The Matt Walsh Show - Daily Wire Backstage： The State Of The Union Address

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, this is Matt Walsh, and you're about to listen to a special episode of Daily

00:00:03.100 Wire Backstage. Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Candace Owens,

00:00:06.620 and yours truly, react to Joe Biden's State of the Union address, followed by an official

00:00:10.340 response from Ben Shapiro, where he'll reveal the real State of the Union. You don't want to

00:00:15.000 miss it. Check it out.

00:00:30.000 Even the fake laughs are phoned in around here, folks. Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage,

00:00:48.840 State of the Union coverage. Joining us tonight, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Andrew Klavan, Matt

00:00:52.900 Walsh, Michael Knowles, and I, your friendly neighborhood, lowercase g, lowercase k, God

00:00:58.300 King. We're going to be watching the President of the United States here in 45 minutes, or

00:01:03.140 probably more likely an hour and 45 minutes. Democrats are notoriously late for everything

00:01:07.840 because they have no respect for anyone, and Joe Biden is no exception. I believe last week

00:01:12.260 he was almost 90 minutes late to a speech, so who knows? We could be up all night, but

00:01:17.160 when the President does make his debut, once they get him good and doped up and propped

00:01:20.740 up, we will be hearing a farcical report on the state of our union. I say farcical because

00:01:28.120 if the President were to tell the truth, he would have to cede his office tomorrow, and

00:01:33.500 then Kamala Harris would be President, and all would be well, and the Republican would

00:01:37.100 be immediately restored. As soon as the President finishes his remarks, we'll come back and spend

00:01:44.080 a little bit of time breaking them down for you, giving you our reaction, and then exactly

00:01:48.520 15 minutes after the President wraps his remarks, our very own Benjamin Shapiro will be giving

00:01:53.920 the Daily Wire official State of the Union response. People have been asking me all week,

00:01:58.700 you know, why are you doing that? I mean, there's already an official GOP response, and I say,

00:02:02.400 that is why we're doing it. The whole problem with the official party response to the, and this isn't

00:02:08.060 just picking on the GOP, both parties are guilty of this, the problem with the official response to

00:02:12.340 the State of the Union is that it has to go through all of the different, the party apparatus,

00:02:17.140 the leadership of the party in both houses of Congress, has to go through all these staffers to get

00:02:22.980 approvals. The result of that is it isn't actually a response to the President's State of the Union

00:02:28.320 address, it's actually something that's been written many days or even weeks in advance, and that's why

00:02:33.880 nobody cares about it. It's basically like the graveyard of a political career when you get the nod to

00:02:39.280 come up to the big leagues and give the response, that's it, that's as far, you have reached the pinnacle

00:02:43.680 of your political career. Even for President Bobby Jindal? Oh, yeah. Well, Rubio, President Rubio.

00:02:49.240 President Rubio, yeah. It's just the worst thing you can be asked to do, uh, is to get this response,

00:02:53.100 and so it's tepid, it's, it's, it's polled, it's, uh, overly censored. What Ben's gonna do is the exact

00:03:00.580 opposite, as only Ben can. He's going to watch the President speak, and then 15 minutes later, he is going

00:03:06.320 to react to the President's speech, and in that way, even, even I, uh, a lowly god king, will not have been

00:03:12.200 able to approve the things that are going to come out of Ben's mouth, and so they will be more or

00:03:16.280 less true, although with a slightly Jewish perspective. Things will be said. Things will

00:03:23.160 be said. That cannot be unsaid, and, uh, and, I mean, look, the, the, the truth is that predicting what

00:03:27.560 Joe Biden is going to say tonight is really easy. There'll be a lot of Bill Bakshian angry. He's

00:03:31.220 going to talk a little bit about the Kramberdus. He's going to talk about Afgadabdus. Yep. Right?

00:03:35.320 Like, there's a lot that he can say. And Candace, you made a good point that at some point,

00:03:38.520 will get angry Joe Biden. Yeah, out of nowhere. He just gets angry every time he's speaking, and

00:03:42.540 you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down, old man. He's going to come out against cancer. That I'm

00:03:48.180 excited about. They've announced that he's going to come out with, uh, with his new initiative, which

00:03:51.400 is to cure cancer. It's very, it's a very bold move on his part. I thought so, too. Because the, the,

00:03:55.540 the pro-cancer lobby will, will not like that at all. I wouldn't be surprised if some people in the

00:04:01.040 GOP actually took that, that stance. We are pretty reactionary these days. Like, right-wing Twitter

00:04:06.400 tonight is not going to be a place for anyone with something. What do you mean you're against

00:04:09.700 cancer? What's wrong? He will misread. He'll actually read out loud the cues on the prompter

00:04:13.600 at some point. Yeah, yeah. Applause. Applause. Yeah. I just want him to whisper. I love him.

00:04:18.840 Pause. The sincere whisper. Square. Square. Square. Square. Well, you know, Kamala Harris already gave

00:04:24.600 the State of the Union address when she went off script yesterday and said, you know, told her

00:04:28.180 audience that you got what you asked for. Yeah. That's the State of the Union. People are getting

00:04:34.600 what they asked for. Good and hard. Good and hard. Democracy is a theory that people deserve

00:04:39.140 what they want. Get it good and hard. Yeah, that's right. You know, obviously we don't need

00:04:44.360 to say too much about it now because we're going to get a chance to react directly to it. But

00:04:48.520 obviously the State of the Union is complete disrepair. I mean, in my lifetime, our country

00:04:53.560 has not been in this bad a predicament. I mean, Jimmy Carter was president when I was born,

00:04:57.360 but it was toward the end. Like, you could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Jimmy Carter,

00:05:00.660 I remember Carter. He was nowhere near this bad. And he actually course corrected. He did what

00:05:05.900 Obama never did. He changed his mind. He said, oh, I was wrong about things. He said he was wrong

00:05:10.280 about business. When the Soviets went into Afghanistan, he was shocked and realized that

00:05:16.020 he had made a mistake. I mean, he was a terrible president. But even he. Yeah, but he was not asleep.

00:05:22.420 The other thing is that everything that has happened in the last year is on Joe Biden. Yes.

00:05:27.360 When you look at the worst first years of any presidents in history, usually you have to go

00:05:32.220 like Abraham Lincoln had natural secession at the beginning of his presidency. Or you have to talk

00:05:36.480 about George W. Bush who had 9-11. Those are things that happened to them. Nothing that's happening

00:05:40.340 right now happened to Joe Biden. It happened because of Joe Biden. That's right. Joe Biden

00:05:44.500 happened. Right. Joe Biden happened. Like, like there was no way it is beyond imagining how he could

00:05:50.000 have screwed things up this badly. Like when he came into office, you're like, there's no way he can

00:05:53.360 screw this up. He's being given a vaccine. It works. He's going to be he's he's giving him a

00:05:57.680 distribution plan. He's giving an economy that's about to come back if he just gets the hell out

00:06:01.180 of the way. He's been had the Abraham Accords in the Middle East. He's got Russia and China fairly

00:06:04.560 in check. Things will be fine. Right. I mean, like all the all the old man has to do is do what he did

00:06:08.180 during the campaign. Go back down into the basement, drink and sure and go to sleep. That's all he has

00:06:11.880 to do. And somehow he managed to screw. I was actually concerned. I was actually concerned

00:06:15.700 when he ascended to the presidency that it would that the Democrats would be undefeatable

00:06:20.340 afterwards, because when you artificially shut down a roaring economy. Yeah, it's going to come

00:06:25.700 back. It's going to come back. Well, they are saying that now they are saying he's the greatest

00:06:29.120 jobs president ever, because when you lock everyone at home and then you let them go out,

00:06:32.820 numbers look pretty good. But the question I have for this state of the union is how does he get away

00:06:39.140 with it? How does a man with a 37 percent approval rating whose vice president had a 27 percent approval

00:06:44.820 rating who the highest rated member of his cabinet is Pete Buttigieg has a 38 percent approval rating.

00:06:50.160 It seems like people are so awake on these issues. I don't really see how the gaslighting is going

00:06:55.200 to work. So what does he say beyond just another pro-cancer republic? I know right here. You

00:07:01.840 under you underestimate their disdain for the American people. Joe Biden actually said people

00:07:06.840 are doing great. They're psychologically impaired by covid so they can't experience the happiness

00:07:11.920 that I've brought to them. He actually he actually said that. And I mean, I mean, he is psychologically

00:07:16.080 impaired. He's actually he's not totally wrong in that people have been psychologically damaged by

00:07:21.940 by him, but by him and especially kids. That's it. Speaking of which, I mean, we're so we've got 30

00:07:27.600 minutes left of covid, which is a which is big news. Covid is officially over now. I mean, of course,

00:07:32.200 it's one big coincidence that right before the State of the Union, you know, California drops the mask

00:07:36.540 mandate. New York, Congress, the White House, the CDC changes their their recommendations as well.

00:07:44.340 I'm pretty pissed at it because, I mean, honestly, if I had known that Joe Biden had the capacity to

00:07:48.300 literally just end the pandemic with the State of the Union, why didn't you do this in like April 2020?

00:07:52.420 Yeah. Right. He could have just done it then. We would have skipped two years of this suffering.

00:07:55.720 I mean, because that's what's happening. The or the science changed radically just in time.

00:07:59.160 Or midterms are coming up and they kind of are betting on the fact that you're cynical have a

00:08:03.800 very, a very short memory. And it's true. We've proven over and over again that we do have a very

00:08:08.140 short memory. So like let him get some fresh air outside and then midterms will hit and hopefully we

00:08:12.540 can run on other things. But this time, I don't think it's going to work. And I think it's just

00:08:16.520 because of the parents. I really do think that that's going to be the game changer. And I think

00:08:20.360 that they're done. And that's why the poll numbers have just been sinking. Ben said this the last time

00:08:24.460 that that we were together in this forum, which is that no politician in American history has ever

00:08:30.480 been stupid enough to turn parents into a voting bloc until Joe Biden. Yeah, it's an incredible

00:08:37.340 thing. And the fact that he's done that is so. Obviously, our president tonight, if nothing else,

00:08:42.320 will be very, very sleepy. I, on the other hand, am very, very hungry. And that's because while

00:08:47.300 inflation is out of control and while we're seeing it more than ever at the grocery store,

00:08:51.080 while prices are hitting all time highs for meat and seafood, cooking and grilling at home used

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00:10:41.760 we love you, the God King. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're in it for. So I want to take a minute.

00:10:46.260 Obviously, we've talked about the president. We're going to talk a lot more about that throughout the

00:10:49.100 course of the evening. We obviously have to talk about the situation taking place right now in

00:10:53.740 Ukraine, and I want to get to that while Ben is still with us. He's going to have to leave a few

00:10:56.760 minutes before the speech to begin mentally preparing for destroying the president with facts and logic.

00:11:02.400 But before that, I want to take a minute while we're all together

00:11:04.700 to remember our friend Andrew Breitbart at 530 in the morning 10 years ago today when I was 33 years

00:11:15.300 old. I got a phone call, and it woke me, of course, because I'm not awake at 530 in the morning,

00:11:19.880 and it was Ben on my caller ID. And as soon as I saw the phone at 530 in the morning and saw Ben's

00:11:26.360 name, I knew that this call was to let me know that Andrew Breitbart had died. Almost anyone who knew

00:11:31.840 Andrew at that time knew the enormous burden that he was under, knew the enormous stress that he

00:11:38.280 carried, knew that he had in some ways lost his joy in those last months because he was under such

00:11:43.640 attack because of the pressure of being one of the earliest Twitter warriors, the pressure of the

00:11:49.300 Shirley Sherrod sort of betrayals that he experienced on the right from some people who are friends of

00:11:55.460 ours, but nevertheless, a real betrayal that he suffered. Many of us had spoken to Andrew about his

00:12:00.200 health, about the enormous burdens that he was carrying. That's why the people who knew Andrew

00:12:04.400 well didn't actually fall for the kind of conspiracy theories about him being murdered by the left

00:12:09.440 because we all knew that Andrew was a very likely, in fact, our friend Bill Whittle and I took Andrew

00:12:16.620 to dinner a few months, maybe six months before he died and had what amounts to an intervention about

00:12:23.320 his health. And I said, Andrew, you are going to have a heart attack and die. And the next, that night or the

00:12:28.060 next night, he had a heart attack. And he called me from the hospital and he said, hey, Jeremy, did

00:12:32.820 you hear the news? And I was like, yeah, Andrew, I heard the news. He goes, you're a clairvoyant,

00:12:37.680 like you're an actual prophet. And I said, yeah, it's true. I saw what no one could see except every

00:12:42.700 other person. I said, have you learned anything? And he said, yeah, I've got to start eating better.

00:12:46.860 And I was like, no, yes, but no, that's not the takeaway. It's this unbelievable burden, which is why of the

00:12:52.560 many lessons there are to learn from our friend Andrew Breitbart, an unbelievable

00:12:56.400 entrepreneur, an unbelievable

00:12:59.160 happy warrior, an unbelievable

00:13:02.120 fighter, and really in many ways began to teach the right to fight.

00:13:06.800 It's that happy warrior thing, I think, that's so important.

00:13:09.580 You know, he started off as happy warrior. He ended up with righteous indignation.

00:13:12.920 He taught us both of those things, but we've latched onto the latter more than the former.

00:13:16.220 And the former was his true superpower. I mean, you go back and watch Andrew skating up,

00:13:23.140 rollerblading up to protesters and taking them to Applebee's. You go back and watch the greatest

00:13:27.380 media moment in modern American political history when he took over the Anthony Wiener press conference

00:13:33.120 in New York. This is a man so full of life and so full of joy for the fight. And because today I'm

00:13:40.540 the age that he was on the day that he died. I've been thinking about him all week, knowing that this

00:13:45.500 that this was coming. And I've just reflected on what a privilege it is for us to be alive

00:13:51.660 in this place, in this time, and to get to fight this fight.

00:13:55.360 And sometimes it begins to feel like a burden to us. Sometimes you feel like you're losing.

00:13:59.160 Sometimes you bemoan the fact that we were born in a time that's hard and not a time that was easy.

00:14:04.420 But what a privilege that we get to do this, and we should approach it with that same joy

00:14:09.540 that Andrew approached it when, you know, when we all got to know him and spend time with him.

00:14:14.080 The thing that I remember about him most was his generosity. The way that he would just say,

00:14:19.240 oh, you know, Ben Shapiro, here's Andrew Klavan, you want to meet him. And, you know, people would

00:14:23.800 hire us. He couldn't pay us when he started, remember, when he started Big Hollywood. I think

00:14:27.800 I may have written the first article for Big Hollywood, and he couldn't pay you. So when PJ

00:14:31.240 TV hired me, he was like, go, get the money, take the money, you've got to be paid for your work,

00:14:36.740 because he couldn't pay you. And he introduced you to people, he never cared. I mean, he said to me

00:14:42.600 once, I remember one of the last times I saw him, he said to me once, whatever doesn't kill me makes

00:14:47.380 me more famous. And so he did care about the way he saw it, but he didn't feel like your fame took

00:14:54.560 away from his fame. You know, it was all bringing people together. The California movement, which

00:14:59.320 has been really, until we left, until the Daily Wire left, was really the center of the conservative

00:15:05.940 movement, is his. He created it.

00:15:07.880 That's right. He did not introduce us directly, but we would not know each other

00:15:11.920 without Andrew Breitbart. He did not introduce us directly, but we would not know each other

00:15:15.000 without Andrew Breitbart. So Andrew was a hub, right? There are certain people who are sort of

00:15:18.480 the nodes in networks, and he was the hub of a network. And so everybody knew each other via

00:15:22.420 Andrew. Andrew was also the most spontaneous and sweet human being. I mean, like, the characterization

00:15:26.760 of him in the media by the end of his life is that he was this monstrous, vicious brute who was mean

00:15:31.080 to everybody. And everyone who knew him knew how not true this was. And it hurt him, I think,

00:15:37.080 on a really deep level to be seen that way, because it was so contrary to how he was and who he was.

00:15:42.940 And so when the media started calling him racist, and when the media started suggesting that he was

00:15:45.920 a bigot, and Andrew was the most tolerant person I've ever met. I mean, like, wildly tolerant.

00:15:50.080 And when people characterized him that way, he got so deeply hurt. There was a fundamental

00:15:55.760 innocence about Andrew that I think was deeply marred by the process of a politics that he, when he

00:16:02.620 first entered the movement, he thought, we're all brothers in this fight, right? We're all on the same

00:16:05.660 side. And we're all fighting the good fight. And America, we all kind of want the same thing. We're

00:16:10.460 just having different ways of getting there. And that's really how he approached things. And I

00:16:12.800 think politics really, you know, hit him square across the jaw a few times. And he responded

00:16:17.640 correctly, aggressively, and angrily, and in defense of other people he thought were being bullied.

00:16:22.560 And that was powerful, and it was good, and it was a good instinct. But it's also, if you don't

00:16:26.360 protect yourself, it can really, really damage you. And I think that that was...

00:16:29.660 It's, he was serious. He meant to fight for the country. And a lot of people, it's partly

00:16:35.300 serious, but it's partly business.

00:16:36.800 Yeah, no, that's right.

00:16:37.420 And it's partly politics. I don't think he ever...

00:16:39.720 He had no self-protective instinct.

00:16:40.960 Yes.

00:16:41.320 Andrew had no self-protective instinct.

00:16:42.700 What Andrew Breitbart...

00:16:44.000 He was barely even a conservative, right?

00:16:45.800 Yeah.

00:16:46.000 I mean, Andrew was a Hollywood left...

00:16:47.860 He was the Clarence Thomas.

00:16:48.780 ...socially left guy.

00:16:49.460 Yeah.

00:16:49.600 It was the Clarence Thomas issue.

00:16:51.880 It was Joe Biden.

00:16:53.080 Yeah, right.

00:16:53.640 Joe Biden made Andrew Breitbart one of us.

00:16:55.520 What Andrew loathed more than anything else was a bully.

00:16:59.320 That's right.

00:16:59.900 And the way that they responded to him was to bully him in a way that they had never

00:17:03.160 bullied anyone up until that time.

00:17:05.340 And they came at the guy with such a vengeance, and I think that that's what shocked him.

00:17:09.020 I've said this before on the one-year anniversary of his death, but it always merits repeating

00:17:13.820 that Andrew had this singular gift that...

00:17:16.120 I've met a few very famous people who have this quality, but it's an incredibly rare quality

00:17:21.240 where every person who met Andrew Breitbart felt that they were an intimate of him instantly.

00:17:28.460 If you met Andrew, you were a six.

00:17:31.440 He would tell you on the day that you met him about his health problems, his dreams,

00:17:35.800 this crazy thing that happened to him in the third grade, like an open book.

00:17:40.120 Very generous, as you say, with himself.

00:17:43.040 And people who are like that, everyone who meets them is their friend.

00:17:47.160 The problem is it's very hard to ever get to seven.

00:17:49.180 Because you started at six, very few people ever get to seven.

00:17:52.680 And I feel that I knew Andrew well enough to know how well I didn't know Andrew.

00:17:56.700 That's exactly right.

00:17:57.800 That's exactly right.

00:17:58.560 I was very close to Andrew, but there was an inner circle.

00:18:00.940 And the inner circle was basically his wife, his kids.

00:18:02.880 That's right.

00:18:03.500 Larry.

00:18:03.880 Orson, Larry.

00:18:06.240 Larry Solove, his business partner.

00:18:07.820 There was this very, very core group of people with whom he, I think, really was true intimate.

00:18:12.620 Yes.

00:18:12.880 But for a lot of other people, it was like I knew him for 10 years.

00:18:16.440 And people who had met him for five minutes knew him about 98% as well as I knew Andrew.

00:18:21.080 And that was his quality.

00:18:21.800 That was his magic.

00:18:22.520 But that was also, it made him kind of a lonely person because of that.

00:18:25.460 Because if everybody is your friend, then you really don't have all that many friends.

00:18:29.040 And again, I think it's because he, on a fundamental level, did not know how to guard himself.

00:18:32.620 And, you know, that sounds like a rip on Andrew, but it isn't.

00:18:34.840 It's a quality.

00:18:35.560 It's a quality.

00:18:36.360 He was such an innocent.

00:18:36.900 No, it was one of the best.

00:18:37.240 It was the best thing about him.

00:18:37.920 The way that we all met him is like just the, it's an apothe, it's a perfect example of who he was.

00:18:43.260 The way I met Andrew Breitbart is I was 17 years old and I was writing for the UCLA Daily Bruin.

00:18:47.340 And he lived in Westwood.

00:18:48.300 And one day he picked up a copy of the UCLA Daily Bruin.

00:18:50.440 And there's this crazy kid writing a very conservative column.

00:18:52.480 And he emailed me.

00:18:53.600 He said, I'm this guy who works at Drudge Report.

00:18:54.880 Do you want to come out with me and get a burrito?

00:18:57.020 That's really what he wrote.

00:18:58.060 And I wish I still had the letter.

00:18:59.600 And we went over to like a greasy taco joint down on Westwood Boulevard.

00:19:05.020 And I watched him pig out on tacos.

00:19:06.760 And I ate nothing.

00:19:07.460 And I'm sipping like seltzer water or something.

00:19:09.460 And he's trying to tell me dirty jokes because I'm wearing a yarmulke.

00:19:11.500 And he wants to like make me feel awful.

00:19:13.220 And that was so typically Andrew.

00:19:16.360 And I think in the last part of his life, you kind of missed that because he was so ensconced in the fight.

00:19:20.640 And so I think when people watch, you know, the documentaries about Breitbart near the end of his life.

00:19:25.900 Or when they read his book, Righteous Indignation, which is a good book.

00:19:29.380 When you read all that stuff, I think that if you want to know Andrew better, watch the earliest tapes of Andrew.

00:19:34.140 Watch him on early Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld, who he made a thing, by the way.

00:19:38.120 Andrew got Greg Gutfeld his job.

00:19:39.940 I mean, like the number of people that Andrew put in certain positions because he was just insanely generous.

00:19:44.140 We all live in Andrew's world.

00:19:45.680 All of us are where we are in some way because of Andrew.

00:19:48.080 And that joy that he brought is his lasting legacy.

00:19:53.480 His wife, his kids, obviously, are his personal legacy.

00:19:57.100 But the legacy that he really should leave with all of us is that we should be happy for our good fortune to be in this battle.

00:20:03.040 And we should approach the battle tomorrow with some of that joy that Andrew brought to it.

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00:21:23.520 So before we lose Ben, Ben, could you catch us up on the unfolding situation in Ukraine?

00:21:30.240 What's happened in the last five days, the last 24 hours, 12 hours since the podcast this morning?

00:21:36.740 Yeah, so I mean, about a week ago, five days ago, the Russian army invaded Ukraine, unlike sort of prior invasions.

00:21:45.660 Wait, wait, wait. Ukraine, a small country?

00:21:48.680 A small country in Europe.

00:21:51.100 Okay.

00:21:51.700 And Russia's a big country on its borders.

00:21:53.920 And when a big country goes into a small country, that's bad.

00:21:57.040 Could you speak more slowly, please?

00:21:57.700 Yeah, like the vice president of the United States.

00:21:59.700 And so basically, Russia had been threatening for months that they were going to go into Ukraine.

00:22:04.980 It was unclear how far they were going to go into Ukraine.

00:22:07.200 I think that most people thought that they were going to solidify their grasp over what's called the Donbass region, which is a region of eastern Ukraine, which is largely Russian-speaking.

00:22:13.960 They had already grabbed onto Crimea and essentially annexed it in 2014.

00:22:17.840 And that had followed on their invasion of Georgia in 2008, which was met with very little world resistance.

00:22:23.280 And so Putin had been making these sorts of noises.

00:22:25.640 The Biden administration kept saying he's going to go into Ukraine.

00:22:28.220 He's preparing for some sort of major military action in Ukraine.

00:22:31.360 And then Biden kept giving off signals over and over and over again.

00:22:34.000 By signals, he literally said, if you invade Ukraine, we won't do anything.

00:22:38.520 Well, he said if it's a minor incursion.

00:22:41.160 Yeah.

00:22:41.260 He basically said just the tip.

00:22:42.400 He said if it's a minor incursion, then we won't do anything.

00:22:45.900 And Putin took that to mean I can do whatever the hell I want because the West historically has not really done anything.

00:22:50.880 And if they do hit me with some sanctions, they'll be temporary and not much will happen.

00:22:54.080 And so he decides I'm going to make this power move and I'm going to ensure my legacy.

00:22:58.020 It's sort of a Peter the Great move because Putin is not actually thinking in terms of USSR.

00:23:02.880 He's thinking in terms of Peter the Great or Catherine the Great or historic Russian leaders who are attempting to recreate the sort of Russian empire.

00:23:09.220 That's how he's been thinking for a very long time.

00:23:11.280 So he invades Ukraine and he's hit with some really harsh sanctions, sanctions that do not include the natural gas and oil industry because too much of Europe is dependent on that.

00:23:19.900 And the United States, because Joe Biden's a moron, partially dependent on that as well.

00:23:23.080 We're importing hundreds of thousands of barrels of Russian oil even at the same time that we're levying sanctions.

00:23:27.320 But there's all sorts of financial sanctions that have basically crashed the ruble.

00:23:31.120 They've turned Russian bonds into meaningless pieces of paper.

00:23:33.980 Their economy is completely shut down.

00:23:36.580 Russia's invasion was, at the beginning, very slow going, pretty unsuccessful.

00:23:41.360 People thought that this was going to be a very quick and easy invasion.

00:23:43.360 I think Putin thought because he had convinced himself that Ukrainians were going to sort of act like the Afghans after the Taliban started to make advances and just completely disintegrate.

00:23:52.680 The defenses would just go away.

00:23:54.000 He thought that he was going to be able to establish full air superiority.

00:23:56.300 He was not able to do that.

00:23:57.440 Even now, he still doesn't have full air superiority.

00:24:00.180 He thought it was going to be easy.

00:24:01.120 And so now he's kind of in a morass of his own making, and it's very difficult to see how this gets resolved.

00:24:06.500 And this is the real problem right now because Vladimir Putin has to win.

00:24:09.700 If he does not win, there's every possibility that he's no longer the head of Russia.

00:24:13.540 And this guy is a murderer.

00:24:15.260 He is a thug.

00:24:15.960 He is a very, very bad man who has literally poisoned people on British territory, who's murdered political opponents, jailed political opponents, killed dissenters, invaded several sovereign countries.

00:24:25.440 And so if he feels as though he's not going to get a victory, he is going to do what he started to do today.

00:24:30.900 And that's why over the last 24 hours, he started to full-on attack civilian centers, which is not a shock because he did this to Grazny in Chechnya in 1999-2000.

00:24:38.160 He killed several thousand civilians in an attempt to simply bring Grazny to its knees.

00:24:43.140 He succeeded in bringing Grazny to its knees to a certain extent.

00:24:45.780 And so the take is that he's going to continue to exert extraordinary military pressure, particularly on civilian centers.

00:24:53.500 The West has responded with sanctions.

00:24:54.940 They've responded with military materiel.

00:24:56.520 There's been no indication that NATO is going to establish a no-fly zone.

00:24:59.160 It would be foolish to establish, in my opinion, a no-fly zone because then you come into the possibility of direct conflict with the Russians.

00:25:04.360 And when you have a rogue dictator who is mainly interested in this territorial land grab, then he does not care if he has to knock down some American jets or if he has to unleash even a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

00:25:16.180 I don't think that we're on the verge of an all-out both sides nuclear war.

00:25:19.000 But Russian doctrine sort of suggests that if you're losing in the battlefield, the possibility of unleashing a tactical Russian foreign policy is that if you're losing on the battlefield, the possibility of using a tactical nuclear weapon in a place like Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine, you might very well do that.

00:25:33.780 He's explicitly threatened.

00:25:34.940 Yes, so the West basically has to do two things right now, in my opinion.

00:25:38.860 They have to continue to exert pressure, and they have to offer him some sort of off-ramp.

00:25:41.640 There's got to be an off-ramp because if there's not an off-ramp, then he's just going to devastate Ukraine.

00:25:46.240 I agree with this.

00:25:46.820 We can continue to pump up Zelensky.

00:25:49.220 We can continue to pump up Ukraine.

00:25:50.700 We can watch as it turns into a guerrilla war that lasts for years at a time.

00:25:53.960 Ukraine almost certainly cannot actually win, and for that reason, like, it's horrible to think that you would reward this behavior, but probably what needs to happen is that Putin needs to get those eastern provinces.

00:26:05.400 If he withdraws his troops, he can keep the eastern provinces.

00:26:08.880 We have to let up some of the sanctions because there has to be a carrot as part of it.

00:26:12.240 And then you have to make an overture to Zelensky, too, which is that if Putin withdraws and just takes those two provinces, then NATO can establish a temporary no-fly zone and start rearming Ukraine or something.

00:26:23.340 I mean, it has to be that kind of a nobody's going to – and what has to happen is a deal that no one is going to like.

00:26:28.840 The only options here are deals that not everyone is going to like.

00:26:32.080 Because the other alternative is that Putin is going to continue to insert hundreds of thousands of troops.

00:26:36.220 That's right.

00:26:36.480 He's going to establish complete air superiority, and he's going to bomb Ukraine into the ground.

00:26:40.520 It is important to note that when you get to a situation like this where all the choices are bad, it's because mistakes have been made along the way.

00:26:48.000 The primary among them, the destruction or at least the thwarting of the American energy industry that could have just essentially isolated Putin entirely.

00:26:57.000 Well, and the green lighting of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was Putin's pipeline to cut out Ukraine for bringing his energy to Europe.

00:27:05.860 And Joe Biden essentially gave it the green light.

00:27:08.220 And the fact that Biden is not going to say in his speech tonight, he's not going to say, oh, we're changing the energy policy.

00:27:12.760 It shows you that something is terribly wrong.

00:27:15.560 Well, there's also the new world that's sort of being established on the back of this is not one I think a lot of people are going to like.

00:27:20.300 Because it's not just that Russia and China are very much aligned, and they're both aligned with Iran.

00:27:23.660 It is also that we can talk all we want about how Germany is paying its share, which they should.

00:27:28.900 I mean, they should be paying 2% of their GDP toward military budgets.

00:27:31.520 But the complete rearming of Europe has not historically gone particularly well for the world.

00:27:35.360 Japan is talking about how maybe now they want a nuclear weapon on their soil.

00:27:38.140 I mean, if you are a non-aligned country right now, you want to nuke, and you want to nuke yesterday.

00:27:41.120 Because the biggest mistake the Ukraine made was giving up its nukes in 1994.

00:27:44.340 Although its nukes were actually Russian nukes, it was not really in control of those nukes.

00:27:48.780 You know, that story that's gone out that they gave up their nukes is not entirely right.

00:27:53.380 I mean, those nukes were Russian nukes that they didn't really have the capacity to take control of without staging.

00:28:00.080 All they needed was one, though.

00:28:00.900 They had 5,000 stationed in their territory.

00:28:02.760 There is this fear also of escalation.

00:28:05.520 We're talking about non-aligned countries and neutral countries.

00:28:07.720 We've completely lost the sense of what are called buffer states.

00:28:12.140 Or even, you know, Switzerland in this battle is now taking sides.

00:28:15.100 Amazingly.

00:28:15.760 Yeah, it's been neutral forever.

00:28:17.440 And yet they're now signing on to Russian sanctions.

00:28:21.440 And there is a fear that Ukraine has been a buffer state between Russia, a relatively strong power, and Europe and the West, a very strong power.

00:28:29.580 And as Ukraine has had alternately more pro-Russian governments, alternately more pro-Western governments, this creates some tension.

00:28:37.240 But now if Zelensky is trying to apply for EU membership and trying to accelerate that process, the European Parliament has voted to advance that.

00:28:45.980 There will still be a long process.

00:28:47.040 But if you now are in a situation where Ukraine, right up on the edge, actually bordering, you know, the breadbasket of Europe is bordering Russia, is now a member of the European Union, that would seem to me to be an escalation rather than an off-ramp.

00:29:01.100 And so it's hard to see at this stage.

00:29:02.780 The problem is it's hard to ask Ukraine to continue to be a buffer state.

00:29:07.060 When there's no buffer in the buffer.

00:29:08.200 No, there were terrible decisions made over the last 10 years, 20 years, and crucially over the last 12 months.

00:29:15.760 Can I make one outlying observation?

00:29:18.860 I know that China won't do this because I know that China is in league with Russia, and they're so intent on humiliating us that they kind of like this.

00:29:27.360 If I were China, what I would do now is make peace.

00:29:29.680 I would force the Russians to make peace because then you're the big boy in town.

00:29:34.640 They need Russian oil, though.

00:29:35.520 China is already the big boy in town.

00:29:37.760 What's that?

00:29:38.340 I think China is already the big boy in town.

00:29:39.940 Well, yeah.

00:29:40.920 People that are winning in all of this.

00:29:41.960 But this is how you make it clear.

00:29:43.880 Yeah, and I mean, I totally agree that so much happened leading up to this, and yeah, most crucially in the last 12 months.

00:29:49.120 But I think it's very difficult to discern, and I think a lot of people feel right now, it's very difficult to discern what is actually happening.

00:29:55.060 I mean, we started this entire talk talking about how nothing that we hear from Joe Biden tonight is going to be true.

00:29:59.680 And yet we seem to, like, switch our brains and think that everything that we're hearing about foreign wars is true.

00:30:03.780 So I find it interesting, like, when we rely on the media for information and when we don't rely on the media for information.

00:30:08.580 And I think that we don't really know what the big play is in all this.

00:30:12.720 It feels like there's something more.

00:30:14.140 Like, if this is really about taking out Russia, why aren't they talking about making America energy independent again?

00:30:19.720 Instead, they're saying, oh, this is an opportunity for us.

00:30:21.660 Now we should be talking about electric vehicles or a new deal.

00:30:25.220 And so it's just a lot of it.

00:30:26.300 I think that more will come out with time.

00:30:28.620 Obviously, like, you know, what Russia is doing is absolutely terrible.

00:30:31.900 But I think there's a lot of information, a lot of things that are going on at play that are not being discussed just yet.

00:30:36.380 Because, I don't know, whenever Hillary Clinton gets out and does any type of speech, I'm like, what are we missing?

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00:32:22.520 Part of the story, to your point, is also Ukraine is certainly winning the propaganda war.

00:32:28.580 Right.

00:32:29.060 And they've won that by a landslide.

00:32:31.440 But, of course, in the West, they have a certain advantage because the institutions are on their side.

00:32:35.080 But, you know, very early on, for the first few days, there was just this barrage of just Hollywood sort of stories.

00:32:42.960 The Ghost of Kiev.

00:32:43.560 The Ghost of Kiev.

00:32:43.840 The Snake Island guys who said, go F yourself.

00:32:46.480 And it turns out that, actually, they surrendered.

00:32:48.580 You know, the supermodels who are charging down to the front lines.

00:32:51.540 With the eyelashes on.

00:32:52.340 And it turns out that they have that, actually, they're holding airsoft rifles.

00:32:54.980 And then a lot of the pictures of Zelensky himself actually were taken months ago.

00:32:58.920 You know, and lots of things like that.

00:33:01.400 And I think that, you know, that makes sense for Ukraine to engage in war propaganda as part of any war.

00:33:08.460 And it would be malpractice not to do that.

00:33:10.600 But that does lend credence to this idea that it's actually, there's a lot that's happening that's sort of strange.

00:33:16.780 It's hard to discern exactly what's going on.

00:33:18.200 Like, for example, Ukraine says that they've killed 5,000 Russians already.

00:33:22.380 Which would mean that they've doubled, you know, American casualties in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years.

00:33:27.500 Maybe that's true.

00:33:28.500 I'll push on you just a little bit, Matt.

00:33:29.960 Because I do agree there's wartime propaganda.

00:33:32.380 I do agree that we've lost faith in our institutions.

00:33:35.240 I agree that our politicians lie to us.

00:33:36.600 All of that's true.

00:33:37.300 But we shouldn't lean on this propaganda situation that is happening.

00:33:41.640 Listen, it's the first social media war in modern nation states in Europe that's happened ever, right?

00:33:47.520 So there's just this constant flood of information and propaganda even possible that's never been possible at this level before.

00:33:53.600 But it isn't as though we know nothing.

00:33:55.900 Like, we know that Russia has invaded Ukraine.

00:33:57.900 We know that Russia, a country with a military of almost 2 million, has invaded a country with a military of 200,000.

00:34:02.860 We know that invading a nation that doesn't want, you know, a very small nation has been invaded by a military.

00:34:09.340 Like, we do know these things.

00:34:11.820 We have photos from space of a 40-mile convoy, right?

00:34:13.780 It's also true that America didn't lose very many people by any historic metric in the war on terror because America is the only military on Earth that can actually forward project power the way that we do.

00:34:26.400 We've spent 10 times as much money as the rest of the world combined for 60 years on our military.

00:34:33.400 Like, the amount of capacity that America has is so enormous.

00:34:36.640 And we were fighting in truly primitive, in truly primitive lands.

00:34:42.820 When you start talking about Russia and Ukraine, you are talking about a situation where people are hurling far less sophisticated weapons at people with far less sophisticated tactics.

00:34:52.340 Do I think the Ukrainians have killed 5,000 people?

00:34:54.300 I suspect all that is propaganda, of course.

00:34:56.300 But I do think that losses, you can't compare losses in a war like this to losses in a war like America goes into Afghanistan and uses highly precision weapons, satellite-guided munitions, the best trained special operators ever to operate in human history.

00:35:12.940 I agree with you.

00:35:13.420 Against, against, against.

00:35:15.300 I agree with you.

00:35:17.100 And also, again, I don't blame, of course Ukraine's going to do this.

00:35:20.620 It would be crazy not to because they have to get the West on their side, which it already would have been anyway, obviously.

00:35:27.600 But my only concern with the propaganda and why I think it's important to, first of all, I think the truth is important.

00:35:32.780 So we always have to discern truth from fiction.

00:35:36.100 But also my other, my personal overarching concern is the United States of America and us not getting sucked into this thing that could potentially be cataclysmic and result in thousands, if not millions of American deaths.

00:35:47.320 A border dispute that has existed for a thousand.

00:35:49.300 Right, right.

00:35:49.920 That, for me, is what I care about the most.

00:35:53.180 And so the effect of the propaganda, when lots of Americans buy into it, is that their emotions get tied up in it.

00:35:58.840 And then you start hearing more and more.

00:36:00.580 And I know, you know, on the first day, everyone was saying, well, no one is suggesting that Americans would get involved militarily.

00:36:06.080 Fast forward a couple of days, and next thing you know, you have prominent members of Congress actually saying.

00:36:10.240 You have one member of Congress and one member of the Senate.

00:36:12.060 Right.

00:36:12.400 There's no serious move for there to even be a no-fly zone.

00:36:15.120 I mean, I came out on my show today and I said Jen Psaki was right.

00:36:18.040 Also prominent members of the media.

00:36:19.680 I mean, there was Richard Engel yesterday who floated the idea that we go bomb Russian convoys.

00:36:23.920 So, yes, it always starts that way.

00:36:26.080 First they're saying no one's saying it, then a few people are saying it.

00:36:28.460 And then you look at the polling data, and more Americans are saying, well, maybe we should get involved in this.

00:36:34.360 And that's just my concern.

00:36:35.440 Fast forward another week, another two weeks.

00:36:37.860 Do people get swept up in it?

00:36:39.040 I agree, and I want to add to that.

00:36:39.760 I think that, you know, your point is obviously well taken, and the war fever is a real thing, and it does really happen to people.

00:36:47.960 But this is, you know, when I go to New York and I say to my friends and relatives, crime is really up, they frequently say to me, not in my neighborhood.

00:36:56.240 I say, your neighborhood is three blocks away from that neighborhood.

00:36:59.020 The world we're living in is a very, very small world.

00:37:01.620 This is actually on the border of Europe.

00:37:03.480 This is actually on the border of Poland.

00:37:05.020 This is on the place where wars begin.

00:37:07.460 And, you know, there is a point at which even knowing that a war would be disastrous, you have no other choice.

00:37:13.640 And that's the place you're trying, that's the thing you're trying to avoid right now.

00:37:17.140 Ben is absolutely right when he says we don't want a no-fly zone because we don't want our pilots facing their pilots in the sky.

00:37:23.120 But at the same time, sanctions have historically not had the kind of effect we want.

00:37:29.220 And so I really think that this is a moment, Germany gets this, oddly enough, Germany gets this, this is a moment when you change your policy.

00:37:36.560 This is the moment when you change the way you run your country.

00:37:39.480 And Joe Biden is not up to that task.

00:37:41.500 That means that we're going to need the people to be up to that task in a very decisive way.

00:37:47.640 And it's difficult because you're right.

00:37:49.020 There is a way out of this, though, I think.

00:37:52.340 And it's been part of the battle of the last 10 years.

00:37:54.880 There was an article in CBS News that just came out today over the real problem of the war is the war within the war, the transgender Ukrainians.

00:38:03.660 That's my favorite article ever.

00:38:04.540 Yes, they're not allowed out because they're men and they're supposed to fight to defend their country.

00:38:08.520 And so...

00:38:09.140 In fact, when they say women and children first, they're like...

00:38:11.100 Yeah, yeah, no, I'm identifying to that.

00:38:13.200 And so what this, I think, will remind a lot of liberals is that Ukraine is not your toy.

00:38:19.840 Ukraine is not this magical, mythical place that we've just decided is a liberal Western democracy with transgenderism and pride parades.

00:38:29.120 Ukraine is its own nation with its own interests and its own culture and its own way of viewing the world.

00:38:34.460 And I think it was a mistake for Ukraine to cozy up too much to NATO and to the European Union.

00:38:40.960 I think it was a mistake for Western governments to support that with money and with propaganda in 2013 and 2014.

00:38:48.180 I think what's probably most likely is, as you say, Putin's got to win.

00:38:52.960 Putin's got to have some kind of win here.

00:38:54.900 And I don't think the win is that Vladimir Putin is going to sit in Kiev and run that country himself.

00:38:59.240 I suspect what would happen is he will install some kind of puppet regime or some government that is more conducive to Russia's interests.

00:39:07.680 And that's what we had before 2014.

00:39:09.920 And it's probably what we're going to have after this.

00:39:11.780 Only because the president's cabinet has begun entering the chamber, Ben Shapiro has to adjourn and go start working on his response to the State of the Union.

00:39:24.060 And so, Ben, many thanks to you.

00:39:27.100 Godspeed.

00:39:27.940 Yeah.

00:39:28.560 Give him help.

00:39:31.180 I want that to be your response.

00:39:32.200 I do want to say, the only thing I want to close out on Ukraine is, it is true that war fever can lead to a war.

00:39:39.500 Listen, the reason we don't want to enforce a no-fly zone is because we would decimate Russia.

00:39:44.540 The entire Russian military couldn't stand up against the American military for a week.

00:39:48.720 That's actually why we don't want to enforce the no-fly zone, because we don't want to push Putin into a corner where nuclear weapons are his only option for inflicting damage on the West.

00:39:58.960 But it is almost always historically weakness that leads to major conflict.

00:40:06.980 The Second World War was created by the weakness of the West.

00:40:10.200 And so we can't simply take the position, we don't want America engaged in foreign conflict.

00:40:14.780 The end of American hegemony dramatically increases the chances of global conflict.

00:40:22.280 American hegemony has kept the peace for 60 years.

00:40:24.380 Nuclear weapons have kept the peace for 60 years.

00:40:26.620 The end of American hegemony will lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of nations that care less and less and less about how those weapons get used.

00:40:38.340 We have to be strong.

00:40:40.740 Our foreign policy has to be strong.

00:40:42.160 This is the fundamental failure of Joe Biden.

00:40:44.180 We are in this situation today because of the weakness of Joe Biden, the literal goading by Joe Biden of Vladimir Putin over the last 12 months.

00:40:52.520 We have to have strength in the White House.

00:40:55.280 And if we don't have strength in the White House, global conflict is inevitable.

00:40:59.400 Peace has only ever been maintained in the 20th century and 21st century thus far by American peace.

00:41:04.240 With that said, you may be wondering, Jeremy, why are you grouchy?

00:41:07.740 Why do you have bags under your eyes?

00:41:09.240 Why don't you ever let anyone else get a word in edgewise?

00:41:11.820 And that, my friends, is because I am tired.

00:41:13.560 And I am tired because, unlike every other person on the panel, I do not have a Helix Sleep mattress.

00:41:20.540 We talked about this.

00:41:21.340 I do want to give some credit to Helix Sleep.

00:41:23.320 After last week's episode, they actually called and said, do you want a mattress?

00:41:26.680 And I said, no.

00:41:27.620 I want to see myself as a victim and to be able to continue to complain in the face of my peers, all of whom sleep peacefully.

00:41:34.340 The sleep of the peaceful dead on their Helix Sleep mattresses.

00:41:38.740 Helix Sleep has a quiz.

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00:42:24.760 Helix has been recommended by multiple leading chiropractors and doctors of sleep medicine as a go-to solution for improving sleep.

00:42:30.680 Go over to helixsleep.com slash backstage.

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00:42:56.760 Helixsleep.com slash backstage.

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00:43:01.840 We are drawing near to the moment where everyone realized that Joe Biden is supposed to be here, and he is not yet here.

00:43:08.180 We see Dr. Jill Biden walking into the chamber right now and taking her seat.

00:43:17.640 Soon, the president, in theory, will join us for what I'm sure will be a riveting discussion about the state of our union.

00:43:26.680 Candace, what are we going to get tonight?

00:43:28.380 Not much.

00:43:31.800 Not much.

00:43:32.780 Listen, at least I think her dress is lovely.

00:43:34.820 That's about the only thing I'm going to say tonight that's going to be a compliment.

00:43:38.680 I still think it's torturous to make us sit here and watch 45 minutes.

00:43:42.920 You know, the good thing is, if anything goes wrong with the president on the podium, they can say,

00:43:46.840 is there a doctor in the house?

00:43:48.180 And Joe Biden, don't worry, I'm here.

00:43:50.620 Let me at him.

00:43:52.440 You're a terrible human being.

00:43:53.480 That's just not great.

00:43:55.160 Yeah, it wasn't a very kind thing.

00:43:59.220 Drew, how many of these have you lived through?

00:44:01.000 Oh, my God, 150.

00:44:02.140 I remember George Washington.

00:44:03.100 George Washington just sent a letter.

00:44:04.240 So I appreciate that.

00:44:05.660 You should say thank you.

00:44:06.580 Every president should send a letter.

00:44:07.740 I think I've told you guys, one of the moments that really struck me during Obama's first year in office

00:44:14.220 is he gave a speech, not a State of the Union address.

00:44:16.900 He had just been elected.

00:44:18.000 But this is a new thing.

00:44:19.040 It used to be that presidents gave their first State of the Union speech after they'd been in office for a year.

00:44:23.340 Now they all give a speech to a joint session like a month after they come into office.

00:44:26.780 And when Barack Obama walked up to the podium, he handed an envelope to the vice president and the speaker of the house.

00:44:35.400 And I realized how it's all pageantry.

00:44:37.560 Because the reason that presidents do that before a State of the Union is because the document that they hand to the vice president,

00:44:45.600 who is the president of the Senate, and the speaker of the house, who of course is the head of the House of Representatives,

00:44:49.940 that is fulfilling the constitutional requirement that the president deliver a State of the Union address.

00:44:56.100 The speech is just fanfare and publicity.

00:44:59.720 And here Barack Obama was giving a speech that was not even the State of the Union,

00:45:03.980 but he was fulfilling the sort of, in a vestigial way, or in a symbolic way,

00:45:09.540 he was handed, because they don't even know why they do the things that they do.

00:45:13.540 It's a monarchical tradition, this court.

00:45:16.360 Of course it is.

00:45:16.880 But you know, the thing to remember about this is that the presidency is a kind of monarchical office.

00:45:22.860 I mean, the point of the executive, you don't want a full-on monarch,

00:45:26.640 but the framers of the Constitution created it to embody that kind of spirited part of the government, right?

00:45:32.420 Remember those, like, Republican values they had where, like, George Washington would get up and, like, put on, like, a coat

00:45:37.740 and say, oh, he's acting like a king, you know?

00:45:40.880 You know, I want that back.

00:45:42.380 I want people to, these guys to just manage our resources, you know?

00:45:46.400 I do wish that if you're going to have the fanfare, you know, listen, I'm of Roman extraction.

00:45:51.460 We have a certain appreciation for these things.

00:45:53.700 I do wish they were good speeches.

00:45:56.540 I mean, I remember Trump gave one or two good ones.

00:45:58.580 A couple of good ones, yeah.

00:45:59.360 Yeah, Reagan gave, I think, like, one good one.

00:46:02.760 Clinton's, he's one of the worst.

00:46:04.160 I mean, his went on and on.

00:46:04.980 On and on and on.

00:46:05.420 You do wish, though, if this is going to really embody the spirited aspect of your country,

00:46:11.700 you know, give a rousing speech, buddy.

00:46:13.620 Especially since nobody listens to them.

00:46:15.500 They lay out their agenda, and the Congress is like, well.

00:46:18.540 Yeah, I'm just, I'm thanking God, because if this had happened a week ago, they'd all

00:46:23.220 be killing each other right now because they're not wearing masks.

00:46:25.020 Yeah.

00:46:25.180 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:25.940 But today, it's okay.

00:46:28.460 They're still doing the social distancing, though, right?

00:46:29.980 Is that?

00:46:31.060 No, I think just no one showed up because there was a testing requirement.

00:46:34.140 Is that right?

00:46:34.620 So Rubio wouldn't show up.

00:46:35.960 Rubio wouldn't show up.

00:46:36.760 Thomas Massey didn't show up.

00:46:37.960 I had him on my show a couple of weeks ago.

00:46:39.360 Massey, that's great.

00:46:40.320 Yeah.

00:46:40.780 He just said, I'm not showing up.

00:46:42.040 Because of the testing.

00:46:42.980 Because I'm perfectly healthy, and I don't need to submit to a test.

00:46:45.280 He's one of the few good ones.

00:46:46.140 He's great.

00:46:46.700 Yeah, he's great.

00:46:47.240 He didn't sign that anti-lynching law, which was a total.

00:46:49.600 Yeah.

00:46:50.280 I just, I think.

00:46:51.180 Oh, no, you're in favor of lynching.

00:46:53.020 The pro lynch.

00:46:54.340 Well, because lynching has to be illegal three times.

00:46:56.320 It's already illegal twice.

00:46:57.300 Now we've got to make it a law to make it illegal a third time.

00:46:59.320 Yeah, well, I just look forward to the pro-law.

00:46:59.920 And also, it never happens.

00:47:01.080 Right, it never happens.

00:47:02.060 It's happened once in the last, like, 40 years.

00:47:03.540 I will tell you, though, as an Italian-American, the Italians were the victims of the largest mass.

00:47:06.780 Wait, you're an Italian.

00:47:07.740 I don't know if you heard about that.

00:47:08.840 Yeah.

00:47:08.960 You know, the Italians were the victims of the largest mass lynching in American history.

00:47:13.000 That's right.

00:47:13.240 And so it's a very pro-Italian legislation they passed.

00:47:16.240 The other crazy thing, there was an academic study of the height of American lynching, which

00:47:20.640 I don't know why this is a topic of conversation 70 years after lynching was a thing.

00:47:24.980 Right.

00:47:25.120 But during the height of roughly, what, 58-year period of American lynching from the late

00:47:30.380 19th to the early 20th centuries, there were an estimated 4,400 lynchings committed in the

00:47:36.220 United States.

00:47:37.380 That's a lot.

00:47:37.720 It's a big problem.

00:47:38.540 That's still a big.

00:47:39.280 4,400.

00:47:40.360 That is the number of people.

00:47:42.340 That's actually slightly more than the number of people who were murdered in just a dozen

00:47:46.820 American cities just last year.

00:47:48.980 The Democrats are not putting forward any bill on how to stop the massive crime spike that

00:47:53.020 they caused over the last two years.

00:47:55.260 They're solving a problem that was solved.

00:47:56.540 Well, they're like Doctor Who.

00:47:57.580 They're traveling back in the past.

00:47:59.460 Part of the way they get away with it, by the way, is that they expand the definition

00:48:02.540 of lynching so that it's like any race-based violence.

00:48:05.900 So Ahmaud Arbery, they say, is a lynching.

00:48:07.780 Well, the thing about that, though, is that Ahmaud Arbery's killers were convicted of murder

00:48:11.380 and a hate crime.

00:48:12.300 Right.

00:48:12.660 So it's like, that's without this bill.

00:48:13.960 What do you need the bill for?

00:48:15.320 Another 30 years on top of the death penalty.

00:48:17.600 I don't know.

00:48:17.900 Right, yeah.

00:48:18.880 That was the other thing about that.

00:48:19.800 So this anti-lynching law that they passed last night, it says that the maximum penalty

00:48:25.180 for lynching is 30 years in prison.

00:48:28.340 They've actually lessened the penalty for lynching.

00:48:30.760 From death.

00:48:31.620 Yeah.

00:48:31.740 I don't know.

00:48:32.600 Call me a bleeding heart.

00:48:33.580 I think it should be stiffer than that.

00:48:35.100 You know?

00:48:35.420 I don't know.

00:48:36.540 That's criminal justice reform right there.

00:48:38.560 Yeah.

00:48:40.760 Yeah.

00:48:41.120 I just love how proud they all are of themselves when they do something that's absolutely meaningless.

00:48:45.560 Yeah.

00:48:46.060 Why also?

00:48:46.980 They just can't pat themselves hard enough on the back for their bravery.

00:48:49.940 I think Joe Manchin has the answer for his hypocrisy.

00:48:52.640 A guy calls himself a Democrat, and yet he voted against slaughtering children.

00:48:56.280 I know.

00:48:56.840 I mean, what the hell, you know?

00:48:58.820 Listen, buddy, be consistent.

00:49:00.140 Yeah, really.

00:49:00.760 Well, it is funny that in the very same night, they voted to pass historic anti-lynching legislation

00:49:07.500 and also to lynch all the babies in America.

00:49:09.760 And to kill the baby.

00:49:10.500 You know, no country on earth has a savage law like that.

00:49:13.980 No other country allows babies to be killed.

00:49:17.160 North Korea, China, and Canada.

00:49:18.980 They did also try to.

00:49:20.300 They tried to pass a law against hair discrimination, which didn't go through.

00:49:25.140 Bad time.

00:49:26.120 What?

00:49:26.480 You know, we know that people are, racial minorities are protected just because they're racial minorities,

00:49:31.260 but we also have to protect their heads as well because there's a specific type.

00:49:34.760 Maybe you, have you experienced this, Candace?

00:49:36.380 Hair discrimination against racial minorities is a thing.

00:49:39.340 I've just, I've experienced it when you're talking about it.

00:49:41.080 You guys, I don't think it means what you think it means.

00:49:43.660 Oh, okay.

00:49:44.440 Sorry.

00:49:44.800 I can't say I have, I've experienced hair discrimination, but we knew it was coming when they started

00:49:51.120 talking about people having to wear their hair a certain way to swim and things like that.

00:49:55.440 All of these sports rules they've now taken out of context, which we should really just

00:49:58.600 be about keeping people safe on the court, like not having like dreadlocks running around.

00:50:02.860 And now they've made it like, it's racial and this is my heritage and it's actually not.

00:50:07.660 So yeah, it's just, it's ridiculous.

00:50:09.380 There's a good heritage pun in there somewhere, right?

00:50:11.120 There is.

00:50:11.720 We'll find it by the end of this video.

00:50:13.020 Yeah, it'll give us something to think about.

00:50:16.720 I will say, I don't recall a State of the Union address this sparsely populated before.

00:50:21.220 It's really remarkable.

00:50:22.960 And this is voluntarily because before they, they did have social distancing last year, right?

00:50:28.360 Last year wasn't a State of the Union address, right?

00:50:31.240 Last year was just Joe Biden making a speech to a joint session of Congress.

00:50:34.820 If there's any chance of any president abolishing the State of the Union, it would have been Trump

00:50:38.660 and he didn't do it.

00:50:39.520 So we're stuck with this forever.

00:50:41.140 I didn't think Donald Trump was going to get rid of an opportunity to stand up in front

00:50:44.840 of the camera and then give a speech.

00:50:47.420 Yeah, good point.

00:50:48.280 Donald Trump has some good qualities.

00:50:51.080 That is not one of them.

00:50:53.800 The only thing that I was upset with Trump about, it's not that he didn't get rid of the State

00:50:56.640 of the Union, which I never expected, but it said he didn't add pyrotechnics or a bald eagle

00:51:00.980 just swooping through.

00:51:02.880 And the guy calls himself a showman.

00:51:04.380 I know.

00:51:04.700 Really?

00:51:05.060 That's outrageous.

00:51:05.980 Just hot babes, you know, in swimsuits.

00:51:08.120 What's the dance number?

00:51:09.160 I will tell you, though, when he brought Rush and then gave him the medal during the State

00:51:15.040 of the Union, that was showmanship.

00:51:17.420 That was showmanship.

00:51:18.380 The chances that President Biden does the same thing with Anthony Fauci tonight will really

00:51:25.540 be something to see.

00:51:26.300 The president is now entering the chamber to tepid applause from the handful of congressional

00:51:31.840 leaders who are actually there.

00:51:34.020 A handful of bored who wish there was someplace else.

00:51:37.600 He's not wearing a mask.

00:51:38.840 He's shaking hands with other people not wearing masks.

00:51:40.880 What a madman.

00:51:41.760 He's so reckless.

00:51:43.120 It is truly over.

00:51:44.460 It is truly over.

00:51:45.940 And we will take you now to the chamber and to the president of the United States, and

00:51:50.560 we will see you back here as soon as the president concludes.

00:51:58.080 President of the United States just concluding his State of the Union with a declaration that

00:52:01.940 America, a country with spiraling unemployment, with an out-of-control inflation, with ending

00:52:09.300 its hegemony around the world as our enemies begin invading, Europe is strong.

00:52:15.600 So there it is.

00:52:16.780 He said it so.

00:52:17.760 It must be.

00:52:18.320 It's basically an executive order.

00:52:19.820 You can't even contest it in the courts.

00:52:22.260 The State of our Union is strong.

00:52:24.040 Michael.

00:52:24.260 It was not a State of the Union address.

00:52:27.680 It began for the first 10 minutes as a State of the Putin address, which talked about this

00:52:32.940 war going on in Ukraine and didn't acknowledge all of the things we should have done in the

00:52:37.280 last 10 years that Biden specifically should have done.

00:52:39.500 And then you saw the turn, which was the rest of the speech, which was Biden couldn't talk

00:52:44.480 about anything good that happened on his watch.

00:52:47.980 He couldn't talk about anything good that he did.

00:52:50.440 And he did talk about a lot of good things, not very heavy on the specifics.

00:52:55.980 He was using broad language.

00:52:57.380 But he said things are going to be really great when I do this next year, when I do this

00:53:01.540 in five years, when I do this.

00:53:03.340 It was all about the State of the Union in his imagination in the future.

00:53:08.780 He couldn't actually talk about the present State of the Union today because the State

00:53:12.880 of the Union today is extraordinarily weak.

00:53:15.740 Even the way that he ended it, he said, the State of our Union is strong, which he had

00:53:18.720 to say, and he said, but it'll be stronger next year, as if to sort of make an excuse.

00:53:23.580 It was truly, I've watched so many of these for my whole conscious political life.

00:53:28.240 I've watched every one.

00:53:29.680 It was, I don't think I'm being hyper-partisan.

00:53:31.660 A lot of them are bad, too, you know, on the Republican side, too.

00:53:34.540 It was the worst, saddest State of the Union I've ever seen.

00:53:38.540 The State of the Union is strong, and it will be stronger next year is the most condemning

00:53:42.400 statement I've ever heard.

00:53:43.760 Like, ugh.

00:53:44.720 I have to take exception.

00:53:45.940 You say he was short on specifics, but he did specifically say that we have to cut

00:53:50.960 costs, and the way to do that is to cut costs, while also raising wages, which is a cost.

00:53:59.140 So I don't know exactly how that works.

00:54:01.120 He also said, though, that we have to end unemployment by adding jobs.

00:54:05.580 So I don't know.

00:54:06.180 I think end unemployment by just not being unemployed anymore.

00:54:10.240 It's like Paris Hilton.

00:54:11.500 Stop being poor.

00:54:12.580 Right.

00:54:12.800 You know, wear this shit.

00:54:13.600 And, of course, he ends on the bold sort of anti-cancer stance, which, you know, after

00:54:18.880 watching COVID spike to record highs under his watch, he's going to turn his magic touch

00:54:23.640 now to cancer.

00:54:24.340 So I'm a little disturbed by that.

00:54:25.920 I agree.

00:54:26.480 I thought that the most significant thing in that speech, if there's anything significant

00:54:30.660 at all, which really, you know, in the State of the Union there never is, but if there's

00:54:33.300 anything significant, it was the entire Democrat Party admitting defeat on the defund the police

00:54:40.900 movement.

00:54:41.520 Because after two years of trying to defund the police, Biden just called for funding

00:54:47.520 the police and got a standing ovation from every Democrat in the room there.

00:54:53.300 So this was...

00:54:54.260 Including Nancy Pelosi.

00:54:55.260 Every Democrat who specifically had said we should defund the police stood up to applaud

00:55:00.080 funding the police.

00:55:01.100 And because, of course, they actually, not only did they try to defund the police, but

00:55:03.940 in many places they actually did, or at least they reduced the funding of police significantly.

00:55:08.680 And we saw just total chaos ensue because of it.

00:55:11.980 Right.

00:55:12.080 And so this was a massive defeat for the Democrats.

00:55:14.440 And, but they get to celebrate their defeats with applause.

00:55:17.340 That's the, you know, that's the magic of being a Democrat.

00:55:20.080 Yeah.

00:55:20.200 I have to say, first of all, I want to thank Jeremy, the God King, for providing this whiskey

00:55:25.280 because I've been drinking steadily throughout the show and I'm still not drunk enough to

00:55:29.060 have endured that State of the Union with the, you know, calm.

00:55:33.560 No, you know, what really struck me about it was the rank dishonesty.

00:55:36.540 The defund the police was a perfect example.

00:55:38.720 Don't defund the police.

00:55:39.620 Fund the police.

00:55:40.140 And the same people who had called for defunding the police standing up.

00:55:42.680 We're going to secure the borders.

00:55:44.260 In what universe?

00:55:46.860 The worst immigration crisis in American history in the last 12 months.

00:55:50.880 And, you know, we, we talked for the first, I don't know, 20 minutes of the speech were

00:55:55.480 about Russia.

00:55:56.800 What did he say we were going to do?

00:55:58.620 I mean, he said we were standing strong and we were standing together, but what exactly

00:56:02.660 were we doing and how did we get into that position?

00:56:05.640 How are we going to change?

00:56:07.000 After telling us, after telling us that Putin wasn't going to invade for years, when Putin

00:56:13.080 did invade, why, why, what went wrong?

00:56:16.560 And why weren't we changing our policies in that regard?

00:56:19.240 I thought, frankly, when he said, fund the police, I thought we were going to have to

00:56:23.520 sedate Kansas, I thought, you know, I mean, because just, but, but the rank dishonesty

00:56:29.680 and the fact that it was an empty speech, a speech that really had nothing, provided

00:56:34.640 nothing to, to confront the things that were actually confronting crime, inflation, weakness

00:56:41.420 throughout the world.

00:56:42.940 Those are the things that we're confronting and everybody knows it.

00:56:45.620 You can't tell people that their jobs are better or they have more money when they don't.

00:56:49.960 They, they know they don't.

00:56:51.420 So it's just, it's just, I don't know, it's almost an insult to sit and listen to a guy

00:56:55.840 lie to you like that.

00:56:56.820 Yeah.

00:56:57.200 For, for 45 minutes.

00:56:59.060 Candace?

00:56:59.840 I totally agree.

00:57:00.700 I mean, it's like, hey, Nancy Pelosi, if you wanted to dramatically rip up a speech

00:57:03.920 based on the lies in it, this was your time.

00:57:06.520 You actually missed your moment.

00:57:07.780 And I was saying to you, as we were watching it, it actually makes you miss Obama, right?

00:57:11.560 Because at least when Obama lied to your face, it sounded nice.

00:57:14.180 He was a great orator and you went, okay, nothing you said was true, but it made me feel

00:57:17.900 so good when you lied, right?

00:57:19.520 With Trump, you had the opposite where it was.

00:57:21.140 It never sounded good, but he was actually telling you the truth.

00:57:23.980 And with Biden, you get neither.

00:57:25.160 It sounds horrible and he's telling you nothing but lies.

00:57:28.200 And it's, it's, it's frustrating because you know that it's so contingent on American ignorance.

00:57:32.520 Like this speech is something that has been dedicated to people that he views to be low

00:57:36.520 information voters.

00:57:37.520 Nothing he said made any sense, right?

00:57:39.180 I mean, he talked about America, we're going, things are going to get cheaper when we bring

00:57:43.000 the jobs back here and everything's made in America.

00:57:44.940 That's actually just fundamentally not true, right?

00:57:47.100 That's the whole reason why people are sending everything to China.

00:57:49.160 And that's because of government policy.

00:57:51.400 People don't understand economics 101.

00:57:53.520 That's the point.

00:57:54.400 They have the school systems focused on CRT, right?

00:57:56.980 You're turning children into toddlers, whiny toddlers, learning about LGBTQ issues,

00:58:01.300 critical race theory, all these things that mean nothing.

00:58:03.980 So they don't understand what it actually means.

00:58:05.780 When a man sits up and really says, I'm going to give you a little more communism.

00:58:08.960 What we need is really price controls.

00:58:10.620 The very thing that's the reason that you're living in this disaster is because there's

00:58:13.680 too much government involvement.

00:58:15.100 So he pivots away from, you know, the state of the European Union address for 20 minutes.

00:58:19.360 And then he goes on and talks about how COVID has been a horrible thing that's happened

00:58:22.260 to our country.

00:58:23.080 Actually, no, it hasn't.

00:58:24.380 Government policy has been a horrible thing that's happened to our country.

00:58:27.660 And in response to horrible government policy, he's offering you more horrible government

00:58:31.460 policy.

00:58:32.060 We're going to have price controls with insulin.

00:58:33.940 Again, relying on American ignorance not to understand that the reason our health care

00:58:37.460 system is a mess is because we don't have free markets there.

00:58:40.940 We don't have price transparency.

00:58:42.960 Things that Trump tried to establish.

00:58:44.820 And the latter end was just him building, you know, a pipe dream.

00:58:47.580 Just like a pipe dream.

00:58:48.500 Here are some problems.

00:58:49.520 I'm actually going to offer no solutions.

00:58:51.140 And I'm actually the person that was behind the problems.

00:58:53.620 Very frustrating to watch.

00:58:54.880 But at least we're going to kill all the babies.

00:58:56.120 But yeah, but exactly.

00:58:57.280 In the end, whatever that maternal, what was that weird phrase?

00:58:58.980 You know, it was the weirdest euphemism because we've heard women's health care, reproductive

00:59:03.100 rights.

00:59:03.380 These are weird euphemisms for abortion.

00:59:05.060 In this one, he said maternal health care.

00:59:09.020 Admitting it's a mother, it's a baby, and we're going to kill the baby.

00:59:11.920 Right, right.

00:59:12.300 Very democratic, except for Joe Manchin, voted to kill babies up to the moment of birth.

00:59:17.240 Yeah.

00:59:17.520 That's, you know, it's savagery.

00:59:19.180 Yeah, the thing, you guys, you're just, every one of you is such an extreme right-winger.

00:59:23.740 What does our current out-of-control inflation look like?

00:59:27.600 Well, it looks like paying 47% more for fuel than you did less than a year ago.

00:59:31.140 It looks like paying 41% more for the same used vehicle if you buy it this year instead

00:59:35.100 of last year.

00:59:35.760 It looks like paying almost 10% more to feed your family.

00:59:38.360 It looks like every dollar in your savings is worth less than it was one year ago.

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01:00:19.940 We are just seven minutes away from our very own Ben Shapiro giving his real State of the

01:00:24.360 Union address, something you've never seen before, which is a response to the President's

01:00:29.320 State of the Union address in real time, an actual reaction to what the President actually

01:00:34.000 said instead of a focus group tested party committee approved boilerplate speech like

01:00:41.220 we usually get, and we will get at some point tonight from some governor somewhere who will

01:00:45.000 never achieve any higher office, because that's what happens when you give the official GOP

01:00:49.200 response to the State of the Union address.

01:00:50.980 So again, probably seven minutes out from Ben giving his response.

01:00:54.640 A few things I noticed about the speech.

01:00:56.560 One, it was actually quite short for a modern State of the Union address.

01:01:01.340 It ran about an hour and 15 minutes.

01:01:03.260 That's on the shorter side of what these things run.

01:01:04.880 It's still Tuesday.

01:01:05.880 It was interminable.

01:01:06.840 It was so difficult to watch because the President said almost nothing.

01:01:11.280 The entire speech was so hollow.

01:01:14.600 It's difficult.

01:01:15.580 I felt this about Biden from the very beginning.

01:01:17.260 It's difficult to watch the Democrats prop up a man at this advanced stage of his life

01:01:21.900 in the way that they do.

01:01:24.860 It's bad for society when people in this age demographic are running the world.

01:01:29.160 It happens at moments of great global conflict.

01:01:31.600 If you look back at the First World War, we were in a very similar situation.

01:01:35.280 The people who were running Europe were all very advanced in age.

01:01:38.460 That isn't a sign of a healthy, thriving civilization.

01:01:41.620 It's one thing to say that we need adults in the room, that we need the wisdom of the

01:01:44.520 ages to be present.

01:01:45.540 We don't want impetuous, youthful people who haven't been shaped and seasoned by reality.

01:01:53.000 But you also don't want people who are past their prime.

01:01:55.400 You don't want people who don't have stakes in the game.

01:01:57.900 It's very easy for an 80-year-old man to say that we're going to combat inflation by spending

01:02:02.520 off all of our money.

01:02:03.380 He will not be here to pay any of the consequences of these policies that he's foisting upon the

01:02:08.640 American people.

01:02:09.780 I think global conflict is upon us in particular because the boomers have been unwilling to

01:02:17.320 move on from the stage.

01:02:18.220 Biden's actually a pre-boomer.

01:02:19.720 I mean, not by much, but he's technically a pre-boomer.

01:02:22.360 But the boomers, almost all of whom actually gave us all of this left progressivism, all this

01:02:27.900 left movement since the Second World War, are now like people who hit a patch of ice.

01:02:33.040 It's trying to grasp the will as hard as they can and turn against the momentum.

01:02:37.840 But it's not fair to say they won't leave if we keep electing them, right?

01:02:40.800 Well, they keep electing themselves.

01:02:42.240 I mean, the beauty of the boomers is that they are the boomers.

01:02:44.740 They're a very large demographic of boomers.

01:02:46.360 And they didn't have many kids, also.

01:02:47.620 Yeah, they didn't have many kids, and their kids don't have many kids.

01:02:50.020 So in one sense, I think they keep electing themselves.

01:02:52.980 Because I completely agree with this, and especially now when technology is changing everything and

01:02:58.400 the internet is changing everything, you know, younger people understand it better.

01:03:02.820 I would rather, when I was watching the Super Bowl and you're watching these two young coaches

01:03:06.140 go against each other using new techniques, that's what I want to see in government.

01:03:10.020 I actually want to see.

01:03:11.180 I'd rather have an impetuous young person in government today, at this particular moment.

01:03:16.240 The beauty is, even, I'd settle for someone in their 60s.

01:03:18.440 Yeah, exactly.

01:03:19.320 Just give me an impetuous young person.

01:03:20.160 To me, that is an impetuous young person.

01:03:22.940 You know, I mean, seriously.

01:03:24.320 On this point of the really sad, lethargic, kind of aged room, the saddest part of the

01:03:30.160 whole speech to me was when Biden made some stupid point, and then at the script that

01:03:36.020 they were all following, they all stood up, the Democrats, and tried to chant USA as if

01:03:41.980 they were Republicans who actually sincerely chant USA.

01:03:44.960 So the Democrats, who have told us now, not just for 12 months, but for decades, that

01:03:49.560 America is evil.

01:03:50.780 These are people who protest the American flag.

01:03:52.880 America, AKK.

01:03:53.800 There was all that stuff.

01:03:54.940 You know, he talked about transgenderism at the end, but where was all the woke garbage

01:03:59.720 that they've been stuffing down our throats for years?

01:04:02.520 It's a midterm year, Drew.

01:04:03.840 I don't know if you know that.

01:04:05.040 November is coming up.

01:04:06.040 Something's gone.

01:04:06.620 Well, if it's gone, it's gone.

01:04:07.960 If it's gone, announce, we are now rejecting everything we've told you for the last 20 years.

01:04:13.220 That's what...

01:04:13.920 But not really.

01:04:14.380 They're just saying stuff.

01:04:15.280 They're just saying stuff.

01:04:15.860 There's no policy that he's implemented to change anything.

01:04:18.380 He's just saying stuff.

01:04:19.480 The guy has a sub-35 approval rating, too.

01:04:22.120 Nothing he said tonight will amount to anything.

01:04:24.500 He has absolutely no political capital.

01:04:26.940 And in a midterm election year, Congress is going to have no will to act on any of his

01:04:31.280 agenda.

01:04:32.560 So really, we just wasted an hour and a half of our lives.

01:04:36.080 And if you're like, no.

01:04:37.200 But we're engaging in political theater of the highest order, except the quality of it's

01:04:43.180 You remember, Bill Clinton shows up to a State of the Union.

01:04:47.160 What does he say?

01:04:47.760 He says, the era of big government is over.

01:04:51.000 He says, I've heard the voters.

01:04:52.700 I get it, guys.

01:04:54.160 And he changes course.

01:04:56.000 That was a significant moment.

01:04:58.360 To your point, Candace, to what we've all been talking about, there was nothing significant

01:05:02.460 here.

01:05:02.680 What's the takeaway line?

01:05:03.560 Nothing will change.

01:05:05.040 Clinton's lack of integrity was the best thing about it.

01:05:07.180 Yes, it was.

01:05:08.040 Because he did change his mind.

01:05:09.280 Because he followed the voters.

01:05:10.900 So we're two minutes out from Ben Shapiro's real State of the Union, the first actual

01:05:16.180 State of the Union rebuttal of our lifetimes.

01:05:18.880 And I got a peek during the speech at some of what Ben was working on.

01:05:23.020 He was texting with me.

01:05:23.660 It's going to be absolutely terrific.

01:05:24.860 I thought it was canceled.

01:05:25.900 He's got nothing to rebut to.

01:05:26.820 Nothing happened.

01:05:28.920 I think the whole speech will be, the State of the Union kind of sucks.

01:05:32.840 Joe Biden's old.

01:05:34.900 Enjoy your night.

01:05:35.960 He didn't say anything.

01:05:36.740 Nothing happened in that entire thing.

01:05:38.160 I mean, just absolute garbage.

01:05:39.960 It's nonsense.

01:05:40.920 And it's sad, too, because I don't think this will work again, because we keep talking

01:05:44.400 about there is a shift happening, especially when he makes this pitch about small businesses.

01:05:47.780 You just fought small businesses in court for a year, trying to tell them what they had

01:05:51.140 to do.

01:05:51.480 You didn't care if everyone was going to lose their jobs over choosing not to get a

01:05:54.100 vaccination.

01:05:54.800 You made a pitch towards the end about children.

01:05:56.900 You just literally fought parents, said they were domestic terrorists.

01:06:00.580 And we're going to enable our Department of Justice to go after them.

01:06:03.780 So it was almost like he's saying one thing, and yet he's done the exact opposite and expects

01:06:08.800 American people to forget.

01:06:09.600 He also said, on that point, he also said that we have to stop treating each other like

01:06:13.000 enemies.

01:06:13.600 Yeah.

01:06:13.980 And this is the guy who said that PTA moms are domestic terrorists.

01:06:17.580 And that half the country is neo-Nazis and bull coroner.

01:06:19.800 He said that like a month ago.

01:06:23.020 Every part of the speech in some way was fund the police, right?

01:06:26.640 Every part of the speech was just going back on things that the same guy's been saying.

01:06:30.400 That's all the time we have for tonight.

01:06:31.700 Thank you for joining us for Backstage State of the Union.

01:06:33.960 Here is Mr. Ben Shapiro.

01:06:36.160 Ladies and gentlemen, we gather here tonight to mourn the state of our nation, because the

01:06:40.700 state of our nation is pathetic.

01:06:43.000 And it is pathetic in the main because of the president of the United States.

01:06:46.700 As it turns out, we all should have listened to Barack Obama.

01:06:49.880 In 2020, former President Obama said something simple yet profound about his former vice president,

01:06:55.580 a man he had labeled his brother.

01:06:57.440 He said, don't underestimate Joe's ability to F things up.

01:07:01.700 Barack Obama was right.

01:07:04.100 Joe Biden came into the office on the wings of eagles.

01:07:07.200 He was handed a working vaccine and a distribution plan for that vaccine.

01:07:11.120 He was handed an economy that had been placed into an artificial coma in order to prevent the

01:07:15.860 spread of COVID.

01:07:16.840 But that was about to rebound to record growth rates.

01:07:20.320 He was handed a stable foreign policy.

01:07:21.820 And he had been blessed with the unending bounty of sycophantic media coverage,

01:07:27.380 welcoming him into the Oval Office with an approval rating of nearly 56 percent.

01:07:32.820 What did he do with these advantages?

01:07:35.200 He presided over perhaps the worst first 14 months of any presidency since the Civil War.

01:07:39.460 And unlike Abraham Lincoln, our current crisis is entirely of Joe Biden's making.

01:07:44.780 On issue after issue, Joe Biden is not merely wrong.

01:07:48.040 He is aggressively wrong.

01:07:49.700 He is not merely foolish.

01:07:50.800 He is stubbornly foolish.

01:07:52.900 Joe Biden became president with one goal, to enshrine himself in history as a great leader.

01:07:57.880 Today, we can safely say that he is one of the worst leaders in American history.

01:08:02.340 On foreign policy, Joe Biden has made America a laughingstock.

01:08:05.580 Our enemies don't respect us.

01:08:07.180 They don't fear us.

01:08:07.980 They laugh at us.

01:08:09.580 Biden promised stability.

01:08:11.280 He promised he would be the adult in the room.

01:08:13.900 Instead, he has acted like a toddler, whining, mewling, throwing tantrums, and then, in the

01:08:18.800 end, capitulating.

01:08:20.000 He precipitously withdrew from Afghanistan for no apparent reason and with no actual strategy,

01:08:24.740 destroying a country for which America had expended thousands of lives and trillions of

01:08:28.760 dollars by handing it over to a group of 8th century radical Islamist barbarians.

01:08:33.260 Those barbarians promptly blew up 13 American service members, and, in retaliation, Joe

01:08:39.600 Biden's Reaper drones eviscerated an innocent family, including seven children.

01:08:43.800 Now, millions will starve, thousands will be sold into sex slavery, and terror groups will

01:08:48.860 reconstitute on the very soil from which the attacks of September 11th were launched.

01:08:53.660 And thousands of Americans were left behind to suffer under the Taliban.

01:08:56.620 Joe Biden cut off the Keystone XL pipeline and greenlit the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline,

01:09:02.920 enriching Vladimir Putin and destroying America's energy independence.

01:09:06.340 Then, he proceeded to futz about uselessly as Putin prepared and launched a full-scale

01:09:10.300 invasion of Ukraine, all of which paves the way for a Chinese attack on Taiwan and more

01:09:15.520 aggressive Chinese moves in the South China Sea.

01:09:17.640 And when it comes to our own borders, Joe Biden has ushered in the greatest wave of illegal

01:09:22.260 immigration in modern history.

01:09:23.980 In his first year, Joe Biden's administration was on track for 2 million border apprehensions.

01:09:30.620 The reason is clear.

01:09:32.320 Illegal immigrants have been openly telling media members they're here because they believe

01:09:36.020 Joe Biden will welcome them.

01:09:38.060 Meanwhile, on our northern border, Joe Biden has stood in solidarity with Justin Trudeau as

01:09:42.780 he claimed emergency powers to crush freedom in Canada.

01:09:45.700 But at least Joe Biden has brought transgenderism and diversity, equity, and inclusion to the Defense

01:09:50.980 Department.

01:09:51.320 Don't you feel safer already?

01:09:53.960 On the economy, Joe Biden has somehow turned a historic recovery into a chaotic nightmare.

01:09:59.260 For four decades, inflation had not been a persistent problem in American life.

01:10:03.800 Today, inflation rates are running at a four-decade high, thanks to his socialist expending plans

01:10:08.720 and ridiculous regulations.

01:10:10.200 Wage gains have been erased.

01:10:11.840 Gas prices are emptying wallets.

01:10:13.260 And the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that went dark, thanks to Democratic-induced

01:10:17.820 lockdown policies, will never come back, erasing the life-savings, dreams, and jobs of millions

01:10:23.640 of Americans.

01:10:24.700 We face future stagnation thanks to our unsustainable $30 trillion national debt.

01:10:30.060 Joe Biden blames supply chain problems, of course.

01:10:32.260 But at least Joe Biden's transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has been on the case.

01:10:35.760 I mean, when he's not taking two months off for paternity leave, well, nobody in the media

01:10:39.840 seems to care.

01:10:41.360 On crime, Joe Biden has consistently sided against police and with those who would make

01:10:45.020 their job harder.

01:10:45.920 He has unleashed his Department of Justice on police departments all over the country.

01:10:50.060 And innocent Americans, many of them black, have paid for his soft-on-crime policies with

01:10:54.140 their lives.

01:10:55.200 A dozen major cities have recorded the highest number of homicides ever in the United States.

01:10:59.360 But at least his vice president did help bail Black Lives Matter rioters out of prison.

01:11:04.620 And then there's our society.

01:11:06.420 Joe Biden has made nearly every aspect of our society worse.

01:11:10.680 Joe Biden promised America unity when he entered office.

01:11:14.160 Instead, he labeled his fellow Americans enemies.

01:11:17.540 He encouraged businesses to bar the unvaccinated, even those with natural immunity, from public spaces.

01:11:23.480 Then he sought to have them fired from their jobs en masse in the single largest executive

01:11:27.860 overreach in modern American history.

01:11:30.500 Joe Biden treated political dissenters as scum of the earth.

01:11:33.120 Biden said those who didn't agree with his plans to federalize voting procedures were aligned

01:11:37.440 with Jim Crow and the Confederacy.

01:11:39.660 Biden's Justice Department cracked down on parents after being encouraged to do so by the

01:11:44.060 National School Boards Association, which encouraged the DOJ to treat parents as domestic terrorists

01:11:49.460 for opposing the indoctrination of their children into radical gender and race theory, for simply

01:11:54.660 wanting to determine how their kids were educated.

01:11:56.580 Joe Biden's administration slurred traditionally moral Americans as retrograde bigots for the

01:12:02.980 great sin of believing that men are men and women are women.

01:12:06.840 Joe Biden's White House encouraged social media to shut down critics from misinformation and

01:12:10.680 defined misinformation as anything the White House didn't like.

01:12:13.400 And then he and his lackeys said he was doing this in defense of the science.

01:12:18.160 As it turns out, Joe Biden is not merely a brutal failure of a president.

01:12:21.820 He's an aspiring tyrant held back only by the strength of our constitutional structure,

01:12:25.500 a structure he now wishes to overthrow by trashing the filibuster, issuing unconstitutional executive

01:12:30.840 orders and at least threatening to pack the Supreme Court.

01:12:34.040 And of course, Joe Biden is a liar.

01:12:37.300 He doesn't lie as well as he used to.

01:12:39.520 He's no longer capable of speaking smoothly or coherently.

01:12:42.840 But if a man spends a lifetime lying, he's not going to start telling the truth when he enters

01:12:46.860 his eighth decade. Tonight, Joe Biden lied and lied and lied again to you.

01:12:53.120 For example, Joe Biden told you tonight that his plan to fight inflation will lower your costs and

01:12:57.820 lower the deficit. He said he would lower inflation by pouring more cash into the economy on top of

01:13:04.220 the trillions he has already spent while we are $30 trillion in debt. That is an insane lie.

01:13:10.220 Build Back Better would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, increase the federal budget deficit

01:13:15.380 by $3 trillion over the next 10 years if all Biden's proposed temporary programs became permanent,

01:13:21.880 which is what he wants. And pouring the gasoline of government spending onto the raging fire of

01:13:26.660 inflation is a perfect way to increase costs. Only a fool would propose it. Maybe that's why Joe Biden was

01:13:33.040 telling you until the last five minutes that inflation would be temporary. And Joe Biden told you

01:13:38.180 that his American Rescue Plan, his massive boondoggle stimulus plan, created jobs, lots of jobs. He said

01:13:43.920 he created 6.5 million jobs. That is another lie. There is no evidence Biden's spending produced one job.

01:13:50.940 Nonpartisan projections for job growth in 2021, not including that American Rescue Plan, showed higher

01:13:56.140 job growth than Biden produced. Joe Biden said, we prepared extensively for the Russian invasion of

01:14:01.560 Ukraine. That was untrue. We were manifestly unprepared. We reacted, as the rest of the world did,

01:14:07.540 and should have. But had Joe Biden been prepared, perhaps he could have helped deter Russia's

01:14:12.380 invasion rather than encouraging Vladimir Putin's miscalculation. Joe Biden also told you tonight

01:14:17.680 that corporations and the wealthiest Americans aren't paying their fair share of taxes. That,

01:14:22.400 again, is a lie. The highest income Americans pay nearly all net income taxes after government

01:14:27.660 benefits in the United States. Joe Biden said that inflation could be blamed on exploitation by

01:14:32.820 corporations. Another lie. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Corporations didn't get more greedy

01:14:38.020 last year. Joe Biden just became president. And Joe Biden said, we will never just accept living with

01:14:43.460 COVID-19. Another lie. Most Americans have been living free since vaccines became available.

01:14:48.380 Only Democratic panic mongering has prevented more Americans from doing the same, not COVID itself.

01:14:54.240 Joe Biden said tonight that the right to vote is under assault. Another lie. Widespread voter suppression

01:14:58.580 is not an issue in the United States. Joe Biden simply means he wants to rig the voting rules the

01:15:04.280 way he prefers. Lie after lie after lie. Enough. Enough of Joe Biden. Enough of his bizarrely

01:15:12.840 incompetent vice president who has failed upward into every job she has ever held and who can't seem

01:15:17.460 to keep a straight face when asked a straight question. Enough of his Senate majority leader who

01:15:22.540 spends more time worrying about being primaried by an Instagram communist than worrying about passing

01:15:27.440 solid bipartisan legislation. Enough of his Speaker of the House who kneels in kente cloth in the

01:15:32.760 Capitol Rotunda to protest America's supposed racism, then goes home and eats gelato in front of

01:15:38.180 her subzero fridge as businesses are forced into bankruptcy by her preferred policies.

01:15:43.160 America deserves better. America deserves a president who sides with parents rather than corrupt teachers

01:15:49.060 unions that shut down schools and mask toddlers and indoctrinate kids into the perverse lies of gender

01:15:54.180 theory and the overt bigotry of critical race theory. America deserves a president who sides

01:15:58.820 with the police who protect law abiding citizens rather than the criminals who target them or the

01:16:03.440 Black Lives Matter radicals who slander America as systemically racist while pocketing tens of

01:16:07.760 millions in cash. America deserves a president who sides with innovators rather than the jealous

01:16:12.660 plutocrats who seek to steal wealth they never created and use it to pay off their friends.

01:16:17.860 America deserves a president who sides with freedom of speech rather than demanding that social media

01:16:21.700 companies crack down on everything he doesn't like. America deserves a president who sides with the blue

01:16:26.780 collar workers who pay his salary, not the blue check marks on Twitter. America deserves a president who sides

01:16:32.440 with those who take their families to church every Sunday, not those who pledge to blot out our shared Judeo-Christian

01:16:37.620 heritage from public life. America deserves a president who sides with America's allies rather than surrendering to

01:16:43.760 America's enemies. America deserves a president who sides with the Constitution rather than seeking to rewrite it to push

01:16:49.520 forward his bureaucratic tyranny. We are more than a year into Joe Biden's presidency. That year is an unblemished

01:16:56.700 record of failure, viciousness and lies. Too many Americans have been told by the radical left and its compliant

01:17:02.520 lackeys in the media that America is rooted in racism and bigotry, that freedom is dangerous, that if we listen to the

01:17:08.440 experts and delegate control over our lives to them, all will be well. Too many Americans listen. And so we are in the midst of a

01:17:16.440 great American decline. But that decline is reversible. It starts now. Attend your local

01:17:23.740 school board meetings, demand an end to the radical indoctrination of your children. Join campaigns in

01:17:29.220 your cities and states for candidates who care about your rights. Vote Joe Biden's enablers out of Congress

01:17:34.260 and the Senate in November, and then vote Joe Biden out of office in 2024. The great American renewal begins

01:17:40.720 when their control of American lives ends.

The Matt Walsh Show - March 02, 2022

Daily Wire Backstage： The State Of The Union Address

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