I blew up the internet yesterday with a comment I made about Social Security and Medicare, and why it's time to raise the retirement age to 65 years old, because it's insane that no one in the United States should be eligible for Social Security or Medicare until they're 65, because we don't have the money for it, it's a Ponzi scheme, and it's not a good idea to retire when you're 65 because you're not getting much in the way of Social Security benefits. I'll explain why this is insane and why Joe Biden should not be running for president until he's 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible to start receiving Social Security. And I'll also explain why Social Security should be privatized, because if you're getting Social Security in retirement, you are getting less in Social Security than you were getting in the old days, and in my case, less than half as much as your grandparents are getting. Tweet me if you agree with me! and let me know what you thought of this episode! Timestamps: 3:00 - Why Social Security is insane 4:30 - Joe Biden s retirement age should be raised to 65 5:15 - Should Social Security be raised? 6:00 7:00- Why it s insane that we don t raise Social Security's retirement age 8:40 - Why you should be able to continue working longer 9:20 - Is it a good thing to retire at 65? 11:00 Is Social Security a bad thing 12: What's your purpose in life? 13:00 Should you get Social Security? 14: What are you going to do with your money in retirement? 15:00 What do you get out of your money? 16: Is it better than you re getting less than someone else s? 17:30- Why you re not getting more than you pay less than you get less in your Social Security 18:10 - How much money you should you get? 19:00 Do you have a job? 21: What is your real purpose? 22:00 Are you getting out of it? 25:00 Does Social Security really need to work? 26:00 Can you get a Social Security check from Social Security, or do you have to work to get your money to help support your retirement
00:00:29.000I want to play you the clip of what I said yesterday, and then I want to discuss why exactly this was so controversial.
00:00:34.000And I think it goes deep to the root of something that's happened on both the right and the left, which is this weird idea that work is somehow demeaning and bad and terrible.
00:00:45.000And that somehow purpose and fulfillment don't come from work and don't come from church and don't come from family.
00:01:09.000The retirement age in the United States at which you start to receive Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare is 65.
00:01:15.000Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and Medicare for 16 years, and he wants to continue in office until he is 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible for retirement.
00:01:27.000No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old.
00:01:30.000Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem.
00:01:34.000Everybody that I know who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years.
00:01:39.000And if you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, Things go to hell in a handbasket real quick, but put all of that aside.
00:01:53.000One is we have to raise the retirement age.
00:01:55.000And two is that as a general rule, it is not a good personal decision for people to retire early.
00:02:00.000And I say even right there, unless we are talking about people who suffer a physical or mental malady, As a result of continued work.
00:02:06.000So, for example, you're a bricklayer and now you're 65 years old and your back is gone.
00:02:09.000Obviously, you're going to want to retire from being a bricklayer because you have a physical malady, which I literally said on the show yesterday and everybody is ignoring.
00:02:16.000But let's go through these arguments one by one, because the first argument about raising the retirement age or privatizing Social Security or changing the Social Security system, this is considered the third rail of politics.
00:02:25.000And as I said in the show yesterday, Donald Trump hasn't touched it.
00:02:29.000He's the first Republican in a long time to have basically said the entitlements are off the table.
00:02:32.000We're not going to do anything about them.
00:02:34.000And I've said before, that's a smart political move, but smart political moves aren't necessarily good for the country.
00:02:39.000Both parties now argue that we can't touch Social Security.
00:02:44.000The entitlement programs basically have to stay.
00:02:46.000The problem with that is that, of course, they're all going to go bankrupt.
00:02:50.000So politicians obviously have an incentive to keep kicking the can down the road and pretending that we have unlimited borrowing power and limited money to pay for a ballooning public debt.
00:03:00.000That, of course, is their incentive structure.
00:03:02.000But I'm not running for office, so I can tell you the truth, which is that if we don't raise the retirement age or privatize Social Security over time and make any changes to Social Security, we will go insolvent.
00:03:11.000Social Security is not, in fact, a lockbox.
00:03:13.000I saw a lot of tweets yesterday from people saying, I paid into Social Security.
00:03:54.000We are taking out trillions of dollars in debt to fund people retiring from work who are not somehow unable to work.
00:04:00.000That was the point that I'm making, is that many of the people that we are paying not to work right now who are 65 years old, yes, they paid into the system, but that is because the system should not have taken their money in the first place.
00:04:12.000You should not have your money taken away from you by the federal government and then spent somewhere else.
00:04:16.000And then later, somebody else has to fill you in.
00:04:18.000You should be able to keep your own money.
00:04:30.000And in fact, if you look at the history of Social Security, what you see, the history of retirement and Social Security, one of the things that you see, is that it was an attempt to get older workers off the payrolls to make room for younger workers.
00:04:43.000The first kind of full social security scheme was put in place by Otto von Bismarck in Germany and was a way of clearing the older payrolls of older workers because they weren't as effective.
00:04:57.000But in any case, when you look in America at the history of old age pensions, what you see is that in 1862, when the life expectancy was 39, There were some pensions that you could apply for if you were a Civil War veteran or if you were disabled.
00:05:10.000Which again, makes some sense, talking about people who are physically disabled.
00:05:14.000In 1890, when the life expectancy was 44, the law was amended to include disabled Civil War veterans who were disabled for any reason.
00:05:23.000The law was amended to include old age.
00:05:25.000Now, why am I using life expectancy statistics?
00:05:27.000I'll get into that in a moment because I've seen some community notes talking about the fact that if you make it to 50 or 60 and you're living in 1906, you're likely to live till 75 or 79 or whatever.
00:05:38.000That's the wrong statistic and I'll explain why in a second.
00:05:41.000The Social Security Act was signed into law by FDR in 1935.
00:05:44.000Again, life expectancy at that time was 60.
00:05:47.000And it kicked in Social Security at 65.
00:05:50.000It created a federal safety net for the elderly, unemployed, disadvantaged Americans because of the Great Depression.
00:05:56.000And again, the main stipulation was to pay financial benefits to retirees over the age of 65 based on lifetime payroll tax contributions.
00:06:24.000Well, internet service providers track every single website you visit, which is also bad.
00:06:28.000They sell that information to ad companies and tech giants who then use it to target you with their ad programs.
00:06:32.000ExpressVPN reroutes your network data through a secure encrypted tunnel so your internet provider can't see or sell your online activity.
00:06:38.000It sounds complicated, but ExpressVPN is actually really easy to use.
00:06:41.000Just fire up that app, click one button.
00:06:44.000One subscription works on all your devices like phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can be protected as well.
00:06:50.000Here at Daily Wire, we're proud to have ExpressVPN as our top privacy partner because we believe everyone should be able to protect themselves from big tech's prying eyes.
00:06:57.000Protect your online privacy by visiting expressvpn.com slash ben today.
00:07:22.000That Social Security Trust Fund is set to empty in 2037, at which point taxes will be enough to pay for only 76% of scheduled benefits, at which time all the benefits are going to get slashed.
00:07:48.000Our demographic pyramid is up-tied down in the United States.
00:07:51.000We have too many old people, and we don't have enough young workers, which means that the Ponzi scheme is collapsing.
00:07:56.000According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, In 1960, the Social Security program had revenues of $12 billion and outlays just shy of $12 billion.
00:08:00.000financial difficulties for Social Security.
00:08:02.000In 1960, the Social Security program had revenues of $12 billion and outlays just shy of $12
00:08:17.000And that gap is going to continue to grow.
00:08:18.000By 2034, the last year before the funds are expected to become depleted, the Social Security's trustees expect the cost will exceed income by $437 billion.
00:08:27.000And when those trust funds are depleted, benefits will then be limited.
00:08:31.000By the income assigned to the program, in absent changes to the law, benefits will be reduced by 20%.
00:08:40.000You can support this pyramid scheme so long as there are enough young people who are there to work to support the elderly, as filtered through government programs.
00:08:52.000Two, people are in fact living longer.
00:08:56.000Around 1960, that was the end of the baby boom, The average number of children born to a woman was 3.6.
00:09:01.000Today, that number is 1.6, which is not replacement level.
00:09:06.000In 1960, if you reached 65, if you reached retirement age, you were expected to live to about 80.
00:09:10.000Today, you're expected to live to about 85.
00:09:14.000Again, according to Cato Institute, the cost of Social Security to the American taxpayer, excluding disability in 2022, was over a trillion dollars.
00:09:22.000By 2033, that's going to be $2 trillion a year, well over $2.1 trillion a year.
00:09:29.000In that year, borrowing authority for Social Security is exhausted under law, so unless Congress acts, benefits get slashed 23%.
00:09:36.000As far as the generalized debt problems with Social Security, Medicare and Social Security are now responsible for 95% of all long-term American unfunded obligations.
00:09:45.000When you hear people say that it's the Defense Department that's bankrupting the country, that is wrong.
00:09:50.000Social Security is already responsible for about 11% of the entire 2023 deficit.
00:09:55.000And according to the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, this is them, the people.
00:09:59.000These are the people who run the thing.
00:10:00.000According to them, Medicare and Social Security, their unfunded obligations, which is about the 75-year unfunded obligation, meaning it's not funded by any of the law today, exceeds $78 trillion.
00:10:12.000$78 trillion, which is three times all the goods and services produced in the United States last year.
00:10:18.000So in other words, this ballooning Social Security program is bankrupt.
00:10:29.000Okay, so argument number one, which is that we have to change social security because it's ridiculous that people are retiring at the age of 65 and then receiving benefits for legitimately 20 years.
00:10:39.000And that's going to bankrupt the country.
00:10:40.000And it's already bankrupting the taxpayer.
00:11:53.000Then there's the question of what retirement actually constitutes.
00:11:56.000There seems to be this idea about that retirement is natural.
00:11:59.000That you hit 65 and you go like sit on a beach somewhere for the next 20 years of your life.
00:12:04.000And whether that is publicly funded or privately funded, the point that I was making yesterday is that I do not think that as a general rule, it is good for people to consider themselves retired from the world.
00:12:42.000Again, not that you should be forced to work if you don't want to, and you can afford to do it, or your family will take care of you.
00:12:50.000The argument that I was making is that when you are 65 years old, if you retire, if you make that decision to retire, that's a decision that you should take really seriously.
00:12:59.000And this bizarre idea that the best thing you can do, so much that the government should sponsor it, is retire.
00:13:05.000And when I say retire, I don't mean get an alternative job.
00:13:10.000If you quit your job at 65 or you are forcibly retired by your company at 65 and then you take Social Security and then you have another job, which is what a lot of people do, you're not retired.
00:13:23.000The retirement I'm talking about is you retire from your job and all jobs and you live on your pension or your Social Security.
00:13:31.000That tends not to be good for people in terms of health.
00:13:34.000According to the BBC, quote, research from the Institute of Economic Affairs suggests that while retirement may initially benefit health by reducing stress and creating time for other activities, adverse effects increase the longer retirement goes on.
00:13:46.000In fact, this study found that retirement increases the chances of suffering from clinical depression by around 40 percent, of having at least one diagnosed physical illness by about 60 percent.
00:13:56.000And of course, that's not particularly surprising, because for a lot of people, they find purpose in the thing that they've been doing for the past 40 years.
00:14:02.000We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
00:14:04.000First, are you struggling with back taxes or unfiled returns this year?
00:14:08.000The IRS is escalating collections by adding 20,000 new agents.
00:14:11.000In these challenging times, your best defense is to use Tax Network USA.
00:14:15.000Along with hiring thousands of new agents and field officers, the IRS has kicked off 2024 by sending over 5 million pay-up letters to those who have unfiled tax returns or balances owed.
00:15:51.000And that created intergenerational contact and point of contact, and that was fulfilling for grandma and grandpa, and it was fulfilling for kids and grandkids, because then you got the wisdom of grandma and grandpa.
00:16:00.000That's been completely destroyed by Social Security.
00:16:02.000Now the American vision is, you hit 65 or you hit 70, whatever it is, You retire, and then we shuffle you off to the villages or some old age home or something.
00:16:10.000And listen, if you want to be there, that's fine.
00:16:13.000But the idea that this is like the ideal form of what 80-year-old life looks like is you don't see your kids, you don't see your grandkids, and you live in a home by yourself?
00:16:21.000The data do not support the idea that this is wonderful for people.
00:16:24.000And it is worth noting that when this sort of idea was proposed, elderly people actually revolted against it.
00:16:32.000Peace from 1999 by Mary Lou Weissman in the New York Times called The History of Retirement from Early Man to AARP and this columnist points out That many, many people who were elderly did not, in fact, like doing this.
00:16:47.000Quote, what used to mean going to bed suddenly meant banishment to an empty stage of life called retirement.
00:16:51.000If people were not going to work, what were they going to do?
00:17:02.000Most retired people wished they could work.
00:17:05.000The problem was still acute in 1951 when the Corning Company convened a round table to figure out how to make retirement more popular.
00:17:11.000At that conference, Santa Rama Rowan, author and student of Eastern and Western cultures, complained Americans did not have the capacity to enjoy doing nothing.
00:17:19.000Say you had retirement communities that sprang up.
00:17:22.000And those retirement communities were essentially fill your time with playing golf or whatever.
00:17:26.000But again, has that cured the problem?
00:17:37.000Depression is more frequent in retirees, with mandatory retirement, retirement due to illness, and anticipated retirement presenting higher levels of this disease.
00:17:44.000The health role in the psychoeducational approach is highlighted in 41.6%.
00:17:49.000With almost one-third of retirees suffering from depression, it is necessary to implement prevention and early detection measures to approach a public health problem."
00:17:58.000This study, by the way, Suggests that retirement is a transition which occurs in the last stage of life.
00:18:03.000It is characterized by the ceasing of work and with that a loss of routine social relations, role, status, accomplishments, and aspirations.
00:18:09.000This implies changing the lifestyle adopted during many years in the working stage and supposes a phenomenon that can alter the psychosocial realm of the retiree.
00:18:17.000Additionally, the aging process supposes diverse changes in health and it would lead to the decline of individuals who suffer it, altering their self-image, self-esteem, autonomy, and functionality.
00:18:25.000The majority of individuals understand the transition from being active in working life to retirement as the process by which they start to become old, which generates feelings of uselessness, thus predisposing them to depression.
00:18:35.000Another journal article from the Journal of Population Aging, Work, Retirement, and Depression, found a considerable depression, by the way, difference in the depression rates in men who retired.
00:18:43.00024% said that they were depressed, compared to currently employed, about 6%.
00:18:51.000They found that women, significantly less of a difference.
00:18:54.000Well, because a lot of women work part-time, and so they were already engaged in stuff that they were doing outside of work.
00:19:01.0002012, a paper, Transition to Retirement and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease from Social Science and Medicine, they found those who had retired were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than those who were still working.
00:19:14.000Another paper, the Association of Retirement Age with Mortality, a population-based longitudinal study among older adults in the United States.
00:19:20.000This is from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
00:19:22.000Quote, early retirement may be a risk factor for mortality and prolonged working life may provide survival benefits among American adults.
00:19:29.000That same study found among healthy retirees, a one-year older age at retirement was associated with an 11% lower risk of all-cause mortality.
00:19:40.000Again, that same study, by the way, One of the researchers explained that delayed retirement is the secret to a longer life.
00:19:46.000He defined retirement as, quote, the first year people responded to the survey saying they were completely retired.
00:19:50.000Okay, so, there's some counter arguments to this argument that I'm making, which is that if you have a personal choice as to whether to retire or not retire, you should seriously consider not retiring.
00:19:59.000And by retiring, again, I mean like retiring from all work, not getting an alternative job.
00:20:58.000And there are a bunch of people who are like, well, that's because you're not a bricklayer.
00:21:01.000Again, I said yesterday, if you're a bricklayer and you hurt your back, that's a completely different thing from a person who was a bricklayer, worked their way up to the management level of the bricklaying company, is still healthy, and then is forced to retire or decides to retire.
00:21:49.000To any player who scores 82 plus points in the regular season to the classic bet of who you think is going to win a game.
00:21:54.000BetOnline is the best online sports betting platform.
00:21:57.000They pride themselves on their higher-than-average betting limits of up to $25,000, and you can increase your wagering amounts by contacting their player services desk by phone or email.
00:23:04.000Okay, but I don't understand why that wouldn't also be true of, say, an electrician or, say, a plumber or a guy who started off as a bricklayer in a bricklaying business, now owns the bricklaying business.
00:23:15.000That seems kind of, actually, elitist to me.
00:23:17.000At the same logic, a fulfillment doesn't apply to people who are blue-collar.
00:23:22.000I know a lot of people who are electricians and are approaching retirement age, they don't, many of them don't want to retire.
00:23:33.000If you really believe that work is inherently degrading and joyless, even certain sectors of work, it's inherently degrading and joyless and terrible.
00:23:41.000So then what does an ideal retirement age look like?
00:23:42.000What you're really arguing against is the work itself.
00:23:45.000You're not really arguing about the retirement age.
00:23:48.000What you're really arguing against is the work itself.
00:23:51.000What does an ideal retirement age look like if you're in favor of this?
00:24:01.000Why exactly do we have to wait until you're 65 and you're feeling beat up and a little bit old in order to allow you to retire if it's quote-unquote allowing you to retire?
00:24:08.000Now my point is no one's quote-unquote allowing you to retire or shouldn't be.
00:24:13.000It's your decision whether to retire and it should be your decision whether to retire.
00:24:17.000The question of whether the taxpayer subsidizes that is an entirely different issue.
00:24:21.000I don't think that it's the government's business to subsidize your retirement.
00:24:25.000I'm not talking about people who are on the cusp of receiving Social Security, by the way.
00:24:29.000Because the government did steal your money.
00:24:31.000And presumably there will have to be a phase out with regard to the age provisions of Social Security.
00:24:39.000What I am saying is that as a general ideological matter, you should be allowed to keep your own money.
00:24:45.000There has never been, as my friend Matt Walsh says, a greater robbery of the middle class than social security.
00:24:49.000They literally take working families, and they tax them, and they steal their money, and then they use that to pay elderly pensioners, many of whom are upper income.
00:25:07.000That was the point that I was making yesterday.
00:25:08.000And again, I think this goes to a deeper ideological point that I was making just a moment ago, which is what do you think work is?
00:25:15.000One of the fascinating things that some of the people who are sort of on the right on this typically would be considered right wing of the political spectrum who were very upset with me yesterday.
00:25:23.000They were saying, well, you don't respect the blue collar worker because you're saying that people quote unquote don't deserve to retire.
00:25:29.000My point is that I don't think that retirement is a good personal decision.
00:25:37.000As far as what you deserve from the public, from the guy who's still working, that's a completely different story.
00:25:44.000But it is interesting to me that many of the same people who will, for example, object to automated technologies because they say that it kills jobs and people need jobs.
00:25:52.000The universal basic income won't do it.
00:25:54.000You can't just cut somebody a welfare check and find a sense of fulfillment in that.
00:25:57.000Suddenly believe that the logic reverses itself when you hit 65.
00:26:00.000When you hit 65, they can cut you a welfare check in the form of social security and that somehow this is more fulfilling than when you were 30 and they were cutting you a welfare check in lieu of a job.
00:26:40.000As long as you still have your health and as long as you still have your mental aptitude, it seems to me like most people want to work and should.
00:26:46.000And that doesn't mean the government forces them to.
00:26:47.000We're not talking about sending you to the salt mines when you're 70 years old.
00:26:50.000And I'm just bewildered by this perception that that's somehow an elitist sentiment, when the point that I'm making is that I believe it is human nature for people to want to feel productive, useful, and purposeful.
00:27:00.000And if you can't find that production and purpose anywhere else than a job, which seems to be the way that it works in America these days, because again, church and family have disappeared, then you're gonna have a bigger problem than you think when you quote-unquote retire.
00:27:12.000Did you know that a baby's heart begins to beat at just three weeks?
00:27:15.000At five weeks, the heartbeat can be heard on ultrasound, and that is sometimes the only defense that the preborn have.
00:28:13.000Meanwhile, in the world of daily politics, the big story of the day yesterday was the testimony of special counsel Robert Herr.
00:28:19.000Robert Herr is, of course, the former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's possession of classified documents after he left the vice presidency.
00:28:26.000And Democrats are fighting mad at Robert Herr.
00:28:55.000Joe Biden is responsible for violations of law, but he shouldn't be prosecuted because he's a sympathetic senile old man.
00:29:02.000And that's the reason why Hur didn't recommend prosecution.
00:29:05.000He said, yes, he fulfills all of the conditions of violation of the law for years on end.
00:29:09.000He kept classified documents from like skiffs in his house and in a variety of other locations.
00:29:14.000But the reason we can't prosecute him is because he's senile.
00:29:16.000The reason we can't prosecute him is because he is a doddering old fool.
00:29:19.000And if you get that guy in front of a jury, it's going to be very hard to convict an 81 year old man of keeping classified documents next to his Corvette in the garage.
00:29:27.000That was the actual report from Robert Hur.
00:29:30.000Democrats are fighting mad at this because, of course, Democrats wanted Biden exonerated on the law, which couldn't happen because he violated the law.
00:29:38.000And then because he couldn't exonerate him on the law, he had to exonerate him.
00:29:42.000He didn't really exonerate him legally.
00:29:44.000He had to let him off the hook because he was a doddering old fool.
00:29:48.000And Democrats don't want Joe Biden called a doddering old fool in the run up to a presidential reelect effort.
00:29:53.000And so what you got yesterday is Democrats berating Robert Herr, just really, really mad at Robert Herr.
00:29:59.000So here is the worst congressman in the country, probably, Adam Schiff, just as a congressperson.
00:30:06.000I'm not talking about like terrorist supporters like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar or something.
00:30:09.000I'm talking about just like as a congressperson who is corrupt and venal, Adam Schiff is unparalleled.
00:30:14.000So here's Adam Schiff berating Robert Herr for the great sin of pointing out that Joe Biden is feeble, which is why you can't prosecute him.
00:30:23.000And you also understand DOJ policy that you are to take care not to prejudice the interests of the subject of an investigation, right?
00:30:32.000That is generally one of the interests that DOJ policy requires that prosecutors respect.
00:30:37.000And it was your obligation to follow that policy in this report, was it not?
00:30:42.000It was also my obligation to write a confidential report for the Attorney General explaining completely my decision.
00:30:47.000What you did write was deeply prejudicial to the interests of the President.
00:30:51.000You say it wasn't political and yet you must have understood.
00:30:55.000You must have understood the impact of your words.
00:30:58.000You must have understood the impact of your decision to go beyond the specifics of a particular document to go to the very general, to your own personal, prejudicial, subjective opinion of the President.
00:31:09.000One you knew would be amplified by his political opponent.
00:31:12.000One you knew that would influence a political campaign.
00:31:46.000Democrats cannot have it both ways, but they were trying to.
00:31:49.000So one House Democrat, this would be Hank Johnson, who believes that the island of Guam is going to tip over.
00:31:53.000That's literally a thing that he once said.
00:31:55.000Accused Robert Herr of trying to get a favor from Donald Trump with this report.
00:32:01.000Honest to God, if you ever want to know why the Founding Fathers designed it so that there were checks and balances in American government, and we shouldn't look to government to get things done, look no further than every public hearing where every single congressperson makes an ass of themselves.
00:32:14.000These people have a collective IQ lower than the wattage of the light bulb right here.
00:32:37.000And you're doing everything you can do to get President Trump re-elected so that you can get appointed as a federal judge or perhaps to another position in the Department of Justice.
00:33:40.000The fact is, Mr. Biden sat through five hours, and he did an admirable job.
00:33:46.000And he did an outstanding job in the State of the Union, laying out the case for the future of America, for the middle class, for democracy around the world, for standing up to the Russians, not bending down to them.
00:35:51.000Here are ABC and CBS doing press for the White House, which is what they do.
00:35:56.000I have reviewed the full transcript myself, all 250 pages of it, and there are moments where the president does have memory lapses, especially, for instance, in his recall and description of his son Beau's death.
00:36:07.000The president struggles to remember the year that Beau died, though he does remember the exact date.
00:36:12.000But overall, George, I have to tell you that the image that you get of the president that you take away largely
00:37:01.000Okay, so now let's talk about what's actually in the transcripts.
00:37:03.000According to the Washington Free Beacon, transcripts of her interview with Biden released Tuesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon support her assessment there are significant limitations surrounding Biden's memory.
00:37:13.000Throughout the five hours of interviews on October 8th and 9th, Biden struggled to recall relevant details about his handling of classified records or when he served as vice president.
00:37:20.000The transcript also confirms Biden could not recall when his son Beau died and further shows the president raised that subject unprompted.
00:37:27.000Which, of course, contradicts the lie that Joe Biden told at his February 8th press conference, where he mixed up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.
00:37:32.000You remember, he started yelling that Robert Herb brought up his son, which is a lie.
00:37:36.000Not only is that the case, not only is that the case, that when Biden started talking about Beau, Herb said, Sir, I'm wondering if this is a good time to take a break briefly.
00:37:46.000So Herb tried to say to him, like, do you want to stop?
00:37:50.000Remember that Joe Biden basically called him a son of a bitch.
00:37:55.000Early on in the October 8th interview with her, the special counsel asked Biden if he ever transferred any documents from the vice presidential residence to his primary Delaware residence.
00:38:02.000Biden answered that he did occasionally.
00:38:04.000And then he said, quote, you left everything in place.
00:38:08.000I just hope you didn't find any risque pictures of my wife in a bathing suit, which you probably did.
00:38:19.000You're talking about how hot your wife is in a bathing suit.
00:38:22.000That's not strange at all, you old weirdo.
00:38:25.000And then, he didn't stop there, according to the Free Beacon.
00:38:28.000He proceeded to provide the special counsel a history lesson on his struggles as a frustrated architect designing plans for the home as it was being built.
00:38:34.000Biden went into great detail about how he obtained its furnishings, including a beautiful desk he purchased during his career as an attorney.
00:38:42.000During this tangent, Biden also revealed that he hit a target hundreds of yards away with a bow and arrow during a visit to Mongolia in August 2011.
00:38:48.000Quote, I'm not a bad archer, but I hit the bleep target A video uploaded by the Obama administration at the time, by the way, shows Biden shooting a bow into an empty field.
00:39:29.000Joe Biden apparently, during this transcript, detailed a bizarre episode during one of his first jobs out of law school involving a 23-year-old construction worker with a seared penis and missing testicle.
00:40:02.000And then apparently, my favorite part of the transcript, My favorite part of the transcript is when he apparently started talking about his Chevy Corvette.
00:40:15.000And he started talking about the torque of electric vehicles.
00:41:14.000Sharp as a tack, our president of the United States.
00:41:17.000Again, you guys, you can't have it both ways.
00:41:19.000Either he's sharp as a tack, in which case he should go to jail for, you know, stealing classified materials and holding them in his house.
00:41:26.000Or he is not sharp as a tack, in which case he should basically be let off the hook.
00:41:57.000All right, so what did Robert Herr actually say in his testimony?
00:41:59.000He said many things that are relevant.
00:42:00.000First, he said Joe Biden obviously willfully retained classified information.
00:42:05.000My team and I conducted a thorough, independent investigation.
00:42:09.000We identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his Vice Presidency when he was a private citizen.
00:42:18.000This evidence included an audio-recorded conversation during which Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter that he had, quote, just found all the classified stuff downstairs, end quote.
00:43:26.000In fact, Robert Herbert went even so far as to say that a reasonable juror could have voted to convict based on the fact alleged.
00:43:33.000Which, um, that's saying that he's guilty, basically.
00:43:36.000Based on the facts and anticipation of defenses presented in your report, could a reasonable juror have voted to convict?
00:43:44.000As I said in the report, some reasonable jurors may have reached the inferences that the government would present in its case in chief.
00:43:51.000So a reasonable juror could have voted to convict based on the facts that you presented?
00:43:55.000So, I mean, he's saying all the things.
00:43:58.000He even said that Joe Biden's ghostwriter, when he was contacted by the special counsel's office, took all the audio files and tried to trash them.
00:44:05.000I said this earlier in my opening statement, page 200, Joe Biden, this is a quote, Joe Biden risked serious damage to America's national security when he shared information with his ghostwriter.
00:44:19.000Shared it with his ghostwriter, the guy who was helping Joe Biden get $8 million.
00:44:24.000And oh, by the way, Mr. Herr, what did that ghostwriter do with the information Joe Biden shared with him on his laptop?
00:44:32.000What did he do after you were named special counsel?
00:44:36.000Chairman, if you're referring to the audio recordings that Mr. Zwanitzer created of his conversations with... That's exactly what I'm referring to.
00:44:44.000He slid, if I remember correctly, he slid those files into his recycle bin on his computer.
00:44:51.000Tried to destroy the evidence, didn't he?
00:44:55.000The very guy who was helping Joe Biden get the $8 million, the $8 million Joe Biden had used, the motive for Joe Biden to disclose classified information, to retain classified information, which he definitely knew was against the law.
00:45:08.000When you get named special counsel, what's that guy do?
00:45:26.000Again, the number of dullards in our Congress is just astonishing.
00:45:28.000Here's Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, trying to browbeat Hur into saying that he exonerated Biden when he clearly didn't.
00:45:36.000So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden.
00:45:43.000For every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the President violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials.
00:45:52.000The primary law that you analyzed for potential prosecution was part of the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C.
00:45:59.000793E, which criminalizes willful retention or disclosure of national defense information.
00:46:45.000The bombshell is that her actually said that the White House asked him to water down the report, which is kind of amazing.
00:46:51.000I thought that the White House wasn't supposed to get involved with the special counsel.
00:46:53.000I thought the special counsel was free to pursue whatever he wanted, but apparently they literally contacted him and tried to get him to water down the report so as to downplay the actual rationale for not prosecuting Joe Biden.
00:47:04.000So is it correct on that February 5th letter that was sent to you asking you to change references to the President's poor memory?
00:47:17.000Wasn't there a request by the White House to do that?
00:47:21.000And Mr. Chairman, I think the record should show that the gentleman from Maryland earlier said that that was not That was not the case.
00:47:29.000I think he said, nor did he seek to redact a single word of Herr's report.
00:47:35.000Obviously, Mr. Herr is telling us differently here.
00:47:38.000And didn't the White House then go to the Attorney General himself and say that he would like to see changes to the references in regards to the President's memory?
00:47:49.000The White House counsel did send such a letter.
00:47:52.000Okay, well that would be the big story, right?
00:47:54.000Is that the White House literally tried to push the special counsel to change the report so as to politically help Joe Biden.