Inflation pops to a 40-year high as Joe Biden threatens further spending, the left keeps attacking the Freedom Convoy, and Russia continues Ukrainian invasion preparations.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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We'll get to all of the economic news in just one moment.
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While all the news for Joe Biden at this moment continues to not be very good, despite a very good employment report that came out just last week, inflation is threatening to rear its ugly head.
And when I say threatening, I mean it's here.
That's EXPR, ESSVPN.com slash Ben to learn more.
While all the news for Joe Biden at this moment continues to not be very good, despite a very good employment report that came out just last week, inflation is threatening to rear its ugly head.
And when I say threatening, I mean it's here.
The stock futures are already pointing to more losses amid surging inflation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, US stock futures fell and bond yields largely rose, suggesting volatility driven by higher than expected inflation data would extend into a second day.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 declined 0.6% on Friday, suggesting the broad index is set to fall further after it closed down 1.8% on Thursday.
In pre-market trading, Zillow rose 13% because it reported a jump on revenue for its core unit.
However, some major tech stocks edged down pre-market, including Netflix, which lost 1.3% and Nvidia down 1%.
Stocks have been very choppy this week.
The reason that stocks have been choppy, of course, is because these inflation statistics underscore the challenges the United States economy is about to face, because either the Federal Reserve is going to have to pretty dramatically raise interest rates or this inflation is going to continue.
And if they dramatically raise inflation rates, you're going to get less investment.
And if you get less investment, you're going to get Less return on investment.
It's pretty much that simple.
Either you're going to get more inflation or you're probably going to tip over into a recession.
There's also the possibility of both considering Joe Biden's garbage regulatory policy.
We'll get to that in a moment.
There's a reason why Joe Biden is completely collapsing in the polls.
There's a brand new poll from CNN.
Nearly 6 in 10, 58% of Americans say they disapprove.
On the question, what has President Biden done for you?
56% of Americans say nothing.
56% of Americans say they can't name a single thing they like about what Biden has done.
Nearly 6 in 10.
That is an astonishingly bad statistic.
Americans don't think that his infrastructure plan has done a damn bit of good.
They don't think the rescue plans did anything except for just inflating the currency.
Again, that is a bad, bad number.
15% say the President has helped with the economy.
Only 6% say that he's helped with COVID.
Okay, these are bad numbers for the President of the United States.
And they should be bad numbers for the President of the United States because, frankly, he's a very bad President.
The only time that the country seems to succeed is when he fails.
And when he succeeds in doing what he wants, say pulling out from Afghanistan, a giant failure ensues.
When he succeeds in blowing out the spending, as he did with the American Rescue Plan, you instead get inflation.
When he fails, like with Build Back Better, then you get more employment.
When he fails, say with regard to his lockdown measures with regard to COVID, and his panic-stricken nonsense with regard to COVID masking and mask testing and all the rest of it, when he fails, then America tends to succeed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a relentless surge in U.S.
inflation reached another four-decade high last month, accelerating to a 7.5 percent annual rate as strong consumer demand collided with pandemic-related supply disruptions.
The Labor Department on Thursday said the Consumer Price Index, which measures what consumers pay for goods and services in January, reached its highest level since February 1982 when compared with the same month a year ago.
That put inflation above December's 7% annual rate, well above the 1.8% annual rate for inflation in 2019 ahead of the pandemic.
The so-called Core Price Index, which excludes food and energy, still climbed 6% in January from a year earlier.
That was a sharper rise than December's 5.5% increase.
It was the highest rate in nearly 40 years.
And that means prices were up for pretty much everything.
Food, vehicles, shelter, electricity.
Massive uptick in housing rental prices, which is contributing to a sort of inflationary spiral when it comes to real estate prices.
According to the Wall Street Journal, high inflation is the dark side of the unusually strong economy that has been powered in part by governmental stimulus to counter the pandemic's impact.
But the truth is that we didn't need any of that stuff.
All you had to do was leave the economy alone in the first place, but then after you put it into an artificial coma and compensated people for that, at that point, you could have left things alone, but they can never just leave good enough alone.
Instead, we need to build back better.
Instead, it wasn't good enough to go back to the economy we had before this, you know, with actual rising wages for pretty much everybody and a 3.8% unemployment rate.
No, we needed to make the economy different structurally, according to Joe Biden.
For most Americans, that is not what he was hired to do.
Kathy Bostjanczyk, the Chief U.S.
Financial Economist at Oxford Economics, said what started as pandemic-specific inflation has now broadened out across many, many categories, both on the goods side of the economy and on the services side.
She said it reflects supply constraints both in goods markets and labor, but it is also a function of still strong demand, particularly from United States consumers.
Over at FiveThirtyEight, David Inflation.
This, of course, has led to a lot of finger-pointing as to who or what is to blame for the price increases we are seeing.
Democrats have blamed supply chain deficiencies because of COVID.
They've blamed large corporations and monopolies.
Republicans, meanwhile, have claimed that President Biden's legislative agenda are to blame.
Most Americans do blame Biden.
Inflation is not just a supply chain issue, and the stimulus likely made it worse, concludes FiveThirtyEight.
FiveThirtyEight is not a right-wing site.
This is Nate Silver's data site.
One of the Democrats' most consistent talking points has been that the COVID-19-afflicted supply chain is to blame for our current levels of inflation.
Biden has even gone so far as to say that supply chain issues have everything to do with it, while House Democrats work to craft legislation targeted at ameliorating supply chain issues.
Many economists say the foundering supply chain has played a heavy hand in driving up prices.
But at the same time, this democratic talking point has its limits.
Because it is clear to many economists that American inflation is not just a supply chain issue.
Our economic response, namely the trillions of dollars of COVID-19 stimulus paid out over the last 24 months, appears to be a meaningful differentiator.
A good way to tease this out is to look at Europe, which has faced similar supply chain issues and even worse oil shock.
And yet European countries have experienced lower inflation, perhaps due in part to the fact they didn't blow out their spending in the same way that the United States did.
Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under former President Barack Obama says, Global supply chain problems affect everybody, but the United States has had more inflation than other countries.
If you look compared to Europe, in the US goods consumption is higher, services consumption is higher than it is in Europe.
In other words, we spent too much money.
And when you keep blowing out money for no apparent reason, you end up inflating the currency.
In just one second, we'll get to all of the things that are costing you more thanks to the inflationary spiral created by Joe Biden and his garbage policy.
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The Wall Street Journal has a good rundown today on the run-up in prices.
They say inflation is broadening out, affecting goods and services that had until now been relatively spared by rising prices.
Higher prices will likely push down consumer confidence, although according to Gus Foucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, he said he doesn't expect it'll have much of an effect on consumer spending, which rose in inflation adjusted 7.9% in 2021 from the previous year.
Groceries rose a seasonally adjusted 1% in January from December.
That is well above the overall inflation.
Cereal and bakery products were up 1.8%.
Meats, poultry, fish and eggs rose 0.3%.
Meat prices stand 12.2% above where they were one year ago.
Electricity has jumped over 4% from where it was a year ago.
In terms of housing, massive increase in housing prices.
Rents continue to rise.
In terms of healthcare, medical care services continue to rise.
Vehicle inflation continued to rise.
So you're just making less money.
You're making less money, like $235, something like $230, $240 a month less money on average for the average American household.
For Joe Biden's part, he's just befuddled.
He has no idea why the prices continue moving this way.
He says that he is puzzled at all of this.
Inflation is up.
It's up.
And coming from a family when the price of gas went up, you felt it in the household.
You knew it was like it matters.
But the fact is that if we are able to do the things I'm talking about here, it'll bring down the cost for average families.
Bring down the cost for average families.
I don't know why they keep moving all that, but the fact is they keep down the cost for average families.
And look, the fact is that we're in a situation now where You know, you should have peace of mind.
You should feel good, guys.
You should have peace of mind.
Don't worry about inflation.
Sure, it's at a 40-year high, but there's nothing to worry about.
I mean, for goodness sake, if it's all about supply chain issues, we have the greatest supply chain guy on the planet, Pete Buttigieg, in charge.
As the Secretary of Transportation, that guy will get those supply chain issues ironed right out as soon as he's back from paternity leave and not spending his days on CNN yelling about the Florida bill that prevents indoctrination on sexual orientation to kindergartners.
This is literally how Pete Buttigieg spends his days now.
He goes on national TV and he talks about why you need to teach kindergartners about two moms and two dads in the same way that you would about a mom and a dad.
Very important, according to the Secretary of Transportation, whose sole qualification for the job was not filling potholes in South Bend, Indiana, and also being gay.
Those are his chief qualifications for being Secretary of Transportation, since, of course, airports and trains are very romantic places, as he knows from his relationship with his husband.
This is very important stuff.
So the supply chain stuff, don't worry about that.
We'll get that ironed right out.
Sure, we've still got the White House pushing well past their sell-by date pandemic restrictions.
Sure, they're still being utterly unrealistic about the pandemic.
But you know, that's not really on them.
Supply chain issues?
I mean, we have a great Secretary of Transportation.
And inflation?
I mean, what if we just spent some more money?
What if we did that?
I mean, Joe Biden literally is still pushing build back better, despite the inflation.
Here was the nearly somnambulant president yesterday.
This does not raise anyone's, if you're making less than $400,000, you're not paying a single penny more in taxes.
Not a single penny more in taxes.
And it does not increase the deficit because it's paid for.
It's fully paid for.
It's fully paid for?
Don't worry about it.
Of course, when he says fully paid for, he means he's going to have to raise taxes in order to pay for Build Back Better.
Or alternatively, borrow an enormous amount of money.
Or both.
And the answer really is both.
And meanwhile, who exactly is Biden blaming for inflation?
He's blaming COVID, of course.
I mean, sure, he's been wrong about everything with regard to COVID.
Sure, everybody went back to work last month.
The labor market increased by half a million jobs.
But here is the President of the United States saying, I have nothing to do with this.
Also, what if we spent a lot more money and regulated the economy and increased taxes?
Genius.
By the way, this is how you go from an inflationary spiral into a recession.
Just follow his prescription.
We'll be in a recession very, very shortly.
Here's the President of the United States.
I'm going to work like the devil to bring gas prices down, which I'm working to make sure that we keep strengthening the supply chain to bring the cost of energy and everything else and the goods that come to America down by helping the ports 24-7, by changing a whole range of things.
You know, what's happened with COVID, COVID has caused significant increase in prices in the supply chain.
Because when a factory shuts down in another part of the world and you need that particular product, In order to finish and build whatever you're working on, the price goes up exponentially, like for cars.
Weird, however, though Europe is not experiencing the same sort of inflation.
Joe Manchin yesterday, he was asked again in the media, who are basically the propaganda wing for the White House.
They keep asking Joe Manchin about Build Back Better as Bill Manchin is going to change his mind.
And yesterday, he said, no, I'm not changing my mind, you idiots.
He said, for months, I've been ringing the alarm bell about inflation.
Once again, we are witnessing that the threat of inflation is real.
There's not a corner of this nation where hardworking families are able to escape the noticeable impact of this inflation tax.
Inflation taxes are draining the hard-earned wages of every American.
And it's causing real and severe economic pain that can no longer be ignored.
It's beyond time for the Federal Reserve to tackle this issue head-on, and Congress and the administration must proceed with caution before adding more fuel to an economy already on fire.
As inflation and our $30 trillion in national debt continue a historic climb, only in Washington, D.C.
do people seem to think spending trillions more of taxpayers' money will cure our problems, let alone inflation.
Of course, he's right about this.
Which leaves the Biden administration with a couple of choices.
They still want to spend awfully large amounts of money.
They still want to raise taxes.
Not for purposes of making the economy better, but for purposes of fairness.
The single most telling comment in presidential political history may be Barack Obama, 2008, being asked directly whether raising the capital gains tax, if it actually lowered the revenue to the government by disincentivizing investment, would he still pursue the capital gains tax, even if it meant less revenue to the government?
And he said, yes, for purposes of fairness.
This is how Democrats think.
They would rather have everybody equal in misery than inequality with prosperity.
It's a principle with them.
And so Joe Manchin is like, let's cut out this inflation, no more spending.
But the Biden administration isn't going to do that.
If they had their way, they would continue to blow out the spending.
They're certainly going to increase the regulations.
They would certainly allow the tax cuts to expire.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's top economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, he says, don't worry, the inflation is going to drop.
I expect inflation to come down significantly in 2022.
Now, more to the point, that's not just my expectation.
That's the expectation of every forecast I've looked at, and it's very important.
Basically, what the forecasts tell you is that the job market should stay tight and get even tighter, supporting wage growth while inflation decelerates, while it slows.
So virtually every forecast has inflation growing about half as fast this year as it did last year.
This leaves them with two choices.
If the Federal Reserve decides to raise the interest rates, as they apparently are going to do, there's a very good possibility that we tip into a recession because of that.
Or, even if we don't tip into a recession, it slows the economy just enough, and then you've got Joe Biden piling regulations on top of that.
And then we've got interest debts that are going to come due on the national debt over time, and we're going to have to raise taxes in order to pay for it, that sort of stuff.
Or cut back on many of the social welfare measures that we have.
All of those factors together mean economic stagnation.
By the way, Joe Biden knew this.
Okay, Joe Biden, his own economic office last year put out stats on Build Back Better showing that over the course of the decade, we were going to be growing, the economy was going to be growing at less than 2% year on year, basically every year for the rest of the decade, which is a bad, bad number.
And again, right now, we've got problems with the national debt that are going to start materializing pretty quickly.
Remember, we blew out the national debt to the tune of $7 trillion over the course of the last two years alone.
All right, coming up, we're going to talk about this New York Times article that runs down the actual problems with our national debt.
These are likely to materialize in the mid to long term here.
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According to the New York Times just a couple of weeks ago, the Fed has been keeping long-term interest rates low by buying government-backed debt and holding those securities on its balance sheet.
Those purchases are set to wrap up in March.
Last week, the Fed signaled a plan to significantly shrink its bond holdings.
Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, suggested during a speech this week that the Fed's big bond holdings might be lowering longer-term interest rates by as much as 1.5 percent, nearly cutting the interest rate on 10-year government debt in half.
While shrinking the balance sheet risks roiling markets, she warned if the Fed remained a big presence in the Treasury market, it could distort financial conditions and imperil the central bank's prized independence from elected government as those rates rise, right?
As the Federal Reserve begins to get rid of all of the assets that it has been holding.
Because, again, it wants to cut down on the amount of money in circulation.
As those rates rise, so does the amount the United States owes to investors who buy its debt.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if interest rates rise in line with their own forecast, net interest costs will reach 8.6% of total GDP in 2051.
8.6% of the total GDP.
That is a lot of money.
That's about $60 trillion in total interest payments over the next three decades.
The CBO said, in its long-term budget outlook, a larger amount of debt makes the United States' fiscal position more vulnerable to an increase in interest rates.
So basically, we've been playing this game over at the Federal Reserve, where the Federal Reserve buys bonds, long-term bonds, in order to inject money into the economy.
And then, by doing so, by creating this inflationary spiral, when they decide to cut back on that, they are going to sell those bonds back out there.
In order to sell those bonds back out there, they're going to have to raise the interest rates on that long-term debt.
And when that happens, they got a problem because now the United States has to pay all of that back.
Axios today is pointing out that the Biden administration now has to face down the possibility of a very real recession.
Want to bring down inflation?
The great dilemma is this.
The only real options are to be patient or to cause a recession.
It's a pick-your-poison environment for the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve, who face public discontent over economic conditions.
And the risk that discontent would only get worse if the alternative was a new recession.
The inflationary pressures from strained supply chains and labor shortages look likely to persist all the way through 2022, maybe beyond.
But the measures that would be needed to bring inflation down more rapidly would risk sending the economy into a tailspin.
According to this columnist for Axios, in the decades after World War II, episodes of inflation have ended when the Fed took steps to tighten the money supply causing recessions.
In other words, companies cannot hike prices and workers can't demand higher pay if the economy is contracting and more people are out of work.
In the most extreme example, Fed Chair Paul Volcker engineered a steep downturn in the early 1980s that ended the double-digit inflation of that era, but at the cost of double-digit unemployment that pummeled President Reagan's popularity.
This time the goal is a soft landing.
The Fed is looking to move toward higher interest rates gradually without a shock.
The Biden administration is decidedly not talking about spending cuts or tax increases that might act as fiscal anti-stimulus.
Yes, but high inflation is hammering Biden's approval ratings and it could cost Democrats big in the November midterm elections.
So inflation is bad for Biden.
Recession is way worse for Biden.
And they've got another problem on the horizon.
The Trump tax cuts are set to expire sometime in the near future.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is set to expire in 2025 and starting in 2021 will increase over time.
Okay, that's a problem for them.
As the tax is naturally increasing, you're not going to get Democrats, of course, to vote for renewal of the Trump tax cuts.
As those taxes increase, we now have a series of disincentives for investment.
People paying higher taxes on their income.
Joe Biden pursuing higher regulations and unionization.
The Washington Post has an entire piece today talking about how the White House is releasing detailed blueprints for how the federal government can work to increase union participation and strengthen workers' rights to organize in the absence of legislative action.
So they want to artificially increase the price of labor and shortages in the labor market.
At the same time, they want to let the Trump tax cuts expire.
At the same time, they want to spend an enormous amount of money.
At the same time, they want more regulations.
And then also, they have a major inflationary spiral that's going to require the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
This is what we call a recipe for stagnation.
This is a recipe for stagnation.
The short-term threat to the United States economy is inflation because we overheated it.
And when I say we, I really mean we.
The Trump team inflated the economy in 2021, in 2020 rather, for at least some understandable purpose because we had artificially shut down the economy.
And then Joe Biden came in and just did it way, way more.
And now they're going to pay the price.
But the mid-to-long-term threat here is not inflation.
The mid-to-long-term threat here is going to be economic stagnation, over-regulation, taxation, interest payments on the national debt.
All that stuff is now inevitable if Democrats get what they want.
Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get into what the Federal Reserve is actually going to do to try to fix all this.
The answer is pain!
We'll get to that in just one second.
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According to CNN, red-hot inflation is raising pressure on the Federal Reserve to take drastic action to get control of prices.
James Bullard, the president of the St.
Louis Federal Reserve Bank, told Bloomberg News Thursday he has become dramatically more hawkish and now supports raising interest rates by a full percentage point by July 1.
Given that there were only three Fed meetings before then, that implies the Fed would have to raise interest rates by half a percentage point in a single meeting instead of the more typical quarter percentage point moves.
The Fed hasn't executed a half-point rate hike since 2000.
Investors are now pricing in a 99% chance that the Fed raises interest rates by 50 basis points in March, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool.
That's up from just 24% on Wednesday.
In fact, markets are now pricing in a very tiny chance of a three quarters of a percentage point hike in March.
Now, I highly doubt the Federal Reserve is going to shock the markets that way, but a 50 basis point rate hike means less investment.
Which is why the Dow Jones fell 425 points, 1.2% last week, right?
As we see people pricing in, the possibility of an actual recession, like, I honestly did not think it was possible for them to screw it up this badly.
I did not.
If you go back and you listen to my podcast right around the time of the inauguration, I said that Joe Biden was going to be blessed with a naturally recovering economy.
And all he had to do is get out of the way.
That Joe Biden had been blessed with Middle East peace.
All he had to do is get out of the way.
That things were pretty stable in Afghanistan.
All he had to do is get out of the way.
And he has managed to screw up everything.
All the things he's managed to screw up.
As Barack Obama once said of Joe Biden, never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to F things up.
Because that dude is incredible at F-ing things up.
Speaking of which, you know, when we talk about supply chain crises and the continuing supply chain crisis, you have to understand that the United States has taken a real outlier position throughout the last year on COVID pandemic restrictions, at least the federal government has.
Most countries in Europe, for example, never really shut down their schools.
Many of them never mask the kids at all.
Many of them started going back to normal months ago.
It's the Biden administration that continues to maintain that we need COVID restrictions and universal masking and masking of children and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
And this has resulted in other countries imitating us or trying to get the lead on us, including Justin Trudeau, who is 100% not.
Stop it.
He's not Fidel Castro's kid.
Stop that right now.
Justin Trudeau, up in Canada, has been continuing to implement VAX mandates that affect these truckers.
And so now we have a supply chain issue from the North.
Because, of course, we have truckers who have been blockading certain bridges into the United States.
The Ambassador Bridge, particularly connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.
All of this could just be solved if Justin Trudeau cut it out.
But he's not going to cut it out, and so this is going to continue.
Which, of course, has necessitated the White House now whining about it.
The Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government Thursday to use federal power to end the truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country's COVID-19 restrictions, according to the Associated Press.
So just to get this straight, according to the Biden administration and Democrats generally, very good to block traffic, to protest supposedly racist policing, very bad to block traffic if you are a trucker whose job is dependent on actually being able to drive across that border.
You know who wants that bridge open more than anybody else?
The truckers.
They're the people who want the bridge.
They want to be able to drive across that bridge.
It is the United States and Canada who have determined that many of them cannot drive across that bridge.
For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.
The White House said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with the Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the stand-up.
Well, now that Buttigieg has gotten involved, I think that we're done here.
I mean, that guy is so competent at his job that he went missing for two complete months for paternity leave to heal his nothing.
And no one noticed.
Federal Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendocino, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa, and Cootes, Alberta, where another border blockade is happening.
So Dudley Doodwright is on his way.
Trudeau met virtually with leaders of Canada's opposition late Thursday and said he spoke with Windsor's mayor.
Trudeau's office said there's a willingness to respond with whatever it takes to end the blockades.
By whatever it takes, they mean everything except for the rational policy of leaving the truckers the hell alone.
Because even if they have COVID, they're alone in the actual cab of the truck.
For thousands of miles.
Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford moved to cut off funding for the protest by successfully asking a court to freeze millions of dollars in donations to the convoy through crowdfunding site Give Send Go.
Ford has called the protest an occupation.
It's amazing how the left is perfectly willing to allow billions of dollars to flow to corrupt organizations like Black Lives Matter.
Perfectly willing to allow the Vice President of the United States to fundraise for bailing people out of jail who are involved in riots.
But when it comes to the Freedom Convoy, different story.
So just to get this straight, according to the left, giving money to people who are protesting Vax mandates, very bad, verboten.
Giving money to people who proclaim that the police are racist and that we should defund the police and a cadre of whom burn down cities, good.
Makes perfect sense.
In the United States, authorities are bracing for the possibility of similar truck-borne protests inspired by the Canadians.
Authorities in Paris and Belgium are banning road blockades to head off disruptions there as well.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin to local and state law enforcement agencies it has received reports truckers are planning to potentially block roads in major metro cities in a protest against VAX mandates and other issues.
The agency said the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend, possibly disrupting traffic around the Super Bowl and reach Washington in March in time for the State of the Union Address, according to a copy of Tuesday's bulletin obtained by the Associated Press.
Now, what's amazing about this is all of this is just rooted in the stubbornness of our garbage public officials.
Because this is over.
Okay?
All across the country in the United States, blue state governors are relieving mandates.
They're relieving mask mandates.
And vax mandates have achieved precisely the opposite of what they were intended to achieve.
People who are the most likely to avoid the vaccine mandates are also the people who are blocking off the roads right now.
Because those people were willing to lose their jobs over it.
You think they are not willing to get arrested over it?
It's creating real problems for the auto supply chain.
Honda, for example, is temporarily stopping production on one assembly line during the day shift Friday at its plant in Alliston, Ontario.
And it is fun to watch as people on the left suddenly discover that breaking of the law in peaceful protest is bad.
That blocking traffic is bad.
So for example, Juliette Kayyem, a Harvard professor and CNN analyst, tweeted yesterday, Trust me, I will not run out of ways to make this hurt.
Cancel their insurance.
Suspend their driver's licenses.
Prohibit any future regulatory certification for truckers, etc.
Have we learned nothing?
These things fester when there are no consequences.
Slash the tires!
Empty gas tanks!
Arrest the drivers and move the trucks!
So good luck slashing the tires on trucks that weigh as much as these trucks do.
Also, emptying their, like, how does she think this is going to go?
Also, if you slash their tires and empty the gas tanks and arrest the drivers, how do you intend on moving the trucks, Juliet?
CNN, just doing an amazing, amazing job over there.
Meanwhile, CNN is, I mean, they are fully panicked over this, over on CNN.
And at no point do they say, well, maybe it's because we're getting the COVID restrictions wrong.
Maybe we should rethink this.
Nope, they're just gonna panic and talk about how the truckers are evil right-wing white supremacists.
The longer they stay, the more they do inspire others across the globe.
We know that there have been similar demonstrations in New Zealand and across Europe, tapping into the anti-vaccine sentiment, pandemic fatigue, and also inciting this civil disobedience.
And now the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security says trucker convoys like these could soon disrupt the Super Bowl in the United States and, of course, the State of the Union and other big events.
Oh no, disrupting the State of the Union.
Oh no, I would be so sad.
I hate the State of the Union.
By the way, the Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas issued a National Terrorism Advisory just two days ago, saying that key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include, quote, the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which so discord or undermine public trust in U.S.
government institutions, particularly with regard to misleading narratives regarding COVID-19.
So we have to crack down on quote-unquote misinformation so people don't get mad over the fact that we have done a horrifying job with regard to COVID-19 in terms of our public health establishment.
You know, by the way, you know who's saying that we lost our actual trust in public health establishments?
Michael Osterholm, who used to advise Joe Biden.
Here was Michael Osterholm yesterday saying, oh yeah, the public health establishment completely blew it.
We have two pandemics going on right now in this country.
One's caused by COVID, and it surely is taking a heavy toll on us.
The second one is a pandemic, a loss of trust in government, in public health, and in some cases, the media.
And in all cases where we lose the trust of the people, to try to get them to comply with recommendations to help save their life and the life of their loved ones becomes very challenging when they don't believe you.
Yes, well, I mean, maybe they don't believe you because you were lying to them nearly the entire time.
Here's the thing.
The left can never let go of this.
So, for example, in New York, where they've already relieved the mask mandates.
They're getting rid of the mask mandates, particularly for adults.
According to the New York Times, hundreds of municipal workers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge this week, chanting in unison for New York City to end its vax mandate, carrying signs that said, fire Fauci and unvaccinated lives matter.
Their pleas were then rejected by Mayor Eric Adams, who has reaffirmed the city's looming ultimatum.
If city workers do not get vaccinated, they are the ones who will be fired.
So just to be straight, the reason that they had these vax mandates in the first place supposedly was to prevent infection.
Then it turned out that the vaccines don't actually prevent infection according to the CDC.
And so they are going to continue to fire people for no good reason at all.
The Adams administration is poised to dismiss up to 3,000 municipal workers on Friday for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID in what could be the nation's most drastic example of a workforce reduction tied to a VAX requirement.
Adam said we have to be very clear.
People must be vaccinated if they are New York City employees.
Everyone understood that.
We are not firing.
People are quitting.
The responsibility is clear.
Well, no, actually, if you threaten people that you will fire them if they don't vaccinate and then they don't vaccinate, you're the one who's firing them.
So we can pretend that you are not creating a new requirement for their employment.
But in fact, you are.
In just one second, we'll get to the simple fact that democratic policy is a failure and even Democrats are beginning to recognize it first.
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Now, here's the thing.
All of this is hitting Democrats exactly where they live, which is in the polling data.
The reason that Joe Biden is down in the 30s right now is because of this sort of stuff.
And so Democrats in various areas are starting to slowly back away, but they can't back away too fast because if they do, people might notice they've been backing away.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so meanwhile, Democrats are starting to try to shift quietly away from much of their own agenda because of course the consequences of their policies.
I've never seen, we are living in a period of acceleration.
If the universe used to turn like 78 RPM, we are now turning at, I don't know, 150 RPM, because the simple fact is that the results of democratic policy are materializing, boom, super quickly.
So, for example, according to Axios, shoplifting has gotten so bad nationally that chains like Rite Aid are closing hard-hit stores, sending terrified employees home in Ubers, and locking up aisles of seemingly mundane items like deodorant and toothpaste.
Retailers are already reeling from the pandemic, supply chain woes, and the labor shortage.
Now they're combating systemic looting by organized crime gangs, which are growing more and more aggressive and violent.
It's out of control.
It's just out of control, said Lisa Lubruno, SVP of Operations and Innovation at the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
A lot of the uptick is tied to the ease of reselling stolen goods online, plus the fact that consumers are buying more everyday goods online during COVID.
We have seen a 300% increase in retail theft from our stores since the pandemic began, said CVS spokesman Michael DeAngelis.
Well, something else happened during the pandemic, you may have noticed.
Yes, that's right.
The Black Lives Matter movement that decided that the cops were bad.
And so now you're starting to see even Democrats in California trying a course correction, according to Politico.
They say, perhaps fittingly, in a year when voters are in a throw-them-out kind of mood, it's a recall in San Francisco.
For months, a national parental backlash to school closings has dominated headlines and driven speculation about a brewing electoral wave for Republicans.
But what's happening in deep blue San Francisco complicates that picture.
Here, a liberal school board is colliding with a group of angry, just-as-liberal parents who have mounted a recall campaign against them.
The city's Democratic mayor and big media organs have endorsed the recall effort.
So has State Senator Scott Weiner, who is eyeing Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat when she retires.
What's happening in San Francisco is the clearest sign of how Democrats are recalibrating by backing away from the party's 2020 swing toward progressive activists' views on COVID-19, race, and crime.
It's happening throughout the Golden State.
Governor Gavin Newsom is lifting mask mandates.
Representative Karen Bass, who's running for mayor of L.A., called this week for a surge of funding for L.A.' 's police.
A surge in funding.
Like, two years after they cut the police funding.
Over and over, progressive shibboleths are being dispensed with in one of the most reliably democratic places in the country.
Because the consequences are obvious.
Democratic policy sucks.
It's really bad.
According to Politico, In San Francisco, it all started when they couldn't figure out why San Francisco's public schools remained closed, while other cities were sending kids back to in-person learning.
So they dialed into the city's Board of Education meetings and, like a lot of other parents, were annoyed at what they saw.
A massive budget shortfall.
An inordinate amount of time and energy spent on a plan to rename 44 school buildings, including those honoring George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dianne Feinstein.
Eliminating the merit-based admissions process at Lowell High School and transforming the coveted academic destination to a lottery.
A two-hour debate over whether Seth Branzell, a father who appears to be white and gay, brought enough diversity to be allowed to join a volunteer parental advisory committee.
And they never reopened the San Francisco schools.
So it turns out that, you know, they suck at this.
And their sucking at this means they have to either recalibrate or lose.
And none of this is being helped, of course, by the fact that the President of the United States is an absolute bag of hot air.
He is inert.
He is an inert element.
I mean, here is Joe Biden yesterday.
So Joe Biden was talking about one of the three, Ukraine, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
I can't tell which, can you?
Here is Joe Biden being asked by Lester Holt about his policies in Afghanistan.
And he goes through a list of countries that are apparently bouncing around in whatever is left of his feeble mind.
There was no way we were ever going to unite Ukraine, I mean excuse me, Iraq, Afghanistan.
And by the way, when it comes to foreign policy, he's certainly on top of it.
We still don't know what exactly is going to happen in Ukraine.
I can certainly guarantee you this.
If the Department of Defense continues to focus in on top priorities like diversity, equity, and inclusion, we will lose a major war in the very near future.
We already lost the Afghanistan war because Joe Biden decided to lose it.
But I'm talking about like just outright lose a war.
Not because the military, not because the politicians lose it, but because the military loses it.
Because we've decided to embed a bunch of leftist progressive activists at the top of the military.
According to defense.gov is a story from the DoD news.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are necessities in the U.S.
military.
This is Bishop Garrison, senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Human Capital and Diversity.
By the way, why exactly do we have an office for human capital and diversity at the Defense Department?
Sounds like a bad make work position at a local junior community college, but it's the Defense Department.
Garrison spoke to the Center for a New American Security today about the progress being made by the department and what still needs to happen.
Some 41% of the military identify as members of minority groups.
That number will grow larger, said Garrison.
The military must be able to attract, train, and retain them for the services to retain competitive edges, he said.
Fewer Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 qualify for military service.
So, he said, we have to find out ways of getting to a broader talent pool and broader interest groups in order to bring those highly qualified, talented individuals in.
He noted the percentage of minorities drops as they rise up the ranks.
Their numbers tend to begin to decline in terms of service.
They tend to get out.
There could be a variety of reasons as to why that actually is.
We need to take a very data-driven approach to get a better understanding as to what's actually happening here.
What is the problem?
How can we address it?
And he said, the answer is diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Now, of course, diversity, equity, and inclusion is code for left-wing views on race and politics.
It's code for affirmative action.
It's code for the basic idea that any statistical disparity is equivalent to discrimination.
Now the military is based on a couple of basic principles.
One, merit before diversity, and two, the only goal that matters is winning.
Those are the basic principles of the United States military.
Robert Putnam wrote many years ago in a book called Bowling Alone, that one of the best examples of cohesive groups in the United States was the army.
The reason being, everybody was oriented toward a single goal, and all of your individual metrics of diversity were fine, but they were subservient to that individual goal.
In that book, what Robert Putnam suggested is that diversity does not actually make groups stronger, per se.
Groups are strong when they have a shared goal and a shared set of rules that they abide by.
But that's not what the Army is attempting to do now.
That's not what the DOD is attempting to do.
According to Bishop Garrison, again, a make-work position over at the Defense Department, quote, I would hope that as many leaders and members of the total force as possible see diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as a force multiplier.
I swear, these people speak like they work for McKinsey.
I'd just use the word synergy and be done with it.
He wants them to see the program as a way to make the U.S.
military more successful in achieving critical missions and in making forces more lethal.
Yeah, but that's not what you're talking about.
Diversity, equity, inclusion does not make forces more lethal.
You know what makes forces more lethal?
Making them more lethal!
He says it's not just something that has to be done because of some type of cultural ideology or culture wars going on.
That's not the case at all.
Again, it's not diversity for diversity's sake.
No, it really, really is.
It really is.
You want to know why all over the world our enemies are on the move?
Because they think we are a paper tiger.
Tom Cotton, he says, you know, Putin could attack Kiev at any point and we probably wouldn't do much about it.
Here is the senator from Arkansas.
My estimate, based on the late troop movements into Belarus, is that Vladimir Putin decided that he wanted to get to the capital sooner rather than later, and that will be the first wave of attack into Ukraine should Vladimir Putin choose to invade.
Meanwhile, the State Department under Joe Biden, Wendy Sherman, one of the top officials there, she says, you know, Vladimir Putin has to understand that if he attacks Ukraine, body bags will go back to Russia.
I'm pretty sure that Putin knows that.
He just doesn't think enough body bags will go back to Russia to dissuade him from doing this.
Maybe one of the reasons is because every ad we bring out for the United States military is about why Hannah's two lesbian moms brought up a perfect soldier.
Here's Wendy Sherman.
Not only will there be dire consequences to the economy of Russia by what we will do, not just the United States, but this extraordinary alliance that exists with all of Europe and the United States and countries around the world.
Not only will that create consequences, but Vladimir Putin should understand that body bags will come back to Moscow as well, that the citizens of Russia will suffer because their economy will be completely devastated.
Okay, well, they don't seem all that scared of you, Wendy Sherman or Joe Biden, which is not a surprise.
Why would they be scared of an incompetent president whose entire policy is a failure on nearly every front?
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
First, don't forget to end your week by tuning into Andrew Klavan's show.
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