The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's SOTU Spectacle, and Job Market Reality, with Charles Cooke, Jeremy Peters, and Dave Ramsey ｜ Ep. 489

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.840 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.060 If you missed last night's State of the Union, good for you.

00:00:19.100 You made the right call.

00:00:21.220 They're never interesting.

00:00:23.200 It's only the media that wants you to believe that they're interesting

00:00:26.140 so that they have something to lure you into turning on the television.

00:00:31.480 There were a couple of moments that are worth discussing,

00:00:34.900 and just more generally, where this country is going under this president is interesting.

00:00:40.000 And there's some other stuff in the political news today that we want to get to.

00:00:42.980 So that's where we're going to go.

00:00:44.580 Did you see the weird display of affection between the first lady and the second gentleman?

00:00:48.480 Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden and Kamala Harris's husbands.

00:00:52.360 That was a little, okay, that's not the lead, but I'm just saying as an aside, it was a little odd.

00:00:56.460 The economy, too, hot topic.

00:00:58.520 President Biden devoted a fair amount to that last night,

00:01:00.780 and Dave Ramsey will be here in our second hour on that.

00:01:04.360 This speech coming as President Biden faces strong headwinds in the polls,

00:01:08.440 with many saying he should not run in 2024.

00:01:11.120 In fact, the majority of his own party says that.

00:01:14.880 And the knives are also out for his vice president.

00:01:17.320 They don't want her either, including a brutal article from The New York Times,

00:01:20.660 which went deep with a ton of Democrats, top Democratic leaders, politicians, and others,

00:01:26.960 all of whom are expressing disappointment with her.

00:01:30.220 She is not their big hope.

00:01:32.120 So we begin with the perfect guests to break all of this down.

00:01:35.280 They joined us after last year's State of the Union,

00:01:37.240 so we're developing a bit of a tradition with these two gentlemen,

00:01:40.300 as well as November's election night.

00:01:42.120 We have today with us Charles C.W. Cook, Senior Writer at National Review

00:01:46.820 and host of the Charles C.W. Cook Podcast,

00:01:50.000 and Jeremy Peters, Correspondent at The New York Times.

00:01:53.540 Guys, welcome back.

00:01:55.920 Thanks for having me.

00:01:57.260 Glad to be here.

00:01:59.040 I'm not going to lie.

00:02:00.160 I was out to dinner.

00:02:02.160 So on the way home from dinner,

00:02:04.820 I turned on on Sirius XM and I listened to the back half of the speech

00:02:09.040 and then caught the transcript and read it.

00:02:11.520 But I'm sorry.

00:02:13.500 They're boring and they never make much of an impact.

00:02:15.860 It was like President Bush's mention of like the uranium cake.

00:02:19.940 Remember, whatever that was.

00:02:21.000 That was something that people would remember.

00:02:23.260 Sometimes they remember the outburst.

00:02:24.680 Maybe people remember Marjorie Taylor Greene yelling liar like we did that 0.96

00:02:27.880 other guy 12, 14 years ago who yelled.

00:02:31.280 I don't know.

00:02:32.360 Like, you tell me, am I wrong, Jeremy?

00:02:34.740 Isn't this just a media dance to try to get people to pay attention to us,

00:02:39.960 not so much him?

00:02:42.260 You raise a really good point.

00:02:44.220 And I think the punditry around these events,

00:02:47.660 not just the State of the Union,

00:02:49.540 but every kind of major speech or event that a president

00:02:55.320 or the leader of a political party does,

00:02:57.660 the significance of it gets so exaggerated by the media.

00:03:01.300 I mean, we saw story after story last night

00:03:03.800 about how this is the kickoff to Joe Biden's 2024 presidential campaign

00:03:09.020 as if any voter is going to remember what Joe Biden said in the speech last night

00:03:14.860 when they go to the polls next year.

00:03:17.220 I mean, it's the inflated significance that many of my colleagues,

00:03:21.760 and I'm sure I've been guilty of this over the years that we apply to these things,

00:03:26.320 is it just doesn't do the public any good.

00:03:29.580 And more importantly, it doesn't tell us anything about how 2024 is going to shake out

00:03:33.600 because we still don't even know who the nominee is going to be for either major party

00:03:38.760 because, you know, a lot could happen in the next year.

00:03:41.380 And although Biden says he's going to run, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.

00:03:45.480 And we don't know if Trump is going to see a legitimate and viable challenger

00:03:50.700 to his quest for the Republican nomination.

00:03:53.020 So I don't think this speech settled any of the major political questions

00:03:58.000 that we as a country are going to be confronting in the next year, year and a half.

00:04:02.800 It's so true, Charles.

00:04:04.660 The to Jeremy's point about, like, are we really going to be basing anything

00:04:09.420 in the next campaign on what happened last night?

00:04:13.020 Will there be anything that resonates or sticks for or against President Biden

00:04:17.460 or for or against his Republican detractors?

00:04:20.260 No.

00:04:20.780 And that's one of the reasons why one of the biggest laughs I've had in the past 14 hours

00:04:25.540 is the pundits saying, aha, he walked them into a trap.

00:04:31.300 Chris Wallace said he literally, I think, walked them into a trap

00:04:34.880 with the getting them to stand and clap for supporting Medicare and Social Security.

00:04:41.080 Hey, they're trapped.

00:04:41.960 They're on record applauding as if some Republicans not going to later say,

00:04:46.440 you know, we really need to reform those.

00:04:48.020 I know.

00:04:48.240 Oh, but you stood.

00:04:49.220 You stood and you clapped at the State of the Union.

00:04:51.160 That's that you can't go back on that now.

00:04:53.720 Why do we engage in these absurd lies?

00:04:57.080 Right.

00:04:57.520 That we I guess it's just to drive press coverage for a day

00:05:00.640 or depending on your partisanship, make yourself feel better about your side.

00:05:06.720 Well, as those things, we've also turned the president into a king, an emperor, the pope.

00:05:14.600 This is an event that is at odds with the American constitutional tradition.

00:05:21.920 And in my view, should be abolished.

00:05:24.540 I'm really pleased that you introduced this segment the way you did, Megan,

00:05:27.800 because it makes it easier for me to say that I hated it.

00:05:32.840 I was primed to hate it because I don't like the State of the Union.

00:05:36.320 The Constitution does not require this sort of spectacle.

00:05:40.380 It could easily be delivered by letter.

00:05:43.180 Frankly, it could easily be satisfied by the president's day-to-day activities.

00:05:47.060 All he is obliged to do constitutionally is from time to time update the legislature about the country.

00:05:53.980 He does that.

00:05:54.900 He does that every few weeks when he talks in public.

00:05:58.520 Certainly doesn't require this sort of spectacle.

00:06:00.740 But that aside, this particular spectacle, I hated.

00:06:04.320 I hated the president. 0.99

00:06:05.520 I hated the Republicans who behave like barn animals. 1.00

00:06:09.460 I hated the flagrant lying. 0.99

00:06:11.960 I hated the pundits who responded to it with absurd hyperbole.

00:06:17.380 This was the greatest speech he's ever made.

00:06:19.040 This is the pinnacle of his career.

00:06:20.460 In 80 years, he's never had a moment like this. 0.61

00:06:22.780 What absolute nonsense.

00:06:25.200 It wasn't informative. 0.65

00:06:26.700 He didn't really make any arguments.

00:06:28.520 He did what all presidents do now, which is to cast themselves as the great talisman of the nation.

00:06:33.280 Anything that good happens, they did.

00:06:36.000 Anything bad happens was, despite them, was their opponent's fault.

00:06:40.940 He barely mentioned Ukraine.

00:06:42.860 I'm in favor of aid to Ukraine.

00:06:44.440 I think it's important.

00:06:45.580 I also think the president ought to make the case for it if he's going to talk to the legislature that's funding it.

00:06:50.360 He didn't talk much about China, which just sent a spy balloon over the continental United States.

00:06:56.300 He spent about 48 seconds talking about the social issues with which his administration is obsessed.

00:07:02.120 He told a whole bunch of lies about the economy and his role therein.

00:07:08.220 I found it appalling.

00:07:10.620 This isn't limited to Joe Biden, but last night's was probably the worst one thus far.

00:07:15.380 And I expect from here on out, they're going to get even worse until someone eventually has the good sense to say,

00:07:20.460 I'm doing the State of the Union as a PDF from now on.

00:07:23.520 Yeah, as a tweet, that's what we should get the next go around, no matter who's the president.

00:07:28.740 People will be a lot happier.

00:07:30.260 Yeah, no, I really maintain it's a media-driven event.

00:07:33.660 If they didn't build it up so much, I mean, you could just run it on C-SPAN and we could all go about our merry lives.

00:07:39.500 Nobody's persuaded by this stuff.

00:07:41.520 And, you know, you are looking for a little drama.

00:07:43.480 I mean, I agree with the barn animal comment that it was absurd to see that moment with Marjorie Taylor Greene was about her.

00:07:53.700 She tried to she's trying to get ink in Jeremy's paper and your paper and my on my show that she wants attention. 1.00

00:08:00.840 That's why, like, they were already, you know, sort of booing him and they didn't they didn't they were showing that they disagreed with what he was saying.

00:08:09.220 A little parliamentary in there.

00:08:11.580 But she she was looking for our attention. 0.99

00:08:14.000 And of course, we give it to her.

00:08:15.560 The whole thing gets so tiresome, Jeremy.

00:08:19.060 As if her desire for attention weren't evident from that outfit she was wearing.

00:08:24.120 Well, I mean, it's just like, look at me, look at me.

00:08:26.780 Oh, I was listening to your your serious colleague, Howard Stern, this morning, and he said she looked like Sharon Stone in Casino.

00:08:34.560 Like, what was going on there?

00:08:37.200 She wishes, you know, in all.

00:08:39.700 Yeah.

00:08:40.660 In all seriousness, though, what that moment demonstrated more than anything else, I think, is the difficulty that Kevin McCarthy is going to have with this conference and corralling his members to to extend Charles's barnyard animal analogy.

00:08:56.640 There it really is going to be difficult for him to keep members like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and some of these other hecklers in line because they showed last night that they are about this kind of performative politics more about that than they are about actual policy.

00:09:18.540 I mean, this is it's a politics of performance.

00:09:21.080 It's a politics of outrage.

00:09:22.700 And they're quite good at creating spectacles.

00:09:25.320 I mean, there's a reason why Marjorie Taylor Greene was, if not the most prolific fundraiser, one of the top two or three fundraisers in the Republican Party last election cycle.

00:09:36.240 This is this is what a large swath of the Republican base likes to see.

00:09:40.580 They like to see people who are willing to to be irreverent and, you know, to stick it to the powers that be often in their own party.

00:09:48.440 And and they will be rewarded for challenging not just Joe Biden, but challenging leaders like Kevin McCarthy.

00:09:56.620 I didn't mind, Charles.

00:09:57.580 I mean, you're originally from England.

00:09:58.980 I didn't mind some of the like, no, boo, like a little bit of the crowd reaction.

00:10:03.420 It kind of helped the viewer at home keep tabs on.

00:10:06.400 Oh, OK, they're challenging him on that.

00:10:08.320 OK, sort of I'm putting a pin in that to remember the parties are at odds on this and what Biden's saying is controversial.

00:10:14.160 That that kind of appealed to me, I have to say.

00:10:16.760 But the individual even like the fact the way, you know, it was about Marjorie Taylor Greene that moment.

00:10:22.120 I guess I'll play it so the audience can hear it is that she yelled liar. 1.00

00:10:26.220 Right.

00:10:26.580 I could even get on board.

00:10:28.860 Maybe I don't.

00:10:29.620 Probably not.

00:10:30.020 But if she just yelled, not true like that.

00:10:33.420 OK, she's fired up. 1.00

00:10:34.820 She's she's indignant.

00:10:36.060 No, she had to make it personal and ad hominem attack on the president of the United States while he's doing his duty. 0.98

00:10:43.220 And so that's how, you know, she went low road and there was no reason to go low road.

00:10:47.360 The Republicans would be so much better served if they tried to look classy and respectful.

00:10:53.020 And then and then heard our friends over the commentary podcast making a very good point in this today.

00:10:59.200 Have somebody I love Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but have somebody take the mic after who can then nimbly and in real time say this was a lie.

00:11:10.940 This was a lie.

00:11:11.960 Let me tell you what he meant when he was talking about Social Security.

00:11:13.860 He was talking about Rick Scott, senator from the state of Florida, who submitted this proposal to take aim at Social Security, Medicare, which within two seconds of it hitting the printing press was rejected by Mitch McConnell, the guy who's actually in control of the Republican agenda.

00:11:27.540 That's all he's referring to this guy.

00:11:29.740 Right.

00:11:29.900 Like they didn't have that.

00:11:31.620 And so and in the moment they just decided to make a spectacle about it.

00:11:35.360 I'll play the I'll play the moment just so the audience who missed it, who was wisely eating dinner like I was, knows what we're talking about.

00:11:41.640 And then I'll give you the floor.

00:11:42.200 Charles, here it is, Sat One.

00:11:44.700 Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.

00:11:52.060 I'm not saying it's a majority.

00:11:56.940 Let me give you anybody who doubts it.

00:12:01.100 Contact my office.

00:12:02.920 I'll give you a copy.

00:12:04.360 I'll give you a copy of the proposal.

00:12:07.660 That means Congress doesn't vote.

00:12:09.800 Well, I'm glad to see you.

00:12:12.880 And I tell you, I enjoy conversion.

00:12:15.220 I'm not saying it's a majority of you.

00:12:16.880 I don't even think it's even a significant.

00:12:20.320 But it's being proposed by individuals.

00:12:23.560 I'm not politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some of you.

00:12:27.300 Go ahead, Charles.

00:12:31.500 Your thoughts?

00:12:33.980 Well, I think this is a structural question. 0.99

00:12:37.700 Clearly, President Biden is a habitual liar. 0.73

00:12:41.300 On almost any topic that he can lie about, he lies and he did it there. 0.99

00:12:48.680 The guy's a demagogue.

00:12:50.140 So I'm not bothered per se by people pushing back.

00:12:54.440 But this is not the British Parliament.

00:12:57.540 And if I go back to where I started, we're supposed to have separation of powers in this country.

00:13:04.200 We're supposed to have a system in which each branch jealously protects its prerogatives.

00:13:09.240 The very fact that we allow the President of the United States to go into the legislative chamber in the first place, I think, is a mistake.

00:13:18.500 We don't have a fused system, as in Britain.

00:13:22.060 We don't even have an adversarial system.

00:13:24.280 It's entertaining.

00:13:25.260 I grew up watching it.

00:13:26.420 But we have a horseshoe.

00:13:28.040 We're supposed to be more cooperative than that.

00:13:31.820 So the idea that the President would, in the first place, be put in a position in which he could lecture another branch of government that is run by the opposite party is, I think, absurd.

00:13:43.000 And a reason we should get rid of the State of the Union.

00:13:45.280 But if that chamber, if the Speaker of the House of Representatives is going to invite, which he has to, the President to address the chamber, then the members of that chamber should not behave like that.

00:14:00.940 And that doesn't excuse Biden for lying throughout, demagoguing throughout, which he did.

00:14:05.800 But I don't like this idea that we need a bit more of this in our politics like the British. 0.96

00:14:11.340 The British have a different system than we do.

00:14:13.140 And if you're going to have the President there making his case, then let him do it.

00:14:18.200 One thing about that exchange, Jeremy, was that the booing, the jeering, did get him to back off a little.

00:14:24.880 Like, I have to give them that point that he then was on his heels and said, oh, well, it's not the majority of you.

00:14:32.620 It's not even most of you.

00:14:33.920 And it left the audience, at least me, asking myself, then why are you raising it?

00:14:39.020 If this isn't really a big push by the Republicans, why did you start off with that sweeping sentence, if not just to scare the bejesus out of the old people who he knows votes? 0.93

00:14:49.180 Vote.

00:14:49.320 It was a moment, Megan, that I found kind of odd, like many other in the speech, where the President kind of expressed a lack of self-confidence.

00:15:01.600 He would take these kind of self-deprecating shots at himself and his leadership and say, well, you know, I know that, you know, you don't think I'm capable of or you don't think I've done X, Y or Z.

00:15:11.460 I don't know why he chose to back away from that.

00:15:17.040 I mean, look, was that particular line in the speech a little disingenuous?

00:15:22.940 Sure.

00:15:23.240 As you say, this is Rick Scott's proposal, and it's about sunsetting all federal legislation.

00:15:29.960 And that would, of course, include Medicare and Social Security.

00:15:32.900 But the vast majority of Republicans roundly rejected it when it came out.

00:15:38.300 So this is the kind of trick that people in both political parties do.

00:15:44.320 I mean, let's not pretend that Biden is the only one that has ever taken a sliver of a policy white paper, a sentence, a clause even, of a proposal from the other side and exaggerated it.

00:15:58.020 I mean, this is why attack ad makers make millions and millions of dollars.

00:16:02.080 This is unfortunately how many important issues in our politics get debated.

00:16:08.040 And it leaves the public, I think, with a lack of real understanding about what's truly at stake here.

00:16:14.020 But, you know, there were moments in Biden's in his delivery, like we saw in this this this excerpt, where he's he was a little unsure of himself.

00:16:25.220 And I think that that's probably because he's looking at the same numbers that we are.

00:16:30.160 And he's seeing that the vast majority of Americans feel like the country is on the wrong track and that many, many Americans, including those in his own party, don't think that he should run again.

00:16:42.260 Look, he doesn't get very high marks at this point in his presidency.

00:16:46.400 That doesn't mean that voters dislike him or find him distasteful, but it does mean that they have questions about his leadership and his ability to take the country in the direction that it needs to go if we're going to pull ourselves out of the slump.

00:17:01.720 And that's where Republicans that I talk to believe that Kevin McCarthy and their colleagues should be attacking the Biden administration on.

00:17:11.640 It's on the economic conditions, his economic record, because that's what's mattering most to people at home, not these kind of theatrical sideshows where you have Republican members of Congress heckling him from from the crowd.

00:17:26.460 Mm hmm. What do you make of that, Charles? Because I, of course, I am not woke and I am fully engaged in the in the culture battle over, you know, the racialization of everything and the radical transgender ideology being shoved on young children. 0.80

00:17:42.440 It's like I'm in those wars as a pundit. And so what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said after the fact appealed to me.

00:17:49.740 But but when you look at the polls and what really matters to voters, it is the economy, stupid. It really is. 1.00

00:17:56.500 And those numbers that are driving Joe Biden's polls down so low, 42 percent, I think, of the lowest the latest approval rating and 66 percent of the population thinking the country's in the wrong direction.

00:18:08.700 That's the real clear politics average, 66 percent saying wrong direction. It's much higher than that.

00:18:13.680 Many polls and a majority of Democrats saying they don't want him to run again.

00:18:18.300 It's all very, very linked to the economy. And so what of the culture war response versus just zeroing in on those economic numbers and pounding them relentlessly?

00:18:30.500 Yeah, I suspect that Joe Biden was underconfident in that moment because he knew what he was saying was a lie.

00:18:41.820 He would like it to be true that Republicans wanted to get rid of Social Security and Medicare because those programs are really popular.

00:18:49.580 It's not true. He knows that it's not true.

00:18:52.180 He knows also that the weird social policies that his party seems to be advancing are not popular.

00:19:02.620 And that's why he barely mentioned them yesterday at all.

00:19:06.140 I think from the other side, Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the same mistake inverted, 0.99

00:19:13.340 which is that she decided to focus on the thing that people don't care about as much as the economy. 0.99

00:19:22.180 And she did so with a lot of hyperbole as well. 0.99

00:19:27.040 My instinct here is that Biden is in one sense showing us that he is the Democrats' best candidate,

00:19:37.340 because not all of the people who might replace him have that grasp of what matters to people.

00:19:45.620 I mean, I thought the speech was wildly dishonest.

00:19:48.220 I thought most of the narratives were false.

00:19:50.000 But he does seem at one level to understand the best cards that he can play.

00:19:58.240 Maybe it's his age.

00:19:59.380 Maybe it's because he's been around Democratic politics for 50 years.

00:20:02.960 Maybe there is something to him being, you know, folksy Joe that people who say marinated in universities don't understand.

00:20:11.260 But he did put his best foot forward yesterday.

00:20:15.680 Now, I think it was frivolous often.

00:20:18.120 I think it is just a national disgrace.

00:20:20.620 And I include Republicans in this, that we spend minutes of that speech yesterday listening to complaints about ticketmaster and resort fees and not about our massive $31 trillion debt,

00:20:34.180 our endless budget deficits, our total unwillingness to talk about Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements, 0.94

00:20:41.960 other than to have stupid, meaningless, irrelevant, out-of-touch fights about whether we want to end them or not, which nobody does. 0.98

00:20:50.140 That's not the question. 0.99

00:20:51.060 But Biden has a difficult set of cards in his hand, and I think he played them relatively well.

00:20:56.600 And I just can't say the same for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

00:20:59.440 She talked about what Republican-based voters care a great deal about at the moment and should.

00:21:04.820 I don't think it's frivolous.

00:21:06.100 I don't think those are irrelevant culture war issues.

00:21:08.780 And I find it quite irritating, in fact, when people say, oh, that's just the culture war.

00:21:12.440 But what do you mean that's just the culture war?

00:21:13.820 That's your children's school.

00:21:15.260 That couldn't be much more important than that.

00:21:18.160 But, as you say, at the moment, the biggest weakness for Biden is not the culture war,

00:21:25.000 because for whatever reason, he's actually not seen as a culture warrior.

00:21:28.720 Maybe he's too old.

00:21:30.220 It's the younger people within the party who are seen as culture warriors.

00:21:33.280 He is very vulnerable on the economy, and I do wish we'd seen more of that.

00:21:38.360 So, in one sense, Biden actually did a better job than Sarah Huckabee Sanders,

00:21:42.960 because he focused in on his strengths and his opponent's weaknesses.

00:21:46.980 And to the point one of you raised earlier, almost nothing on China.

00:21:52.460 So, we're going to talk about Ticketmaster.

00:21:55.260 But, I mean, it had to be less than 100 words on China.

00:21:59.720 And he just sort of wrote this passing reference to the balloon, like, and we did, you know,

00:22:03.020 he showed them who's boss or however he put it.

00:22:05.500 So, China is a massive problem facing the United States right now.

00:22:09.300 And there's a lot of criticism going his way that he doesn't know how to deal with them,

00:22:12.660 especially in light of our positioning in Ukraine with respect to Russia and so on.

00:22:16.540 And I don't think anybody who's got those concerns, and it should be everybody,

00:22:20.000 is feeling better about them today because he just blew it off.

00:22:23.860 I mean, it's like, what did we learn?

00:22:25.440 We learned about, I guess, burger shop workers who are allegedly under non-competes.

00:22:30.460 I mean, where?

00:22:31.560 Okay, but perhaps there's been a case here or there.

00:22:34.520 That got time in the State of the Union.

00:22:36.380 He called attention to Tyree Nichols, who I've said yesterday,

00:22:40.360 God love the family of Tyree Nichols.

00:22:42.720 But those cops have yet to be tried.

00:22:46.180 And there's something as a lawyer that makes me very uncomfortable with the President of the United States

00:22:50.000 calling attention to it and painting it as a thing before the jury and the justice system has had their say.

00:22:56.660 You know, he already did this with Kyle Rittenhouse and other cases, too.

00:22:59.500 Jacob Blake, he and Kamala Harris, same thing.

00:23:01.680 Like, just be quiet.

00:23:02.880 All right?

00:23:03.220 I know you want to say something.

00:23:04.340 Just be quiet when a case that's in the justice system has not yet played out.

00:23:07.980 All this time, but nothing on China.

00:23:09.960 Who wants to take that?

00:23:13.080 I mean, Megan, you're exactly right.

00:23:16.520 The delivery in those aspects of the speech at times seems a little off.

00:23:23.460 And that's because these culture war issues are not in Biden's wheelhouse.

00:23:28.220 It's not who he is.

00:23:29.600 He's not a progressive.

00:23:31.200 And Republicans will try to paint him that way.

00:23:36.180 That's what they did in 2020.

00:23:38.680 It didn't work then.

00:23:40.040 And I don't see it working for them again.

00:23:43.840 This is why it's so important of Republicans I speak to believe to talk about the economy.

00:23:49.740 People know the economy isn't working for them.

00:23:52.440 They know that the country doesn't feel like it's at its best and that it's moving in the right direction.

00:23:58.160 So to the extent that Republicans hammer those points instead of focusing on what gets them cable news time or gets them applause from Twitter.

00:24:10.660 I mean, you know, the Ron DeSantis playbook here.

00:24:13.580 I don't know that anybody really can replicate that.

00:24:16.640 And to Charles's point, Sarah Sanders attempt to do that last night really fell kind of flat.

00:24:24.820 And that's because when all is said and done, people are going to be more concerned about the economy.

00:24:32.300 And that's Biden's it's that's where he can make the most effective case for his reelection.

00:24:39.320 It's also his biggest vulnerability because the economy is not good right now.

00:24:43.460 What he needs to be able to do is tell people, look, you should trust me and the Democratic Party over these Republicans who, frankly, didn't look like they were in much of a position to govern last night with all of that catcalling and hooting and hollering from the House floor.

00:25:00.660 Well, if I could take the China question.

00:25:04.060 Yeah, go.

00:25:05.080 This is why I hated the speech.

00:25:07.640 And this is why I hate most of those speeches.

00:25:10.440 The constitutional responsibility is to update the legislature.

00:25:14.780 Foreign policy is a role the president legally is obliged to spearhead.

00:25:22.260 He doesn't get to decide whether or not we go to war.

00:25:24.680 But outside of that, he is instrumental in our foreign policy.

00:25:28.740 I know that he doesn't want to talk about China.

00:25:33.140 I know that he knows as well as anyone else that the American public is not as interested in China as it should be.

00:25:41.640 But I think he had a responsibility to address what happened last night, whether he wanted to or not, whether it made him look good or not, whether it would fit into a campaign speech or not.

00:25:53.120 I think he should have spent some time explaining where we are with China, what the balloon they sent represented, why he decided to shoot it down.

00:26:04.900 That is the point of the State of the Union.

00:26:09.760 But he didn't.

00:26:11.260 I think the same on Ukraine, as I said earlier.

00:26:14.040 I think it would have been a good use of his time.

00:26:16.700 And I'm broadly aligned with President Biden on Ukraine.

00:26:19.180 This isn't a criticism of the policy.

00:26:21.260 I think it would have been a good use of his time to make for two, three, four minutes a case for why we are sending them so much money and getting involved and slowly escalating up the chain with what we're sending them.

00:26:36.360 The latest seems to be tanks.

00:26:38.080 That would have been a public service.

00:26:40.560 And, of course, I'm not naive enough to think this is going to happen.

00:26:43.940 But I think the same thing is true on entitlements and should be under Republican presidents as well.

00:26:50.660 It would be a public service for a U.S. president to say to the country in a primetime address like this and to the legislature that controls the budget, here is the problem we have with Social Security.

00:27:02.760 Now, you can argue all day as to how we should fix it.

00:27:05.880 You can say if you're a Democrat, we have to raise taxes.

00:27:08.580 You can say if you're a Republican, we need to reform or cut or not.

00:27:12.960 Many Republicans don't want to reform or cut.

00:27:15.040 They want to either do nothing or raise taxes or a combination of the three or run away.

00:27:19.800 But it would have been a public service.

00:27:21.800 So why didn't he address China?

00:27:23.060 He didn't address China because he did not see this as a presidential function.

00:27:28.700 He saw it as a campaign event.

00:27:30.640 And the upshot of it is that it was a pointless event and worse.

00:27:36.560 China's not a winner. 0.96

00:27:37.960 This is, I think, all he said.

00:27:39.980 It's 13 seconds long as cut in the following soundbite.

00:27:44.940 Sot 8 on China. 0.76

00:27:47.120 I'm committed to work with China where we can advance American interests and benefit the world.

00:27:51.380 But make no mistake about it.

00:27:52.940 As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country.

00:27:59.660 And we did.

00:28:00.380 By the way, was it a it was an attack that threatened our sovereignty?

00:28:04.960 Because that's not really the messaging we were getting from the administration last week. 0.99

00:28:08.880 It was like, oh, get over your obsession with the damn balloon. 0.99

00:28:11.860 Would you move on? 1.00

00:28:12.780 It's like, wait, what?

00:28:14.440 Could you talk more about that?

00:28:15.760 How did it threaten our sovereignty?

00:28:17.220 Exactly.

00:28:17.760 Go on.

00:28:18.400 Go.

00:28:18.500 But you're right, because as much as he wants to say, I get it, I get it.

00:28:22.760 Then don't be afraid to go to the difficult topics and show us that you actually do get it and you're wrestling with it.

00:28:28.920 The thing about Social Security, Medicare is a great one, Jeremy, because, you know, I've been talking about these issues long enough on the news that I remember the whole generation when I first joined Fox in 2004.

00:28:39.060 That was a lot younger than and they were talking about these things are going to have to be managed.

00:28:44.320 They're going to go bankrupt.

00:28:45.760 It's, you know, our elderly parents who are going to have to deal with this and then us as a result.

00:28:49.760 And then that whole group is now aged into retirement age.

00:28:53.000 Now, they don't want to talk about it.

00:28:54.360 Now, the young people today are like, well, this is a problem to deal with.

00:28:57.180 In 15 years, they're going to age out.

00:28:58.600 They're not going to want to talk about it.

00:28:59.560 But sooner or later, we're going to be left with this massive problem.

00:29:02.420 And all these politicians who skated through by just getting reelected by never touching it are going to be gone.

00:29:07.200 And someone will be left to pay the bill at some point.

00:29:12.600 You're exactly right.

00:29:14.320 It's it's a crushing problem that we're facing on the horizon here.

00:29:18.200 But it's it's not just that Republicans don't want to talk about this anymore.

00:29:22.980 It's that the ones who were front and center in the debate over public entitlement spending.

00:29:28.680 I'm thinking of former Speaker Paul Ryan were driven out of the party and they were replaced by the likes of Donald Trump and Republicans who were much more comfortable.

00:29:37.200 Saying they wanted to spend more money on Social Security, on Medicare.

00:29:42.880 And remember, Trump, that he famously said, I mean, he said this over and over.

00:29:47.680 I remember interviewing him once when I was writing my book and we talked about his position on entitlements.

00:29:52.900 And he told me about the time he told Paul Ryan that he thought Republicans had a death wish for continuing to pursue cuts to these really popular programs.

00:30:02.340 Now, politically, of course, he was correct.

00:30:04.900 The question of what that means for the future stability of our economy is another thing altogether.

00:30:11.300 And you're right to point out it is a very real problem.

00:30:14.420 But at a time when political courage is really lacking in in our leadership in Washington, I wouldn't expect anyone in either party to do anything about this anytime soon.

00:30:25.480 Courage. What you saw, the courageous moment last night was with the woman in the casino coat, Howard Stern.

00:30:31.760 He's right. That was the most courageous moment we had last evening, unfortunately.

00:30:36.500 When we come back, I wanted to spend a minute on the media.

00:30:38.960 You mentioned it in passing, Jeremy, that, you know, the greatest ever.

00:30:41.940 We've got some of that.

00:30:43.380 And I want to get into some of the spin because I found that almost more interesting than the actual remarks.

00:30:49.120 Stand by us. Charles and Jeremy, stay with us.

00:30:51.240 OK, so the media, not surprisingly, everyone I saw on CNN and MSNBC, the main channels, loved it.

00:31:02.420 They they were delighted.

00:31:03.980 You could tell that he exceeded their expectations and they were relieved.

00:31:08.720 Here's just a little sampling of Wolf Blitzer of CNN and Joy Reid on MSNBC.

00:31:13.020 I've heard President Biden, going back to his 36 years in the U.S. Senate, deliver a lot of speeches over the years.

00:31:20.600 I've covered him for many, many years.

00:31:22.500 I've gotten to know him a bit.

00:31:24.000 I think this was the best speech I have ever heard him deliver.

00:31:28.200 He was passionate.

00:31:29.500 It was extremely well written.

00:31:31.200 He clearly had practiced it and he delivered a powerful message to the American people.

00:31:36.540 Remember the argument that went into this is there's a lot of anxiety in the Democratic sort of political world about Biden's age.

00:31:47.020 He shattered that tonight.

00:31:50.140 You think, Jeremy, your thoughts?

00:31:53.480 Well, I think part of the issue is that Republicans have set the bar so low, the expectations for Biden so low.

00:32:01.760 As one of them said to me, they spent the last couple of weeks talking about how Biden was basically going to fall off the stage.

00:32:11.100 And then when he doesn't do that, he ends up looking OK.

00:32:15.260 I mean, I don't think the delivery was was great.

00:32:18.940 There were moments when he seemed to slur his words and he ran one sentence in to the next.

00:32:26.240 But it certainly wasn't as devastating a performance, as much of a bomb, as many on the right were hoping that it would be.

00:32:35.600 I mean, I was listening to your friends, Megan, who do the Ruthless podcast, you know, Josh Holmes and his buddies, Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff.

00:32:44.220 And I like those guys.

00:32:45.060 I think they give smart political analysis.

00:32:46.980 But yesterday they were talking basically about how it would be, you know, Biden was going to split his pants on the stage.

00:32:53.400 And he's they're talking about him as if he's this senile guy who's who's got one foot in the grave.

00:32:59.280 Well, you know what?

00:32:59.900 He's not dead yet.

00:33:01.380 And if Republicans keep talking about him like he is, I think he's going to continue to beat the spread here on nights like this and in debates. 0.98

00:33:09.460 I mean, remember, one of the moments when he really rebounded in in the 2020 campaign was after that first debate when everybody expected him to be this doddering, you know, stammering old fool. 0.97

00:33:22.880 And he didn't look like that at all. 0.92

00:33:24.880 So I think Republicans, again, would be wise to stop talking about some of these more superficial issues and get on to substance and attack the Biden administration over its policy.

00:33:36.840 See, I disagree profoundly with that.

00:33:40.500 I don't think this is a question of expectations.

00:33:44.740 And I also don't think for what it's worth that Republicans and conservatives and anyone who doesn't like Joe Biden pointing out his age and inability to speak is a problem.

00:33:54.960 I'll take this one by one.

00:33:55.980 If you look at the quotes that we just heard in the clips that were played, the argument being made was not Joe Biden did better than expected.

00:34:07.660 Joe Biden was supposed to blow this and didn't.

00:34:11.020 Joe Biden was more on the ball than some anticipated.

00:34:15.280 The argument was this was objectively a terrific speech.

00:34:20.200 This was, I think Wolf Blitzer said, the best speech he's ever given, the best speech he's given in 80 years, during which time he's been vice president.

00:34:29.900 He's been a senator since what, 1973, 4?

00:34:36.100 That is an absurd claim.

00:34:37.580 And it's a claim that was contrived before this speech was ever given.

00:34:40.920 He could have come out last night, ripped his shirt off and thrown water balloons at all of the members of the Supreme Court.

00:34:46.080 And they would still have said, wow, what a great speech, the best speech he's given in 80 years.

00:34:50.220 On the broader question of Republicans pointing out that Biden has passed it, I think it's imperative.

00:34:55.260 I don't think it's imperative from some cynical, amoral political perspective.

00:34:59.300 I think it's imperative because it's true. 0.52

00:35:01.220 And I think that it's imperative because it is true.

00:35:03.660 And the American public know it's true.

00:35:05.380 Look at the NBC poll from last week.

00:35:08.540 28% of Americans think that he is capable of being president of the United States.

00:35:13.040 They think that he is able to do the job at his age.

00:35:15.900 28%, less than a third, think that he can do it.

00:35:20.740 31, I think, said that he would be able to handle his job in a crisis.

00:35:25.200 You can't con people into thinking that.

00:35:27.420 If Republicans had said that Barack Obama was incapable of doing the job in a crisis, that he was too old, that he was too senile, that he was too ineloquent, no one would have believed it because it wasn't true.

00:35:38.480 They didn't go down that road because it would have been unprofitable to do so.

00:35:42.860 But I think it's really important for people to say this because it's correct.

00:35:46.440 He's too old for the job.

00:35:47.700 It's really clear that that is getting worse as he proceeds.

00:35:52.100 And to pretend that the press did that what we saw last night was a masterclass, I think it's farcical and irresponsible.

00:35:58.620 Can I tell you, this is reminding me a little bit of, forgive me for this sidetrack, but Madonna looked bizarre the other night at the Grammys.

00:36:08.380 She's clearly done something to her face that she's crossing over.

00:36:11.600 She looks like the cat lady right now and just like so much filler. 0.62

00:36:14.640 And her response has been on Instagram to say that is ageist.

00:36:19.480 I'm sick of this ageist society in which we live.

00:36:21.740 And that is not I'd be the first to say that it's ageist.

00:36:24.700 If it's not, it's no one has a problem with her age except for Madonna, clearly, who's doing bizarre things to herself to avoid looking 64, which she is. 0.98

00:36:34.700 But this the criticisms on Joe Biden and his moments of senility are not about people object to his age, per se, that he's 80.

00:36:43.180 Look at Alan Dershowitz.

00:36:44.380 You'd be hard pressed to find somebody who is more on point or intellectually nimble than Alan.

00:36:49.920 He's still got it full bore.

00:36:52.080 And he's four or six years older than Joe Biden.

00:36:56.020 It's not about Joe Biden's age or his stutter as the media was, you know, the other side of the media, Jeremy, like the Republicans are like he's going to fall down and split his pants.

00:37:03.980 But a lot of these Democrats, well, he's got a stutter going into last night.

00:37:07.680 Like, remember, he's worked hard to overcome it.

00:37:09.980 Right. It's like, no, it's not about his age and it's not about his stutter.

00:37:14.060 It's about him. And he's clearly losing his grip.

00:37:17.100 He wanders. He mumbles.

00:37:18.660 He didn't last night know that Chuck Schumer was the majority leader now and not the minority leader.

00:37:23.520 He couldn't remember the name of that ambassador.

00:37:24.960 He messed up Tyree Nichols name like that.

00:37:26.900 It's a pattern for him.

00:37:30.680 And it's a huge vulnerability.

00:37:31.980 I mean, nothing I said earlier is should suggest that I don't know for a fact that Democrats are very worried about this.

00:37:42.700 And in Biden's own focus groups, what Democrats have seen in their poll numbers, they know that his age is a major concern for a lot of voters.

00:37:52.520 And that when they see it, when Americans see him speak, they don't feel comfortable when he wanders off topic, when he slurs his words, when he can't finish his sentences, because it reminds them that, yes, he is in his 80s.

00:38:08.060 And that is something that, you know, it's why we didn't see him a whole lot in 2020 on the campaign trail, as one Republican strategist put it to me, that this was a really effective Democratic strategy, because all Biden really needed to do was issue a proof of life video every six weeks or so.

00:38:26.560 And he was probably going to beat Trump anyway. 1.00

00:38:56.540 work because voters don't like being told that they're stupid. 1.00

00:39:00.140 Well, you raise a good point, which is the Democrats know, too, they're not going to run and say it out on the air, but they know, too. 1.00

00:39:06.220 And they would love, according to these polls, to exchange him for somebody else.

00:39:10.360 But they don't want Kamala Harris, according to your newspaper, which had a fascinating report this week on her called Kamala Harris is trying to define her vice presidency. 1.00

00:39:22.500 This is the headline.

00:39:23.600 Even her allies are tired of waiting.

00:39:26.000 It goes on to talk about how her critics and detractors alike acknowledge the vice presidency is intended to be a supportive role.

00:39:32.400 But the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and just around the nation, including some who helped put her on the ticket, said she has not risen to the challenge of proving herself as the future leader of the party, much less the country.

00:39:50.660 Even some Democrats, whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes, confided privately that they had lost hope in her.

00:40:00.560 They use the term quiet panic setting in among key Democrats.

00:40:05.700 What do you make of that, Jeremy?

00:40:06.500 Because it doesn't seem like it seems like for The New York Times to write this kind of article says something.

00:40:13.460 It's interesting because you picked up on the key sentence, the one that I was going to mention.

00:40:17.560 And I'm glad you did, is that the people that her office suggested New York Times reporters get in touch with, people who were presumably going to vouch for Kamala Harris and say what a good job she was doing and how she wasn't getting the benefit of the doubt.

00:40:32.260 Those people privately told my colleagues that they have lost faith in her and that they don't think that she's doing a great job.

00:40:40.620 That's significant in and of itself, but it also speaks to the lack of competence that she and her staff project.

00:40:50.400 And people across Washington that I talk to have picked up on this.

00:40:53.900 They've complained about it a lot.

00:40:55.440 It's not just that she doesn't have a national profile or that people don't really know what her identity is or her political brand.

00:41:03.060 It's that they don't think that she's very good at her job.

00:41:07.540 And that's a really hard image to correct.

00:41:12.940 I will say just one last point here.

00:41:15.400 What I found most interesting was not necessarily the article itself, but what I read in the comments from New York Times readers about Kamala Harris.

00:41:25.960 And it was overwhelmingly almost to a person, hundreds and hundreds of people, New York Times subscribers and readers who said, we don't think she's doing a good job. 0.61

00:41:36.560 She had a chance.

00:41:38.060 She blew it. 0.99

00:41:38.820 And that tells you about where, you know, a certain core constituency, presumably of Kamala Harris's and the Democratic Party, you know, a New York Times reader that tells you what they really think of her and that her standing among, you know, people who are left of center is actually pretty low.

00:41:58.420 What are they going to do about this problem, Charles?

00:42:01.000 Because if Biden, I mean, he's expected to announce that he's running, but maybe he won't.

00:42:06.720 And even if he does, there's significant fear that he won't be able to serve out a second term were he to win one.

00:42:12.880 Never mind for his first term.

00:42:13.900 He's got a couple of years left on that.

00:42:15.580 And the Times points out accurately that some did not feel she could win the presidency in 2024, but some felt the party's biggest challenge would be finding a way to sideline her without inflaming key Democratic constituencies that would take offense.

00:42:30.400 Which leads me to what Ron Klain told the paper, the president's departing chief of staff, which I think is just so telling.

00:42:36.820 He talks about how she carries the expectations that are upon her as the first, you know, vice president who's a female, who's a person of color, who's got she checks a bunch of identity boxes.

00:42:48.720 She carries these expectations, not as a burden, but with grace and an understanding of how much her history making role inspires others.

00:43:00.060 I mean, my layperson interpretation of that is it's enough that she's diverse.

00:43:05.460 You're welcome.

00:43:06.540 She's diverse.

00:43:07.540 Just be glad that she's diverse.

00:43:09.060 She's breaking barriers left and right just by being diverse.

00:43:12.100 Nothing more is really required.

00:43:13.580 Well, that was my favorite part of the piece, because I think that it is deliciously awkward and it shows the limits and the well-deserved limits of identitarian politics, which judges people based on their immutable characteristics.

00:43:31.040 What that essentially means is that if the Democratic Party wants to defenestrate Kamala Harris, it's going to have to tell a whole bunch of people why it was profoundly inspiring to have a half black, half Indian woman as vice president.

00:43:51.420 But it wouldn't be inspiring to elevate that person to the nomination for president.

00:43:56.800 Now, you can say if you want and should say it's because she's not good enough. 0.96

00:44:01.280 But then you have to admit that that was true all along on the question of who could succeed Joe Biden.

00:44:10.640 This is Biden's greatest strength.

00:44:12.980 I was asked at an event I did recently, how can it be in a country of 330 plus million people that Donald Trump and Joe Biden seem to be the frontrunners for the presidency?

00:44:27.960 And the answers are actually very different between the parties.

00:44:31.440 The answer for Trump is that Donald Trump has a hold on primary voters.

00:44:35.800 They like him.

00:44:36.360 They've rejected the Republican parties that previously existed, and they're attached to Trump.

00:44:40.820 I personally don't think Trump's going to be the nominee.

00:44:43.240 I think that that attachment is dwindling.

00:44:45.620 But if he is, it will be because he came in and reformed the party and the primary voters liked it.

00:44:53.080 The reason that Joe Biden is the frontrunner is that the Democratic Party's bench has been chopped up over and over and over again for 10 to 12 years.

00:45:03.680 It got destroyed in 2010.

00:45:05.840 It got destroyed in 2014 and 2016.

00:45:10.820 And to a lesser extent in 2020, even though Biden won the presidency, Democrats did not do as well as they had hoped in the Senate, in the House and in the states.

00:45:22.200 The simple answer there is there isn't really anyone else.

00:45:26.980 Kamala Harris is a disaster. 0.81

00:45:28.780 Pete Buttigieg is a joke.

00:45:30.640 There are some other figures around the edges, perhaps Gavin Newsom.

00:45:33.800 But I'm not convinced the Democratic Party wants to nominate a Californian in 2024, especially if Ron DeSantis is the nominee.

00:45:42.140 I don't think a California v. Florida fight is going to go very well in the rest of the country.

00:45:47.120 And Joe Biden may well be their best option.

00:45:51.060 So the question, well, who can replace him?

00:45:53.420 I don't know.

00:45:54.120 And they don't know.

00:45:55.060 And that's why you're seeing this panic.

00:45:56.700 And it's also why you're seeing people tell The New York Times that Kamala Harris isn't up to it, because they're aware that they may not get the choice to re-nominate Joe Biden.

00:46:05.020 And they're going to have to start thinking about what they're going to do instead pretty quick.

00:46:08.440 Two things.

00:46:08.920 Two things quickly.

00:46:09.620 My favorite part of the piece was the Times discussing the challenges posed by having a woman VP, foreign leaders wanting her to meet with first ladies.

00:46:17.480 That's BS.

00:46:18.300 That would be annoying.

00:46:18.940 But talking about how she's even revolutionizing the office chair, her top or her recently stepped down communications director, saying he learned that the desk chairs in the office needed to be changed to suit her.

00:46:30.620 She's only five foot two instead of average male height like her predecessors. 0.97

00:46:36.020 She forces us, quote, to recalibrate our assumptions by being short.

00:46:41.860 OK, I'm sure we can do better than that.

00:46:44.160 Quickly, before we go, why people should not be mouth kissing ever, if it's not your husband or your mouth or your spouse.

00:46:53.000 Here's Kamala's husband and Joe Biden's wife kissing on the mouth. 0.58

00:46:57.640 I'm sorry.

00:46:58.840 Secondhand uncomfortable feeling.

00:47:01.200 Should it be done or shouldn't it?

00:47:02.420 Charles, quickly.

00:47:04.020 I had no idea what's going on in that clip.

00:47:07.460 Jeremy, what'd you like to weigh in?

00:47:09.560 Not in flu season.

00:47:12.500 Not ever.

00:47:13.200 Don't kiss me on my mouth.

00:47:14.460 Don't do it.

00:47:15.020 In fact, don't kiss me and probably don't hug me either.

00:47:17.100 Just, you know, like the wave, like the pat.

00:47:19.340 I'll take that.

00:47:20.300 Definitely no mouth kissing. 0.86

00:47:21.820 Gross.

00:47:22.360 I don't know where your mouth's been and I don't want to know. 0.94

00:47:25.200 Charles and Jeremy, what a pleasure.

00:47:27.020 Thanks, guys.

00:47:28.260 Thanks, Megan.

00:47:32.800 Biden spent a large portion of his boring State of the Union address talking about the economy.

00:47:38.380 But what is the real state of the economy?

00:47:41.460 My next guest knows and is here to tell you.

00:47:44.260 Dave Ramsey is host of The Dave Ramsey Show.

00:47:47.200 He joins me now.

00:47:48.200 Dave, great to see you.

00:47:49.220 Thanks for coming back.

00:47:50.780 Well, thank you.

00:47:51.780 Good to talk to you.

00:47:53.160 So what'd you make of it last night?

00:47:54.740 What was your impression?

00:47:55.400 Well, I mean, presidents always take credit for the economy, whatever that is, unless it's bad.

00:48:05.300 And it's not really their fault one way or the other.

00:48:10.320 So this president, and generally speaking, Washington's pretty much out of touch with what's going on with real people.

00:48:19.760 And so for a president to stand up and say things that indicate that he's out of touch is not unusual.

00:48:25.500 And to take credit for things that he didn't do is not unusual.

00:48:28.720 But in my opinion, President Biden took that to a whole new level.

00:48:33.600 He's extremely out of touch and completely just looked to me like he was just making up numbers.

00:48:40.220 I don't know where they got these ideas.

00:48:43.300 One of the things he was doing was talking about all of the jobs he created, right, that he created more jobs in two years than any president has created him for.

00:48:53.660 And to me, even, you know, from my post, which is not exactly as an economist, it made no sense because I understand he inherited an economy in which businesses were shut down.

00:49:04.800 So saying that they can start up again isn't really job creation.

00:49:11.520 Well, I mean, let's be clear.

00:49:14.220 No president creates jobs. 0.71

00:49:16.980 Businesses create jobs.

00:49:18.740 The only thing a president can do is to, you know, cast a vision over the country, give the country a belief that things are going to go well.

00:49:27.900 And then in the environment of strong leadership, stable, predictable leadership, then business people will create jobs.

00:49:36.960 But government has never created a job ever except a government job.

00:49:41.480 And he didn't create 12 million government jobs.

00:49:44.160 We know that 80,000 extra IRS people, apparently, but not 12 million.

00:49:49.100 So government doesn't create jobs.

00:49:50.660 And Trump didn't create jobs. 0.58

00:49:52.180 I mean, nobody, my governor in Tennessee, I got a great governor here, is a friend of mine, but he doesn't create the jobs.

00:49:58.740 He just creates an environment where those of us that hire people actually create the jobs.

00:50:04.520 And so what of that, though, because even his policies, like it ties together with another beef I had with the remarks, which was he kept saying how COVID shut things down.

00:50:16.600 COVID shut down the economy.

00:50:18.120 COVID shut down businesses.

00:50:19.040 And that was, I mean, the passive COVID, that's COVID didn't do anything.

00:50:22.920 Politicians decided to shut things down.

00:50:25.700 Democrats, Democrats for the most part.

00:50:28.080 And Joe Biden was chief among them in wanting to keep businesses shuttered.

00:50:32.360 It's part of the reason why there's so much resentment of him in many business corners.

00:50:36.180 So he's out there saying it was COVID that shut things down, but it was Joe Biden that opened things back up and created jobs.

00:50:45.120 Yeah, which is absolutely absurd.

00:50:46.620 I mean, we just ran the COVID, whatever element of truth was around COVID and whatever element of mythology was around COVID that caused a, the greatest economic shutdown in the history of the United States. 1.00

00:51:02.800 It's never happened before, and I pray it never happens again, that we all willingly go along with these idiots and do this again, ever. 1.00

00:51:12.200 But the flattening of the curve and all the garbage we went through. 1.00

00:51:15.620 And, yeah, to reopen after that is, no, you didn't create anything.

00:51:23.140 And you didn't, you know, where was the part where you did us a favor?

00:51:26.980 Again, we just got back, business people, we just get back to going what we do, which is run businesses.

00:51:31.760 And thank God we're able to do that again.

00:51:34.880 But the COVID ran its course, whether the mythology ran its course, our unwillingness to comply ran its course, or the actual disease ran its course.

00:51:48.880 But it ran its course.

00:51:49.880 It's, you know, and no one gets to take credit for that.

00:51:53.320 But the only thing we can do is learn from the thing that happened and look back and go, going forward, are we ever going to be willing to be told to comply like that again?

00:52:06.200 I was thinking of a woman named Ashley Graham.

00:52:09.980 She goes online by a Patriot Barbie, and she was at the Capitol on January 6th.

00:52:15.580 She did not storm the building, but she was, sorry, Lindsey Graham.

00:52:18.700 And she was storming the, she should not storm the Capitol.

00:52:22.340 She was just there to attend the Trump speech.

00:52:24.600 But this is a woman who was a single mom, a new mom, and had a chain of businesses she had built. 1.00

00:52:33.220 Dave, you would appreciate this.

00:52:34.400 It was like a hair salon, maybe a tanning salon. 0.98

00:52:37.280 I'm testing my memory.

00:52:38.340 But she had like maybe five or six small shops that she had recently opened, and they were doing pretty well and was told to shut them down during COVID.

00:52:46.980 COVID told her to shut them down.

00:52:48.600 And I think she was living in the state of Oregon, blue state, you know, extreme measures.

00:52:54.140 And because I was kind of going in depth with her on what brought you to the Capitol on January 6th.

00:52:59.760 And she, well, though she didn't storm, she was a believer that somehow they were going to reinstate Trump, you know, like they were going to reverse, you know, she did sort of get sucked down the rabbit hole.

00:53:09.360 And what the government did to her in the shutting down of her business and basically making it impossible for her to support her new baby and her lifestyle is what drove her there. 0.52

00:53:21.100 She started to lose her tether on what was real, what was appropriate for her and her position as this mom, and got there, got spun up.

00:53:30.500 This woman was hurt by politicians who made bad decisions that directly affected her. 0.55

00:53:36.020 She was not hurt by, quote, COVID.

00:53:38.680 And she is, I guarantee you, not sitting there feeling grateful to Joe Biden for now creating jobs by letting her salvage what's left of her business, if she even can.

00:53:48.360 She moved, I think, to Arizona after all of this happened.

00:53:50.900 Well, and I mean, it's, it's old news, but we can very, it's easy to look at the correlation between who opened up and when, uh, and the correlation does run down political lines.

00:54:07.300 It runs down party lines.

00:54:08.460 And so, you know, you, the, the most draconian and longest shutdowns were in blue states, uh, and red states opened up faster.

00:54:19.780 I mean, you can argue about why, or you can say, I don't like them because of that, or I do like them because of that.

00:54:26.020 But the actual data is there that, you know, California stayed shut down, Oregon stayed shut down, Michigan stayed shut down, Tennessee opened up, Florida opened up, uh, New York stayed shut down, Texas opened up.

00:54:39.380 And so you can run it right down the lines of what happened there.

00:54:42.920 And it is a party line thing.

00:54:44.880 So in that sense, politicians do, uh, if they're driving something like the quarantine, um, or, or the shutdown or the draconian measures or whatever, whatever we want to name that stuff in that sense, they're, they are, uh, not creating anything, but they're creating the problems.

00:55:02.420 And when they finally get out of the way, I don't know why you get to take credit for that.

00:55:06.820 Right. No, it's true. Um, forgive me. I just wanted to mention this one moment to the audience, Dave, this isn't exactly in your wheelhouse, but I did think it was worth mentioning while we're on the subject of January 6th.

00:55:18.820 There was a moment in which Joe Biden, once again, referred to that as the greatest threat our nation has faced since the civil war.

00:55:28.100 All right. 3000 Americans died on nine 11, but this was the greatest threat we faced since the civil war.

00:55:33.680 Jan six, he said it. And when he said it, house speaker, Kevin McCarthy did not clap for that.

00:55:41.380 I'll show you the moment. Here it is. First, here's the moment. So at six.

00:55:44.240 Two years ago, democracy faces greatest threats in civil war. And today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbound and unbroken.

00:56:03.740 Now you can see in the background, Kevin McCarthy did not stand. Kamala Harris did stand.

00:56:07.360 And here was CNN, uh, Jamie Gengel, I think, uh, reacting to that later in the evening. Listen to this.

00:56:15.220 I do want to point out one thing. Uh, when he spoke at the beginning of the evening about January 6th, and he said, our democracy faced the greatest threat since the civil war, Kevin McCarthy sat there and he did not.

00:56:33.280 Yeah. He did because it's asinine clap clap. Yes. Clap. It's asinine. I mean, you can say it's a horrible event and you can put drama on it, but, uh, and you, if you're going to say civil war, you should fully enunciate your words so we can hear them. Don't sound like you've got mush in your mouth, but the, that's just horrible. It's just, again, it's just this drama queen version of, of politicians. 0.97

00:57:02.280 Politicians. And, and the problem with that back to where, you know, it does have an impact on things like the economy because a business leader is sitting and saying, this guy can't shoot down a balloon.

00:57:16.180 And he's, he's got this ridiculous set of the greatest threat since the civil war. I mean, that's an, that's a ridiculous. So that, that does not elicit confidence saying, okay, in the next three years, my business is in a stable environment. I can make forecasts and predictions and higher into that. Instead. I'm like, Oh God, what are we in for next? 0.95

00:57:41.760 I know. Like what bit bigger than like world war one or world war two, like bigger. Okay. Um, all right. I was, it does make you ask how I'm supposed to take these people seriously. Are these people are not getting the buffalo hat is our biggest threat. I mean, seriously.

00:57:56.580 Bigger than like Hitler, Stalin. Okay. Um, the unemployment rate, let's talk about that because it's, it is at a historic low 3.4%. It was at 3.5%. I think when he, under president Trump, uh, and then COVID. Um, and so he was definitely taking a victory lap on that. You're welcome. 0.50

00:58:17.660 You're welcome. Historically low job, uh, unemployment rate. Is it true? Does he get credit for the unemployment rate and for at least helping to create a climate in which it could be so low?

00:58:29.020 Well, again, um, Washington takes credit for things, both sides of the aisle do it all the time that they're not responsible for. And so, uh, what we've got is number one, we have a problem with how we measure unemployment.

00:58:43.940 The unemployment rate as we measure it today is the statistical processes from the 1930s and it's missing so many elements now. So it creates a false picture. So, uh, yes, we have a full employment. No question about it. Actually, we have a labor shortage. That's very dramatic right now. Uh, but what is that from?

00:59:07.300 Well, it's from the labor pool having an existential crisis during COVID during a quarantine that says, Oh, uh, not only they might just shut my job down at any moment, uh, and people might comply to that on not only that, but on top of that, I might die. And I never thought about dying before.

00:59:26.140 And so now I'm going to go do work that I want to do. I'm not going back to a job or a boss I hate. So we've had the great resignation and the great movement. Uh, we've got a great work from home movement that has exploded, uh, and, uh, employers have complied to, uh, but also the thing that nobody's talking about in the mix of this is, and Mike Rowe, my buddy's been dirty jobs has been covering this a bunch and several other people have picked up on the research that's out there on it.

00:59:54.500 We currently have about 6 million unfilled jobs and that the unemployment statistics, the way we do them now doesn't cover the fact that for the first time in American history, we have 7 million able-bodied males between 25 and 54 that are not looking for work.

01:00:20.080 So they're sitting on the couch playing video games for whatever reason. And someone else is supporting them, whether it's the government, their girlfriend, their mother, but someone else is supporting them and they're not looking for work. And we've got a shortage of labor. This is affecting the economy in a different way than unemployment would affect the economy.

01:00:43.820 So there's, there's all this stuff is mixed into this right now. And again, it does come off the back of, uh, the psychological reaction to COVID this existential crisis. People said, I'm not working there anymore. And we've had the largest level of resignations from companies, from jobs in the history of keeping records in the last two years. And, uh, and it has slowed down finally, but all of that is enters into this.

01:01:11.880 So it's a, it's, my point is it's an incomplete picture to say, Oh, 2.7%, which most economists would call full employment. We're there. Great job. The economy's booming. No, there's all kinds of problems under that.

01:01:24.260 You know, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a doctor. The other day was saying that in New York city, if you take a job as a nurse in the ICU, you make about a hundred thousand bucks between the 80 and a hundred thousand bucks. Um, this doctor was trying to hire somebody to work at his front desk. You don't have to work overnight at the ICU. You don't have people thrown up on you. You don't have people dying all the time. You work nine to five and it's great benefits and it's controlled and it's air conditioned and all that's, you know, great stuff.

01:01:51.340 And he was paying something like 125. Couldn't get anybody to take the job. Could not find anyone to take that job. And he was speculating that this problem is basically going to lead potentially to the end of cities. You know, like there are no restaurant workers anymore in New York that you can't find the nurses.

01:02:12.080 You can't find the cab drivers. Their businesses were wiped out during COVID. And now we have all these people staying at home and not wanting to go into the office. Like all of these little things are erosions in the way we used to live.

01:02:24.820 And really we're at the beginning or maybe slightly past the beginning of this massive sea change that I don't know that we willingly wanted or accepted or even that we're walking into it with eyes open.

01:02:35.800 Well, it's the unintended consequences of overreach by government help. I mean, government tried to step in. Trump did it and so did Biden and help people during the quarantine.

01:02:49.800 And they just started throwing government money, throwing checks at them, checks at them, checks at them. Biden bucks, we called them. But there were Trump bucks, too. Both of them did it.

01:02:57.180 And the unintended consequences. People got used to that. Not working and getting money. We conditioned segments of each generation to no longer want to work.

01:03:10.600 And instead of trumpeting success and controlling your own destiny and hustle and grind and hard work is where success comes from.

01:03:20.080 And, you know, nothing of gain of great value comes to anyone unless they're willing to get up, leave the cave, kill something and drag it home.

01:03:30.420 Instead of trumpeting that kind of a thing, we said, hey, listen, we'll take care of you.

01:03:34.800 And people sat on their couch and it's going to be it's going to it's going to take a little bit of leverage to get them back up off their couch.

01:03:41.760 Well, the fact that it's still ongoing is so interesting, right?

01:03:46.360 When the checks were still being doled out, it made more sense to me.

01:03:50.100 OK, I get it. They don't want to work. They want to sit on the couch and take the paycheck.

01:03:53.320 Wouldn't have been my choice, but not everybody's like me.

01:03:56.780 The fact that now there's no more money being handed out, the government's not still handing out those checks to people and they're still sitting on the sidelines.

01:04:04.800 I don't understand. First of all, how are they paying their bills?

01:04:07.440 Like who who is supporting those seven million guys?

01:04:11.580 But I also think there's a deeper societal problem going on here.

01:04:16.500 And I think it has to do with what we're doing to American men.

01:04:20.680 You know, the lectures on how they're toxic, the elevation of women over men. 1.00

01:04:25.660 It's it wasn't enough to get equality.

01:04:27.300 Now it had to be something like subjugation of men and demonization of men in many cases. 0.99

01:04:34.800 And they're just the knee jerk. 0.97

01:04:36.860 You don't matter unless you're, quote, diverse, unless you're a woman or you're a person of color or you're trans or your sexuality is in the minority. 0.95

01:04:46.640 One of those things. And if not, you don't matter.

01:04:49.940 In fact, you're probably something close to the devil. 1.00

01:04:52.940 In fact, you're so awful just by your skin color and your maleness. 1.00

01:04:57.220 We're going to start wiping you off of the syllabi in college courses. 0.99

01:05:01.560 And we're going to tear statues down of people who look like you. 1.00

01:05:05.060 And I just like they're only human.

01:05:07.160 These guys have got to be feeling kind of depressed and accepting the message that maybe maybe I don't matter.

01:05:13.860 Maybe this isn't a society that wants me.

01:05:15.340 Well, we have the highest level of obesity.

01:05:20.180 We have the highest level of anxiety, depression, suicide that we've ever had in the history of record keeping.

01:05:31.320 And and it's because they don't we don't do anything, whether it's because you're demotivated by being called the devil all the time or whether you're demotivated by the fact that someone else is carrying you.

01:05:46.960 You've been coddled and, you know, we don't do anything.

01:05:50.660 We don't have any calluses on our on our minds and we don't have any calluses on our hands, men and women out there today.

01:05:57.360 And so instead of worrying about identity, whether it's white maleness or worried about being demonized or whether, you know, someone minority of some sort getting their rights, it would be a nice change to shift back to the idea that we're going to respect you for what you do.

01:06:17.280 We're going to respect you for what you accomplish.

01:06:20.240 We're going to compensate you for what you do and what you accomplish, not what your identity is.

01:06:26.280 We're not going to spend any more time on your identity, whatever it is, or whether you are, you know, you know, discriminated against because you're a Christian or persecuted against.

01:06:38.440 I'm not going to spend any time on that.

01:06:40.340 Let's just start talking about, hey, we need to get back to respecting accomplishment.

01:06:45.880 We need to get back to respecting and paying for, you know, anything but identity.

01:06:52.600 Let's go back to if you move something down the road, that's what we're going to be excited about.

01:06:57.920 And are you helping people?

01:06:59.720 Are you serving people?

01:07:01.560 Are you making a difference in the in your community?

01:07:05.000 And those kinds of things matter a whole lot more than whether you got your feelings hurt or what is it triggered?

01:07:12.220 Right.

01:07:12.880 Right.

01:07:13.160 Triggered.

01:07:13.600 This reminds me of the debate, not directly between them, but sort of between them, between Michelle Obama and Sheryl Sandberg, who is COO of Facebook.

01:07:22.640 And Sheryl written that book, Lean In, and it was basically about work hard, you know, get get your seat at the table and fight for your seat at the table.

01:07:30.160 And don't be afraid to volunteer, despite the fact that you have other things pulling at your time. 0.99

01:07:34.760 And then Michelle Obama felt the need to take a shot at it, you know, saying that shit doesn't always work, right? 0.99

01:07:41.520 Better to lean back and claim that you're a victim and that bad things happen to you because bosses are mean. 0.99

01:07:47.780 That's a better place rather than Sheryl's book, which whatever, I'm sure it wasn't perfect.

01:07:52.220 But it was a more empowering message of like, lean in, get to work, do it.

01:07:57.300 If you're going to change your life, you need to do it.

01:08:00.900 No one's coming to save you.

01:08:02.180 No one feels sorry for you.

01:08:04.100 Two very different mindsets there.

01:08:06.540 And it feels like Michelle Obama has won.

01:08:10.400 Well, with a portion of the 7 million people sitting on their couch, I mean, you know, definitely.

01:08:17.320 And the loud, squeaky wheel minority, you know, having a voice on social media that they wouldn't have normally had a voice otherwise in other cultures, in other time frames. 0.99

01:08:32.180 And it sounds like they're winning.

01:08:35.120 And yet the reality is out here that, man, this new generation, Gen Z, they are amazing.

01:08:44.160 There is a percentage of them.

01:08:46.680 I've got 19 and 20-year-olds watching this on YouTube calling me, and they're within a month or two of having their first home paid off.

01:08:55.500 Oh, my gosh.

01:08:56.500 And there's a dirty little secret that there's a section of Gen Z that is absolutely the most productive and amazing young people I have seen in years.

01:09:07.180 They're amazing. 0.93

01:09:08.720 And there's a portion of them are just completely, you know, useless, right? 0.56

01:09:12.660 But I guess that's true of every generation.

01:09:15.120 We've always had a generation that was a portion that's productive, and then we stereotype. 0.96

01:09:19.680 Yeah, we stereotype the millennials, you know, avocado toast or whatever crap, right? 0.91

01:09:23.480 And so, but I've got a bunch of millennials on my team. 1.00

01:09:27.000 And when they believe in something, they'll charge the gates of hell with a water pistol, man.

01:09:32.680 They are passionate.

01:09:34.400 They go for it.

01:09:35.500 And they're the opposite of these ne'er-do-wells that we're talking about.

01:09:39.120 And it's so interesting to me that, I mean, Sheryl Sandberg is like radical feminist. 0.99

01:09:44.820 I mean, she's like an icon for that and comes out and then comes out and says, okay, the answer, though, is hard work.

01:09:53.220 So, yeah, it is the answer.

01:09:55.000 So, thank God somebody's out there, you know, doing that.

01:09:57.720 But, and, you know, Ms. Obama's wrong.

01:10:02.020 It does always work.

01:10:03.420 It never always works perfectly, and it might not work this time, but it works better than the other thing, which is doing nothing.

01:10:13.540 So, this idea that you work your butt off, you become excellent instead of embracing your mediocrity with quiet quitting.

01:10:21.540 And I'm going to sit back and I'm going to let, you know, the way I'm going to fight a toxic boss is I'm going to stay on his payroll or her payroll and do nothing and quiet quit. 1.00

01:10:31.900 And instead of going, wait a minute, this is a jerk. 0.99

01:10:35.140 I don't want to work here anymore. 0.99

01:10:36.340 I'm going to go work for somebody that gets it, and I'm going to give my excellence to a different place in the marketplace.

01:10:41.860 And instead of trumping that or trumpeting that on Tic Tac, we go the other way, right?

01:10:48.740 And we go, oh, we're going to worship the victim.

01:10:51.100 And so, again, it's just messaging and narratives that are flowing through the culture, and the concern is that when we get a State of the Union address that doesn't lift us into our best version of ourselves, instead, all we can do is point fingers and act like, okay, we got you.

01:11:12.300 Washington's going to carry you.

01:11:13.840 You don't have to do anything.

01:11:15.140 You can sit there and play video games three hours a day.

01:11:18.900 You spend too much time thinking about your own mortality and good things do not follow.

01:11:22.840 A momentary, like, life is short.

01:11:24.560 Am I making good choices?

01:11:25.880 That's good.

01:11:26.640 But getting too mired in it, it really just leads to apathy and immobility.

01:11:31.320 And this thing that you talk about, you know, the light bulb of, oh, my God, I have to live my best life.

01:11:37.580 You know, this is an existential crisis.

01:11:39.060 You could die at any moment.

01:11:41.440 That's not really the best thinking.

01:11:43.020 It's really not.

01:11:43.660 Like, sometimes you just need to get a job, and sometimes it's not your dream job.

01:11:48.440 It's not giving back to society in any profound way that was going to change the world, but it's an honest day's work, and it helps pay your bills, and it will have the day-to-day effect of making you feel good about yourself and like a responsible citizen.

01:12:03.320 And before you know it, your mood has improved, and you're with other people, which is also important to happiness.

01:12:09.900 Like, this younger generation, I think it's the younger ones, who are thinking, I've got to wait until, like, the perfect job that checks all the boxes comes along to get off my couch are really misguided.

01:12:22.960 You know, the idea of apprenticing for something rather than just starting to do it as a master craftsman is beyond a lot of people.

01:12:31.460 And that's, you know, like, we're supposed to skip all the steps of the hard part and only get to the good part. 0.88

01:12:36.600 No, the hard part, you know, you need to embrace the suck.

01:12:39.360 There's part of this that there's a journey here, and that's when you develop your world-class talent. 0.73

01:12:46.740 You don't start out as a world-class talent.

01:12:49.340 No one does.

01:12:50.360 They're a natural.

01:12:51.540 No such thing.

01:12:52.800 No such thing.

01:12:54.300 They swing that golf club 1,000 times till their hands bleed, and then we call them a professional.

01:13:00.740 You know, 10,000 hours of practice, Malcolm Gladwell says, and then we call them the best in the world. 0.98

01:13:06.380 But it wasn't, you know, when they started, they sucked. 0.99

01:13:09.360 I mean, the first time I got on the radio, I sucked. 0.99

01:13:12.720 I was awful. 0.93

01:13:14.140 The only reason I got to stay on the air is a bankrupt radio station, and I was working for free.

01:13:18.720 Any good broadcaster would have thrown me off.

01:13:21.720 But thank God I got to hang around and got better and got better and listened to my own tapes, and they were horrid, cringeworthy, horrible.

01:13:30.640 I'm like, who is listening to this hillbilly?

01:13:32.840 No one's going to listen to this hillbilly. 0.98

01:13:34.560 I've got to clean this up. 0.97

01:13:35.780 And, you know, but you embrace the suck, and you go through the grind part, the hustle part, and then you evolve into world class.

01:13:45.580 But you don't get to skip those steps.

01:13:47.420 Mm-mm, and you're not doing anything for yourself sitting on the couch playing on the iPad.

01:13:52.260 You know, when you were talking, it was reminding me of my sister.

01:13:55.320 My sister, sadly, died in October at 58 suddenly.

01:14:00.420 And I told the audience at the time, thank you, that she had, for a period of time, been sucked into the opioid crisis.

01:14:06.760 She'd been given a prescription drug that she was told was not addictive.

01:14:09.220 That was, and hit a downward spiral for some years there.

01:14:13.940 And she was a teacher.

01:14:15.340 She had a college degree, and she was a teacher of young kids when she was working.

01:14:19.960 And she did not want to take a job in retail.

01:14:24.580 You know, like, this is post a lot of her troubles.

01:14:26.320 And she felt like, oh, if I take a job, you know, at whatever, you know, just work in the stand at the Sunoco, you know, or, like, at the little shop that sells the mugs and the frames and all that.

01:14:39.720 And it's somehow a surrender of my prior life as a teacher, like I'm giving something up, and maybe it's beneath me, and I, you know, if I could just work harder and get back to the teaching role, I'll feel better about myself.

01:14:51.380 And we urged her to think about it differently.

01:14:53.540 And ultimately, she did, and she took a job at the grocery store, you know, as a cashier in the checkout aisle.

01:14:59.080 And it was honest work, and her mood improved, and she did lick her addiction issues.

01:15:06.020 And she felt better.

01:15:07.220 It was like an elixir, Dave.

01:15:09.720 You know, and she was so happy that she got back out there.

01:15:13.200 And forgive me to all the cashiers out there, but in her mind, she felt like she was humbling herself, right?

01:15:18.700 But in making that choice, she felt so much more uplifted and, of course, developed a newfound respect for how hard that job is.

01:15:25.760 And it really did help her.

01:15:28.800 Yeah, there is a dopamine release when you engage in activity versus sitting around discussing engaging in activity.

01:15:39.720 And it's one of the problems that we're seeing with the screens, too much time on the screens.

01:15:47.240 There's tons of research coming out that the screens are, not only do you have friends on Facebook that aren't real friends, but you're having experiences that aren't real experiences.

01:15:57.740 And so there's a dopamine release.

01:16:01.200 And so, oh, I posted my thing on Instagram.

01:16:04.420 Now I get to go check and read the comments, and I get to see how many likes I get.

01:16:07.540 And that's not a real experience.

01:16:10.060 But your brain is fooled into thinking it is and gives you a dopamine experience or release.

01:16:16.180 But also, if you go into the marketplace and you embrace something, anything, whether you're driving for Uber, whether you're working as a cashier, whether you're digging a ditch, whether you take a job in the trades and learn to take an apprentice position so that you can become a master craftsman.

01:16:33.740 Whatever it is you're embracing, when you engage in that activity, there's all kinds of chemical release.

01:16:41.260 Huberman's talking about this.

01:16:42.380 Everybody's talking about this versus the fake release that the screen fake life creates.

01:16:49.260 And so the real release there, we see depression go down.

01:16:53.500 We see anxiety and panic attacks start to move away.

01:16:56.760 And I guess it's probably tied back a little bit to the common sense of you're actually doing something about your life rather than discussing it.

01:17:05.900 But also, there is just this simple thing of when you start doing something, your brain fires off and you feel better.

01:17:14.700 Oh, guess what?

01:17:15.380 That sets you up for the next thing versus sitting on your couch discussing it with someone in your Facebook group does not set you up for the next thing.

01:17:24.120 Uh, I remember when we were growing up, mom and dad owned a real estate company and we went to a nice steakhouse and we had this waitress that was unbelievable.

01:17:33.800 I was probably 12 years old.

01:17:35.320 And I remember to this day, she was just, just sparkly.

01:17:39.480 I mean, smiling, active, working the table, you know, just became your best friend, just an incredible service experience.

01:17:47.080 Well, you know what happened?

01:17:49.660 My dad hired her to go to work selling real estate.

01:17:51.960 And the first year in the real estate business in the seventies, she sold a million dollars worth and she became a rock star sales.

01:17:59.780 And now she's a sales trainer today, lives in Chicago and trains women in sales. 1.00

01:18:05.080 But she wasn't sitting at home.

01:18:07.780 She was waiting tables and opportunity came along and put its arm around her and said, I'm going to walk you to the next thing.

01:18:14.780 That doesn't happen if you're not the cashier or the waitress.

01:18:19.100 Yeah, that's, that's such a great story.

01:18:20.940 It gave me the chills.

01:18:22.160 Um, and I will also just put a period on it with this.

01:18:25.040 Part of the reason some of those 7 million are at home is most likely drugs and alcohol, which shot through the roof during the pandemic, drug and alcohol use and overdoses and so on.

01:18:35.620 And, and, and it's yet another reason to just get busier, you know, addictions, one thing, but a lot of these folks are not addicted.

01:18:41.640 They're just abusing and getting out there and getting busier and getting into a job like sitting for eight hours at the cashier.

01:18:47.740 You know, you can't, you can't, you can't booze it up all day.

01:18:50.240 So it's just a one small way of taking care of that issue too, which so many fell into.

01:18:56.100 It affects drug and alcohol use recreational or otherwise work does work affects obesity work affects your mental state.

01:19:06.760 It affects anxiety and when you take the dignity of work away and you make it evil to be working and accomplishing things, instead you say, take the victim role.

01:19:18.580 You're setting up a society that looks a lot like the problems in our culture right now.

01:19:24.000 That's such an interesting discussion.

01:19:25.720 It's so fun talking to you, Dave.

01:19:26.860 All right, stand by quick break.

01:19:28.580 And then I do have to run Janet Yellen's thoughts by you.

01:19:32.080 Janet Yellen is like, I, I don't, I think she might be three feet tall. 1.00

01:19:35.020 She's very tiny.

01:19:36.340 We'll talk about it right after this.

01:19:40.600 So Dave, Janet Yellen had some thoughts on Monday about our booming economy and whether or not we are in a recession.

01:19:50.220 Here she is.

01:19:51.100 Jobs numbers seem to defy predictions of a recession this year.

01:19:53.620 Do you still think one is likely?

01:19:54.920 Well, look, you don't have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years.

01:20:05.740 So what I see is a path in which inflation is declining significantly and the economy is remaining strong.

01:20:15.620 And really, that's a path I believe is possible.

01:20:21.160 And it's what I'm hoping we will be able to achieve.

01:20:26.440 Do you agree with that?

01:20:28.520 No.

01:20:29.880 No.

01:20:32.160 A recession hasn't got anything to do with jobs.

01:20:34.700 There's a technical textbook definition of a recession.

01:20:38.480 It's two consecutive quarters of reduction in the GDP.

01:20:44.060 And the GDP can actually go down.

01:20:46.400 The gross domestic product, the total of all goods and services produced in the U.S., it can actually go down and still have this level of employment.

01:20:54.860 We've been talking about that.

01:20:56.900 You don't find businesses right now that are all excited and feeling prosperous and feeling bullish about the future.

01:21:06.440 You find them that are hoarding cash.

01:21:09.040 They're pulling back.

01:21:10.460 They're holding.

01:21:11.760 They're waiting to see, A, what inflation does, and B, what some of these other political nightmare things are going to do, and whether the stinking Fed is going to continue to monkey with this economy or not.

01:21:26.740 And so we don't – I mean, the problem is economics is really psychology at its core.

01:21:33.140 People react based on what they believe, how they feel about the future.

01:21:40.980 Do I feel good about the future?

01:21:42.500 Do I feel bad about the future?

01:21:44.260 And then based on that, I expand my business.

01:21:46.960 I hire people or I contract my business.

01:21:49.600 I don't hire people, and I pile up cash to get ready to weather a freaking storm.

01:21:54.240 And so right now what we've got is a whole bunch of business folks on the sidelines.

01:21:58.160 We are not expanding.

01:21:59.740 They're not blowing up.

01:22:01.040 They're not feeling bright and sunshiny.

01:22:04.640 And so that's the definition of a good economy.

01:22:07.620 When there's a sense of prosperity in the air, a sense that this is my time, that we can go out into the marketplace and, you know, create new products, create new services.

01:22:17.640 And this is the time to do that.

01:22:19.800 And very few businesses are doing that right now.

01:22:23.080 So that is what leads us towards a recession, because if they're not creating that movement, then we don't have an increase in the gross domestic product.

01:22:34.300 So, you know, is it going to be a deep, dark recession?

01:22:37.320 No, it's not.

01:22:38.140 But this is just malarkey to run around, regardless of your political persuasion, to run around saying everything's great out there.

01:22:47.340 Not when you talk to people about the price of eggs or even still the price of gasoline. 0.75

01:22:52.940 It's still $4 and something a gallon to fill up your stinking car.

01:22:58.020 And still we've got these issues.

01:23:00.080 And so, no, they haven't somehow magically made everything okay.

01:23:03.960 And talking about it like it's okay doesn't make it okay.

01:23:07.180 They seem to be wanting to claim victory, that inflation isn't growing as fast as it was, that it's lower than it was in June.

01:23:18.400 And, you know, that the Fed rate hikes are working.

01:23:23.020 That's what they think, that they're battling inflation.

01:23:25.220 It's a slow battle.

01:23:26.480 They would claim it's not a problem of their making.

01:23:28.360 We've heard them say that many times from COVID to Putin.

01:23:31.260 It's somebody else's fault.

01:23:32.640 But there has been some progress versus June.

01:23:36.260 So, is that cause for optimism?

01:23:39.620 But it wasn't caused by increased interest rates.

01:23:42.580 What it was caused by was the supply chain smoothed out.

01:23:46.680 And, you know, we've gotten back to a normal rhythm.

01:23:49.900 And when you create extreme shortages, 100% of the time prices go up.

01:23:55.720 This is seventh grade econ.

01:23:57.420 And when you create extreme shortages, because all the factories are not producing cars, they're not producing wire, they're not producing drywall, they're not producing lumber, 100% of the time the commodities are going to go up.

01:24:12.640 The services are going to go up.

01:24:14.460 You know, guess what?

01:24:15.540 The cost of labor has gone through the roof.

01:24:19.460 Why?

01:24:20.080 There's a shortage of labor, like we've just been talking about for the last 30 minutes.

01:24:25.500 And so, why has inflation calmed down?

01:24:28.700 It calmed down because it was caused by extreme shortages, which drove prices up.

01:24:33.780 Now, once the shortage, once people went back to work and the factory started producing again, the drywall is starting to come out, the wire is coming off the line, the mines are open, the lumber, you know, mills are running again.

01:24:48.580 Well, guess what?

01:24:49.280 The cost of lumber came back down to where it was pre-COVID.

01:24:51.940 And so, you know, increased interest rates didn't do that.

01:24:58.700 Production just caught up, and supply diminished price because there wasn't a shortage anymore.

01:25:05.440 And that's where it came from.

01:25:07.100 We still have enough of a shortage that gas has created this, but that's an artificial shortage created by a pro-green administration that wants to cut the gas prices off.

01:25:19.040 So, that sticker on your gas pump with Biden's picture says, I did that, is actually accurate.

01:25:24.560 He did do that.

01:25:26.440 What about that moment last night where he said, well, we're going to be dependent on oil for another 10 years?

01:25:31.060 And it was open laughter in the House chamber at, oh, really?

01:25:35.000 10 years?

01:25:35.480 We're going to be off oil?

01:25:36.360 Great.

01:25:36.780 What's your plan?

01:25:38.600 They're so out of touch.

01:25:39.880 And it's the same bunch that said Miami is going to be flooded by now.

01:25:43.160 I mean, come on. 0.98

01:25:44.200 Guys, you've lost all credibility with these ridiculous statements. 0.98

01:25:49.680 And, again, yeah, it enters into the process. 0.94

01:25:55.520 His plan seems to be right now.

01:25:57.300 The other side's guilty of doing it, too.

01:25:59.600 So, I mean, we can't say, like, no Republican's ever been a drama queen because they sure have.

01:26:04.460 Hell, no.

01:26:05.500 But what about – because his plan right now, I'm not exactly sure how he's going to tackle the remaining economic problems.

01:26:10.700 But he did mention higher taxes.

01:26:12.720 And he always says it's just going to be the billionaires, which makes it feel good, right?

01:26:16.360 Because very few of us are billionaires.

01:26:17.760 So we're like, yeah, let's get them.

01:26:19.520 Get the billionaires. 0.96

01:26:20.360 I want them to suffer.

01:26:22.680 But it's always light on details.

01:26:24.700 And then you think it through and you realize, wait a minute.

01:26:27.120 Who are the billionaires again?

01:26:28.240 They tend to be the best job creators.

01:26:29.740 And are they going to take the pinch or are their workers going to take the pinch? 0.68

01:26:34.240 How is that actually going to work?

01:26:35.160 So what he said last night, we talked about a new tax on billionaires, a sharp increase on a current tax, on corporate stock buybacks.

01:26:42.780 And what the buzz on this is, Dave, is that there are a few details, but it sounds kind of close to the plan that he revealed last March when he called for a 20% hike on Americans who take in at least $100 million a year and said that rate would apply both to income and to unrealized gains.

01:27:01.780 Like the future measure of your unsold gains, like you haven't cashed in the stocks, but on paper you've earned.

01:27:08.900 And now you have to start paying taxes on it.

01:27:11.160 It's impossible to administer, so it's not going to occur.

01:27:17.180 I mean, when the wonks get down into that legislation, they're going to explain to him, there's no mathematical way to figure that out. 0.94

01:27:25.200 So that's just ridiculous. 0.92

01:27:27.680 That's political speak. 0.97

01:27:31.440 It's not going to occur.

01:27:32.960 But here's the thing about, okay, I'm going to fix the economy.

01:27:36.760 How am I going to do that?

01:27:37.700 I'm going to raise taxes on the rich.

01:27:41.160 I'm so confused about the disconnect here.

01:27:44.320 It sounds so good.

01:27:45.720 When you're not rich, you're like, yeah, get them.

01:27:48.660 Yeah, but I mean, how's that fix the economy is my point.

01:27:51.520 Because where, what piece of historical data do you have anywhere in the history of the United States that increasing taxes caused the economy to boom?

01:28:03.480 It's, there's not one.

01:28:06.640 It has never occurred.

01:28:09.820 Now, we have increased taxes periodically and decreased them periodically, but you cannot find a single example in actual data that says Washington, or for that matter, a state, increased their taxes.

01:28:26.600 And the economy boomed as a result of increasing taxes of any kind, property taxes, income taxes on the rich, capital gains taxes on the rich, taxes on everybody.

01:28:40.460 You can't find any increases ever that caused, that followed, the thing following it was a booming economy. 0.76

01:28:49.600 So that's just ridiculous.

01:28:52.140 I'm going to fix the economy by raising taxes. 0.69

01:28:55.680 Said no one ever.

01:28:57.520 Well, he also was like, well, we're going to get teachers a raise.

01:28:59.840 How are you going to do that?

01:29:00.920 Because you don't control the salaries of teacher raises.

01:29:04.140 Yeah, you have nothing to do with education, except screwing it up with policies.

01:29:08.920 It was like this random wish list.

01:29:10.560 All right, before we go, I got to ask you about housing, because a lot of people worry about the housing market and where that's going.

01:29:16.820 How do you see it?

01:29:19.460 Housing has scared people to death.

01:29:22.300 This is an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy I was talking about a while ago, that economics is psychology.

01:29:27.680 So what happened was everyone said there's going to be a housing collapse.

01:29:32.120 Everyone being Washington started yakking and yakking and yakking.

01:29:35.720 Oh, and interest rates go up and interest rates go up and interest rates go up.

01:29:38.520 And we've gone from this white hot economy on housing where if you put your house up for sale, what, two years ago, you got 87 offers over one weekend.

01:29:49.440 Well, that has never happened in the history of real estate, except for one little short period of time, and that was two years ago.

01:29:58.180 So now what has happened is the market has slowed, and it's kind of normal right now.

01:30:06.100 House prices continue to go up, but very little.

01:30:10.640 Four or five percent is probably what we're going to see in 23.

01:30:13.260 And when you put a home on the market today, there's still a shortage of houses.

01:30:19.720 There's still a shortage of inventory versus the number of buyers that are out there, even though the number of buyers are diminished right now.

01:30:26.160 A lot of them are sitting on the sidelines.

01:30:27.960 But still, when you put a house on the market, it's selling right now, national averages, 90 to 120 days.

01:30:34.360 I got my real estate license in 1978, 90 to 120 days to market a single family residence in a metro area has been the standard since 1978, except for a short time when it was white hot.

01:30:48.520 But we got used to this white hot, huge jumps in prices and, you know, huge numbers of offers coming in.

01:30:57.160 And so now, I mean, it's kind of like when you're driving down the road, if you ever get like in a wonderful car and there's no one around and you can get out there and you get up to 100 miles an hour and you let it run for about 30 minutes at 90 or 100, and then you slow down to 55, it feels like you're crawling because of what you were doing before.

01:31:15.440 This is not an experience I've had, Mr. Ramsey.

01:31:16.860 No, no, I am not a thrill seeker in that way.

01:31:19.280 But anyway, the bottom line is it was running 100 miles an hour and now we're at 55 and it feels slow.

01:31:26.300 Yeah.

01:31:26.580 Yeah.

01:31:27.160 And it's just normal.

01:31:28.520 So, you know, the market, think about it.

01:31:32.180 I mean, in 1982, interest rates were 14% to buy a house.

01:31:38.500 Wow.

01:31:39.100 I mean, and we used to tell people when I first went on the radio, we'll never see single digit housing interest rates again.

01:31:47.220 I remember when it went from 10 down to nine because everybody started ragging on me because I said it would never go down there.

01:31:53.280 And so, and here we are at six and seven acting like the dadgum world's coming to an end at six and 7% interest.

01:32:01.160 That is not a high interest rate in the, unless you compare it to 3% a few years ago, two years ago, three years ago.

01:32:09.460 So, you know, the market in real estate is fine.

01:32:12.240 It's not going to crash.

01:32:13.500 If you're getting ready to sell your house, you need to put it on the market and you put it on the market at a price that's reasonable and you need to expect it to sit there for 90 to 120 days.

01:32:22.600 It's all relative.

01:32:26.060 Dave Ramsey, such sage advice in there.

01:32:29.300 Thank you so much for being here.

01:32:30.420 It's great to have you.

01:32:31.960 Always honored to be with you, my friend.

01:32:33.520 Anytime.

01:32:36.880 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:32:38.740 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 08, 2023

Biden's SOTU Spectacle, and Job Market Reality, with Charles Cooke, Jeremy Peters, and Dave Ramsey ｜ Ep. 489

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