00:01:14.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:22.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:26.000And, you know, I think if you go back to his very first day in office, if you remember, you know, energy independence is truly, truly a security issue, it's not a climate issue.
00:02:44.000And if you look at what we're doing these days and you look, we take folks a couple times a year out to Harold Hamm's Bakken Shale and show them that the only damage that's being done to the climate is being done as a result of the directives of the Biden administration.
00:03:03.000But if you recall, the very first thing he did the day that he was elected or sworn in on January 20th, the next morning he canceled the Keystone Pipeline.
00:03:15.000And I remember telling everybody that day, this is a disaster about to happen to the United States.
00:03:22.000And it's not only a result of that, it's a result of our security.
00:03:27.000If you look at this, if you remember the earliest moves that the administration made were all against fossil fuel.
00:03:36.000And every alternative energy source depends on fossil fuel for their raw material.
00:03:44.000I mean, what do you make solar panels out of?
00:03:48.000And the only effect it's got on the climate is a result of the fact that you've got to flare all of this gas because there's no other way to transport it.
00:03:59.00090% of the aviation fuel in the United States is produced in the Houston Ship Channel, in the Port of Houston, along the Ship Channel here.
00:04:09.000And I think it's something like 70, 80% of the gasoline.
00:04:13.000So you've got to be able to get it down here.
00:04:15.000Well, how are you going to move gasoline?
00:04:18.000How are you going to move oil to begin with?
00:04:20.000You're going to do it through pipeline.
00:04:24.000There's only so many trains, and they're all filled.
00:04:26.000You're going to do it through trucks, and they're all filled.
00:04:29.000And they've got to get down here to the Houston Ship Channel.
00:04:33.000Are arguably to some extent to Long Beach.
00:04:36.000And if they don't get here, we're not going to produce oil.
00:04:39.000And if you look at these issues, anytime there's a natural disaster like we're facing right now in California, I mean, I don't know for a fact, but I got to believe all the refineries in Long Beach are closed down.
00:04:54.000Well, why do we have a strategic petroleum reserve?
00:04:58.000We have a strategic petroleum reserve so that when the refineries shut down, there is a supply of Of gas to give to the areas that are going through a disaster.
00:05:12.000It's certainly going on in Hawaii right now.
00:05:15.000But all of those things being said, the other thing is energy independence, which is what, for the most part, Harold Hamm created.
00:05:25.000I love to tell him there's only one place in America that he's not the single icon of the industry, and that's in Houston, because we had George Mitchell down here who also discovered.
00:06:09.000From a policy perspective, what has Biden done?
00:06:12.000I know that he probably has not been expanding leases.
00:06:15.000He also is, it's probably stuff, this is the way the Chinese Communist Party works.
00:06:19.000It's stuff that's hard to always prove, but I hear from people that are in the space more audits, more headaches from the EPA, just kind of government knocking on their door more.
00:07:15.000You couldn't drill offshore, which is all for the most part in international waters.
00:07:21.000Then finally, he said, Well, maybe we'll promote this a little bit, but then you couldn't get a permit.
00:07:28.000Well, hello, how are you going to drill a well if you can't get a permit?
00:07:33.000And the permitting process, even after he said he's going to support drilling, which he never meant, by slowing down the permitting process, this is what you're talking about.
00:08:19.000You're not going to have alternative energy and forget the effect that that's got on the environment.
00:08:24.000I mean, how many bald eagles get killed a year trying to get through Aransas Pass down in their normal migration in geese offshore Texas because of the wind farms that are out here?
00:08:36.000So, and you know, when the wind doesn't blow, which it doesn't a lot, okay, in West Texas, Texas is the biggest producer of wind energy, but only when the wind's blowing.
00:08:49.000So, I mean, all of these things count, Charlie, towards what has happened to America.
00:08:57.000And the fact that we have allowed China to, if you look at what's happened to American exceptionalism and you look at what has allowed China to do in taking our place as the exceptional country in the world.
00:09:11.000We were always the guardian of the world.
00:09:29.000And now they're turning back to Iran because they don't firmly believe.
00:09:34.000Again, look at what the Biden administration did to us in Afghanistan.
00:09:39.000Look what they've done in Syria, although they've started a little action there.
00:09:44.000So all these countries that always relied on us now feel that they can't rely on us.
00:09:50.000And they've gone back to buying all this sanctioned oil from Iran, who is now producing, and Russia, who's under sanctions.
00:10:00.000We didn't, we didn't, we greatly curtailed the export of LNG.
00:10:06.000So all of a sudden, all of Western Europe was dependent on Russian oil and didn't join us for the most part in the early days of the war in Ukraine because they didn't want to come out against Russia.
00:13:36.000California says they're going to do whatever's going to become an electric car, except they tell you their grid is no good.
00:13:45.000You look at, I mean, Texas, I'm the proudest Texan there is, but I mean, one of the issues we have here is that we went all independent here.
00:13:54.000If we have a power problem like we did a couple of years ago, we can't look to any outside our state.
00:14:00.000We don't have to give it to anybody else who's got a problem, but it's not coming here either.
00:14:05.000But it has destroyed American exceptionalism.
00:14:09.000It has made us dependent on imports again.
00:14:13.000The fact that we have two lifetimes, two lifetimes, I mean, how many thousand years of supply of natural gas that we have that we are flaring into the air, which, by the way, is the only Damage, if you will, that we're doing to the climate, to the environment.
00:14:31.000And it's not that much because it's in such isolated places.
00:14:36.000But these are the issues that continue to come up.
00:14:40.000Who made the biggest contribution to the Paris Peace Accords?
00:14:48.000It was the United States, and we weren't the problem.
00:14:50.000So, yeah, we're going to, half of the reduction in emissions is going to come from us.
00:14:59.000So, okay, so we go from 9% to 4%, right?
00:15:03.000And that still leaves 96% of it coming from China, coming from Eastern Europe, coming from the countries that are depending on coal.
00:15:12.000And if you look at the emissions from the coal plants in the United States, and by the way, it's my understanding that 30% of the power still produced in the United States is coal produced.
00:15:23.000But if you look at the changes that have been made, I mean, nobody, nobody could be more off track.
00:15:30.000Than Joe Biden was and President Biden was in that debate and the comments that he made about the pollution of the environment.
00:15:46.000This industry has cleaned it up so much.
00:15:49.000I mean, we have walked through coal plants and there is no emission.
00:15:53.000If you go out to any production facility, the only emission at all is gas flaring.
00:16:01.000And that's just because this administration has cut back the only way of getting gas out of the field and down to Galveston where you can turn it into fuel oil.
00:16:15.000What's going to happen if all of a sudden?
00:16:17.000He's successful, and you cut production.
00:16:45.000You know, we're certainly not going to be secure.
00:16:48.000We are intentionally impoverishing our nation.
00:16:51.000And the other part of Council of Secure America is the relationship with Israel.
00:16:57.000And that's being stressed tremendously right now because of the relationship with this administration and the things that they're doing with regard to that.
00:17:08.000You know, they're talking about not, you know, about cutting aid to Israel.
00:17:13.000And who is our eyes and ears in the Middle East?
00:18:47.000Dr. EJ Antoni, economist for the Heritage Foundation.
00:18:51.000Doctor, so much happening in the news right now.
00:18:53.000How should we think about the BRICS summit, and what does that mean for the American dollar and the American economy?
00:18:59.000Well, Charlie, I think the best way to look at this is yet another failure of Bidenomics.
00:19:04.000One of the key elements of the president's economic plan has been the destruction of the dollar, whether intentional or not.
00:19:12.000They have destroyed the dollar at home by devaluing it.
00:19:17.000We've seen the dollar lose 16% of its value in an incredibly short period of time just since Biden took office.
00:19:25.000But we've also seen an effective devaluation of the dollar abroad.
00:19:29.000We've seen that through The unprecedented sanctions imposed by Russia, the confiscation of Russian dollars.
00:19:37.000And what that has done is shaken people's confidence around the world in our currency.
00:19:42.000And as a result of that, you now have countless individuals who are wondering whether or not the dollar is still a safe bet anymore or whether they actually need a safer alternative, such as a gold backed currency.
00:19:55.000And that's one of the things that these BRICS countries are looking at.
00:20:00.000So, do you see any urgency or concern from our leaders?
00:20:05.000I just feel as if our leaders are ignoring the fact that we might lose the status as the global reserve currency.
00:20:12.000Not only have they been ignoring it and downplaying it, But now, as it is becoming increasingly a reality, we are seeing some of them acknowledge the fact that it's happening.
00:20:23.000And they're going from saying it can't happen to brushing off the consequences.
00:20:27.000We've seen that with the Treasury Secretary, for example, Janet Yellen, saying that, oh, yes, de dollarization is actually happening.
00:20:39.000It absolutely is a problem because the global reserve currency status is the mechanism by which, We have effectively been exporting deficits for about seven decades.
00:20:51.000And now imagine if seven decades worth of deficits all come rushing back into the United States.
00:20:57.000The result of that would be absolutely catastrophic.
00:21:00.000You would see inflation not of an extra 1%, 2%, but 10, 20, 30, 100%.
00:21:08.000Again, it is difficult to overstate just how catastrophic that would be.
00:21:13.000And our leaders really don't seem to care.
00:21:16.000What would be a prudent American response then to these nations trying to join BRICS, like India and Mexico?
00:21:22.000The most prudent thing would be for the United States to get together with all of the nations in BRICS and to go back to some kind of commodity backed currency, to say, look, let's all have currencies that are backed by commodities, and we can develop fixed ratios again between our different currencies.
00:21:41.000In other words, let's say a dollar is redeemable for one two thousandth of an ounce of gold, and then we have a similar fraction.
00:21:50.000For the Chinese yuan, for the Brazilian currency, currencies in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany, et cetera.
00:21:57.000And then once you have that standard in place, you don't have these competing devaluations, for example, anymore.
00:22:04.000I don't see anybody in the kind of American ruling class seem overly concerned.
00:22:09.000But so, EJ, if you were to say this economy is one of the most confusing economies I've ever seen, and the devaluation doesn't exactly play neatly into that, if it happens at all with the BRICS nation.
00:22:24.000How would you grade the health of the American economy currently?
00:22:32.000And one of the reasons for that is because we have a very big difference between the aggregate numbers and how the average American is doing.
00:22:40.000Just one very good example of that is the fact that virtually all working class folks, people in the lower and middle income classes, have completely exhausted their pandemic era savings that they had, and they are now going into debt to just Be able to afford not luxuries, but necessities.
00:22:57.000Conversely, the upper income spectras, they still have pandemic era savings left over.
00:23:04.000And so when we look at savings, we see that they remain elevated today, but it's almost exclusively among a very small group of people.
00:23:11.000So for the vast majority of Americans, the economy is not doing well.
00:23:15.000More than half of small business owners believe we're already in recession today.
00:23:20.000And so we very, very likely will officially be in a recession.
00:23:24.000By the end of this year, or sometime at the beginning of next year, we have just far too many economic indicators that are pointing in the wrong direction.
00:23:32.000So, EJ, can you just give me some ideas?
00:23:34.000So, when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed right around February and March, is it true that the Federal Reserve quietly expanded their balance sheet and increased the money supply?
00:23:45.000It feels that from that point forward, we had this little sugar high of an artificial increase in the Dow, where obviously dollars will find its way to the Dow if you expand the balance sheet.
00:23:55.000Is that a fair assessment of what's happened so far this year, EJ?
00:23:58.000Because this market is ridiculously overpriced.
00:24:02.000So, Charlie, if you put two things on a chart together, one being The securities held by the Fed.
00:24:08.000So that's all of the bonds, bills, notes, et cetera.
00:24:10.000And then total assets, which would include other things like loans to banks.
00:24:15.000You see something very interesting happen in March.
00:24:17.000While the securities that the Fed holds continue to just steadily decline as that chart moves forward, you all of a sudden get this huge spike, hundreds of billions of dollars worth in total assets.
00:24:29.000And that's that emergency lending that you were just talking about.
00:24:34.000So you absolutely did see a big spike.
00:24:36.000And also, we've seen not only the Federal Reserve willing to bail out these bad actors and create a moral hazard, but on top of that, they have failed to continuously raise interest rates at a pace that is necessary to really tame inflation.
00:24:51.000We actually saw the money supply grow for the last couple of months.
00:24:55.000So far from taking everything they can to try to fight inflation, they are truly doing this in a very half hearted way.
00:25:03.000But that's necessary in order for them to continue funding all of Biden's and Congress's unfunded government spending.
00:25:10.000Is there anything that could be done to slow this down?
00:25:14.000I mean, from a policy perspective, obviously, there's some things that be done.
00:25:16.000But I'm afraid that we're going to see a simultaneous collision of the worst possible economic effects where we're going to continue to see high inflation, low growth.
00:25:29.000The thing we haven't seen yet, EJ, but I think we're starting to see the beginning of it, is the labor market start to dry up.
00:25:36.000Then we're going to have some huge concerns.
00:25:38.000Are you seeing early indicators of that?
00:25:40.000We are, we're seeing early indicators of precisely that.
00:25:43.000You know, manufacturing tends to lead the rest of the economy, for example, into recession.
00:25:49.000And when you look at the manufacturing surveys done by each of the regional Federal Reserve banks around the country, universally, you have seen manufacturing not just slow down in terms of growth, but actually begin to contract.
00:26:01.000And so you are seeing some job losses in that sector, which again is a very strong indication that the rest of the labor market is soon going to turn that way.
00:26:19.000And it's very likely that they're going to show that the number of jobs created over the last year is not actually as high as we thought it was.
00:26:27.000They are playing games, intentional games and manipulations with these numbers.
00:26:32.000EJ, what's the best case scenario here?
00:26:36.000Is the best case scenario that somehow there is this legitimate artificial intelligence sugar high and it results in higher productivity and higher growth and we're able to?
00:26:44.000Persevere because I'm afraid, even the kind of just balancing the worst and the best to kind of the average, this is going to be a very difficult economic year and a half upcoming for most Americans.
00:26:59.000You know, we've already had a very difficult year and a half looking backwards, and now looking forwards, we are probably going to have another difficult year and a half because the government continues overspending, over regulating, and therefore also over borrowing and over printing money.
00:27:14.000And a consequence of that is not only slow economic growth.
00:27:20.000This claptrap about how inflation has been trending towards 2%, it's utter nonsense.
00:27:24.000If you look at the monthly inflation data for the last year and you annualize that out, what you find is that inflation has not been trending towards 2%.
00:27:58.000Everything is getting more expensive and the economy is grinding to a halt in a very serious way.
00:28:05.000But yet, EJ, Chuck Schumer says it's the best economy we've ever had.
00:28:10.000If you're one of the ruling elites, Charlie, and you don't have to face the ramifications of your own actions, in other words, the policies you put in place don't actually affect you, then yes, things are going just fine right now.
00:28:23.000If you're a wealthy elite and you have lots of money in hard assets like a house or even equities like the stock market, then those things are in.
00:28:31.000Inflating with value as other prices rise.
00:28:34.000And so your net wealth is rising as well.
00:28:39.000The average American last month, Charlie, was effectively paying an inflation tax on his wages of $4.60 an hour every hour he worked.
00:28:50.000Compare that to federal income taxes, which cost the average American worker less than $4 an hour.
00:28:55.000In other words, inflation under Joe Biden has effectively more than doubled what you pay in federal income taxes.
00:29:02.000That is just crushing working class folks in this country.
00:29:06.000Energy is a huge part of the American economy.
00:29:11.000And right now, we are being lectured that we need to transition to a green economy.
00:29:16.000What would that mean for the economy in general?
00:29:18.000What evidence do we have that that's a really bad idea?
00:29:20.000Well, it would send us back to the Stone Age.
00:29:22.000I mean, my goodness, none of these things are actually efficient, these things that the left wants, whether that's wind power, solar power, you name it.
00:29:31.000If these things were actually as efficient and as profitable as the left claims they are, then private business would be doing these things already.
00:29:55.000You can actually remove all of those particulates and other harmful particles and molecules from the exhaust streams of those power plants.
00:30:04.000You can have clean, reliable, domestic American energy, and you can do it very easily if you simply remove All of the regulations and tax burdens that we have in place on coal, oil, and natural gas, and even nuclear, frankly.
00:30:19.000But I mean, it's just absolutely nonsensical to think that you can take a net negative like solar, like wind, for example, and you can somehow run the country's electrical grid off of that.
00:30:31.000It is completely and totally ideologically driven, not driven on what is best for the economy, but ideologically driven.
00:31:11.000Well, we're made of carbon, so I suppose that means this is part of the left's war on humanity, just like abortion, you could say.
00:31:17.000But I mean, please explain to me how climate change had anything to do with the decision to withhold water from firefighting efforts in Maui for five hours while literally thousands of people burned to death.
00:31:31.000This has nothing to do with climate change.
00:31:33.000This is everything to do with failed government policies.
00:31:37.000It's, I mean, the decarbonization argument is perfect.
00:31:40.000Well, are you going to get rid of human beings?
00:31:41.000Because that's, I mean, we're all made of carbon.
00:32:22.000Now, mind you, the common man is not going to get bailed out, but once again, it will be the bad actors on a big scale, things like the banks that we saw in March.
00:32:32.000EJ Antoni from the Heritage Foundation.