.000 Caitlin Collins, for example, over at CNN, directly asked Republican Congressman Mike Wall to Florida, have you seen any direct evidence?
00:06:16.000 Well, I mean, no, he didn't actually see, like, the heads of Burisma handing Joe Biden a sack of cash.
00:06:21.000 But, like, these people don't know the definition of direct versus indirect evidence.
00:06:25.000 We have tons of indirect evidence.
00:06:28.000 For you yourself, when you're talking about the evidence that you say you've seen, and for those listening at home, have you seen anything that directly ties President Biden and shows that he profited from his son's foreign business dealings?
00:06:42.000 We have his son complaining to his relatives about how many of his father's bills he's having to pay with these illicit gains.
00:06:50.000 Have you seen direct evidence that President Biden profited?
00:06:54.000 Well, I mean, but Caitlin, the point of the inquiry is to give us greater standing to get the full evidence.
00:07:01.000 If we get full cooperation, if they say we have nothing to hide and give it to us and we don't see anything, then that's where the facts lead us.
00:07:09.000 So you're saying it may not lead to an actual impeachment if you don't get more evidence.
00:07:12.000 We need to.
00:07:13.000 We need to.
00:07:14.000 We're going to follow the facts.
00:07:15.000 We're going to do this responsibly.
00:07:17.000 But again, I'm amazed at the standard.
00:07:20.000 I'm amazed at the standard here.
00:07:21.000 I mean, the standard, which is Hunter Biden says to his own daughter, I pay dad's bills.
00:07:27.000 And Caitlin Collins, have you seen any evidence that Hunter Biden paid dad's bills?
00:07:31.000 Well, I mean, he said he did.
00:07:32.000 That seems like some evidence that he paid his dad's bills and the fact that his dad has like millions of dollars of unexplained wealth.
00:07:39.000 I mean, that seems pretty suggestive.
00:07:41.000 So I guess the new standard is that Republicans have to show that Hunter Biden directly signed a check to Joe Biden and has to have Joe Biden's name on the back of the check handed to the bank in order for any of this to be good.
00:07:52.000 I don't think so.
00:07:53.000 That's not how any of this is going to work.
00:07:54.000 And by the way, the American people don't believe that either.
00:07:56.000 The reality is that impeached or not is almost irrelevant because we know that Joe Biden is not going to be removed by the Senate of the United States.
00:08:01.000 It's dominated by Democrats.
00:08:03.000 What we do know, however, is that the American people, by and large, believe the allegations that Joe Biden is involved in corruption because he very clearly is.
00:08:10.000 We'll get to Joe Biden's response to this momentarily.
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00:09:15.000 Okay, so.
00:09:17.000 The Joe Biden response to all of this is basically to pretend that it's a big nothing.
00:09:22.000 So he's at a campaign reception in McLean, Virginia, and he reportedly said, I don't know quite why, they just knew they wanted to impeach me.
00:09:29.000 And now, the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government.
00:09:35.000 Look, look, I got a job to do.
00:09:36.000 Everybody always asks about impeachment.
00:09:38.000 I get up every day.
00:09:39.000 Not a joke.
00:09:40.000 Not a joke.
00:09:41.000 He always says, not a joke.
00:09:42.000 And it's like, dude, no one thought you were joking.
00:09:44.000 I'm so confused.
00:09:45.000 I agree.
00:09:46.000 Not a joke.
00:09:47.000 Not focused on impeachment.
00:09:48.000 I've got a job to do.
00:09:49.000 I got to deal with the issues that affect the American people.
00:09:52.000 Every single.
00:09:53.000 Solidary.
00:09:54.000 So, his theory is that Republicans are pursuing impeachment so they can also pursue a government shutdown.
00:09:59.000 Which, by the way, is actually the opposite of the truth.
00:10:01.000 Even if you are cynical about politics, what you think is that McCarthy is pursuing the impeachment inquiry in order to get his own side off his back so he can cut a deal with regard to the continuing resolution.
00:10:09.000 Not the opposite.
00:10:11.000 But again, I love when Joe Biden pretends that he doesn't know what the hell is going on with regard to his son, when he very clearly does.
00:10:17.000 So the goalposts continue to move.
00:10:20.000 The White House is using the same line as the media.
00:10:22.000 Karina Jean-Pierre says there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong.
00:10:26.000 You suggested that there's no evidence to back up the Republicans.
00:10:29.000 Which is true.
00:10:31.000 I'm not suggesting it.
00:10:32.000 That's actually a fact.
00:10:34.000 Oh, well, she says, yeah, there's no evidence.
00:10:36.000 But my favorite is they went from Joe knew nothing about Hunter's businesses to, yeah, he knew something about
00:10:41.000 Hunter's businesses, but he wasn't involved, too.
00:10:43.000 Well, yeah, he was involved, but he didn't actually clear the
00:10:46.000 money. And now they're moving to, well, you don't have any direct evidence that he cleared the money.
00:10:49.000 And from there, they're going to move to, well, how could you
00:10:52.000 expect him not to clear?
00:10:53.000 How could you expect him not to benefit?
00:10:54.000 After all, this wasn't really for him.
00:10:56.000 It was for Hunter.
00:10:57.000 He just loves his son too much.
00:10:59.000 He just loves his son too much.
00:11:00.000 And that's going to be the final repository of this argument.
00:11:03.000 It was trotted out yesterday by the White House's Ian Sams, saying that the reason that Joe stopped by Hunter's business meetings was out of love.
00:11:10.000 It was just out of love.
00:11:12.000 Just like, you know, in the Corleone family, members of the family would stop by meetings held by other members of the family just out of familial love.
00:11:21.000 Now, I love my family.
00:11:23.000 I do.
00:11:23.000 I'm also not a public servant.
00:11:25.000 I'm not somebody who works for the American taxpayer.
00:11:28.000 And it turns out that if your love for your family requires you to engage in corruption at the expense of the American taxpayer, that is impeachable and quasi-criminal behavior.
00:11:38.000 I love this defense.
00:11:39.000 He just loved Hunter too much.
00:11:41.000 He loved him too much.
00:11:42.000 Ah, a tragic love story.
00:11:45.000 Why was the president at those meetings on those phone calls?
00:11:50.000 Well, again, I think this is part of the right wing's misinformation machine to try to confuse people about what the truth is.
00:11:57.000 The truth is that the president, as he has said publicly for years, calls his family every day to check in.
00:12:04.000 He calls his son every day to check in.
00:12:05.000 He calls his other family members to check in to see how they're doing.
00:12:08.000 He loves them.
00:12:09.000 They're a tight-knit family.
00:12:13.000 They're so tight-knit.
00:12:14.000 He was just checking in to see how he was doing, which is why his son would call him in the middle of business meetings, and Dad would get on the phone and he'd say, how's the weather in Ukraine, in Kiev, son?
00:12:23.000 And then he'd say, that's fine, Dad, and click the phone.
00:12:26.000 That's the end of the call.
00:12:26.000 And he'd say, see, I can get my dad on the phone anytime I want.
00:12:30.000 According to the New York Times, the strategy here is to battle it out in the court of public opinion, says Ian Sams to the New York Times.
00:12:38.000 Well, good luck with that because, again, it's pretty obvious the level of corruption that Joe Biden has been involved in his entire career.
00:12:44.000 This is nothing new for Joe Biden.
00:12:46.000 This is the part that's totally astonishing.
00:12:48.000 I'm not sure how many Democratic scandals get ignored by the media on the basis that they're utterly unthinkable.
00:12:53.000 They totally cannot be true.
00:12:54.000 And then it's pretty obvious that they could totally be true.
00:12:58.000 So, I've mentioned before, in a completely different context, scandals involving, for example, allegations about Barack Obama's drug and sexual behavior in the late 1990s.
00:13:08.000 You're like, that's unthinkable!
00:13:09.000 That's totally crazy!
00:13:10.000 That's terrible.
00:13:11.000 Now, maybe those rumors are untrue.
00:13:13.000 Maybe they are.
00:13:13.000 The media didn't bother to look them up for five seconds.
00:13:15.000 Why?
00:13:16.000 Because they were unthinkable.
00:13:17.000 And then it turns out that, you know, Barack Obama admits in his memoirs that he was doing cocaine. 0.95
00:13:22.000 And he also wrote letters to his girlfriend talking about fantasies of having sex with men.
00:13:27.000 And the media, when those rumors arrived, they're like, that's unthinkable.
00:13:29.000 We cannot talk about this.
00:13:30.000 And then later, they're like, well, it's too late.
00:13:31.000 There's nothing really to talk about here.
00:13:33.000 Okay, here's the thing.
00:13:34.000 As scoreless as those rumors may be, were they the most implausible rumors?
00:13:39.000 I mean, not the most implausible rumors.
00:13:42.000 But put even that aside, here we're not even talking about rumors.
00:13:45.000 Here we are talking about actual documented relationships between Hunter and Joe, testified to by Hunter's business partners.
00:13:54.000 We have documentation from Hunter's computer backing us.
00:13:58.000 And we have decades, decades of records of Joe Biden engaged in corrupt bargains on behalf of his family with a variety of sources ranging from MBNA in Delaware.
00:14:08.000 He was known as the Senator from MBNA.
00:14:10.000 He was known as this because his son, Hunter, right out of law school, already being a derelict, got hired over at MBNA.
00:14:18.000 And MBNA was a huge Biden donor.
00:14:19.000 And meanwhile, Biden was giving sweetheart legislative deals to MBNA, which was growing by leaps and bounds in the state of Delaware.
00:14:28.000 That sort of stuff has been going on with the Bidens.
00:14:29.000 He was cutting sweetheart real estate deals with the heads of MBNA, going all the way back to the 1970s, cutting sweetheart deals with unions in order to get himself elected.
00:14:38.000 There's nothing new about the corruption here.
00:14:40.000 He's cutting sweetheart deals with banks.
00:14:41.000 In order to get those banks to give loans to his brother Jimmy, so his brother Jimmy could start a rock bar in Wilmington, Delaware.
00:14:48.000 So, like, him using his power in order to benefit his family financially has been the entire Joe Biden story for as long as Joe Biden has been in public office.
00:14:56.000 That's been the entire shtick.
00:14:58.000 Why is this impl- There's no evidence.
00:14:59.000 There's no evidence.
00:15:01.000 Well, actually, there's a lot of evidence, guys.
00:15:03.000 There's a lot of evidence.
00:15:05.000 Meanwhile, there's another scandal that's piled on top of the actual corruption, and that is the cover-up of the corruption, the obstruction of the corruption.
00:15:11.000 We'll get to that in just one second first.
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00:16:27.000 Okay, so.
00:16:30.000 Scandal number one is obviously Joe and Hunter corruption.
00:16:33.000 But scandal number two is that Joe is currently the president and the DOJ was attempting to cut a very obvious sweetheart deal.
00:16:38.000 A sweetheart deal with Hunter.
00:16:39.000 So obvious that the judge in the case uncovered it and blew it up and the DOJ was forced to pretend that it hadn't cut the sweetheart deal in the first place.
00:16:47.000 Meanwhile, the White House is maintaining, guys, Joe didn't talk to anybody about the Hunter case.
00:16:51.000 Here's Ian Sams of the White House saying just that.
00:16:54.000 Yeah, I mean, the president's been very clear about this since before he even took office, that the Justice Department and his administration is independent.
00:17:01.000 He has not been involved in that case.
00:17:02.000 He has not talked to anybody about that case.
00:17:04.000 But don't take his word for it.
00:17:07.000 Take the words of the GOP's own witnesses in the House who testified in an open hearing that neither Attorney General Garland nor President Biden interfered in this case.
00:17:20.000 Okay, well, I mean, what they did testify to is that the attorney in this case, David Weiss, had asked for special counsel status from the DOJ and was not given it.
00:17:31.000 Or at the very least, that he was not given special counsel status even if he didn't ask for it.
00:17:35.000 And then Merrick Garland was like, well, you didn't even ask for it.
00:17:37.000 Well, it's not up to him to ask for it.
00:17:38.000 You just give it to him if you wish for him to be truly independent.
00:17:42.000 Well, now Politico is reporting an FBI agent involved in the Hunter Biden probe said the prosecutor leading it sought but was denied help from a key fellow US attorney.
00:17:49.000 The lack of cooperation did not prevent charges from being brought against the President's son, but it did make the prosecutor's job harder.
00:17:54.000 The testimony, delivered behind closed doors, is consistent in part with an IRS whistleblower's description of the probe and comes at a critical juncture in the investigations into the Biden family.
00:18:03.000 Republicans have pointed to that whistleblower description when making the case for opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
00:18:09.000 The agent said she did not recall another key part of the whistleblower allegation Republicans have focused on, that David Weiss said he didn't have final authority to charge the President's son.
00:18:18.000 Apparently, the agent said, quote, I remember learning at some point in the investigation that Mr. Weiss would have to go through his other processes because the U.S.
00:18:24.000 Attorney's Office had, I guess, in that sense, using that terminology, wasn't going to partner.
00:18:30.000 Asked if she recalled learning that Martin Estrada, the U.S.
00:18:31.000 Attorney for the Central District of California, specifically decided not to bring tax charges against Hunter Biden, the agent said, I understand that, yes, a decision had been made that the Central District of California wasn't going to, I guess.
00:18:41.000 My understanding is they weren't going to bring the case on their own.
00:18:46.000 So here is the problem with all of this.
00:18:48.000 And again, this is the problem inherently with issues involving the DOJ.
00:18:52.000 Joe Biden doesn't have to say anything to Merrick Garland for all of this to get done.
00:18:55.000 There are widespread reports in the public media, in the New York Times, about how upset Joe Biden is about all of these charges with Hunter, how much he loves his son, how upset he is with all of this stuff happening.
00:19:04.000 You think Merrick Garland doesn't know that?
00:19:07.000 You think Merrick Garland isn't interested at all?
00:19:08.000 He has no political stake in making sure that a sweetheart deal gets cut with Hunter?
00:19:12.000 A sweetheart deal that he attempts to bury in a gun deal?
00:19:15.000 You think that that's... Joe Biden doesn't have to, like, pick up the phone and say to Merrick Garland, Merrick, I want you to quash this investigation.
00:19:21.000 He doesn't have to sign him letters saying, Merrick, I love my son, and make it go away.
00:19:27.000 He doesn't have to do that.
00:19:28.000 All he has to do is make it clear that he would like that to happen, and Merrick Garland knows how to make that happen, so he makes it happen.
00:19:34.000 And one of the ways he makes that happen is he says to David Weiss, I'm not giving you special counsel status.
00:19:39.000 You work for me, so if things go wrong here, I get blamed anyway.
00:19:42.000 Now, like, let's make this thing go away.
00:19:44.000 That's all.
00:19:46.000 Democrats, for the record, are beginning to turn on Hunter.
00:19:49.000 House Democrats are beginning to realize that maybe Hunter has to go under the bus in order to save Joe here, which is a pretty dirty pool.
00:19:56.000 We'll get to that momentarily.
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00:21:03.000 Okay, so meanwhile, Democrats, while they protest that there is nothing here, House Democrats are preparing to throw Hunter directly under the bus, according to Politico, quote, As the House barrels closer to an impeachment vote, Democrats are vowing to defend Biden to the end.
00:21:14.000 Joe Biden, that is, not Hunter.
00:21:16.000 Top Democrats are coalescing around a strategy to oppose the GOP's impeachment inquiry, cleaving off the son's conduct from his father's.
00:21:22.000 They think they have the facts to back them up, since the probe has yet to find any evidence directly linking Hunter Biden's business dealings to Joe.
00:21:27.000 Again, they keep saying this over and over.
00:21:29.000 I don't understand.
00:21:30.000 You do have evidence.
00:21:31.000 Hunter talked about it.
00:21:32.000 Tony Bobulinski talked about it.
00:21:34.000 Devin Archer talked about it.
00:21:36.000 What are you talking about?
00:21:38.000 But I guess they're going to pretend.
00:21:40.000 Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands says our job, or my job, will be to remind the American people of that over and over again.
00:21:46.000 Hunter Biden is not the administration.
00:21:48.000 Jamie Raskin said you can't impeach Hunter Biden, but he will be prosecuted.
00:21:51.000 Democrats don't even plan to try to defend Hunter Biden's conduct during his time serving on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma.
00:21:57.000 That arrangement, Republicans say, allowed him to trade on his father's influence at the time as vice president.
00:22:01.000 By the way, that's not just what Republicans say.
00:22:03.000 Hunter himself said it!
00:22:04.000 He said, if my last name were not Biden, I wouldn't have been on the board of a natural gas company in Ukraine.
00:22:09.000 He knows nothing about natural gas.
00:22:10.000 He knows nothing about Ukraine.
00:22:11.000 But his last name is Biden.
00:22:14.000 Instead, the president's party is keen to keep Joe as far away as possible from the drip-drip of damaging information coming out about his son.
00:22:20.000 Jerry Nadler of New York, he says Hunter Biden may have very well done some improper things.
00:22:24.000 He's a disturbed man.
00:22:25.000 Almost every president has had problematic family members.
00:22:27.000 Yes, but is the president in business with them? 0.97
00:22:30.000 Question, we understand that Roger Clinton, Bill Clinton's brother, was a really screwed up dude.
00:22:35.000 Was Bill clearing checks?
00:22:37.000 Was Bill like actively using his influence to get Roger Clinton jobs outside the administration?
00:22:43.000 I'm just, I'm so confused.
00:22:45.000 But this is what Democrats think they're going to do.
00:22:46.000 They're going to throw Hunter under the bus. 0.97
00:22:47.000 So it'll be fascinating to see, it's almost Shakespearean, whether Joe is eventually just going to throw Hunter under the bus as well.
00:22:54.000 If the mask of, he's a caring father, goes by the wayside when his presidency is at stake.
00:22:59.000 If he says, yeah, Hunter does a lot of corrupt, terrible things, and he's got problems, obviously, and, you know, well, I wasn't involved in those, but Hunter, man, he's gonna have to go to jail and pay his, like, you think Joey's gonna do that?
00:23:10.000 It'll be interesting to find out.
00:23:11.000 Meanwhile, Democrats have come up with a secondary angle here, and that is, the person behind all of this is the nefarious Trump.
00:23:18.000 Oh, Trump, Trump is manipulating, he's pulling all the strings here.
00:23:23.000 No, I'm just gonna say no.
00:23:26.000 There are a lot of Republicans who think that Joe Biden has done corrupt and terrible things here.
00:23:31.000 Nothing to do with Donald Trump.
00:23:32.000 But again, everything has to be Trump's fault.
00:23:34.000 That dog is not going to hunt.
00:23:36.000 That is not a dog that is going to hunt.
00:23:37.000 That is Trump from behind the scenes manipulating genius like all of this.
00:23:42.000 Donald Trump can barely manipulate his own hands.
00:23:44.000 Are you kidding me?
00:23:45.000 That's not a thing.
00:23:47.000 Donald Trump manipulating the Republican Party into impeaching Joe Biden.
00:23:50.000 Give me a break.
00:23:51.000 But according to Yahoo News, on a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, New Jersey, former President Donald Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:24:00.000 It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman, but over halibut and diet cokes, Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Trump, the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year's election.
00:24:12.000 I did brief him on the strategy I want to see laid out with impeachment, Greene said in a brief phone interview.
00:24:16.000 Trump's dinner with Greene came just two nights before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to over-order the opening of an impeachment inquiry.
00:24:23.000 Ah, so just to get this straight, the theory here from the press is that Trump talked to MTG, who then dictated terms to Kevin McCarthy.
00:24:31.000 Uh-huh.
00:24:32.000 Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
00:24:34.000 Nailed it.
00:24:34.000 That's probably what's going on here.
00:24:35.000 But of course, this is what Jamie Raskin, who again was involved in the impeachment of Trump twice, now is claiming that the impeachment is coming from Trump.
00:24:42.000 This is so tiresome.
00:24:43.000 You know where it's coming from? 0.54
00:24:43.000 It's coming from the fact that Joe Biden is a lifelong corrupt politician for decades. 0.54
00:24:49.000 You know what he wouldn't have to worry about?
00:24:51.000 Impeachment. 1.00
00:24:51.000 If he had not been a lifelong corrupt politician for decades, deploying his drug-addicted, booze-addled, prostitute-abusing son to go pick up money for the family. 1.00
00:25:00.000 I mean, I don't understand why this is so tough to understand. 0.99
00:25:02.000 It's amazing.
00:25:02.000 Here's Jimmy Raskin.
00:25:04.000 Do you think the White House should have, could have handled the Hunter Biden saga better?
00:25:10.000 You know, I'm not closely watching the White House.
00:25:14.000 What I'm doing is engaged in the work of the Oversight Committee.
00:25:17.000 So for seven months, we have watched the Republicans on the Oversight Committee and Chairman Comer get all of the witnesses they want, all of the documents they want, more than 12,000 pages of documents, and there is no evidence of any criminality or wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
00:25:33.000 There's 91 criminal charges against Donald Trump right now, 13 criminal charges against Congressman Santos, who was just on the show a few moments ago.
00:25:42.000 They have nothing to say about that.
00:25:43.000 There are no charges against Joe Biden, and they want to impeach the guy.
00:25:47.000 That's obviously coming from Donald Trump.
00:25:50.000 That's obviously coming from Donald Trump.
00:25:52.000 Or maybe it's coming from Republicans who look at the fact that you impeached Donald Trump twice without actually alleging crimes. 0.94
00:25:58.000 And they're like, turnabout is fair play and your president is corrupt.
00:26:01.000 Anderson Cooper is doing the same thing.
00:26:02.000 Trump is behind it. 0.94
00:26:04.000 Oh, it's the nefarious Trump. 1.00
00:26:05.000 I do enjoy the spectacle of Donald Trump is simultaneously a bumbling fool, but also he's a Machiavellian genius manipulating all the strings from behind the scenes. 0.98
00:26:14.000 CNN is reporting that the former President Trump spoke today with House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik about the impeachment strategy. 0.98
00:26:20.000 Is he, I mean, is he really the one driving this?
00:26:25.000 I don't know whether he's driving it directly or indirectly.
00:26:27.000 Certainly as he participates in social media and talks about this on social media, he is driving the activists to call members of Congress and get involved.
00:26:37.000 So whether he called Kevin McCarthy directly or whether he is just sort of getting the troops riled up, I'm not sure which way it happened, but certainly members of Congress are hearing about it.
00:26:50.000 Oh, you mean, wow, shocker.
00:26:53.000 Donald Trump's been saying publicly he wants Joe Biden impeached from like the very first day.
00:26:56.000 So what else is new?
00:26:59.000 One of the reasons the Democrats are in a state of outsized panic about something that is not going to come to fruition, by the way.
00:27:03.000 Again, let me remind you, Democrats control the Senate. 0.96
00:27:06.000 Joe Biden is not going to be removed from office.
00:27:08.000 The reason Democrats are fighting mad about this is because by announcing an impeachment inquiry, McCarthy and the Republicans have successfully put this at the top of the news.
00:27:14.000 And that's what they don't want.
00:27:15.000 They want to talk about Trump.
00:27:16.000 They want to talk about the old news of Trump's indictments and all the rest of this kind of stuff.
00:27:20.000 They don't want to talk about Joe Biden being absolutely corrupt.
00:27:23.000 It's not something they wish to speak about.
00:27:24.000 Why?
00:27:25.000 Well, because they're fighting.
00:27:26.000 I mean, they are afraid beyond all reason.
00:27:29.000 And all measure about Kamala Harris.
00:27:31.000 That's really one of the things that's happening here.
00:27:33.000 It's hysterical.
00:27:34.000 Every column that tells Joe Biden not to run always includes an addendum from these Democratic kind of advisors that Kamala also shouldn't run.
00:27:41.000 David Ignatius, as we talked about yesterday on the program, David Ignatius wrote a column in the Washington Post saying Joe should not run and also Kamala Harris.
00:27:49.000 Which is kind of amazing, right?
00:27:51.000 Because she's supposed to be this wunderkind, this political genius.
00:27:55.000 She's supposed to be amazing at this, and we just all misunderstand her.
00:27:58.000 But the problem is, nobody likes Kamala Harris. 0.99
00:28:00.000 So the reason they're panicking about Biden is because they got nobody to back him up.
00:28:03.000 Who's the person waiting in the wings?
00:28:05.000 You can say it's Gavin Newsom, but let me tell you, running on the record of California is not likely to win you the presidency, or at the very least, it ain't gonna go amazing.
00:28:12.000 California's been bleeding population, including my entire family, for years under Gavin Newsom.
00:28:17.000 It's truly an amazing spectacle to watch as the Democratic Party recognizes, I mean they really do, that they must...
00:28:23.000 Send this Madame Tussauds wax figure of a human into battle, and he's melting.
00:28:29.000 But you better get him back in the presidency before that dude completely melts, because backing him up is Kamala Harris. 1.00
00:28:35.000 And you can hear the Democratic unease.
00:28:36.000 Nancy Pelosi was asked yesterday about whether Kamala Harris was the best pick for vice president for Joe Biden. 1.00
00:28:41.000 She refused three separate times to say yes.
00:28:43.000 She's like, well, you know, Joe did pick him, but she's like... Is Vice President Kamala Harris the best running mate for this president? 0.99
00:28:52.000 He thinks so, and that's what matters.
00:28:55.000 People shouldn't underestimate what Kamala Harris brings to the table.
00:28:59.000 Do you think she is the best running mate, though?
00:29:03.000 She's the Vice President of the United States. 1.00
00:29:04.000 So when people say to me, well, why isn't she doing this or that?
00:29:07.000 I say, because she's the Vice President.
00:29:09.000 That's the job description.
00:29:12.000 You don't do that much.
00:29:13.000 You know, you're a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource, and the rest.
00:29:23.000 Again, she's not saying that she should be the running mate.
00:29:25.000 She's just saying, well, you know, she is great and Joe, nobody's comfortable with Kamala Harris.
00:29:31.000 Why?
00:29:31.000 Well, because she's terrible at this.
00:29:32.000 For example, she was asked about her limits on abortion.
00:29:34.000 So remember, the talking point from the Democrats, including from people like Jen Psaki, former spokesperson for the President of the United States, the talking point is that they're not for abortion on demand.
00:29:43.000 The problem is when asked, name a situation in which you would outlaw abortion, they cannot name any.
00:29:47.000 Here's Kamala Harris on Face the Nation botching it once again. 1.00
00:29:51.000 So what is it that you believe?
00:29:54.000 I mean, what week of pregnancy should abortion access be cut off?
00:29:59.000 We need to restore the protections of Roe versus Wade.
00:30:03.000 We're not trying to do something new.
00:30:04.000 But does it need to be specific in terms of defining And where that guarantee goes up to?
00:30:12.000 And where it does not?
00:30:13.000 At which week of pregnancy?
00:30:15.000 We need to put back in place the protections of Roe vs. Wade.
00:30:18.000 You know why I'm asking you this question though?
00:30:20.000 Because... We're not trying to do anything that did not exist before June of last year.
00:30:30.000 That would be abortion on demand, by the way.
00:30:32.000 Just recognize, the question was, where would you limit abortion?
00:30:34.000 And the answer is, I'm not going to answer your question.
00:30:37.000 Because they don't have any limits on abortion. 0.68
00:30:38.000 She's terrible at this.
00:30:39.000 Everybody knows she's terrible at this. 0.98
00:30:41.000 And meanwhile, it's a two-front war for Joe Biden in this election.
00:30:48.000 On the one hand, you've got his corruption and his unpopularity.
00:30:51.000 And on the other hand, you have a bad economic situation that is manifesting itself right now.
00:30:55.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer prices rose in August at the fastest pace in more than a year due to a jump in energy costs, illustrating the potential obstacles to wringing inflation out of the economy without a sharper slowdown.
00:31:05.000 The Consumer Price Index, a closely watched inflation gauge, rose 0.6% in August from the prior month, according to the Labor Department.
00:31:11.000 More than half of that increase was due to higher gasoline prices, but that doesn't matter because, I mean, you're still paying for it.
00:31:15.000 The monthly core reading likely keeps Federal Reserve officials on course to hold interest rates steady at their meeting next week.
00:31:22.000 However, on an annualized basis, prices were up 3.7% overall in August versus 3.2% in July.
00:31:28.000 Annual core inflation is still 4.3% in August.
00:31:32.000 So these are not good numbers.
00:31:33.000 It's supposed to be, again, at 2%.
00:31:35.000 Remember, every time they say that inflation is slowing, recognize that all of the inflation that already happened is not being undone.
00:31:42.000 So, if you say that a good costs 10% more this year than last, and then you say next month it costs only 5% more, and the month after that 3% more, and the month after that 2% more, you have to aggregate all of those for the final price.
00:31:54.000 Right now, people are paying a boatload more than they were paying for their goods and services just a couple of years ago.
00:32:01.000 And that is thanks to Joe Biden, which is why his economic numbers are in the toilet.
00:32:06.000 Every single poll shows a plurality of Americans trust Trump over Biden to handle the economy, without a doubt.
00:32:11.000 But meanwhile, Democrats keep saying, they keep trying to make Fetch happen.
00:32:14.000 It's not going to happen.
00:32:15.000 Keep saying Bidenomics over and over and over.
00:32:16.000 I mean, you're just cutting campaign commercials for Republicans at this point.
00:32:19.000 Here's Karine Jean-Pierre suggesting that Bidenomics turned the economy around, which is quite a shock considering the economy was already turning around by Q4 of 2020.
00:32:28.000 Why is he going to Maryland, the blue state, instead of maybe a red state, to talk about these economic policies?
00:32:37.000 So, I'm not going to get, you heard Jared, the chair of CEA, talk specifically about the economy, speak specifically about a major speech, a major speech that the President is going to do tomorrow on binomics.
00:32:48.000 You've heard us talk about binomics.
00:32:50.000 It's all sloganeering.
00:32:51.000 believe has turned the economy around and just not from us but from the data
00:32:54.000 that we certainly have seen and this is a president has been very clear he wants
00:32:58.000 to see an economy that come that build that's built from the bottom up middle
00:33:00.000 out and not the trickle-down economy that we saw them up middle out Republicans
00:33:04.000 want to continue to do it's all sloganeering by the way that's also the
00:33:10.000 title of the next Megan thee Stallion Cardi B song bottom up middle out it's
00:33:14.000 gonna it's gonna be fantastic Jared Bernstein, who you just referenced there, he's blaming congressional Republicans for quote-unquote allowing child poverty to double.
00:33:21.000 I love the way they play this game.
00:33:22.000 So the game is, what if we just infuse trillions of dollars into the economy on the basis of emergency measures, and it creates massive inflation, and then that expires.
00:33:31.000 And then you blame people for allowing it to expire.
00:33:34.000 That's the game here.
00:33:35.000 So we create a false perception of child poverty being relieved by blowing money into a pandemic-era economy and a post-pandemic-era economy, and then when it expires because, you know, inflation is through the roof, then it's the fault of everybody else.
00:33:47.000 It's your fault, guys.
00:33:48.000 Costs and benefits accrue to every policy.
00:33:51.000 It turns out the long-term cost of what you guys have created here is a stagflating economy.
00:33:56.000 That is what we have right now.
00:33:58.000 That's not okay in an economic context where congressional Republicans have allowed child poverty to double by refusing to extend this child tax credit.
00:34:11.000 They're so tiresome.
00:34:11.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden is facing some serious problems on the union front.
00:34:14.000 We'll get to that momentarily.
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00:35:13.000 Well, meanwhile, Joe Biden is having some union troubles.
00:35:15.000 So Joe Biden has always been a union guy.
00:35:17.000 And the reason he's been a union guy is because there's fairly good evidence that the unions were actually heavily involved in Joe Biden's first Senate election campaign.
00:35:23.000 Ben Schreckinger writes about this in his book, The Bidens, that basically the day before
00:35:28.000 Joe Biden's original senatorial election campaign back in like 1970, effectively,
00:35:34.000 there was a mailer that was supposed to go out in all of the newspapers that day,
00:35:37.000 and the unions picketed the newspaper to stop the mailer from going out
00:35:41.000 at the behest of people connected with Joe.
00:35:43.000 So he's always been bought and paid for by the unions.
00:35:46.000 Well, now he's running into a problem because the UAW is seeking another big payout
00:35:51.000 from the car companies, despite the fact that the UAW did enormous work
00:35:54.000 in the 50s, 60s, and 70s to completely undermine America's car advantage,
00:35:58.000 which is why by the time of the 80s, everybody was driving a Toyota.
00:36:02.000 The White House is closely monitoring as Detroit's big automakers and the UAW engage in acrimonious negotiations with the laborers threatening to strike if agreement is not reached before their current contract expires at 11.59 p.m.
00:36:12.000 on Thursday.
00:36:13.000 A full or partial strike could send shockwaves through the economy while also calling into question Biden's pledge to create a win-win transition to a clean energy future.
00:36:22.000 He's not directly involved, but he certainly has a strong interest in seeing a settlement both sides can live with, said Harley Shakin, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
00:36:30.000 With the deadline approaching, UAW's fiery new president, Sean Fain, has not echoed Biden's optimism.
00:36:34.000 He says the union's roughly 150,000 automotive members are ready to walk off the job if their demands are not met in the next couple of days, which could completely destabilize the industry.
00:36:43.000 The workers are calling for a 36% pay hike over four years and the restoration of defined benefit pension plans, which means the utter bankruptcy of these car companies again.
00:36:51.000 You remember that Barack Obama bailed out the car companies.
00:36:54.000 So, we'll get that again.
00:36:56.000 Joe Biden presumably will come down on the side of the unions because Joe Biden doesn't care about the economy, he doesn't care about the car companies.
00:37:01.000 He cares about pleasing his union cronies, who will then presumably spend a billion dollars in the upcoming election to get him re-elected.
00:37:07.000 Okay, all of this bodes ill for Joe Biden's re-elect chances.
00:37:10.000 The good news for the Democrats is they always have the Republicans to fall back on, which is exciting, exciting stuff.
00:37:14.000 So, Republicans are about to have a circular firing squad with regard to a possible shutdown According to Axios, House Republicans have fallen into a state of paralyzed chaos on their second day back from recess with no obvious exit ramp and a government spending fight of their own creation.
00:37:30.000 On the first night of the House Speaker election, we published a piece headlining the ungovernable House GOP.
00:37:34.000 Eight months later, the sentiment has never rung more true.
00:37:36.000 The House was forced to cancel the vote on Wednesday, advancing funding for the Pentagon after the Freedom Caucus rebelled over spending levels.
00:37:43.000 Another typically uncontroversial appropriations bill funding agriculture has been scrapped entirely over an internal GOP debate about abortion policy.
00:37:51.000 McCarthy's announcement of an impeachment inquiry appears to have backfired, with some Republicans trashing it as a distraction.
00:37:55.000 GOP leadership is now advocating for a short-term continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown.
00:38:00.000 But if McCarthy puts a bill on the floor, Matt Gaetz is vowing to trigger daily votes to oust him as Speaker.
00:38:04.000 I just have a question.
00:38:05.000 What is the point of this?
00:38:06.000 Like, what is seeking to be achieved here?
00:38:09.000 I said this with regard to the first threats to not hand McCarthy the speakership unless he handed some concessions to the House Conservatives.
00:38:16.000 I'm fine with that.
00:38:17.000 But can we name the points that you actually are advocating for so McCarthy can either, you know, do them or not?
00:38:23.000 Instead, what we're getting, it seems, is another fight over McCarthy with nobody waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces because 190 Republicans say they're committed to McCarthy no matter what.
00:38:32.000 And meanwhile, Democrats are just sitting on the side, chortling.
00:38:34.000 Because why do they care?
00:38:36.000 Now, behind all of this is a real sort of bizarre ideological battle, and it's an ideological battle over the value of tactics at all.
00:38:43.000 There's part of the Republican Party that just thinks that tactics don't matter at all, that the best way to strategize in situations in which you don't control all the power is to run directly at a wall at full speed with your head down.
00:38:53.000 And if you do it over and over enough, the wall will crumble.
00:38:55.000 I've yet to see that strategy.
00:38:57.000 Achieve any sort of real success, lasting success.
00:39:01.000 It seems more likely that what you should do is you should make moves that eventually guarantee you full power across all the branches of government.
00:39:08.000 Then you can really make harsh moves.
00:39:10.000 But instead, we're just going to get internal squabbling.
00:39:12.000 Matt Gaetz goes on MSNBC to bitch about Kevin McCarthy.
00:39:14.000 It's always a dead giveaway when Republicans are appearing on MSNBC to do this sort of stuff.
00:39:19.000 This is about term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and single-subject spending bills, just like I've been saying for an entire year.
00:39:26.000 I am the most investigated man in the entire Congress, and right there, you saw Kevin McCarthy lying like a dead dog, because I have never asked him to interfere in any ethics matter.
00:39:36.000 I had the FBI and DOJ, who hate me, investigate me for three years.
00:39:40.000 You covered it nearly nightly, and even you acknowledged at the end that my denials held up consistently, and the people Yeah, I don't know what the hell that has to do with Kevin McCarthy, but suddenly, I guess the idea is that if, what, you yell at Kevin McCarthy that he will be replaced by whom?
00:40:02.000 Who's waiting in the wings?
00:40:03.000 Steve Scalise doesn't want it.
00:40:05.000 Jim Jordan ain't gonna take it.
00:40:07.000 Like, what are you talking about right now?
00:40:09.000 Meanwhile, McCarthy is accusing Gates of teaming up with Eric Swallow to attack his speakership.
00:40:14.000 So this is all going great, guys.
00:40:17.000 working with Eric Swalwell.
00:40:20.000 But let me be very clear.
00:40:22.000 Matt is upset about an ethics complaint.
00:40:25.000 I don't care what they threaten against me.
00:40:27.000 I am not going to interject into an independent committee like ethics.
00:40:33.000 And I'm not going to put Swalwell back on the Intel Committee.
00:40:36.000 So again, these sorts of firefights are completely useless, but leave it to Republicans to shoot themselves directly in
00:40:44.000 the foot when facing down the possibility of Democrats doing the
00:40:48.000 same.
00:40:49.000 I swear, watching the Democrats and the Republicans do battle with one another
00:40:51.000 is like watching a gunfight in which both gunfighters are pointing
00:40:55.000 their own guns at their own heads and threatening to commit suicide.
00:40:58.000 It's like, it's an amazing thing. 0.99
00:40:59.000 They're standing 10 paces apart and the Democrats are like, if you don't give me what we want, man, I'm going to shoot myself right now in the head.
00:41:05.000 And Republicans are like, don't do it. 1.00
00:41:07.000 I'll shoot myself in the head. 0.59
00:41:09.000 And all of us are standing here like, I don't understand, why don't neither of you do that? 1.00
00:41:15.000 That seems stupid. 0.88
00:41:16.000 I've been saying for years at this point, first party to sanity wins. 0.99
00:41:20.000 But it seems like we're not going in that direction anytime in the near future.
00:41:25.000 Meanwhile, other big political story of the day is that Mitt Romney is now announcing his retirement from the Senate of the United States.
00:41:33.000 And Mitt Romney is one of the more peculiar figures in the history of American politics.
00:41:39.000 He was a very, very moderate Massachusetts Republican governor.
00:41:44.000 He ran as the conservative in 2008, you'll recall, against John McCain.
00:41:47.000 He came in second to John McCain in that nominating battle, and he was considered the more conservative candidate against John McCain, largely because of immigration.
00:41:54.000 Then he ran again in 2012, and he won the nomination, and then he lost the presidency to Barack Obama.
00:42:01.000 In an election that I think actually broke the country.
00:42:03.000 Because you had an incredibly milquetoast moderate Republican running against a radical Democrat, and the radical Democrat wins by cobbling together a coalition of the supposedly oppressed against the demographically elderly white majority and all this nonsense.
00:42:17.000 And he breaks politics permanently, does Barack Obama, in the United States.
00:42:21.000 So then, Mitt Romney goes to the Senate in Utah.
00:42:24.000 He moves to Utah because he's a Mormon, he's elected to Senate overwhelmingly, and he proceeds to work with Democrats on a wide variety of issues.
00:42:35.000 His voting record overall is pretty conservative, but on some key issues, on certain bills like, for example, the Infrastructure Act, he ends up working with Democrats.
00:42:42.000 The widespread perception from Republicans about Mitt Romney Is almost a circle.
00:42:47.000 It starts from he's a moderate Republican, not sure how conservative he is, but I guess he's got an R by his name, too.
00:42:53.000 He's very, he's a harsh conservative.
00:42:56.000 He's a harsh conservative in 2008, too.
00:42:57.000 He's a harsh conservative, but he didn't really stand up to Barack Obama the way that he should.
00:43:01.000 Probably that's why he lost.
00:43:02.000 If he had been only a little bit harsher, too.
00:43:04.000 He's kind of a moderate Republican.
00:43:06.000 He kind of has an R by his name, but not all that conservative.
00:43:09.000 Here's Mitt Romney announcing he's not going to run for reelection.
00:43:12.000 At the end of another term, I'd be in my mid-80s.
00:43:17.000 Frankly, it's time for a new generation of leaders.
00:43:21.000 They're the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.
00:43:27.000 Now, we face critical challenges – mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China.
00:43:37.000 Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront those issues.
00:43:44.000 Political motivations too often impede the solutions that these challenges demand.
00:43:51.000 The next generation of leaders must take America to the next stage of global leadership.
00:43:58.000 While I'm not running for re-election, I'm not retiring from the fight.
00:44:02.000 I'll be your United States Senator until January of 2025.
00:44:08.000 Okay, so he then shared in an interview with McKay Coppins his hatred for all the rest of the Republican Party.
00:44:14.000 And here is the thing about this kind of stuff.
00:44:17.000 We have a peculiar standard inside the Republican Party for what counts as loyalty and what counts as disloyalty.
00:44:21.000 So Mitt Romney's attacking all the other Republicans.
00:44:23.000 He shared a unique disgust for Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who he said, quote, put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.
00:44:30.000 He also went after Senator J.D.
00:44:31.000 Vance, and I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D.
00:44:34.000 Vance.
00:44:36.000 And, you know, so that is considered disloyal by a lot of Republicans.
00:44:39.000 I hear it.
00:44:39.000 I hear it.
00:44:40.000 Like, why are you directing your fire inside the House?
00:44:41.000 Also, I tend to hold that rule about Donald Trump attacking fellow Republicans inside the House, but it's very strange to me that certain types of attacks are considered completely verboten, and certain types of attacks, depending on who is doing them, are considered totally appropriate.
00:44:53.000 So when Donald Trump suggests that, in some way, Ron DeSantis is a rhino, his fans are like, yeah, that's true.
00:44:59.000 And you're like, wait, that's not true at all.
00:45:02.000 And then when people attack Mitt Romney as a rhino, then the same people will be like, well, that's appropriate or inappropriate.
00:45:12.000 How about one standard for whether you attack people inside the caucus or not?
00:45:16.000 When they violate actual conservative principles, then you attack them.
00:45:21.000 Donald Trump spent the day celebrating the ouster of Mitt Romney.
00:45:26.000 Which is, again, like Donald Trump spends more time celebrating the ouster of Republican senators than any Democrat that I know.
00:45:32.000 He put out a statement saying, Fantastic news for America.
00:45:34.000 The great state of Utah and the Republican Party.
00:45:36.000 Mitt Romney sometimes referred to as Pierre Delecto.
00:45:39.000 I will say, the guy's really funny.
00:45:40.000 That was his peculiar screen name on like an alternative Twitter account.
00:45:46.000 Now, again, I'm fine with Mitt Romney stepping down, and I'm fine with a lot of people thinking that he wasn't conservative enough in Utah.
00:45:57.000 I agree with some of those criticisms.
00:45:59.000 A lot of those criticisms.
00:46:00.000 I'll just point out that Donald Trump has now celebrated the ouster of people ranging from Jeff Flake to John McCain to Mitt Romney I mean, like, he does this kind of stuff all the time.
00:46:12.000 So when you're talking about, like, it's bad for Romney to attack other Republicans in the Senate, it's not great to attack other Republicans in the Senate, you might think.
00:46:19.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:46:23.000 So, things that I like today.
00:46:26.000 I have to say that the pagan mentality that's taken over corporate America is truly an astonishing thing.
00:46:32.000 So there's an ad that was released yesterday by Apple.
00:46:35.000 In which they effectively call for worship of Mother Nature.
00:46:39.000 I mean, this is just pure pagan Gaia worship nonsense. 0.95
00:46:43.000 So this commercial is Tim Cook and supposedly the rest of the Apple board meeting with Mother Nature, who of course is a black woman. 0.95
00:46:52.000 And she shows up to express her unease at the progress that corporate America has made in protecting her, the environment.
00:47:00.000 And here's how this commercial goes.
00:47:04.000 Mother Nature, welcome to Apple.
00:47:06.000 How was the weather getting in?
00:47:08.000 The weather was however I wanted it to be.
00:47:17.000 Let's cut to the chase.
00:47:19.000 In 2020, you promised to bring Apple's entire carbon footprint to zero by 2030.
00:47:24.000 Henry David Thoreau over here said we have a profound opportunity to build a more sustainable future for the planet we share.
00:47:31.000 I think our ten o'clock's at the same time.
00:47:33.000 They all do.
00:47:35.000 Alright.
00:47:36.000 This is my third corporate responsibility gig today, so who wants to disappoint me first?
00:47:42.000 Well, we've got some updates we're excited to share with you.
00:47:46.000 Materials?
00:47:47.000 Status?
00:47:48.000 Is there a materials person here?
00:47:51.000 Yes.
00:47:52.000 We are in the process of eliminating all plastic from our packaging by the end- Let me guess.
00:47:56.000 Fifty years from now when someone else is left holding the bag?
00:47:59.000 By the end of next year, actually. 1.00
00:48:02.000 Okay, so can I just point out how stupid this is? 1.00
00:48:04.000 So there are a few things that are incredibly stupid about this. 0.99
00:48:05.000 So this entire commercial, which apparently was unveiled at the Apple product launch to demonstrate just how environmentally friendly they are. 0.99
00:48:12.000 First of all, It begins with Mother Nature arriving.
00:48:15.000 And then they say, how's the weather?
00:48:17.000 And it gets real dark.
00:48:18.000 And Mother Nature says, whatever I want it to be.
00:48:21.000 So what are we worried about you for?
00:48:23.000 I'm confused.
00:48:24.000 If Mother Nature is all that powerful, then why is it that we are not seeking to protect ourselves from you and not the other way around?
00:48:30.000 Which, by the way, was the story of virtually all of human history until the last five minutes.
00:48:34.000 Mother Nature trying to kill people and people trying to figure out a way not to die. 0.91
00:48:37.000 It's pretty much the story of all of human survival and civilization.
00:48:40.000 Still kind of the story of all of human survival and civilization.
00:48:43.000 Okay, but immediately, it's an immediate contradiction.
00:48:47.000 Then it turns into, how can we worship at the altar of Mother Nature?
00:48:50.000 Well, we won't, what if we recycle all of our plastic?
00:48:53.000 We don't even use plastic.
00:48:54.000 What if we recycle all the aluminum that we use in our phones?
00:48:57.000 And this is what we're, we're proving to you what good people we are.
00:49:00.000 What amazing, amazing people we are.
00:49:03.000 Don't worry about values.
00:49:04.000 Don't worry about, like, whether what you're doing is good or evil in terms of the product that you produce, what kind of protections it has for, say, children, how content actually reaches people via the phones and computers you put out.
00:49:14.000 Don't worry about any of that stuff.
00:49:15.000 What you really ought to worry about is mother nature.
00:49:18.000 So first of all, the substitution, I mean, this is, it is paganism.
00:49:23.000 Worshipping nature is a form of paganism.
00:49:25.000 Because the reality is, nature don't care about you.
00:49:28.000 And if you are making pagan sacrifices to the gods, but what you're offering up is not, you know, grain and meat.
00:49:34.000 What you're offering up is instead like recycled aluminum.
00:49:37.000 I'm not sure what the difference is.
00:49:38.000 Maybe my favorite part about all of this is the apple board.
00:49:42.000 The supposed apple board meeting with Mother Nature here.
00:49:44.000 It's super diverse.
00:49:45.000 You got a black lady, you got an Asian woman, you got an Indian woman.
00:49:48.000 Here's what the actual apple board looks like right now.
00:49:52.000 That is the whitest group of people in human history. 1.00
00:49:55.000 That is a very white group of people.
00:49:58.000 There is maybe one person on this entire list who is not white.
00:50:03.000 So, yeah.
00:50:04.000 They wouldn't want to put that in the commercial because then it would just be a bunch of white people meeting with a black lady. 1.00
00:50:08.000 And that wouldn't look, you know, nearly as good or quite as diverse.
00:50:12.000 What I like about this is it's good when the mask comes off.
00:50:14.000 When corporate America basically says, when people like Tim Cook are like, well, you know, my chief goal is to worship Mother Nature and to use my giant company to do so.
00:50:21.000 Meanwhile, I'll produce all of our product in communist China, where they completely abuse the environment and don't care about anything. 1.00
00:50:28.000 Yeah, I don't believe you.
00:50:30.000 But I appreciate the sentiment.
00:50:31.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
00:50:33.000 You're not going to want to miss it.
00:50:34.000 We'll be joined online by Yasha Monk, author of The Identity Trap.
00:50:37.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use code SHAPIRO.
00:50:38.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.