The Ben Shapiro Show - April 16, 2024


Will Israel STRIKE Iran?


Episode Stats

Length

51 minutes

Words per Minute

195.93144

Word Count

10,097

Sentence Count

665

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary

Deterrence is the idea that you can prevent action by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction, and a belief that the cost of action outweighs the perceived benefits. In other words, you do not attack me because I am threatening you. If you attack me, I will clock you into next week. This is the concept of deterrence, and it is the single most important concept of the post-war era. But when Joe Biden over and over again keeps saying, "Don't," and then other parties do, and the United States does not respond, and not only does the U.S. not respond but it slow walks aid to America s allies, so even America's allies cannot respond. And the party that is deterred is not the opponents, the enemies of the United Sates, but the UnitedS. herself. And when the suggestion is suggested that the United US should be deterred by the presence of the Soviet Union, or by the possibility that Vladimir Putin is going to unleash nuclear weapons, which of course is not credible threat, the party is not deterred. The United States is the deterred party. And that s a sign that you are the weaker party in any conflict because, of course, the stronger party typically does not deter. And yet, if you're on the playground, it's not the bully who is being deterred, it is not by the weakling, but by the bully. And so why is it so difficult to get the smaller powers to do more than they can do more? Why does the less powerful ones seem to be more likely to be the most effective in a conflict? and why does it become a point of no return? Why does this happen? And why does the smaller power become more insufficiency of American materiel ? in the face of a lack of American might and lack of ability to defend themselves? and so much more? And what is the answer? why does this become a problem for other powers? The answer is that the answer is not the answer might not be more American might, not more American power or more resources and less And why is this not a problem a better country is not a better than China and Iran and China which does not have nuclear weapons and Iran has a ballistic missile system China has nuclear missiles so much better than the US does


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So, Joe Biden, the President of the United States, he keeps saying one word over and over and over.
00:00:05.000 That word is don't.
00:00:07.000 He said it to the Taliban with regard to attacks on American troops.
00:00:10.000 And then, of course, they did.
00:00:12.000 He said it to the Russians with regard to going into Ukraine.
00:00:15.000 Then, of course, they did.
00:00:17.000 And he said it to the Iranians with regard to directly attacking Israel.
00:00:20.000 He said don't.
00:00:21.000 And then, of course, they did.
00:00:23.000 All of which means that Joe Biden is not a credible player on the world stage.
00:00:28.000 Now, there is something in foreign policy called deterrence.
00:00:30.000 It's the single most important concept of the post-war era.
00:00:33.000 Deterrence is the idea, according to the Defense Department, that you can prevent action by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction and or a belief that the cost of action outweighs the perceived benefits.
00:00:44.000 In other words, You do not attack me because I am threatening you.
00:00:48.000 If you attack me, I will clock you into next week.
00:00:51.000 You know who is an expert at deterrence, oddly enough?
00:00:54.000 President Donald Trump.
00:00:55.000 He was excellent at deterrence because every threat that he uttered was perfectly credible.
00:01:01.000 He kept everybody off balance.
00:01:03.000 It's sort of a madman theory of foreign policy.
00:01:04.000 You never knew when he meant it, and you never knew when he didn't.
00:01:07.000 It didn't matter whether you understood it.
00:01:08.000 It only mattered whether he understood it.
00:01:10.000 He could push you off the ball simply by saying, if you cross that line, you don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be a really bad big league bat.
00:01:18.000 And other nations took that seriously.
00:01:21.000 The Taliban took that seriously.
00:01:22.000 Russia took that seriously.
00:01:24.000 China took that seriously.
00:01:26.000 And Iran took that seriously.
00:01:28.000 But when Joe Biden over and over and over again keeps saying don't, And then, other parties do.
00:01:34.000 And the United States does not respond.
00:01:36.000 And not only does the United States not respond, it slow walks aid to America's allies, so even America's allies cannot respond.
00:01:42.000 The United States intervenes to tell America's allies not to do too much.
00:01:46.000 Then it turns out that the party that is deterred is not, in fact, the opponents, the enemies of the United States.
00:01:52.000 The party that is deterred is the United States herself.
00:01:56.000 Now it is one thing to suggest that the United States should be deterred from forward action by the presence of, say, the Soviet Union.
00:02:02.000 But to suggest that the United States should be deterred from providing full aid to Ukraine, for example, such that Ukraine is not overrun, And that we should be deterred by the possibility that Vladimir Putin is going to unleash nuclear weapons, which of course is not a credible threat when it comes to simply maintaining the current battle lines in Ukraine.
00:02:21.000 That's stupid.
00:02:22.000 When the suggestion is that the United States should be deterred by Iran, and that's what's happening right now, Iran is saying, We fired 300-odd missiles, drones at Israel.
00:02:32.000 Most of those got knocked down, virtually all of them got knocked down, but don't go further or we are going to go further.
00:02:38.000 And Iran is openly saying that right now.
00:02:39.000 Iran is saying if Israel were to counter-attack, then they would unleash 1,500 cruise missiles, for example, and ballistic missiles.
00:02:47.000 And the United States is then putting pressure on Israel.
00:02:49.000 The United States is the deterred party.
00:02:52.000 Being deterred is a sign that you are the weaker party in any conflict.
00:02:55.000 Because, of course, the stronger party typically is not deterred.
00:02:57.000 Typically, again, it is the weaker party who is worried that the cost of action will outweigh the perceived benefit.
00:03:05.000 Typically, if you're on the playground, it is not the bully who's being deterred by the weakling, it's the weakling who's being deterred by the bully.
00:03:12.000 When it comes to foreign policy, the United States has the world's largest and most powerful military presence, spanning the globe, in terms of technology far more advanced than anything, on the table.
00:03:23.000 By a factor of probably five.
00:03:25.000 And yet it is the United States that is over and over being deterred by significantly smaller powers, which of course is why smaller powers are feeling their oats right now.
00:03:33.000 So the question is why?
00:03:34.000 Why exactly has it become sort of rote point of course for other smaller parties to deter the United States?
00:03:42.000 The answer obviously is not insufficiency of American materiel.
00:03:46.000 The answer obviously is not insufficiency of America's military might.
00:03:50.000 America is so far beyond, for example, the Chinese military in terms of advancement, that the idea that China would go to full-scale war with the United States, that'd be the biggest mistake China ever made.
00:04:01.000 And if that's true of China, which has nuclear weapons, think about Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons and whose ballistic missile system is so bad that half of the rockets it just fired at Israel fell in its own territory or the territory of other countries before they even hit Israeli airspace.
00:04:16.000 So why is America being deterred?
00:04:17.000 And the answer is simple moral cowardice.
00:04:20.000 The United States under Joe Biden has become a morally cowardly force.
00:04:25.000 The United States under Joe Biden has basically decided that any engagement in the world's fear is some sort of act of aggression.
00:04:33.000 And even so much as funding our allies so those allies can defend themselves with forward action to deter, for example, Iran from doing this again.
00:04:40.000 That would be some sort of American aggression that would escalate things.
00:04:44.000 The reality is that when it comes to the Middle East, every single conflict is a game of chicken.
00:04:51.000 The Game of Chicken, as we all know, is a game wherein two sides both drive toward a cliff, and whoever stops closest to the cliff without driving over, wins the Game of Chicken.
00:05:01.000 The worst case scenario is you're the one who goes off the cliff.
00:05:06.000 But, when it comes to the United States versus other countries, we have both the best gas and the best brakes.
00:05:13.000 The reality is that if there were to be a cliff, and if we were to hit that cliff, the significant impact would be on Iran and not on the United States.
00:05:22.000 The United States is already engaged in wartime activity against Iran.
00:05:25.000 It was American forces striking down drones directly from Iranian territory.
00:05:30.000 And yet again, it is Joe Biden who is acting the weakling, not just with regard to Iran directly, but with regard to Hezbollah, with regard to Hamas, which is a basically defunct terror group at this point.
00:05:42.000 The only reason that is happening is because Joe Biden does not have the courage of American convictions.
00:05:46.000 This is not an argument for America to be involved in war.
00:05:48.000 This is an argument that American deterrence relies on credible threat of force.
00:05:54.000 And that in a world where America's deterrence is gone, everybody gets a lot more aggressive.
00:05:58.000 The world becomes a lot more violent.
00:06:00.000 There's this theory out there from both the sort of far libertarian right and from the far left Noam Chomsky crew.
00:06:06.000 that the way that world wars start is through a series of escalating steps that no one can stop.
00:06:12.000 The other way, there are two ways the world wars start.
00:06:16.000 That can be one of them when you have a relative balance of power, but when you have one full on
00:06:20.000 dominant power, the way the world war starts is by simply mistaking your way into it by failure
00:06:26.000 of credibility. The reality is that the United States owes it to the West to be an iron wall
00:06:33.000 and to provide enough support to its allies that those allies can be an iron wall against forces
00:06:40.000 of say Iran.
00:06:40.000 And yet that is not what the Biden administration is pursuing, and that is a moral shortcoming.
00:06:44.000 That is a question of will, and it is a question of common sense.
00:06:47.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:07:52.000 So, the Biden administration continues to put pressure on Israel not to actually take any sort of aggressive action against Iran, believing that this will lead to some sort of escalation.
00:08:00.000 Now, it seems to me that when you fire, again, 300 drones and missiles at a sovereign state, that is the escalation.
00:08:06.000 And the big problem for Israel is if they don't do anything with regard to Iran going forward, well then Iran is going to feel like they got away with something.
00:08:13.000 Yes, they failed this time militarily.
00:08:15.000 But what happens when they have a nuclear weapon?
00:08:17.000 Right now, the United States is being deterred in Ukraine by a nuclear Russia.
00:08:20.000 If you're Iran, aren't you moving forward as fast as possible with a nuclear weapon?
00:08:24.000 Because that way, if the United States starts attempting to strike down cruise missiles on the way to Israel next time, Iran will say, well, we have nukes and we will use those on you.
00:08:33.000 We will use those on your friends.
00:08:36.000 In other words, you deter and you hamstring your enemies now before they become more powerful because otherwise they are simply going to continue to flex their muscles and push the envelope.
00:08:46.000 And yet again, the Biden administration is seeking de-escalation.
00:08:49.000 There's only one reason that they are seeking de-escalation.
00:08:51.000 Because again, you know how this de-escalates?
00:08:53.000 Iran getting punched in the teeth.
00:08:55.000 That's how this gets de-escalated.
00:08:57.000 The way this de-escalates is Israel takes Hamas off the board as a power player.
00:09:01.000 Then Israel signs a peace agreement with the Saudis.
00:09:04.000 And now you have a Sunni-Israeli access.
00:09:07.000 that is oriented against Iran. Then that axis eventually takes out Hezbollah and now Iran is
00:09:12.000 completely surrounded and completely isolated. And that axis is also capable of taking out Iran's
00:09:18.000 nuclear facilities such that Iran can no longer pose a nuclear threat. That is the way that you
00:09:22.000 de-escalate the situation. You don't de-escalate the situation by telling Iran, well, you know,
00:09:27.000 sure you attacked a sovereign state with a massive cache of arms from your own sovereign territory.
00:09:33.000 But, you know, we'll call this one just, yeah, well, this one doesn't count.
00:09:38.000 Oh, no biggie.
00:09:39.000 No biggie.
00:09:41.000 As former State Department spokesperson Valley Nasser said, Iran has actually achieved deterrence against both Israel and the United States because of the U.S.' 's cowardice.
00:09:52.000 Well, it did create a dilemma for Iran.
00:09:54.000 Iran could not just roll over and be seen by its own population and in the region to essentially taking such a provocative escalation from Israel without responding.
00:10:07.000 On the other hand, they did not want to throw Prime Minister Netanyahu a lifeline of basically shifting the attention from Gaza to Iran and Syria and even drawing the United States into a war with Iran.
00:10:18.000 So they had to react, but they had to react in a way where the emphasis was not really on retaliation, but on deterrence.
00:10:26.000 And I think the deterrence was achieved not just by the military act they carried out yesterday, but essentially by the very effective psychological campaign that they managed through this escalation, both in Israel and also in Western capital.
00:10:40.000 So the real question is, why is the West being intimidated by a third-rate power like Iran?
00:10:45.000 Why is that happening?
00:10:47.000 And the answer, of course, is because Joe Biden is beholden to his left-wing base and he is scared of them.
00:10:52.000 This is why John Kirby, national security spokesperson yesterday, suggested that it is in the chief interest of the United States to stop Israel from taking the sort of action that would stop Iran from taking future action.
00:11:03.000 That de-escalation is top of the priority list.
00:11:08.000 Again, that's a decision that only Prime Minister Netanyahu in the War Cabinet can make.
00:11:12.000 I mean, again, we respect their sovereign decision-making process.
00:11:16.000 What we want to see is de-escalation of the tensions.
00:11:19.000 We don't want to see a wider war.
00:11:21.000 And everything the President's been doing, including putting U.S.
00:11:24.000 forces in the fight Saturday night to defend Israel, which I think is the first time it's ever been done, has been to de-escalate, to take the tensions down, to put resources in the region, to send a strong signal to anybody who might Okay, but it's not de-escalating if you're wearing a bulletproof vest and someone fires a gun at you and it happens to hit the bulletproof vest.
00:11:47.000 The de-escalation comes when you then clock that person directly in the face and take their gun away from them.
00:11:53.000 Now the situation is de-escalated.
00:11:56.000 It is not, in fact, a victory or a de-escalation simply to survive an attack from Iran.
00:12:00.000 Iran, presumably, will change its M.O.
00:12:02.000 going forward.
00:12:04.000 That is the idea here.
00:12:05.000 And yet the Biden administration continues to push forward with restrictions, not on Iran.
00:12:10.000 They're not pushing sanctions on Iran.
00:12:12.000 They're not pushing significant ramifications for Iran after all of this.
00:12:15.000 Instead, they're putting all sorts of pressure on Israel not to do anything.
00:12:20.000 It's more on this in just one moment.
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00:13:27.000 And again, the question is why?
00:13:29.000 And the answer is because Joe Biden believes that his reelect efforts depend on a bunch of crazy people who really, really like Hamas.
00:13:36.000 People who have already been protesting in the streets.
00:13:39.000 It's truly amazing.
00:13:41.000 So remember, Saturday night, Iran hit Israel with 300 drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles.
00:13:49.000 That's how many they fired.
00:13:50.000 Israel was able to knock down 99% of those along with Jordan, the UK, France, and the United States.
00:13:57.000 Protesters have decided now is an opportune moment to protest Israel.
00:14:00.000 So remember, Israel hasn't struck back yet.
00:14:02.000 This is very reminiscent of right after October 7th, when immediately the pro-Hamas protesters took to the street in a bizarre attempt to assault Israel for having committed the great crime of not allowing themselves to be slaughtered wholesale.
00:14:14.000 Here were anti-Israel protesters blocking roads near O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
00:14:22.000 They're literally just blocking the road.
00:14:24.000 Where are the cops?
00:14:25.000 Where are the cops?
00:14:27.000 Take these jackasses away.
00:14:29.000 This is not difficult.
00:14:30.000 People were literally getting out of their cars and walking to O'Hare to try to make their flight.
00:14:34.000 What are the cop cars doing?
00:14:35.000 Just remove them.
00:14:37.000 Just remove them.
00:14:38.000 But the Democrats who run Chicago won't.
00:14:40.000 They will allow them to run the show on a freeway.
00:14:45.000 And shut down an entire freeway outside an airport.
00:14:47.000 Meanwhile, anti-Israel protesters also blocked the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
00:14:52.000 You can see they literally shut down the Golden Egg Bridge with signs that say things like, stop the world for Gaza.
00:14:59.000 And there are cop cars right there.
00:15:01.000 Just drag them off and put them in the back of the car and put them in jail for a fairly lengthy period of time and all this crap stops immediately.
00:15:09.000 And by the way, if they don't, something terrible is going to happen.
00:15:11.000 Because it turns out that if you allow radical jack**** to shut down traffic, sooner or later somebody is going to go nuts and do something truly terrible to one of these protesters.
00:15:19.000 Meanwhile, anti-Israel protesters actively cheered the news of the Iranian missile attack over the weekend.
00:15:25.000 Here were some of them.
00:15:27.000 I would like to make a quick announcement in terms of the protest to bring in this announcement.
00:15:31.000 The Islamic Republic of Iran has just sent tens of drones towards Israel!
00:15:39.000 There's a pro-Khamos protesters literally cheering Iran firing on Israel.
00:15:47.000 Khabib!
00:15:49.000 Oh, fuck!
00:15:51.000 These are the people that Joe Biden wants the votes of.
00:15:53.000 That's why he is doing this right now.
00:15:55.000 He needs a de-escalation right now to make sure that there aren't protests by these pieces of debris over at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in a couple of months.
00:16:05.000 As the New York Times points out, support for Palestinians, a cause once largely championed on college campuses and in communities with ties to the region, has transformed into a defining issue of the Democratic left, galvanizing a broad swath of groups into the most significant protest movement of the Biden era.
00:16:20.000 Labor activists are calling for a ceasefire.
00:16:21.000 Black clergy leaders have appealed directly to the White House.
00:16:23.000 Young Americans are using online tools to mobilize voters and send millions of missives to Congress.
00:16:28.000 An emerging coalition of advocacy groups is discussing how to press its case at the DNC this summer.
00:16:33.000 And that is who Joe Biden is afraid of.
00:16:36.000 That is who Joe Biden's afraid of.
00:16:37.000 And that is why he is being deterred by a third-rate power like Iran.
00:16:42.000 Now, what exactly will Israel do?
00:16:43.000 That's an open question at this point.
00:16:45.000 Yesterday, Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman said that Israel will make the decisions necessary to protect the country, which is what you would expect from any sovereign state.
00:16:52.000 Again, if the United States were hit with 300 drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles, the country that fired those things at the United States literally would not exist the next day.
00:17:01.000 But if you're Israel, then the United States tells you to, that you're being, you guys, you're getting a little bit uppity with your whole self-defense thing.
00:17:09.000 I can't stress the nature of the relationship, of the friendship, of the shared values that we have with the American people and with the administration.
00:17:18.000 And we thank the administration for everything that they've done for us and continue to do for us.
00:17:24.000 But at the same time, we will have to, as a sovereign state, make the decisions to defend our country in the best possible way.
00:17:33.000 Now, in the beginning of the war, we were told, don't rush into Gaza.
00:17:38.000 So, it is still unclear exactly what Israel is going to do.
00:17:50.000 Israel obviously wants to retain the friendship of the United States.
00:17:53.000 They still have to work with Joe Biden and they still have to finish the job in the Gaza Strip.
00:17:58.000 According to the Times of Israel, the War Cabinet Monday afternoon, Wrapped up a discussion on Israel's response to Iran's massive missile and drone barrage amid calls for Jerusalem to exercise caution so as not to spark a regional war, reports that a retaliatory move could come as soon as Monday.
00:18:13.000 According to Channel 12, which is the biggest news station in Israel, they claim the war cabinet decided to hit back clearly and forcefully against Iran with a response designed to send the message that Israel, quote, will not allow an act of that magnitude against it to pass without reaction.
00:18:28.000 The response would also be designed to make plain that Israel will not allow the Iranians to establish the equation they have sought to assert in recent days.
00:18:33.000 This was an apparent reference to Iran's warning that future Israeli strikes on Iranian territory will henceforth again be met by Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel.
00:18:42.000 However, Israel wants to coordinate its actions with the United States.
00:18:46.000 Again, what this means, in all likelihood, is that Israel is first going to move forward with the finishing of Rafa, which is exactly what needs to happen.
00:18:53.000 The reality is that Israel has plenty of time to strike back against Iran, just on a tactical and strategic level.
00:18:59.000 Israel should wait until a more surprising moment to strike back against Iran.
00:19:03.000 The history of Israel's military action suggests that when Israel launches surprise attacks, as in 56, or 1967, or in Tebiraid, they're very successful.
00:19:12.000 When they telegraph their punches, as they have been doing for the last 30 years, most of my lifetime, then they are significantly less successful.
00:19:18.000 Because the world starts to get on their back before the thing is even done.
00:19:24.000 Well, the defense minister in Israel, Galant, he has suggested that they are already making efforts to evacuate Rafa before they go in, of course, that is in coordination with the United States again.
00:19:37.000 He held an assessment on the necessary civilian operations that need to be taken ahead of the IDF offensive in Rafa.
00:19:43.000 Meanwhile, John Kirby is starting to make more conciliatory signs toward the Israelis on finishing off Rafa.
00:19:48.000 Here he was saying that Israel has been increasing the humanitarian aid and is now doing more of what the United States would like to see in the Gaza Strip.
00:19:56.000 The aid has increased, and quite dramatically.
00:20:00.000 In just the last few days, more than 2,000 trucks have been able to get in.
00:20:04.000 I think I might be wrong on this number, but I think it's nearly 100 or so over the last 24 hours alone.
00:20:10.000 So the aid is getting in.
00:20:12.000 That's important, but it has to be sustained.
00:20:15.000 And what we also said was our policy with respect to Gaza will have to change if we don't see changes over time and have them sustained.
00:20:22.000 So, so far, yes.
00:20:24.000 They have been meeting the commitments they made to President Biden.
00:20:27.000 They have been doing the things that the President asked them to do, but we really need to see it sustained over time.
00:20:32.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:21:36.000 Meanwhile in the House, the House Republicans are pushing forward a series of measures designed to target Iran.
00:21:41.000 One of those would be additional sanctions against Iran.
00:21:44.000 Furthermore, the House Speaker is now planning to separate out Israel aid in order to pass that separately from Ukraine.
00:21:50.000 Right now the whole thing is being held up because a lot of Republicans are not fond of the The Ukraine aid.
00:21:54.000 A lot of Democrats are not fond of the Israel aid.
00:21:56.000 Either one separately would pass in the House of Representatives.
00:21:59.000 Both together would pass in the House of Representatives.
00:22:01.000 But the Speaker doesn't want to bring up both at the same time.
00:22:04.000 He's afraid, presumably, that if they pass as a package group, then Marjorie Taylor Greene will launch her idiotic motion to vacate and suddenly his job will be on the line.
00:22:13.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Johnson plans to bring separate bills funding Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to the House floor in a maneuver aimed at breaking a month-long deadlock Over a $95 billion foreign aid package the Senate passed earlier this year.
00:22:25.000 President Biden and Senate Democrats have been urging Johnson to take up the Senate bill.
00:22:29.000 Instead, Johnson is splitting the aid up in an effort to work around that large bloc of Republicans who are opposing sending more aid to Ukraine.
00:22:37.000 Speaking to reporters late on Monday, Johnson said his phone melted over the weekend with calls from GOP members about how to proceed.
00:22:42.000 He said it was the will of my colleagues to vote on these measures independently and not have them all sandwiched together as the Senate had done.
00:22:48.000 He says that he hopes to finish the votes on them this week.
00:22:51.000 This could presumably complicate efforts to get the aid packages to Biden's desk by forcing new action by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
00:22:58.000 The question is whether Joe Biden is literally going to veto aid to Israel in the middle of a war against Iran simply in order to get the Ukraine aid.
00:23:08.000 He might.
00:23:08.000 He is threatening to do just that.
00:23:11.000 Now, again, the reality is that the United States should pass some level of Ukraine aid.
00:23:17.000 What that Ukraine aid is to look like?
00:23:19.000 I can countenance arguments about anti-corruption, about the amount that's being sent, and all the rest.
00:23:25.000 But the reality is that it's in nobody's interest, particularly that of the United States, for Russia to simply overcome Ukraine's military capacity and walk into Kiev.
00:23:35.000 With that said, separating this out does put pressure on the Democrats to simply pass the aid for Israel in the moment.
00:23:41.000 Meanwhile, America's enemies continue to be on the move.
00:23:45.000 China continues to support Russia.
00:23:48.000 The Biden administration has this weird game where they sort of become a lawyer for America's opposition.
00:23:53.000 So the United States will say, well, you know, Israel really should come to the table with Hamas.
00:23:58.000 And then Hamas will reject literally every deal that is proposed.
00:24:01.000 And then the United States will say, well, maybe Israel should concede some more.
00:24:03.000 And Israel will do that.
00:24:04.000 And then Hamas will reject the deal.
00:24:07.000 The United States is now acting as a sort of bizarre lawyer for China as well.
00:24:12.000 So Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, who is truly terrible at her job, she has some meetings with the Chinese and she says that China heard our concerns about their support for Russia.
00:24:22.000 Well, that isn't really the question.
00:24:23.000 The question is, are they going to stop supporting Russia?
00:24:25.000 Because given your level of lack of deterrence, I have doubts.
00:24:30.000 Well, we've been extremely clear and I was clear at the highest levels in my meetings that the United States will not tolerate violations of our sanctions by Chinese banks or firms that are aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine and that if that's done that there will be consequences.
00:24:58.000 But did the Chinese seem responsive?
00:25:01.000 Do you expect Chinese policy to change?
00:25:06.000 I think they clearly heard our concerns and will consider them very carefully.
00:25:12.000 Well, that's a no.
00:25:12.000 This is one of my favorite aspects of diplomacy.
00:25:15.000 Well, they did hear our concerns.
00:25:17.000 Okay, well, who gives a crap whether they heard our concerns?
00:25:19.000 I would imagine they did.
00:25:20.000 They have ears and you expressed them.
00:25:23.000 The stupidity where we say a thing to our enemies and our enemies listen and then dismiss all of our concerns.
00:25:30.000 Nothing got done there.
00:25:31.000 China, by the way, is in fact ratcheting up its building of nuclear weapons.
00:25:37.000 They continue to increase their military spending.
00:25:41.000 According to the New York Times, the Pentagon says Beijing is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade's end to 1,000 from 500, a development senior U.S.
00:25:49.000 officials have publicly called unprecedented and breathtaking.
00:25:52.000 China has drastically expanded its nuclear testing facility and continued work on three new missile fields in the country's north, where more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos have recently been constructed.
00:26:05.000 China's transformation from a small nuclear power into an exponentially large one is a historic shift, upending the delicate two-peer balance of the world's nuclear weapons for the entirety of the atomic age.
00:26:14.000 So now there are three major nuclear players out there, and of course Taiwan remains a flashpoint.
00:26:20.000 W.J.
00:26:21.000 Hennigan, a columnist for the New York Times, he says that in February, China openly invited the United States and other nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty in which all sides would pledge never to use nuclear weapons first against one another.
00:26:33.000 I mean, that's a completely useless agreement.
00:26:35.000 No first use of nuclear weapons.
00:26:36.000 I promise and you promise.
00:26:37.000 Like the Kellogg-Briand Pact, that was an actual agreement that was signed by major powers in 1928 in Paris, and it outlawed war.
00:26:47.000 So well done everybody, because as we know, the 1930s ended up being unbelievably peaceful.
00:26:53.000 These sorts of moves in international diplomacy mean absolutely nothing.
00:26:56.000 The reality is China's building up their nuclear arsenal.
00:26:59.000 Get to more on this in a moment.
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00:28:12.000 Meanwhile, by the way, China continues to pour money into American research facilities.
00:28:16.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, American universities signed contracts around the world to sell their research and training expertise.
00:28:22.000 Some of their most lucrative agreements have been with companies based in China.
00:28:26.000 Nearly 200 U.S.
00:28:27.000 colleges and universities held contracts with Chinese businesses valued at $2.32 billion between 2012 and 2014, according to a review of the Wall Street Journal.
00:28:37.000 The journal tallied roughly 2,900 contracts.
00:28:42.000 According to Daniel Kirill, a Trump administration educational department official, By the way, when it comes to countries pouring money into the U.S.
00:28:47.000 universities, they're getting a capability they can't get anywhere else.
00:28:50.000 The big question is what contracts should be legal?
00:28:53.000 What should be legal and disclosable?
00:28:54.000 What should be illegal?
00:28:55.000 By the way, when it comes to countries pouring money into the US universities,
00:29:00.000 you're talking in the main about Qatar.
00:29:04.000 Qatar spends over $4 billion a year pouring money into American universities.
00:29:08.000 You wonder why so many American universities are oriented against Israel and seem to have a real soft spot for Iran.
00:29:14.000 Maybe it's the fact that Qatar has poured billions of dollars into American universities.
00:29:19.000 That is followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and then China clocking in at number four.
00:29:24.000 After that is Saudi Arabia.
00:29:27.000 I think there should be a basic rule that unless a country is an open ally of the United States, it should not be funding American research institutions, specifically in order to garner the results of that research.
00:29:39.000 Meanwhile, China continues to be incredibly militant.
00:29:42.000 According to The Sun, China is now bragging about its merciless execution of an alleged U.S.
00:29:47.000 spy in an unprecedentedly detailed admission.
00:29:50.000 The man's death sentence and execution were disclosed in a chilling propaganda documentary by the country's top counterespionage agency, the Ministry of State Security.
00:29:58.000 Monday marked the first time China indicated that a man named Kuan Yew, executed for spying in 2016, had sold secrets to the United States.
00:30:06.000 So now China is bragging about executing a person that they call a United States spy.
00:30:12.000 And America's enemies are on the move there.
00:30:13.000 On the move because Joe Biden is a weakling.
00:30:15.000 And the more weakness Joe Biden shows, the more those enemies are going to be on the move.
00:30:19.000 More than that, America's allies are going to quickly begin to triangulate.
00:30:22.000 Under Joe Biden, it is very dangerous to be an American ally.
00:30:25.000 Whether you are our Afghan allies in Afghanistan, who of course ended up under the tender mercy of the Taliban.
00:30:32.000 Whether it's the people of Hong Kong, who have really done poorly.
00:30:36.000 Whether it is the Kurds in Iraq.
00:30:39.000 The list goes on and on of American allies who have been abandoned over the past several decades.
00:30:44.000 Joe Biden has been particularly bad in this respect.
00:30:47.000 And meanwhile, the other big news of the day, of course, is that Donald Trump was in court yesterday.
00:30:52.000 This is all part and parcel of a broader attempt to finish Trump off.
00:30:56.000 Because after all, Democrats perceive Donald Trump as the chief threat to the Republic.
00:31:00.000 Joe Biden is such a bad president, the only way to keep him as president is to label Joe Biden's opponent the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to the United States of America, despite the fact that we know precisely what a Trump presidency would look like since we already did it.
00:31:13.000 We'll get to all that in just one second.
00:31:15.000 First, ladies and gents, if you haven't yet tuned into the new Dailyware Plus series Judge by Matt Walsh, consider this your subpoena to start.
00:31:21.000 For those who are already hooked on the series, get ready, because Court is back in session with episode three of the all-new reality courtroom comedy series premiering tonight, 8 p.m.
00:31:28.000 Eastern exclusively at Dailyware Plus.
00:31:30.000 Matt Walsh isn't just playing a judge.
00:31:32.000 He's donning the robe and wielding the gavel as a bona fide judge, resolving real disputes from real litigants.
00:31:36.000 And yes, his rulings are indeed enforceable.
00:31:38.000 This isn't your run-of-the-mill court TV.
00:31:40.000 This is really petty court at its finest with Judge Walsh presiding, determining the fate of all who dare to stand before him.
00:31:45.000 Episode 3 of Judge by Matt Walsh premieres tonight, 8 p.m.
00:31:48.000 Eastern exclusively at DailyWire+.
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00:31:58.000 Okay, meanwhile...
00:31:59.000 Because Joe Biden has set the world completely on fire, both domestically and mostly internationally, this means that Democrats have to come up with a narrative.
00:32:06.000 The narrative, of course, as you know it would be, is that Donald Trump is the biggest threat to the Republic ever.
00:32:10.000 Now, the problem with that particular narrative is that is going to create real unease among the half of the American population that is very likely to vote for Donald Trump.
00:32:18.000 If you wish people to believe that the election is going to be legitimate, you cannot say things like, we are justified in doing whatever we have to do to stop the other guy from winning.
00:32:28.000 That provides you with the motive for doing things that are untoward.
00:32:31.000 Like, for example, dragging the ex-president of the United States into court on a bunch of bullcrap charges with regard to him stooping a former porn star and then paying her money.
00:32:40.000 That was determined by the federal authorities, not to a violated campaign finance law on the federal level.
00:32:46.000 In any case, here is NBC's Jon Meacham.
00:32:48.000 I gotta say, the left-wing historians, they need to take a chill pill.
00:32:51.000 They have been completely untethered from reality.
00:32:53.000 Here's Jon Meacham suggesting that Donald Trump is a tyrant and America will fall if he wins.
00:33:00.000 In one of his first public speeches, Abraham Lincoln said that if the American Republic were ever to fall, it would not fall to a foreign foe.
00:33:07.000 It would fall to a tyrant who rose among us.
00:33:12.000 And I think that's essentially where we are.
00:33:16.000 You're exactly right.
00:33:17.000 What's unfolding in Manhattan today is part of a larger story about Donald Trump, his behavior, His view of whether or not American democracy exists for the good of the country or for the good of Donald Trump.
00:33:34.000 Well, I mean, he's obviously the threat to democracy is Donald Trump.
00:33:37.000 I mean, he was the president already, and this would be his last term in office, legally speaking.
00:33:43.000 But probably he'll be a tyrant or something.
00:33:45.000 Meanwhile, the president of the United States, the current one, who has run roughshod over the law, who openly brags about defying the Supreme Court of the United States on things like student loans, who intends to use his occupational safety and health administration to cram down vaccines on 80 million Americans.
00:34:01.000 That guy, he is the true democracy defender.
00:34:05.000 MSNBC's Michael Beschloss, another one of our bizarrely high historians.
00:34:10.000 I mean, honestly, I don't know where they're getting these historians these days, but they need a better class of historians.
00:34:14.000 Here he was, suggesting our founders would be appalled by Donald Trump.
00:34:17.000 Oh, you mean as opposed to the great centralizer of power in the executive branch, Joe Biden?
00:34:24.000 Like, seriously, name the things that Joe Biden and the founders agreed on.
00:34:26.000 Go.
00:34:28.000 Like, please, I'm waiting.
00:34:29.000 Here's Michael Beschloss.
00:34:31.000 So, Michael, first to you, what do you see at stake, in terms of history, in the way this trial is conducted and the way it turns out?
00:34:44.000 Well, let's have a very brief, and I promise, brief visit to our founders in 1787, writing the Constitution.
00:34:52.000 I think they felt that they had created a political system that would choose people as presidents who were not too likely to have been to be accused of criminal conduct.
00:35:03.000 I think that's safe.
00:35:04.000 So if they came back in 2024, the first thing they would say, I think, is, you know, our system did not work.
00:35:12.000 What happened?
00:35:13.000 I mean, honestly, I think if they came back in 2024, Donald Trump would be the least of their of their squabbles.
00:35:19.000 Honestly, they might look at the fact that pretty much everything they rebelled against the British Empire with regard to like, for example, taxation without representation, they might look at the administrative branch of the American government and go, uh, what is this?
00:35:32.000 We didn't put like, what is all of this?
00:35:34.000 Like this giant executive power that you've created?
00:35:37.000 What is this enormous federal government?
00:35:40.000 That we literally wrote a constitution in order to subvert.
00:35:43.000 What is this?
00:35:45.000 I think they probably start there.
00:35:46.000 Donald Trump might be a little lower on their list.
00:35:48.000 In any case, Donald Trump did, in fact, end up in court yesterday.
00:35:51.000 There were a series of rulings, some good for him, some bad.
00:35:54.000 Here he was prior to entering court, suggesting that his trial is an assault on the country.
00:35:59.000 And to be fair to him, it kinda is.
00:36:01.000 This is a very stupid case.
00:36:02.000 Remember, this is a case where he's being charged with 34 counts Those 34 counts are felony counts related to the fact that he wrote some 34 separate checks to Michael Cohen to reimburse his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for having paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her yap shut about the fact that she shtooped the president many moons ago.
00:36:24.000 That's what we're talking about here.
00:36:26.000 Now you ask yourself, wait a second, if that's a federal campaign finance violation, why isn't he being tried on the federal level?
00:36:31.000 And the answer is, he was never tried on the federal level.
00:36:34.000 The federal prosecutors decided that the case wasn't worth their time, that there was not a violation of law sufficient to justify a prosecution.
00:36:41.000 That didn't stop Manhattan D.A.
00:36:43.000 Alvin Bragg, who then decided that he was going to somehow jerry-rig this thing into a felony trial.
00:36:51.000 That he was going to suggest that Donald Trump had committed financial fraud by somehow labeling the payments to Michael Cohen as non-campaign related expenses.
00:37:04.000 This is an assault on America.
00:37:04.000 violation of federal campaign finance law. The whole case makes no sense
00:37:08.000 whatsoever from a legal level. So when Donald Trump says this is a violation of
00:37:12.000 Americans perception about how elections should work he's not wrong about that.
00:37:17.000 This is an assault on America. Nothing like this has ever happened before. There's never been anything like it.
00:37:24.000 Every legal scholar said this case is nonsense.
00:37:28.000 It should never have been brought.
00:37:30.000 It doesn't deserve anything like this.
00:37:33.000 There is no case, and they've said it, people that don't necessarily follow or like Donald Trump.
00:37:39.000 So this is an outrage that this case was brought.
00:37:43.000 This is political persecution.
00:37:44.000 This is a persecution like never before.
00:37:46.000 Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
00:37:49.000 And again, it's a case that should have never been brought.
00:37:53.000 It's an assault on America.
00:37:55.000 And that's why I'm very proud to be here.
00:37:57.000 This is an assault on our country.
00:38:00.000 So, this is a Manhattan jury.
00:38:01.000 That means that the jury is almost certain to be stacked against President Trump.
00:38:05.000 The judge in this case, Judge Merchant, made a couple of rulings yesterday in court.
00:38:10.000 One was that prosecutors cannot elicit testimony to the effect that Donald Trump's wife, Melania, was pregnant when another playboy model was stripping President Trump, allegedly.
00:38:21.000 So the jury won't hear that.
00:38:23.000 But prosecutors can still tell jurors about alleged efforts to suppress McDougal's story.
00:38:27.000 Karen McDougal.
00:38:28.000 That is because they're trying to set the precedent that Donald Trump was trying to shut up all the women he had stooped during the 2016 election.
00:38:34.000 They're trying to set a predicate for the idea that what Donald Trump was doing in paying hush money was not an attempt to shield his wife from the bad news.
00:38:41.000 It was instead an attempt to shield the American public from the bad news in advance of the election.
00:38:47.000 With that said, prosecutors will not be able to play the infamous Access Hollywood tape for jurors, but the judge said the prosecutors will be able to present internal campaign emails that Assistant District Attorney Steinglass said contained powerful evidence of the campaign's reaction to the incendiary language contained in the Access Hollywood video.
00:39:02.000 And they're trying to draw out the relationship between Donald Trump and the National Enquirer, which Donald Trump was allegedly using as a cutout in order to pay to kill stories.
00:39:13.000 That is what this case is all about.
00:39:15.000 With all that said, are Americans really that engaged with a story about Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal?
00:39:23.000 Is that what people are seriously caring about right now?
00:39:26.000 I think most of us are mostly concerned about what's happening in the Middle East.
00:39:29.000 You know, the fact that there might be a world war because of Joe Biden's weakness.
00:39:33.000 Many of us are concerned about the fact that Russia is on the move in Ukraine.
00:39:36.000 Many of us are concerned about the fact that inflation continues to be nearly 50% too high.
00:39:41.000 Like that seems more problematic.
00:39:44.000 But the media are focused like a laser beam on Donald Trump being in court because they love this.
00:39:48.000 Again, anything that stops Trump is, in fact, their priority.
00:39:53.000 With that said, apparently Donald Trump went to sleep in court today.
00:39:56.000 So Maggie Haberman said that.
00:39:59.000 Forty minutes ago, you wrote an observation that I was very surprised.
00:40:05.000 Trump appears to be sleeping.
00:40:06.000 His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.
00:40:10.000 Tell us about that.
00:40:13.000 Well, Jake, he appeared to be asleep.
00:40:15.000 Repeatedly, his head would fall down.
00:40:18.000 There have been other moments in other trials, like the Agent Carroll trial, which was around the corner in January, where he appeared very still and seemed as if he might be sleeping, but then he would move.
00:40:29.000 This time, he didn't pay attention to a note that his lawyer, Todd Blanche, passed him.
00:40:33.000 His jaw kept falling on his chest, and his mouth kept going slack.
00:40:37.000 Now, sometimes people do fall asleep during court proceedings, but it's notable, given Okay, or maybe Donald Trump is just like, whatever.
00:40:49.000 I mean, that would certainly fit the personality.
00:40:53.000 With all of that said, prosecutors are now trying to push for Donald Trump to be held in contempt.
00:40:59.000 According to Mediaite, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, who's inside the New York courthouse, tweeted, quote, while arguing for the admission of tweets and social media posts evocative of Trump's pressure campaign on witnesses, the DA's office drops this, shortly, we'll be asking an order to show cause why defendants should not be held in contempt for violating a gag order on him.
00:41:17.000 Again, the more the courts crack down on Trump on idiocy like this, I think the less it's going to hurt him.
00:41:23.000 And again, what it does set the predicate for, and this is all very dangerous stuff, because what it sets the predicate for, again, is the fact that if Donald Trump does not win the election in November, Republicans are rightly going to look at the processes that have been used, and they're going to ask a lot of questions.
00:41:38.000 One of the questions they might ask, for example, is why Democrats have been so stringent in attempting to fight, say, voter ID.
00:41:44.000 This is a very commonsensical idea, that you should have to show ID before you vote.
00:41:49.000 And yet here was the MSNBC panel over the weekend suggesting that that was just a terrible, no good, very bad thing.
00:41:55.000 Now, apparently, House Republicans are going to pursue legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
00:42:02.000 My question is, so we're going to show proof to Ms.
00:42:05.000 Suzy at the polling place?
00:42:09.000 How is Ms.
00:42:10.000 Suzy going to verify?
00:42:11.000 Are we asking people to bring their papers?
00:42:14.000 This is America.
00:42:15.000 So I just want to know, is this what all of the House Republicans want to prove?
00:42:20.000 Lay their chips on?
00:42:21.000 Even the 18 that sit in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020?
00:42:24.000 What strikes me is this is the long tail of a long time Republican effort to make it harder to vote because they know that some of those requirements, you know, having to show a license, they disproportionately impact communities of color.
00:42:38.000 And they just what's interesting to me is they also disproportionately impact older Americans.
00:42:43.000 Oh, yeah.
00:42:43.000 Right.
00:42:44.000 So that's the part that you would think that Republicans would be more attuned to strategically.
00:42:48.000 But I think the bigger, broader, scarier point, Alicia, is this is all to breed distrust in our elections process.
00:42:57.000 Okay, you know what you could do if you wish to fight that distrust?
00:42:59.000 Make people show ID when they vote.
00:43:02.000 You make them do it and they buy alcohol.
00:43:05.000 You make them do it every time they fly in a plane.
00:43:07.000 Why precisely should you not show ID to vote?
00:43:09.000 By the way, every single demographic in the United States is in favor of voter ID.
00:43:14.000 By polling data.
00:43:15.000 There is no, like, vast minority resistance to voter ID.
00:43:19.000 That's why when Republicans look at this sort of resistance, they're like, what are you even talking about?
00:43:23.000 Why are you...
00:43:24.000 And the answer that many people come to is maybe you're in favor of not having voter ID because you kind of like the idea of the voting being a little bit squirrely.
00:43:33.000 Okay, meanwhile, NPR continues to just be a complete and utter crap show.
00:43:38.000 So NPR has a brand new head.
00:43:40.000 That brand new head is a person named Catherine Marr.
00:43:43.000 So Chris Rufo, who just is the best in the business at finding receipts, he has now gone through the receipts of Catherine Meyer's Twitter.
00:43:52.000 And what he finds is that, of course, NPR's new head is a wild, insane person of the left.
00:44:00.000 Quote, I know that hysteric white woman voice.
00:44:02.000 I was taught to do it.
00:44:03.000 I've done it.
00:44:04.000 It's a disturbing recognition.
00:44:06.000 While I don't ever recall using it to deliberately expose another person to immediate physical harm on my own cognizance, it's not impossible.
00:44:11.000 That is whiteness.
00:44:13.000 He's writing about hysterical white woman voice in May, 2020.
00:44:19.000 She said that America is addicted to white supremacy.
00:44:22.000 She said in 2021, quote, never underestimate the ability of white people to center ourselves.
00:44:29.000 She says about Trump, quote, what is that deranged racist sociopath ranting about today?
00:44:36.000 In 2017, she celebrated, quote, rejecting binary gender frameworks.
00:44:44.000 In 2018, she said, just learned about the term incel.
00:44:46.000 Holy toxic masculinity.
00:44:50.000 She complained in 2016 about airline business class demographics being too white and too male.
00:44:58.000 So, um, yeah, this is the lady who is going to be leading all the efforts over at NPR.
00:45:03.000 I can't imagine why Republicans want to defund NPR.
00:45:05.000 This seems like a pretty easy one.
00:45:07.000 By the way, she even called Bill Maher a racist bigot in 2018.
00:45:10.000 Bill Maher is just a typical old-school Democrat.
00:45:15.000 Also, 2011, quote, I missed it.
00:45:17.000 Who was it that declared a fetus was genetically human from the point of conception?
00:45:20.000 Well, I should hope so.
00:45:23.000 I mean, I'm confused.
00:45:25.000 Of course it's genetically human from point of conception.
00:45:28.000 What are you talking about?
00:45:32.000 This is the person who had to be the head of it.
00:45:35.000 By the way, this person was also the head of Wikimedia.
00:45:37.000 So if you ever worry about the politics on Wikipedia, that would be the reason why.
00:45:43.000 Truly amazing stuff from the brand new head of NPR.
00:45:45.000 This is directly in the aftermath of a free press piece that we talked about last week in which a high-ranking former member of NPR staff pointed out that NPR has basically just become a propaganda outlet on behalf of the wild left.
00:45:57.000 So, great way of rebutting that accusation by hiring a person who appears to be directly from the fever dreams of Bernie Sanders.
00:46:05.000 Really, really well done stuff.
00:46:07.000 Okay, I have a quick thing that I like and that I have to play for you.
00:46:09.000 So, there is a UFC fighter.
00:46:12.000 I've never seen anything like this.
00:46:13.000 The UFC fighter's name is Renato Moicano.
00:46:16.000 And he had just won a fight.
00:46:18.000 He's from Brazil.
00:46:19.000 He had just won a fight at UFC 300.
00:46:22.000 And he proceeded to launch into an economic disquisition.
00:46:25.000 And, gotta say, loving it.
00:46:28.000 Here we go.
00:46:30.000 Yeah!
00:46:31.000 Love it!
00:46:32.000 That's amazing!
00:46:32.000 Man, talk about using the opportunity.
00:46:34.000 You win a UFC fight.
00:46:37.000 Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian Economic School, mother******!
00:46:43.000 Yeah!
00:46:44.000 Love it! That's amazing! Man, talk about using the opportunity. You win a UFC fight, I mean,
00:46:53.000 like, this is me doing rap but in reverse. Right, there's a UFC fighter who just beat
00:46:57.000 the hell out of somebody and he's like, and now I want you to read Ludwig von Mises
00:47:01.000 and the six lessons of the Austrian School.
00:47:04.000 So first of all, that's my jam, people.
00:47:06.000 I mean, go watch the Sunday special that we just did with Javier Mille, who's also a devotee of the Austrian School of Economics.
00:47:14.000 Yeah, baby, read yourself some Ludwig von Mises and then read yourself some Friedrich von Hayek.
00:47:20.000 Really, read some Baum-Baerwerk.
00:47:21.000 Like, do it, man.
00:47:22.000 This is the good stuff.
00:47:25.000 Austrian School of Economics getting cited at UFC.
00:47:28.000 You know, I gotta say, I started off as not a UFC fan because I'm not in favor of brutal violence, and now I gotta say, kind of a fan.
00:47:35.000 Kind of there.
00:47:36.000 First of all, I like Dana White.
00:47:37.000 I'm friendly with Dana White.
00:47:38.000 But second of all, like, that's awesome.
00:47:42.000 The world would be a better place if more people read Ludwig von Mises.
00:47:45.000 At some point, I'm gonna have to explain who Ludwig von Mises is.
00:47:49.000 Suffice it to say, the Austrian School of Economics, those are the founders of what is called the Marginal Revolution in Economics.
00:47:56.000 The Marginal Revolution in Economics, to give you a very brief exposition.
00:48:01.000 So, their key discovery and their key finding is that there was a basic idea in classical economics that was then picked up by Karl Marx, that value in any good product or service is to be found in labor.
00:48:15.000 That the amount of labor, capital, and Land, for example, that go into the making of a product, create the price of the product.
00:48:23.000 That's where the value of a product comes from that.
00:48:27.000 There are a bunch of problems with that particular theory, the labor theory of value.
00:48:30.000 The biggest problem with the labor theory of value is that it's obviously not true.
00:48:35.000 If I'm walking along on the beach and I find a pearl, that pearl is more valuable than something that I worked a lot on.
00:48:41.000 Why?
00:48:42.000 And the answer comes courtesy of the Austrian School of Economics and Ludwig von Mises.
00:48:47.000 And that answer is that the value of an object is in what you are willing to pay for it.
00:48:54.000 So it is not that you actually calculate the price of an object, a good or a service, with reference to how much is labor inherently worth, or land inherently worth, or capital inherently worth, or a combination thereof.
00:49:05.000 That's not how you've bought any product in your entire life.
00:49:06.000 The way that you buy a product is you go to the store and you decide, what is it worth to me?
00:49:11.000 That is the Marginal Revolution.
00:49:12.000 It's called the Marginal Revolution because the idea is that prices are set at the margin.
00:49:16.000 And one of the big problems in classical economics is what's called the Water Diamonds Problem.
00:49:22.000 Here is the Water Diamonds Problem.
00:49:24.000 It is going pretty deep on a UFC quote here, but this is what he's talking about.
00:49:28.000 The Water Diamonds Problem goes like this.
00:49:30.000 Why is a glass of water less expensive than a diamond?
00:49:35.000 A glass of water is significantly more valuable just in terms of pure utility than a diamond.
00:49:39.000 You can't really use a diamond for anything.
00:49:40.000 Most of us aren't gonna buy diamonds and then use them in order to craft things
00:49:44.000 in terms of engineering.
00:49:45.000 So why exactly is a glass of water less valuable than a diamond?
00:49:49.000 And the answer that classical economics had a tough time with,
00:49:52.000 but that the marginal economists were able to answer very easily,
00:49:55.000 is you're not paying for all the water in the entire world.
00:49:57.000 If you're paying for all the water in the entire world, that would indeed be more valuable
00:50:00.000 than all the diamonds in the entire world.
00:50:01.000 You are paying for what the glass of water is worth to you right now.
00:50:04.000 And the glass of water is not worth very much to you because you can just go and find the sink
00:50:09.000 and get yourself another glass of water right now.
00:50:11.000 Whereas you cannot find yourself a diamond right now.
00:50:14.000 So the marginal utility of the diamond is significantly higher than the glass of water.
00:50:18.000 And there may be circumstances where the glass of water is significantly more valuable to you than the diamond.
00:50:22.000 You're dying of thirst in the desert.
00:50:24.000 Now you don't care about the diamond, you care about the glass of water.
00:50:26.000 In other words, value is in the eye of the beholder.
00:50:28.000 That is a very crucial finding in economics.
00:50:32.000 Because once you understand the subjective theory of value, you can no longer say that there is such a thing as an exploitative profit margin.
00:50:40.000 That there's the real value of the thing, and then there's an exploitative profit that's put on top, right?
00:50:44.000 This is the basic theory of Marxism, is that workers create a certain baseline level of value, and then the evil capitalist comes along and creates profit and makes them work extra.
00:50:53.000 That's not how that works.
00:50:55.000 The way that labor is actually valued is by the person who's purchasing the labor.
00:50:59.000 And then profit is the additional value that is placed on the final product as produced by the capitalists who had to invest in the machinery and the marketing and the organization and all the rest.
00:51:10.000 Okay, so there is a quick disposition on the Marginal School of Economics, the Austrian School of Economics and the Marginal Revolution.
00:51:16.000 And thanks to our friend over at the UFC for citing Ludwig von Mises because I never get an opportunity to talk about that kind of stuff.
00:51:22.000 Alrighty, coming up.
00:51:23.000 We are going to talk about RFK Jr.
00:51:26.000 He claims that Donald Trump offered him the VP slot.
00:51:28.000 We'll get into it.
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