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June 17, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:29
Old Joe Meets The Bond Villain | Ep. 1278
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President Biden has his showdown with Vladimir Putin, and it doesn't go great.
The Federal Reserve dramatically increases its inflation estimate, and the left celebrates Juneteenth becoming a national holiday by decrying America's supposedly unending racism.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Alrighty, so yesterday was Joe Biden's big face-off with Vladimir Putin.
And Joe was gonna stand tall and stand strong against Vladimir Putin, who you do have to admire the guy's commitment to being a Bond villain.
I mean, truly, the guy is a Bond villain.
It is astonishing how much he has committed to that role.
He is going to lower Sean Connery over a tank filled with sharks and there will be lasers attached to their heads.
And that is who Vladimir Putin is.
He is very much committed to that image in public.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is wandering around stumbling into walls.
So this was all set up with Joe Biden touting just how strong and powerful he was going to be.
Now, again, there was no reason to have this meeting.
Understand that usually when you have bilateral meetings with people from other countries, unless they're allies, there's an agenda on the table, stuff that you want to accomplish, stuff that you're negotiating over.
Usually don't just get together for a photo op, because if you get together with a dictator for a photo op, he is elevated and you are naturally degraded.
We are not answerable to Russia.
We should not be answerable to Russia.
Russia has a GDP, a total GDP of 1.7 trillion US dollars in 2019.
Okay, do you understand?
That's their total GDP.
That's not their, that's not like what they're spending on their budget, right?
We in the United States, on our federal budget, spend four trillion dollars a year, and maybe six if Biden gets his way.
The entire gross domestic product of the country of Russia is $1.7 trillion.
They are not a world power.
They are not a superpower.
They are a decrepit, declining power with heavy military and some aging nukes.
That is what Russia is.
It is a second rate power.
And the fact that we continue to treat them as though they are the USSR is really quite astonishing.
How weak is the Russian economy?
How weak is Russia as a country?
I mean, this is the reason why Vladimir Putin is clinging to power, right?
Their entire GDP is $1.7 trillion US dollars.
Italy's GDP, okay?
Italy is an economic failure because of its high tax rates and its levels of corruption.
Italy has serious economic problems.
Italy's GDP is $2 trillion.
Germany's GDP is $3.8 trillion.
Okay, so if you rank GDP by country, Russia is not close to the top of the list.
Russia is ranked 11th on the list.
The United States, by contrast, our GDP, on a normal basis, is almost $20 trillion a year.
China's at like 12.
Japan's at 4.8.
Germany's at 3.7.
India is at 2.6.
The UK is at 2.6.
France, Brazil, Italy, and Canada all rank above Russia, and South Korea is right on their heels.
So Russia is like, when we pretend that Russia is a world power, Russia is not a world power.
Russia has a less powerful economy by a fairly large margin than Brazil, for example.
And we don't treat Brazil with this kind of kid-glove treatment.
We shouldn't treat Russia with the kid-glove treatment, but we have been for years because we have this kind of Cold War mentality where Russia is this aggressive world power that we somehow have to negotiate with.
And because, frankly, too many European leaders are whores and they want Russian oil.
I mean, really, the German, The German government has been basically making itself prone to Russian aggression and Russian leverage for years.
Okay, in any case, Joe Biden treating... And this is a bipartisan problem, by the way.
This is not just a Joe Biden problem.
This is a problem for Trump.
It was a problem for Bush.
It was a problem for Obama.
Like, everybody has been treating Russia as this great world power when, in fact, Russia is not even close to a world power at this point in time.
In any case, Joe Biden says it's better to meet face-to-face.
He can't really explain why we're meeting face-to-face or what he hopes to gain from meeting face-to-face.
Vladimir Putin is very happy to meet face-to-face because for him it's a win.
He goes home and he plays all of the clips of him chiding American media about how terrible America is.
And meanwhile, the United States is saying kind of mild critiques of how Putin runs his dictatorial country.
Putin is subjecting his own dissidents to jail time and maybe death.
And the United States has, like, mild critiques, and we think maybe we can work with Vladimir.
You know, it's all just business.
There's a reason that dictators like meeting with U.S.
presidents.
U.S.
presidents should be very, very reluctant to meet with dictators, unless there's a real agenda on the table, like, for example, an arms reduction treaty or something.
In any case, here was Joe Biden saying, you know, it's better to meet face to face.
I hope that our meeting will be productive.
Well, thank you.
As I said outside, I think it's always better to meet face to face.
Okay, well, it's not always better to meet face-to-face, particularly when your face is an old doddering codger who can't really hold it together.
This led to an unfortunate incident in which Joe Biden yesterday was asked by a reporter, do you trust Putin?
Do you trust each other?
According to Yamiche Alcindor.
Remember, Yamiche Alcindor is just a lackey for the administration, right?
She works for PBS and she, of course, was a gadfly when it came to Trump, but she's a bootlicker when it comes to the Biden administration, just like most of the media.
And she tweeted this out.
After a reporter asked Biden, do you trust Putin?
Do you trust each other?
Biden looked directly at the reporter and nodded affirmatively.
That's Jimmy Schausender, an ally of President Biden.
And this was reported by a wide variety of other media sources who were in the room.
All of which led Jen Psaki to immediately respond before she'd even talked to Biden, right?
She hadn't talked to Biden.
She immediately responded, quote, Oh, is that what happened?
You know, like before you actually spoke with Joe Biden, you know what was in his head.
each other, the president gave a general head nod in the direction of the media.
He wasn't responding to any question or anything other than the chaos.
Oh, is that what happened?
You know, like before you actually spoke with Joe Biden, you know what was in his head.
The reality is that the Biden team treats him as an afterthought in their own administration.
Joe Biden is not the one making policy.
Joe Biden is not the one in control of the bus.
Ronald Klain as chief of staff may be in control of the bus.
Jake Sullivan on foreign policy may be in control of the bus.
Joe Biden has very little control of this bus because he is just not with us.
We've already shown you tape where he is walking around the G7 into random cafes and then being led away by the hand as though the woman is his care nurse and is dragging him away to get his vitals tested.
None of this is good, right?
He's the elected president of the United States.
You don't want the president of the United States looking like a bewildered barely sentient patient at an old age home on the world stage.
It just doesn't look good.
And for all those people who are concerned about Trump's optics, this is a very different sort of optics, and it is really not a good optics either.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Alrighty, so.
So after that little mix up, then Joe Biden, he gave a speech.
He gave a couple of pressers.
The pressers were not particularly long.
He answered like four questions in one presser because he just doesn't have the sort of stamina that other world leaders have had in the past or than Vladimir Putin had yesterday.
Again, if you're going to have this meeting and the meeting is about optics, then we do have to pay attention to the optics.
If the meeting is about substance, then we pay attention to the substance.
But this entire meeting was about the optics.
So Joe Biden decided for some odd reason that he was going to hold his presser outside.
It was apparently very hot.
He started taking off his jacket in the middle.
He was looking very tired.
And he started mixing people up.
Also, he mixed up Trump and Putin at one point.
I caught part of President Trump, Putin's press conference, and he talked about the need for us to be able to have some kind of modus operandi where he dealt with making sure the Arctic was, in fact, a free zone.
Okay, so again, mixing up Trump and Putin, always a good look.
Also, in terms of policy, Biden also said that he gave Vladimir Putin a list of 16 pieces of critical infrastructure not to hit.
Now, I have some questions about this particular strategy.
Like, my first question is why?
Why is that a good strategy?
So you've got Arch-Villain, and you've got Goldfinger over here, sitting there, plotting things against the United States, and Joe Biden, rambles in and takes a list out of his pocket.
He's like, I really like for you to not hit these particular targets, Shabba Dabba, Goose Dabba Dab.
You just gave him a list of targets to hit.
Why would you do that?
That doesn't make any sense.
Here was Joe Biden announcing that one.
Another area we spent a great deal of time on was cyber and cybersecurity.
I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructures should be off limits to attack.
Period.
By cyber or any other means.
I gave them a list.
If I'm not mistaken, I don't have it in front of me, 16 specific entities.
16 defined as critical infrastructure under U.S.
policy.
From the energy sector to our water systems.
Okay, um, why?
Like, really, why?
First of all, you think the Russians don't know which pieces of infrastructure are important to us?
Second of all, are there any consequences attached to an attack on those pieces of infrastructure?
Third, do you really think the Russians are just going to openly attack it?
The game that the Russians have been playing for a very long time in terms of cybersecurity is they've been using proxy cutout groups.
They use groups that are based not in Russia, or they create false sort of identification for groups based in Russia, and then they attack American sources, and then they just deny responsibility.
This is something that state What is this?
terror groups have been doing for a very long time now.
Iran has been doing this for decades.
And Iran recognizes that if Iran were to attack American soldiers directly, then America might hold Iran responsible. So instead, they set up some sort of proxy terror group in Iraq, or they set up a proxy terror group in Yemen or in Brazil or wherever. And the same thing is true of the Russians, right? They set up these sort of proxy groups, the proxy groups attack the United States, and then Russia just disclaims all responsibility.
And Vladimir Putin throws, oh, what is this? We've never seen such a thing. So you hand him a list of the infrastructure you You don't want the archvillain to hit.
Brilliant move.
Can't see how that one backfires at all.
Then Joe Biden said that there will be devastating consequences for Russia if Navalny dies.
Now understand, the real purpose, the true purpose of this particular meeting was not to contrast Joe Biden with Vladimir Putin.
That was not the optic purpose.
Again, if this is about optics, let's examine the optic purpose.
The optic purpose for Joe Biden, and you can see it in the media coverage, was to contrast Joe Biden with Donald Trump.
That was the optic purpose.
And so that meant that Joe Biden's main goal here was to go out there and talk about the wonders and glories of democracy in Putin's face, basically.
And that's wonderful.
But honestly, I have no quarrel with talking about how the United States is superior to the evil dictator of Russia, the murderous dictator of Russia.
That seems like a pretty easy win.
But does it forward American interest in any material way?
Not really.
The media treated this as though it was a win simply because Joe Biden said the word democracy over and over again.
But did he actually leverage anything out of Vladimir Putin?
Of course not, because that was never the agenda.
The agenda was simply to go there and say a bunch of stuff and then leave.
And then for the media to cheer Joe Biden as though Joe Biden is some sort of great world leader who is leading the civilized world into a brighter future.
None of that is happening.
But he did get what he wanted, which is a bunch of headlines saying, well, at least he's not Trump.
Except for the fact that Putin kind of got what he wanted to.
In fact, in many ways, Putin got more than what he wanted.
In any case, here was Joe Biden saying that there will be devastating consequences for Russia if Navalny dies.
I don't believe this is true.
I just put that out there right now.
If Alexei Navalny dies, I don't think the United States is going to do much of anything.
I think they'll up sanctions on particular figures inside the Russian regime, and I think that's about it.
How do I know that?
Because China took over Hong Kong last year and no one did anything.
And that was a lot worse than Alexei Navalny dying.
Don't get me wrong.
Alexei Navalny dying would be a terrible thing.
And it would be caused by the Russian regime that tried to have him murdered in the last couple of years as well.
But the subjugation of 7 million citizens of Hong Kong to complete Chinese tyranny came at zero cost for the Chinese regime.
I mean, in fact, the unleashing of a virus that has killed now at least 3 million people all over the globe, including 600,000 Americans, has come at zero cost for the Chinese regime.
I do not think that the West has deterrent power against China and Russia anymore.
I think everybody knows it, including the Chinese and the Russians.
And so I think that while the press is cheering Biden, I just don't think that there's any reality to this.
I think Putin knows there's no reality to this, which is why he seems so unflapped and so unbothered by any of this.
Here is Joe Biden talking up the idea that there will be serious consequences.
I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.
I'll go back to the same point.
What do you think happens when he's saying it's not about hurting Navalny, all the stuff he says to rationalize the treatment of Navalny, and then he dies in prison?
I pointed out to him that it matters a great deal.
When a country, in fact, and they asked me why I thought there was important to continue to have problems with The president of Syria.
I said because it's a violation of international norm.
Yes, this, what a strong and unwavering, by the way, this is one of the great lies, and it has been told in sort of bipartisan fashion by presidents of both parties, and it's really, really stupid.
When Joe Biden says, you know, I think that Vladimir understands that it wouldn't be in his interest to, you know, let's see Navalny.
When he says that kind of stuff, I'm pretty sure that Vladimir Putin thinks it's in his interest for Navalny to die.
And I really don't think he feels particularly threatened.
He's been playing this game for 20 years.
He's been killing all of his political opponents and garnering personal wealth amounting to billions of dollars in Russia since, like, 1999.
I do not think that he sits around and he thinks to himself, well, I don't know, is it in my interest to kill political opponents?
I think mostly Vladimir Putin's considerations are things like, will I kill him with radioactive material or push him out window?
That's pretty much as far as the thought goes for Vladimir Putin.
Because again, the guy's maintained power for two decades.
There's this very self-flattering Western notion that everybody thinks like we do.
They do not think like we do.
By the way, it is exactly this sort of notion that leads to the ridiculous sort of self-critiques of the West that you see in the West.
Like, oh my god, we're so racist, we're so terrible, we're such an awful, unjust, hierarchical society.
And anybody who's spent any time outside of Western civilization, you walk around planet Earth for like five seconds, you're like, whoa, America's pretty damned unbelievable.
I mean, just incredible.
But because we in the United States don't spend a lot of time doing that, and because we think that everybody thinks like we do, like, but why can't we make peace with the Russians?
Why can't we just give something away?
Why can't we?
Do something.
Why?
Why doesn't Vlad?
Vlad probably understands.
He probably gets it the same way we do.
Everybody thinks that.
No, they don't.
They absolutely 100% do not.
The same exact sort of foolish theory that democracy can be implanted anywhere and take root immediately and be fine.
That led to the notion that we were going to immediately turn Afghanistan and Iraq into thriving multicultural democracies.
That exact same theory that was widely disproved and scorned in the 2000s.
is still applicable, according to the left, for pretty much everything else.
Well, you know, the Russians, they probably think like we do.
I mean, Vladimir Putin, that government, they probably think like we do.
So when Joe Biden is saying to himself, even Vlad understands that he shouldn't do that.
No, he understands exactly what he wants to understand, which is how to keep power in his country and amass personal wealth to himself and expand the borders of the old Soviet Union, which he would like to rebuild if he actually had the power to do that.
And you can see this in Vladimir Putin.
He's not hiding the ball.
This is part of the problem with watching This stuff with a weathered eye.
When you watch these sorts of events with any sort of knowledge of history and you watch, not Biden, but the other guy, it's not like he's hiding the ball.
He's saying exactly what he wants and what he plans on doing.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, meanwhile, you got Joe Biden saying, oh yeah, now the Russians will come around.
They'll come around.
And meanwhile, I kind of trust them.
And also, I trust them so much, I gave them a list of 16 pieces of infrastructure not to hit.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, and again, Dedication to the Bond villain role?
Tremendous.
Here's Vladimir Putin explaining a very Nietzschean view of happiness.
This guy's read some Russian literature.
That's all you can say about Vladimir Putin.
Here we go.
There is no happiness in life.
There's only a mirage of it on the horizon.
So, you know, cherish that.
It's hardly sort of, you know, family trust, but I think there is a spark of hope in his eyes.
Spark of hope in his eyes.
But understand, happiness is not a goal.
It's mere journey.
You always fall short and then fall into a revocable black pit of death.
Yeah, I will admit that I sort of enjoy that a little bit.
Anyway, Vladimir Putin, here's how he handled all this.
Meanwhile, you have Joe Biden, he's like, I think that Vladimir understands there are costs to violating human rights.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin was asked about violating human rights, and he's like, you know who violates human rights?
You!
You Americans!
You violate human rights!
Here's Vladimir Putin.
You have now prevented anyone who supports him to run for office.
So my question is, Mr. President, what are you so afraid of?
Once again, the US has passed a law which said that the US would particularly favor Individual organizations in Russia.
And at the same time, they declared the Russian Federation as an enemy.
They publicly declared that they will try to contain Russia.
My question is which organizations, which political organizations in the U.S.
are going to Okay, and then he continues along these lines.
He just starts ripping into America.
And again, this is the way that the USSR used to act.
Every time anybody would point out that, you know, they were starving millions of people in Ukraine, for example, or that they were engaging in a full-scale purge and murdering people at the basement of the Lubyanka by the tens of thousands.
Anytime anybody would mention this, the USSR would immediately come back with, yes, and what about Jim Crow?
Well, this is what Vladimir Putin is doing right now.
Listen to me.
What about Guantanamo?
to me. What about Guantanamo? It's still working. And it doesn't come under any kind of law.
International, American, nothing.
But it still exists.
CIA prisons which were opened in lots of states which exercise torture.
CIA prisons which were opened in lots of states which exercise torture.
Is that human rights?
This is the game for him.
What did he get out of this optically?
Nobody seems to bother caring what Putin got out of it optically because the media is so fascinated by the idea that Biden is greater and better and more pure than Trump.
What this was and should have been about is depriving Russia of a win, but they didn't deprive Russia of a win.
Here's Vladimir Putin talking about how Biden is responsible for shootings and killings in the United States.
You know, in principle, everything that happens in our countries, one way or another, is the responsibility of the leaders themselves.
Look at the streets of America.
Every single day, there are shootings and killings.
You don't have time to open your mouth and you're shot dead.
What was that about?
Who is responsible for that?
Who are the murderers there?
Okay, so there you have it.
Now, did Vladimir Putin come away with a win?
In just a second, we're going to talk about whether he did.
Like, what were the actual material takeaways from this particular summit?
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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OK, so how did this end?
Well, Putin announced that they'd reached some sort of agreement on cybersecurity, which really means they haven't reached an agreement on cybersecurity.
As far as cyber security is concerned, we agreed that we would begin consultations on that issue.
And I believe that's extraordinarily important.
Okay, so what exactly were the details of that cyber security agreement?
The answer is not much.
According to the Associated Press, which again was cheerleading for Biden throughout this whole thing, U.S.
President Joe Biden and Russia's Vladimir Putin exchanged cordial words and plotted modest steps on arms control and diplomacy, but emerged from their much-anticipated Swiss summit Wednesday largely where they started, with deep differences on human rights, cyber attacks, election interference, and more.
The two leaders reached an important but hardly relationship-changing agreement to return their chief diplomats to Moscow and Washington after they were called home as the relationship deteriorated in recent months.
And Biden and Putin agreed to start working on a plan to solidify their country's last remaining treaty, limiting nuclear weapons.
But their three hours of talks on the shores of Lake Geneva left both men standing firmly in the same positions they had started in.
I'm not confident he'll change his behavior, Biden said at a post-summit news conference.
What will change his behavior as the rest of the world reacts to them and they diminish their standing, I'm not confident.
And meanwhile, the White House and Kremlin had set low expectations going into the summit.
They issued a joint statement after the conclusion that said that their meeting showed the practical work our two countries can do to advance our mutual interests and also benefit the world.
Okay, so basically they issued a statement from miscongeniality, right?
That's pretty much like they, world peace, world peace.
Over and over, Biden defaulted to, we'll find out, when assessing whether their discussions about nuclear power, cybersecurity, and other thorny issues will pay off.
Biden came into the summit pushing Putin to clamp down on the surge of Russian-originated cyber security and ransomware attacks.
When the summit ended, it wasn't evident that more than superficial progress had been made.
Biden said that he made clear that if Russia crossed certain red lines, his administration would respond.
And the consequences would be devastating, right?
That was him talking about Navalny as we played before.
But what are those consequences?
Nope.
And meanwhile, Putin just continues to deny it.
He said most of cyber attacks in the world are carried out from the cyber realm of the United States.
This is the game that he plays, right?
It's always the U.S.
The U.S.
is cyber-attacking itself.
That's probably it.
Nailed it.
Garry Kasparov, who's been a long-time anti-Putin dissident, he was on MSNBC.
Again, MSNBC, they were busy basically tubing all over Joe Biden for this thing.
Journalism-ing all over the wazoo.
Hot, sticky journalism getting everywhere.
But Garry Kasparov kind of burst the bubble.
He was like, yeah, this was not a win for Joe Biden.
The good news, the only good news about the meeting, about the summit, it was shorter than I expected.
So there was not much damage done.
But Putin got what he wanted.
That's why he was beaming with joy when he left the summit and went to the press conference.
Even when he entered the building before the talks, he got the attention that he couldn't be dreaming of getting during the last few years.
Correct.
Correct.
And Kasparov knows more about this than the entire combined anchor staff at MSNBC and CNN, that is for damn sure.
Meanwhile, Biden, he walked out, he said, I did what I came to do.
And he said, the last thing he wants now is a Cold War.
We have significant cyber capabilities, and he knows it.
Well, actually, the thing that he wants most, kind of, is a Cold War, because it actually enshrines his power.
But this is the thing.
That's not the message that you're gonna get from the media today, because the media are just in the bag for Biden.
As always, this whole thing was not directed for foreign consumption.
It was not directed at accomplishing anything.
It was directed toward American consumption.
That's all.
It was directed at an American political audience.
Because Biden knew that if he said a couple of things, like human rights and democracy, without actually demanding anything of Putin, in terms of hard deliverables, then the media would celebrate him and say, well, at least he isn't Trump.
And that's exactly what he got.
Because this is our media.
Meanwhile, I mean, it is incredible.
The media are being treated as just what they are.
They're lapdogs.
Biden pats them on the head every so often, and he puts them outside when they are being unpleasant.
They start barking, he immediately takes them and he pushes them into the yard.
And they're just fine with it.
It's absolutely incredible.
So there was a clip that went viral a little bit yesterday of these reporters who were outside, their mics were on, and they started joking about the kinds of questions that they were going to be asking Biden right before the summit.
What did you think of the vice president's trip, Mr. President?
What about this or?
When are you going to Florida?
Where's Hunter?
There you go.
Let's stop talking.
What are the questions they're joking about?
Where's Hunter?
When is Kamala Harris going to the border?
And they're joking about that because they know that they're never going to ask a difficult question of Joe Biden.
Right?
They're literally joking about, wouldn't it be ridiculous if we asked why Kamala Harris isn't going to the border?
It's just amazing.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden is treating the media exactly as they wish to be treated in this bizarre S&M relationship.
Joe Biden is, he's literally going into press conferences and just reading the stage directions.
He's like, they gave me a list.
Of people that I should call on.
Because I don't know faces anymore.
Or where I am.
There was the President of the United States yesterday in Geneva.
This is not about just our self-interest.
It's about a mutual self-interest.
I'll take your questions, and as usual, folks, they gave me a list of the people I'm gonna call on.
So, uh, Jonathan, Associated Press.
Okay, they gave me a list.
Who is they?
Aren't you the most powerful man on planet Earth?
Who is they?
They gave you a list.
My goodness.
His handlers.
My goodness.
OK, and then he had this bizarre sort of exchange with CNN's Caitlin Collins.
The way the media treated this exchange is really, really telling.
So here was Joe Biden yelling at CNN's Caitlin Collins, like yelling at her.
Here we go.
Why are you so confident he'll change his behavior, Mr. President?
I'm not confident he'll change his behavior.
What the hell?
What do you do all the time?
When did I say I was confident?
You said in the next six months you'd be able to determine that.
I said what?
Let's get it straight.
I said what will change their behavior is that the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world.
I'm not confident of anything.
I'm just stating the fact.
So how does that account to a constructive meeting as president, President Putin?
If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business.
If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business.
Now, imagine that President Trump had said that to a reporter, a female reporter.
Imagine that a female reporter called out to him.
And he had walked back and then started chiding her and then finished with, you don't understand your own business.
We would get a three week long news cycle about sexism, the vicious, brutal sexism of that exchange.
We would get a long news cycle about attacks on a free press.
Oh, my God.
Oh, the threat.
Jim Acosta would just be slobbering all over himself as per his usual arrangement.
Instead, here's how CNN covered that exchange.
Remember, Caitlin Collins is a reporter for CNN.
Here's how CNN covered that exchange.
Wolf, it is quite striking to just see the confidence in his approach, in his tone, as he really handles all of this.
He did not go point by point rebutting everything that Vladimir Putin said.
There was a discussion among White House aides what he should talk about.
But in the end, he ended up talking about at this press conference essentially what he had planned to going into it.
Certainly was comfortable in that moment taking off his jacket, answering these questions from some top foreign policy reporters in the audience that he doesn't always call on.
Wolf, as we assess this trip, this is why Joe Biden ran for president.
Unbelievable.
I mean, first of all, I thought that CNN had originally suspended Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on camera, but apparently you're allowed to do it so long as they let you.
Wow.
Wow, guys.
So you have the President of the United States attack your own reporter, and you're too busy fapping to actually say a damn word about it.
Well done, CNN.
By the way, even Biden later recognized there was some blowback online, and Biden was like, probably I should probably walk that back a little bit.
The truth is, Joe Biden is a combative jerk.
People who have been following him in the media for years know this.
He treats the media like this.
He's very combative.
You saw it on the campaign trail.
He literally called the guy fat on the campaign trail when the guy asked him a tough question.
He's like, listen up, fat.
Remember that one?
That is actually who Joe Biden is.
He's not this genteel, elderly statesman.
He's an idiot.
He's been an idiot for 40 years.
He's a loudmouth, braggart, dumbass.
And, like, the fact that we treat our politicians this way is truly incredible to me.
And the fact that the media treat the politicians who, like, they only like them when they get what they want from the media, obviously.
My favorite tweet of yesterday, there was a journalist, and I'm trying to remember which one.
We tweeted yesterday, Joe Biden just said that journalists are the smartest people he knows.
Donald Trump never said anything like that.
Yeah, because it's not true.
Journalists are not the smartest people I know.
Are you out of your mind?
I work with journalists every day.
Some of them are smart.
Some of them are dumb as rocks.
What the hell are you talking about?
The smartest people I know are mathematicians, doctors, PhDs in actual hard sciences, not like in education.
What?
But the media are like, oh my God.
Oh, it's like when Harry met Sally out here for the media.
Oh, he said, we're smart.
Oh, oh, oh, I'll have what they're having.
And what in the what in the actual world?
So here is Joe Biden walking that back.
He knows where his bread is buttered, too, which is as long as he continues to massage the media every so often, they will continue to to release his chakras.
Look, to be a good reporter, you gotta be negative.
You gotta have a negative view of life, okay?
It seems to me, the way you all... You never ask a positive question.
Why, in fact, having agreement... Well, find out!
The thing that always amazes me about the questions, and I apologize for having been short on it.
If you were in my position, would you say, well, I don't think, man, anything's gonna happen.
It's gonna be really rough.
I think it's gonna really be bad.
You guarantee nothing happens.
Okay, first of all, that's the stupidest answer I've ever heard.
No, you should be honest.
You should say, I am highly skeptical that we are going to get any sort of concession from the Russian government absent serious international pressure, which is why I'm calling for a ratcheting up of serious international pressure.
Instead, it's like, no, I'm hopeful that we'll get something.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Good luck with that.
All right, in just a second, we'll get to all of the experts.
It turns out their expertise, not so expert when it comes to the economy.
We'll get to that momentarily.
First, let us talk about a magnificent, meaningful gift.
Okay, so Father's Day is, of course, coming up.
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Alrighty, in just a second, we'll get to the latest economic reports.
Surprise, surprise, the experts blew it.
Who could have predicted such a thing?
Get to that momentarily first.
As you know, American values are under assault right now, like your individual rights, and you can feel it, right?
You see it every day.
I'm going to talk in a few minutes about some stories of people just seeing their individual rights stripped from them because every major institution in American life has been re-normalized and weaponized by the left against these rights.
That's why I wrote the book, The Authoritarian Moment, to help understand how all of these institutions, from education to science, got taken over by the left, renormalized and weaponized against you and your rights.
And what the book really is about is how we fight back against that.
What steps do we need to take in order to reverse the progress that the left has made in taking over these institutions and emptying them out of any content and then using them purely as weapons?
Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to shut the woke cult down in its tracks before it is too late.
The Authoritarian Moment.
I think it's a really important book.
It is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other major bookseller.
Go check it out.
Once again, it's called The Authoritarian Moment.
It's already sold thousands and thousands and thousands of copies.
Get yours right now on pre-order at any bookseller, including Amazon.
Meanwhile, no one ever said leaving a cult was easy.
Every now and then, somebody actually does it.
If they didn't, we'd never get an inside glance into just how disturbing the ideologies they push really are.
That's why we should all be listening to Georgia Howe's brand new podcast, Office Hours, here at Daily Wire.
Georgia is a former liberal and school teacher.
She became aware of the ideological indoctrination spreading throughout the school system.
She took a stand against it in her viral walk away video.
Now, on her podcast, she gets into everything from critical race theory to transgenderism with various experts the media will not allow you to hear.
She offers a wealth of incredible information from some of America's most important voices.
Subscribe and download Office Hours with Georgia Howe on Apple Podcasts or whatever your platform of choice may be.
Get ready for the ultimate listening experience no matter where you are.
Also, We have another exciting announcement for you today, and yet another reason to join the Daily Wire.
The left loves to quote-unquote amplify black voices, but only when those voices repeat exactly what the left wants.
That's why it was not a big surprise that during Black History Month, Amazon removed, created equal, a documentary about Clarence Thomas' rise from the segregated South to the highest court in America, and the all-out war that was waged on him by the left during his confirmation hearing.
So Amazon took that documentary down, like in the middle of Black History Month.
Now, it is unfortunate that Amazon deep platform such an excellent and it was actually really high performing documentary, but the Daily Wire has gained from that because right now the Daily Wire has acquired the North American streaming rights to created equals.
So get ready.
It's a really important film.
It's a really important documentary about one of the most important figures in modern American history.
Clarence Thomas is streaming live tomorrow, 9 p.m.
Eastern.
I was never going to be white.
members over at dailywire.com. If you're not yet a Daily Wire member, you can join with code justice for 20% off your membership. Get ready to start streaming today. Take a look at the trailer.
I was never going to be white. The problem is I could never go back completely to the world I came from. I saw what I had become.
And then I asked God, if you take anger out of my heart, I'll never hate again.
You're not really black because you're not doing what we expect black people to do.
That's when all heck broke loose.
So you'd still like to serve on the Supreme Court?
I'd rather die than withdraw from the process.
So once again, you can stream Created Equal tomorrow, live at 9pm Eastern.
Eastern, 8 p.m.
Central, at dailywire.com.
If you're not yet a Daily Wire member, join with Code Justice for 20% off your membership and get this amazing Clarence Thomas documentary and all of our other fantastic content, like Run, Hide, Fight, or our talk show, Candace, or the second hour of this show, On Demand.
Go check it out right now.
Right now you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Alrighty meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, it turns out that the experts, oh, they were Wait, you mean experts are wrong sometimes?
I know.
After a year in which they're wrong about nearly everything, it turns out they've been wrong on the economy as well.
According to Ben Zeisloff, reporting for The Daily Wire, the Federal Reserve hiked its inflation expectations while not backing down from aggressive monetary stimulus, which makes perfect sense.
You're completely acknowledging that you got wrong your inflation recommendations, and then you're just holding to the same policy.
Genius.
The central bank insisted, during its much-anticipated June meeting, inflation is transitory in nature as the United States emerges from COVID-19 and the lockdown-induced recession.
Although the Federal Open Market Committee intends to aim for stable inflation rates in the long term, it increased inflation projections for 2021 to 3.4%, an entire percentage point higher than its March forecast.
The Fed's statement reads, quote, the committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at a rate of 2% over the long run.
With inflation having run persistently below this longer run goal, the committee will aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2% for some time so that inflation averages 2% over time and longer term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2%.
The committee expects to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy until these outcomes are achieved.
So in other words, because there was deflation last year, because demand fell off, because all the businesses were closed and all of the rest of it.
Because of that, they're now saying, well, if we run, you know, 4% inflation, 5%, 6% inflation year on year, well, we can do that for a while and it'll all average out in the end.
Yeah, except for if it starts to run out of control, it's going to be kind of harder to control it on the other end without some pretty significant economic ramifications when you raise those interest rates.
Why would you not be gradually raising interest rates right now?
There's no shortage of credit in the American system right now.
Right now, in fact, we're just paying people to stay home.
Meanwhile, the Fed will continue to promote a near zero interest rate and purchase treasury bonds in order to inflate the currency.
The committee decided to keep the target range for the Fed funds rate at zero to one quarter percent and expects it will be appropriate to maintain that target range until labor market conditions have reached levels consistent with the committee's assessment of maximum employment.
And inflation has risen to 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time.
So to understand what they are doing right now, you have to understand that basically what the Fed funds rate does is it sets the overnight lending rate between banks.
Basically, you have all of these banks and at the end of the day, their balance sheets have to live up to what they promise, right?
They have to hold a certain amount of money in the back room in case people come to the bank and they want the money, because when you give your money to the bank, the bank doesn't normally hold it there. It lends it out.
Okay, so these banks lend to each other at an overnight rate.
So if I have a surplus of cash and another bank needs cash in its back room, I lend to that bank and there's a rate, the overnight market's rate, that sets what that rate is.
When the Fed sets its rate at zero, basically it makes it very, very easy for banks to take out credit from the Fed funds.
Okay, not just that.
When the Fed funds decide that they want to inject money, when the Federal Reserve decides it wants to inject money into the system, the way it does this is the Treasury Department issues a bond.
Hey, then let's say Goldman Sachs buys the bond from the Treasury Department and then resells it to the Federal Reserve, which literally just makes up money in order to buy it.
The Federal Reserve doesn't take money that's already there.
The Federal Reserve just adds a zero to its ledger at the end of a big number and then just buys a bunch of bonds.
And then that fake money, which is digital, becomes real money in the hands of these bond traders.
And then these banks and these institutional investors are supposed to take that money and they're supposed to invest it.
And this is supposed to jog the economy.
Well, what if people aren't leveraging up right now because there is just not the demand?
What if people have stopped leveraging up because no matter how much they leverage up, they're not able to actually get workers to come back in the workforce because we are paying them to stay out of the workforce.
Then you have inflation because you have too much money chasing too little product.
And that's exactly what we are seeing right now.
The Fed has upgraded expectations of America's real GDP growth from 6.5% to 7% in 2021.
6.5% to 7% in 2021.
It made no changes to its forecast of a 4.5% near-term unemployment rate.
The Fed is also going to extend its temporary U.S.
dollar liquidity swap lines with nine central banks through December 31st, 2021, in order to promote the supply of credit to households and businesses, both domestically and abroad.
Again, we are seeing the worst increase in inflation since the Great Recession.
The Consumer Price Index saw a 5% year-over-year increase, but the Producer Price Index, a metric that tracks businesses' purchasing costs, reached a 6.6% year-over-year increase.
I've been talking to people, particularly in the construction industry here in Florida, they're telling me they cannot get materials.
They're telling me that the materials they are getting are extremely expensive.
And most of all, they're saying they literally cannot find labor.
That people are not willing to work right now because the government is just paying them to stay home.
So, genius stuff happening from our federal government, as always.
Meanwhile, controversy breaking out, oddly enough, mainly from the left over Juneteenth.
So yesterday, Congress adopted, pretty much unanimously, there are a few people who voted against it, to make Juneteenth a national federal holiday.
Now, Juneteenth is the date in which slaves in Texas were finally informed about the Emancipation Proclamation.
And it happened like two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
And so it's been celebrated in black communities around the United States as sort of the marking the end, the date marking the end of slavery.
For decades.
Truly decades.
And so now, it's been made a federal holiday.
And as I said yesterday on the program, not only do I not have a problem with this, I think that it's quite good that we have a federal holiday marking the end of slavery.
Because that was a signal moment in America's history.
It seems to me that we should absolutely celebrate the end of slavery, whether that should be on Juneteenth or whether that should be upon the ratification of the 13th and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution, the revivification of the promises of the Declaration of Independence under the auspices of the Lincoln administration, and the end of slavery, and the establishment of equality before law, at least
In at least in the Constitution and then gradually effectuated over time so that now there is full equality before law in the United States and if you don't believe that you should read some of the laws of the United States sometime.
That is well worth celebrating.
That is a very good thing.
Now, what the left was saying is that they want Juneteenth to be made a federal law so that we can basically club Americans by saying that if they don't now agree with our racial agenda, then it's because they don't understand the legacy of Juneteenth.
The legacy of Juneteenth is racial progress, right?
It is literally marking racial progress in the United States.
And there's been a lot more racial progress, as it turns out, between 1865 and 2021.
Okay, so it seems that that should be a date that, you know, frankly, everybody should celebrate, right?
I mean, that is a very, very good thing that slavery ended in the United States.
This is undisputed.
Okay, but the left is using this as an excuse, as they always do.
Everything is an excuse to push for more.
Always.
So, you have a person named Astid Herndon, okay, at Astid Wesley on Twitter.
He's a national political reporter based in New York for the New York Times.
He's a reporter, not an opinion guy.
And he is very upset that Juneteenth became a national holiday yesterday and voted nearly unanimously.
Unanimously in the Senate.
With like total support from everyone.
He says that what's truly amazing is that many of the same people who are voting to make Juneteenth a national holiday also oppose critical race theory.
Critical race theory is not Juneteenth.
Critical race theory is the belief that all of America's institutions are irrevocably intertwined with racism, that they are shot through with racism, that they are so poisoned at the root that all of the branches are just fruit of the poisonous tree.
That is the basic idea of critical race theory, that whiteness is present in everything, that racism is a normal state of the world, that people don't even acknowledge their own racism, and that people benefit from that racism.
Okay, and that kids are supposed to be taught this.
Now, here's the reality.
So what did this guy tweet out?
What did this reporter, this national political reporter, S.D.
Herndon, tweet out for the New York Times?
What?
It's kind of amazing.
Juneteenth is going to be a federal holiday for reasons teachers won't be allowed to explain to their students out of fear of critical race theory backlash.
What?
I'm pretty sure Americans know about slavery.
Turns out that we were all, literally all of us, taught about slavery in school from the time we were children.
We are all very much aware of slavery, and that's why Juneteenth is a national holiday, to end slavery.
But notice how the left conflates all the issues, right?
All the issues are the same, always and forever.
All of them.
And if you apparently, quote-unquote, give the left an inch, and I don't think this is giving the left an inch.
I don't think it's giving them anything, frankly, to celebrate the end of slavery.
Again, I think that's a pretty unifying thing.
But if you give them what they perceive to be an inch, they then proceed to try and take it for a mile.
And that mile is indoctrinating your children in the idea that America's institutions are irrevocably racist, which, by the way, is the precise reverse of what Juneteenth is.
Juneteenth is a recognition that America's institutions changed and morphed and molded and adapted in order to be less racist.
The reality is the constitutional provisions for amendment were utilized in order to end slavery in the United States.
The reality is that it was America's legal process that was changed by the law under the systems and institutions of the United States in order to effectuate the end of legalized racism in the United States.
So actually, celebrating Juneteenth is precisely counter to critical race theory, which suggests, I mean, Derrick Bell openly suggested this, that racism in the United States has gotten worse, not better.
Juneteenth is a precise rebuke and rebuttal of that idea.
But the media have decided that basically you have to accept, if you are racially sensitive, you have to accept that America is a more racist place, a more terrible place, and you have to allow the indoctrination of your children in this particular idea.
That is, of course, absolute stupidity.
There's a reason why there's a backlash, and that backlash is going to be extremely strong.
I'm perfectly willing, and so is every other American I know, to hear about the flaws of the United States.
What I'm not willing to hear is that the United States is at root a racist, horrifying country, and our institutions are bad.
That is not true.
It's a patent and absurd lie on its face, and the people pushing it have nothing but malignant intentions for what comes next year.
All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
Coming up soon is The Matt Walsh Show.
It airs at 1.30 p.m.
Eastern.
Today, Matt explores the massive bisexual versus pansexual dispute.
Bisexual means apparently that you like people of both sexes.
Pansexual means that you like like kitchenware.
So be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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