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March 10, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
59:47
Joe Biden’s Gas Problem | Ep. 1449
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Joe Biden cuts off Russian oil and natural gas and then says that spiking gas prices are all Vladimir Putin's fault.
Plus, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky makes early moves toward a compromise.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Bench Bureau Show.
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Well, the gas prices at the pump are now extraordinarily high all across the United States.
The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Wednesday hit $4.25.
That is an all-time high.
Earlier in the week, it had broke the previous record of $4.11 a gallon that had stood since July 2008.
Now, inflation adjusted.
It's still lower than 2008, but not for long, because we are about to see gas prices continue to skyrocket.
According to CNN Business, that sticker shock is hard, if not impossible, for most Americans to ignore.
In the short term, at least, you can't easily adjust how much gas you need to get by.
And if you look at the areas of the country that are hardest hit, the West Coast, of course, is the hardest hit.
You're seeing places in L.A., we got $7 a gallon.
There are certain places in New York where you've got seven bucks a gallon.
These are really, really high prices.
And this, of course, is going to put a damper on whatever economic growth was already taking place.
Inflation has already been eating into economic growth stats over the course of the last year.
Inflation, of course, outpacing wage gains.
Well, now that we've seen the price of gas skyrocketing over 75 cents over the course of just the last several weeks, And likely to continue into the near future, that is going to eat even more into whatever wage gains were taking place in the first place.
According to CNN Business, when it comes to inflation, psychology matters.
If consumers expect prices to rise, they spend more in the near term, which feeds demand, which pushes prices up further, a cycle that can be tough to break, especially when the source of the price spikes is making headlines daily.
Again, one of the things that's truly incredible about all of this is that we've seen all of this before.
This just looks like 1979.
We are now back in Jimmy Carter era with stagflation setting in, Russians invading a foreign country, a prolonged guerrilla war that is likely to last for a while, and an economy that is on the brink.
So, well done to President Biden who, you know, he once suggested that Mitt Romney wanted to bring back the 1980s.
Well, now he's bringing back 1979 in all of its glory.
Now, I would be remiss if I did not point out here that Donald Trump predicted this, I believe, the day before the election.
In 2020, he said, if Joe Biden is elected president, you're going to see seven buck a gallon gas.
And everybody in the media was like, no, he's just exaggerating again.
And here's the thing.
Trump did make wild and outlandish speculative speculative guesses about what was going to happen in the future.
And some of those were really exaggerated.
But here's the point.
When Joe Biden hits the exaggeration numbers, when Donald Trump's like, it's going to be a million dollars a gallon, he's like, no, it'll never be a million dollars a gallon.
And then a year and a half later, it's a million dollars a gallon.
He just looks like a prophet.
So here was Trump.
We have more oil than anybody, okay?
And it's an incredible thing that it's happened over the last few years.
A lot of great things.
And you're paying, what, $2 a gallon for your gasoline?
That's okay.
You know what that's like?
That's like a tax cut.
That's bigger than a tax cut.
If Biden got in, you'd be paying $7, $8, $9.
Didn't they say, get rid of your car?
Okay, that is a little eerie.
I mean, because as it turns out, that is in fact exactly the Joe Biden strategy.
$7, $8, $9 a gallon and get rid of your car because gas is just too expensive.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is stumbling around on the world stage as per his usual arrangement.
Yesterday, he was speaking in Texas and he bizarrely suggested that a couple of Congress people Play ball and one bombs people?
It was a weird moment.
If that guy gets off teleprompter, things get wild really quickly.
The three congressmen you have here, two of them look like they really could and did play ball, and the other one looks like he could bomb you.
Uh, what?
And then after that speech, he sort of just got lost on the way out of the room, which, which is the thing he does fairly regularly.
And then somebody has to come and show him which way it is to the cafeteria for, for pudding time.
Here is Joe Biden yesterday, kind of wandering around.
There he is.
Fort Worth, Texas.
Where do I go?
I don't know.
This way?
Uh, there you are, I assume.
That way?
This way?
Ooh, what?
No, that way.
That way?
Oh, we'll go to the left, to the left, to the right.
So Joe Biden is just wandering around.
He's obviously losing his mind.
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Remember that at the same time that Donald Trump was suggesting that gas prices were going to skyrocket under Joe Biden, Joe Biden was suggesting that he was going to solve all the world's problems.
Well, just last year in October of 2021, Joe Biden was maintaining that the gas prices would come down because he was so good at this.
Do you have a timeline for gas prices of when you think they may start coming down?
My guess is you'll start to see gas prices come down as we get by and going into the winter.
I mean, excuse me, and the next year in 2022.
Yeah, that one didn't come true.
And then just a couple of weeks later, as the gas prices continue to be very high, he then blamed OPEC.
See, everybody's to blame except for him.
Always and forever.
Here's Joe Biden in November of 2021.
If you take a look at gas prices and you take a look at oil prices, that is a consequence of, thus far, the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil.
And we'll see what happens on that score sooner than later.
It's everybody else to blame.
Now, the reason that I'm pointing this out is because Joe Biden's newest line is that the reason that the gas prices have spiked is purely because of Russia-Ukraine.
Now, there's no question that Russia-Ukraine, that conflict, and the cutoff of oil and natural gas from Russia has impacted world markets in a pretty severe way.
But I need to show you the price of gas in the United States over the course of the last year and a half or so.
This is going back about one year.
When Joe Biden took office, gas in the United States was clocking in at about $2.90 a gallon.
Something like that.
$2.80 a gallon.
Okay.
And as you see, the gas prices in this chart continue to rise.
Continuously.
Continuously and steadily.
To the point that at the beginning of his presidency, it was about $2.80, $2.90 a gallon.
And then it was already $3.50 a gallon by November of 2021.
And then it continued to rise all the way up till just before this conflict was about $3.60 a gallon.
So you'd already had this massive $0.80, $0.90 increase in the price of gasoline over the course of Joe Biden's presidency.
And then over the past couple of weeks, it's really, really spiked.
75, 80 cents.
So Joe Biden wants you to ignore the fact that the gas prices were rising continuously during his administration, largely because of his anti-gas and oil perspectives on how we should pursue our energy future.
So yes, we are in a significant crunch.
But you know what makes a crunch worse?
Is when you have exacerbated shortages in the first place.
This is like saying that there's an earthquake and you have no water in the house.
And so you say, well, the earthquake is a real problem because I have no water in the house.
I mean, that's true.
You know, it would have been really, really helpful if you hadn't gotten rid of the gallons and gallons of water that you had in the garage just before the earthquake, which is what Joe Biden basically did.
Joe Biden has made it very difficult to set up a pipeline of energy futures in the United States.
And what that means is that when the crunch comes, it affects us much more severely.
Because we don't actually have the capacity to ramp up production in the way that we would have, say, two years ago under Donald Trump.
For their part, the Democrats are simultaneously claiming it's not a problem and then sort of recognizing that it is a problem.
So you have Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who's been discussed as a possible heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi as the head of Democratic caucus.
He says, you know, we haven't even discussed gas prices during our caucus meeting, which seems like a weird thing to not discuss considering it's the number one topic in America.
What has been the reaction of your colleagues to, you know, things like diplomatic outreach to countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in terms of like increasing the global oil supply?
I assume those conversations are taking place, but I haven't been read into them.
And we await, you know, further clarity from, you know, from the administration.
OK, so, yeah, no, no, no conversations taking place at all.
Very, very interesting.
By the way, you know where there are conversations taking place is on the state level, where governors are about to feel the shellacking.
There are a bunch of governors who are going to be up for re-election over the course of the next couple of years, and you know what they don't like?
Those giant gas bills in their state.
And so a series of governors, governors from Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, all Democrats wrote directly to Speaker Pelosi and Schumer and McCarthy and McConnell asking them to relieve the gas tax.
Now, it's Democrats who've been pushing the gas tax for years.
It's Democrats who believe that because gas is a staple in American life, they can make more government revenue if they just pass a federal gas tax.
So all of these governors, all of Democratic states, are asking now Democrats to relieve them of the taxes they put in place in the first place.
They say, according to the American Automobile Association, the national average gas price in the United States is $4.17, up more than a buck from 2021.
The Gas Prices Relief Act, as introduced in the House and Senate, would alleviate the consumer cost of rising gas prices while protecting the federal government's capacity to make infrastructure investments.
First, it saves Americans at the pump by suspending the federal gas tax for the rest of the year.
Money saved at the pump translates into dollars back in consumers' pockets for groceries, childcare, rent, and more.
If only Democrats extended this logic to tax cuts generally.
It turns out that when you cut people's taxes, they have more money in their pocket to invest and spend on things.
It is impressive that the Democrats are at the same time claiming this is not a problem and also please relieve us of the gas tax.
Please, please, please, please, please.
In just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden's announcement about getting off of Russian oil and natural gas.
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And meanwhile, Joe Biden yesterday, he announced that he was finally going to ban Russian gas and oil imports.
He'd been called upon to do this for a couple of weeks.
Bizarrely, he had been lagging behind many of the European countries on this, despite the fact that only about 5% of imported American oil comes from Russia, whereas it's like 40, 50% for certain European countries.
Here was Joe Biden announcing this yesterday.
Today I'm announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia's economy.
We're banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy.
That means Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S.
ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin's war machine.
Okay, well, here's the thing.
He should have done this a couple of weeks ago when he first rolled out the sanctions.
But if he's going to do this now, then it seems as though he's doing this as an excuse.
Honestly, it seems as though he is doing this as an excuse so then he can blame Putin and Russia for gas prices that are already rising on his watch.
Now, this is, it's the right move to cut off Russian natural gas and oil if you actually are hoping that sanctions are going to effectuate policy change.
I'm skeptical that's actually going to happen.
But, you do want to undermine the Russian war making machine, I get it.
However, you are the president of the United States and you don't get to just say, wash your hands clean of this thing and be like, yeah, you know, it's all Putin.
But that's exactly what Joe Biden is doing now.
Now he's going to abdicate responsibility on an issue where, again, he was talking back in October, November, about how gas prices were way too high for most Americans.
And so we're just going to pretend that didn't exist.
We're going to pretend that the world of high gas prices started spinning yesterday.
Nope.
Here's Joe Biden.
Biden.
Now Russia's responsible, you can see how happy he is about this.
Now he gets to blame Russia for his own bad policymaking decisions.
Again, you are the person who got rid of all of the water in the garage in preparation for the earthquake.
And then the earthquake happened, you're like, man, I guess it was just that earthquake.
I can't do anything now.
Jen Psaki doubled down on this yesterday.
This is the new line, is that it's Putin's gas hike, that Putin is responsible.
Now, again, Putin is responsible for a huge portion of the gas hike that we have seen in the last couple of weeks or so.
But everything up till then, when we were already paying too much for gas, that's just on Joe Biden.
Here's Jen Psaki trying to mention this same sort of propagandistic effort yesterday.
Americans are paying a higher price at the pump because of the actions of President Putin.
This is a Putin spike at the gas pump.
Putin's right.
So this is going to be the new talking point, and the media is going to go for it, because the way that the media cover issues is they just take whatever is the Democratic talking point, and then they turn it into a weaponized propaganda machine, and they just spin it out.
So Florida passes a bill that says that you're not allowed to indoctrinate children in sexual orientation and radical gender ideology, like small kids.
And the media immediately labeled it the Don't Say Gay Bill, which of course it is not.
And then you have a bunch of morons on Twitter, the Mark Hamills of the world, who are just tweeting out the word gay, as though this makes any sort of difference, or as though the people on Twitter are typically five and six-year-olds in public school.
Which, by the way, if you were just saying gay over and over and over to a five-year-old, I would think that you were a weirdo.
It's a weird thing to do.
Especially in defiance of parents.
But, again, the idea here is that the media always pick up the Democratic line.
So within 24 hours, the entire media line is, it's Putin's gas hike.
Okay, but it's not Putin's gas hike.
It is partially Putin's gas hike because you have an exogenous situation that has now created a spike.
But the spike is not entirely because of Putin.
If you artificially create a shortage and that shortage is exacerbated by an exogenous event, that's partially your fault and it's partially Putin's fault.
And if you're the head of the leading oil-producing nation on planet Earth, which is what the United States is, then it's really kind of more your fault over the course of time.
Joe Biden yesterday, he said, I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike.
Again, this is going to be the slogan they say over and over and over.
Since Putin began his military buildup on Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of the gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents.
And with this action, it's going to go up further.
I'm gonna do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home.
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And then Joe Biden adds that it's not true that his administration has been holding back natural gas and oil growth in the.
That's not true.
Who are you going to believe?
This doddering old man who may not be alive?
Or these simple facts on the ground?
And every piece of testimony from every member of the oil and gas industry in the United States.
Here's Joe Biden yesterday lying to you.
It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.
That's simply not true.
Even amid the pandemic, companies in the United States pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor's first year.
And that, well, first of all, you would imagine that the production would have gone up somewhat.
I like how he's comparing his predecessors first year to his first year.
That's not how that works.
You have to compare your predecessors last year to your first year and preferably your predecessors last year before a giant pandemic wiped out the world economy.
So you'd actually want to compare 2019 to now if you wanted to make an apples to apples comparison.
But that's not exactly what Joe Biden is doing.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden says, I don't It's not that I don't like the oil and gas industry.
I just hate their guts.
And I'm going to slam them in a tweet-a-mouth!
A twat-a-mouth!
A tweet!
A twat-a-mouth!
So Joe Biden tweeted out yesterday.
Let me say to the oil and gas companies and finance firms that back them.
We understand Putin's war against the people of Ukraine is causing prices to ramble-do.
But that is no excuse for excess price increases, or padding profits, or any kind of effort to exploit the sitch-mash-a-moo.
So it's their fault.
It's Putin's fault, and the oil company's fault, but not Joe Biden's fault.
And of course, this has been the Democratic Party line for years, is that it's just oil companies are seeking to patent their profits.
It's amazing how when prices rise, that is greed.
When prices go down, that's never corporate largesse.
It's not that corporations got altruistic.
It's that corporations have been crushed by the marketplace.
But when the prices rise, it's because of corporate greed.
These morons.
Here's Elizabeth Warren doing this routine yesterday.
Should Congress be monitoring profiteering?
Absolutely, and actually we are.
I'm co-sponsoring with Senator Whitehouse and others a bill on windfall profits tax.
Look, we get it, supply and demand, that prices go up, but profit margins should not go up.
Okay, the fact that you think Elizabeth Warren should regulate your energy production demonstrates all you need to know.
By the way, again, the White House says that they've not cut down oil and natural gas production or capacity, and that's just not true.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, despite reassurances from the White House, it is doing nothing to discourage oil companies from opening new drill sites.
President Biden's allies in Congress just months ago Pressured oil executives to decrease outputs because of climate change.
Raising questions about the Democratic Party's strategy to lower prices for consumers.
In late October, for example, the House Oversight and Reform Committee called in the CEOs of Exxon, BP, Shell, and Chevron to explain what steps they are taking to produce less oil and gas, with Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, alleging the world can't wait any longer.
At that time, gas prices were already hovering around a 10-year high.
That hearing has gained new relevance as a global gas shortage has pushed prices to an all-time high.
Prices are rising even more due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with no sign of falling after Biden's announcement the United States will no longer accept Russian oil imports.
The president said on Tuesday his administration's policies are not holding back domestic energy production.
However, according to CounterPoint Strategies President Jim McCarthy, policy advisor for leading energy companies, he can draw a direct line from how the Democrats marauded energy production yesterday to the unprecedented pain Americans are feeling at the pump today.
Some Democrats, like Representative Ro Khanna of California, have demanded that domestic oil companies dramatically curtail their domestic operations.
At the same time, Cana has called for the United States to end its dependency on oil imports from countries like Russia.
In one exchange during that October hearing, Cana pressed Shell President Gretchen Watkins on whether she agreed that under the Paris Agreement, we need to have oil and gas production declining every year.
Again, Democrats continue to push all of these oil companies to cut production.
This is not all that long ago.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal pointing out that Joe Biden has a long and inglorious history of attempting to undermine natural gas and oil production in the United States.
So Joe Biden says that, you know, he's actually not cutting down on oil and natural gas production in the United States.
It's not his fault.
It's not his fault.
Well, it is, in fact, his fault.
It is.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, here's what they say.
They say what Joe Biden should be doing right now is he should be encouraging the development of U.S.
oil and natural gas.
If he did that, if he announced a moratorium on new regulations, expedite permits, encourage investment, the price of Brent crude would probably fall 20 bucks a barrel in anticipation of higher production.
But Biden is doing precisely the opposite.
On Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, he even blamed U.S.
companies, not his policies, for not producing more.
There are 9,000 available unused drilling permits, he claimed.
Only 10% of onshore oil production takes place on federal land.
Talk about a misdirection.
Play first.
Companies have to obtain additional permits for rights-of-way to access leases and build pipelines to transport fuel.
This has become harder under the Biden administration.
Second, Companies must build up a sufficient inventory of permits before they can contract rigs because of the regulatory difficulties of operating on federal land.
It takes 140 days or so for the feds to approve a drilling permit versus two for the state of Texas.
The administration has halted onshore lease sales.
Producers are developing leases more slowly because they don't know when more will be available.
Offshore leases were snapped up at a November auction because companies expect it might be the last one.
Interior's five-year leasing program for the Gulf of Mexico expires in June.
The administration still has not promulgated a new plan, nor did it appeal a liberal judge's order in January revoking those November leases.
But the administration has appealed another judge's order requiring that it hold lease sales.
Then there's the not small problem of financing.
Companies cannot explore and drill or build pipelines without capital.
Biden financial regulators allied with progressive investors are working to cut it off.
The Labor Department is now proposing a rule that would require 401k managers to consider the climate impact of their investment holdings.
The SEC is expected to issue a rule requiring companies and their financiers to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden has nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin of all people to be the Fed's top bank supervisor.
Her top priority is using bank regulation to redirect capital from fossil fuels to green energy.
Large energy producers are buying back stock and redirecting capital to renewables because they see the administration's writing on the wall.
Small independent producers are eager to take advantage of higher prices, but they can't get loans.
Many relied on private equity during the last shale boom.
Now these firms are cutting them off.
Progressive outfit Global Energy Monitor gleefully proclaimed on Tuesday that $244 billion in U.S.
liquefied natural gas projects are stalled because they are struggling to find financiers and buyers amid pressure from cheap renewables, i.e.
rich green energy subsidies Democrats want to make richer, and tightening climate commitments.
The Biden administration has taken overt measures in order to quash American energy production.
And they're kind of open about it.
So on the one hand, they say, we're not doing anything to quash production.
We would never do anything like that.
It's all Putin's pragedy.
It's his fault.
But yesterday, literally yesterday, as the gas prices were spiking to record highs, Joe Biden was saying, our actual goal should not be to open up the floodgates on energy production in the United States in the same speech.
Instead, he said, no, no, no.
Our goal is to become the lead exporters of clean energy to the globe.
Good luck with that.
And also, how do you expect to achieve this, given the fact that carbon-based fuels are significantly more efficient on a material-to-energy level than anything that has been come up with that is quote-unquote green-friendly, with the exception possibly of nuclear power, which again, Democrats oppose.
And you can't export it anyway.
So here's Joe Biden trying to claim at the same time that it's Vladimir Putin's fault gas prices are high.
Also, we should sink billions and trillions of dollars into green energy and cut off oil and gas at the knees.
Lucy environmental regulations are pulling back.
Clean energy investment won't.
I mean, it won't will not lower energy prices for families.
But transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles powered by clean energy.
With tax credits to help American families winterize their homes and use less energy.
That will.
That's good, in fact.
The Tressler, the Tressler Sam Blue.
Um, I'm just going to point out here that Donald Trump said this would happen.
He did.
I mean, I can't say a lot of stuff, did Donald Trump.
That one happened to be correct.
$7, $8, $9 a gallon.
Plus, they're going to press you to get rid of your car and get yourself an electric vehicle.
All it will cost you is $50,000, $60,000.
No problem.
You need to spend $50,000 or $60,000 to save a couple of bucks a gallon at the pump right now.
This is part of a broader agenda and to pretend that it is not is foolishness.
Now, I know there are people out there who have sort of been looking at this and they think maybe it's on purpose, right?
Maybe it's conspiratorial.
Maybe basically Joe Biden is deliberately driving up energy prices so as to get everybody to embrace the sort of Green New Deal idea.
If so, he's a moron because the fact is that when energy prices are high, people have far less tolerance for this sort of Gambling around and pretending that green energy is going to be the solution.
Environmentalism is the privilege of rich countries and rich people.
People who are poor don't care about it.
People who are struggling to get by, they do not care about carbon emissions.
They care about making sure they can get to work and get food on their family's table.
That is what they care about.
So if that's the plan, to purposefully drive up the price of energy in order to encourage people to go green, it is likely to backfire on the Democrats in pretty dramatic fashion.
Instead, it seems more like to me, because Hanlon's razor I tend to attribute to stupidity rather than malice.
Although in this case, it's stupidity combined with malice.
When it comes to the Democratic Party, it seems much more like they are taking advantage of the price spike in order to push the Green New Deal kind of stuff because their preferred solution is always the solution to any given problem.
You saw this with Build Back Better, right?
Inflation was happening, and so Joe Biden was like, Build Back What I'm Gonna Do is gonna solve inflation.
You're like, wait, that, no.
Like, clearly not.
But when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And for these idiots, the hammer here is radical green environmentalism.
And it doesn't matter if they are bashing away at a screw.
They're gonna pretend that that screw is a nail.
Or it's just gonna screw the American people.
Joe Biden didn't take any questions after all of this because he can't take questions because he's no longer a sentient human.
I know there's a lot of questions.
I know.
I know there's a lot of questions, but there's a lot more that has to be made clear.
And I'm going to hold on that until we get more information.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
He does this sort of self-comforting thing where he's holding his little briefcase and then he kind of starts clutching it to himself and you know that he wants to be done.
You know, I heard an argument yesterday from a pro-abortion fanatic suggesting that sentience ought to be the standard for life.
Well, the president of the United States had better hope that's not the case because that man is no longer with us.
Meanwhile, again, this administration is not... They're being pretty clear that they are fine with the suffering so long as it allows them to push green energy.
Here's Biden economic advisor Brian Deese yesterday suggesting that the answer to high energy prices is not to produce more energy, it's to produce more windmills that chop up baby seagulls or something.
Here we go.
The only viable path to energy independence for the American economy is to reduce the energy intensity of our economy overall, and ultimately to reduce it to zero and get ourselves to a position where we're no longer reliant on fossil fuels.
Oh, well, I'm glad that that is your long-term vision.
What do you expect to do for the soccer mom who's trying to get her kids to the park today?
You're going to attach a windmill to the top of that car?
Is that the plan?
I'd like to hear the plan, here.
Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, she's saying the same kind of stuff.
She says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what?
If we want to lower prices at the pump, what we really need to do is transfer over to green energy.
Well, that's amazing.
I mean, probably what we should do is we should figure out some way To put that little device on the DeLorean that Doc Brown does at the end of Back to the Future 1.
When he comes back from the future and he's got that like food compactor and he can throw like banana peels in the car and suddenly it just runs.
It runs on banana peels and trash and he's just picking through the organic matter in order to power the DeLorean.
If we could do that, that probably solves the problem.
Imaginary energy.
As Kamala Harris said yesterday, imagine.
So here's Jennifer Granholm imagining.
Ultimately, it's difficult to imagine flipping a switch and seeing those barrels, those Russian barrels, come online and be acceptable around the world, given the egregious activities of Vladimir Putin.
So this is why increasing production is really, and increasing clean energy, transitioning to clean energy, are the solutions for being able to reduce those prices at the pump.
I love how she caught herself there.
I love how she caught herself there.
She's like, increasing production of green energy.
Increasing production because everyone knows if you want the price to go down, you have to increase the supply.
Except apparently members of the Biden administration who believe that in order to bring prices down, what you actually do is not increase supply.
You worry about how we can.
Here's the amazing thing.
All these environmentally friendly solutions, all the electric cars, those are powered by things like lithium.
They're powered by rare earth materials.
Who's in control of those rare earth materials?
So, we are getting off our dependency on Russian oil by apparently going to the Venezuelans for their oil and also going to the Chinese for rare earth minerals.
I can't see how this goes wrong in any way.
It's a perfect... Now, here's the thing.
If you are an elite leftist, which is basically the Democratic coalition at this point.
The Democratic coalition is minorities.
This is by the statistics.
It is minorities who vote disproportionately Democratic and college-educated white liberals.
That is the entire coalition.
And so it tends to be people, economically speaking, who are either at the bottom of the economic spectrum or at the top of the economic spectrum and not much in between.
One of the people at the top of the economic spectrum, of course, is Stephen Colbert.
And the beautiful thing about being Stephen Colbert is you can be as elitist as you want to be.
When Stephen Colbert says, I don't care about paying a couple extra bucks at the pump, what does it matter to me?
Of course, it doesn't matter to him.
He's very, very wealthy.
I'll be honest with you, when I pay a little bit of extra money at the pump, it doesn't matter to me either.
But I know that it matters for hundreds of millions of Americans.
I also am online to buy a Tesla, as Stephen Colbert is about to suggest here.
But that doesn't mean that everyone can afford a Tesla.
Those suckers are expensive.
Here is Stephen Colbert, however, saying he doesn't care if the price of gas goes up to $15 a gallon, because after all, he's very wealthy.
And you, you people, you can eat Prius.
Let them eat Prius.
Here is Stephen Colbert, man of the people.
Since the invasion, oil prices have skyrocketed.
Today, the average gas price in America hit an all-time record high of over $4 per gallon.
Okay, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two.
I'm willing to pay $4 a gallon.
hell I'll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla.
You could go back to riding horses.
Horses, they run on their own poop.
What is with these people?
But you should take your advice from them.
They know what's best for you and the future of Murica.
In just one second, we'll get to the foreign policy of this administration.
It is just an absolute mess.
First, now the simple fact is that there are a lot of cars out there and all those cars need separate car parts.
And when you go to that local auto parts store, they probably are not going to have the part that you're looking for.
Just going to break it to you right now.
Instead, you're going to wait in line.
You'll get to the front of the line.
And then some dude behind the counter is going to be like, yeah, bro, we can order this for you and upcharge you.
Or you could just order the part yourself because you also have access to the magical interwebs.
Head on over to rockauto.com at home and in your pocket.
Why would you choose to spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same auto parts at a chain store or new car dealership?
Delphi FG 1456 fuel pump assembly.
For a 2005 to 2010 Honda Odyssey, for example, that is $354 bucks in advance.
It is $217 bucks at rockauto.com.
Rockauto.com, it's a family business.
They've been serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
Head on over to rockauto.com.
Shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
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Go to rockauto.com.
See all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box.
So they know that we sent you.
Already in just one second, we'll get to the foreign policy ramifications of Joe Biden's idiotic moves on energy and beyond.
First, I just gotta tell you, we are 24 hours away from the premiere of our next big hit, The Hyperions.
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It is not woke.
It has no agenda.
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Good day, Hyperion Club members.
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Set a reminder for the live showing.
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Alrighty, so meanwhile, the foreign policy of this administration continues to be a So, if you can't get oil from the Russians, apparently you're going to try and get it from the Venezuelans.
As we mentioned yesterday, this is nuts.
If you're Nicolas Maduro, the socialist tyrant of Venezuela, and you have your people eating dogs in the streets of Caracas, then apparently the Biden administration has you to talk to.
They're going to come talk to you.
By the way, he's openly allied with Vladimir Putin.
The solution to not giving money to a dictator who is murdering people in Ukraine is to give money to a dictator who is murdering people in his own country and is allied with the dictator who's murdering people in Ukraine.
Makes perfect sense.
It's a genius move by the Biden administration.
Again, all of this is a consequence of you refusing to up oil production in your own country, which is inexcusable.
The United States is blessed with this unbelievable natural resource.
And the Biden administration solution is what if we could produce it, but With less environmental safety, like much more environmental damage in other countries that are oppressive and horrific and make ourselves dependent on them.
What if we could do that instead of just, you know, ramming up production here at home?
According to the New York Times, Venezuela is trying to make overtures to the United States.
They're seeing a lever of power here.
Venezuela's authoritarian government on Tuesday released at least two imprisoned Americans, a potential turning point in the Biden administration's relationship with Russia's staunchest ally in the Western Hemisphere.
The release follows a rare trip by a high-level U.S.
delegation to Venezuela over the weekend to meet with President Nicolas Maduro, part of a broader Biden administration agenda in autocratic countries that may be rethinking their ties with President Putin in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Yeah, that is a bunch of wishful thinking crap.
Okay, this is where the Biden administration is like, we're prying Venezuela away from Russia.
No, you're not.
No, you're not.
They're just playing you.
Because everybody plays you.
Because you're the sucker.
If you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, it's you.
Joe Biden is the sucker at the poker table, and every single human knows it.
Obama was the sucker at the poker table, too.
I'm old enough to remember when Syria unleashed chemical weapons on its own citizens, and Barack Obama had drawn a red line, and then he made a deal with the Russians.
And the idea was, we have opened a new era of great international relations with the Russians.
This is great.
They're going to take over Syria.
We're going to back out.
And we have a common interest in keeping things from getting too hot in Russia, in Syria.
Meanwhile, the Russians were like, what if we just give Assad free reign to level cities and also we'll invade Crimea?
That's what's happening right now.
Every country on Earth looks at Democratic presidents and they're like, how can we go?
How can we get some of this guy?
This guy is a sucker.
And Joe Biden is a sucker par excellence.
It's just incredible.
So we're reaching out to Venezuela.
Meanwhile, we've been reaching out to the Saudis and to the Emiratis, the UAE, who are actually allied with the United States, at least much more than Venezuela and Russia and Iran.
And they're like, yeah, take a hike.
Just get it.
We're not interested.
You know why they're doing that?
They're not doing that because they are radically opposed to American interests.
They have in the past opened up the floodgates when it came to pumping.
The reason that they are doing that is because they are saying to the Biden administration, you cannot make overtures to the country that is on our borders in the north and exporting terrorism to Yemen in our south.
You cannot make overtures to that country, offer them a pathway to a nuclear weapon, open up their economy, while they are fostering terrorism inside our own countries, and expect us to bail you out of your crappy foreign policy decisions.
Why would the Saudis and the UAE help out the United States right now?
Why?
If you're a non, again, if you're a country that is not formally allied with the United States right now, you have to hedge your bets.
You have to.
You'd be a moron not to.
If you're the Saudis, why would you make overtures to the United States?
Why would you bail Joe Biden out of his problems while he is simultaneously negotiating a deal with Russia and Iran in order to give Iran a pathway to a nuclear weapon?
Why would you do that?
If you're the Saudis, you're instead going to say to him, go shove it, dude.
No, this one's on you.
You're going to have to deal with whatever domestic turmoil you have to deal with.
You're going to have to deal with whatever world consequences there are for your policy.
But we are not bailing you out of this problem so that you can turn around and expend your political capital to make a deal with the Russians to help the Iranians who want to wipe us out.
They'd be fools to do otherwise, by the way.
And everybody's like, well, what's the point of Saudi allyship if they're just not going to help us on this?
The answer is maybe they don't see you as the allies that you said that you were even 10 years ago or five years ago or four years ago or two years ago.
Maybe that's because of you.
You're seeing this from countries all over the world hedging their bets because they do not trust the United States, because why would they trust the United States under administrations that consistently seem to want to make deals with enemies of our allies rather than make deals with our allies?
This, by the way, is not relegated to the Middle East.
Let's face it.
The reason that Europe is arming up right now is because they don't trust that the United States is actually going to back them in a time of war.
And why would they trust us?
Seriously.
We pulled out of Afghanistan for no reason and turned over the country to a bunch of 8th century barbarians who proceeded to sell small girls into slavery.
Why is that?
We did nothing when China took over Hong Kong.
Nothing.
We did nothing when Russia took over Crimea.
So if you are a non-aligned country, or even if you're a soft ally with the United States, Why exactly would you not arm up?
Why would you give the United States anything?
This is the thing.
An American non-led world order is a worse world order for America.
If you're rooting for America to win, you want a stronger America that keeps its commitments, that backs its allies, that does not make overt overtures to some of the world's worst regimes on the basis of some perverse notion that if you are nice to them, they will be nice to you.
This is Barack Obama's idiotic idea.
If you're nice to the Russians, if you give them the reset button, everything will be fine.
If you're nice to the Iranians, you'll bring them into the community of nations.
You'll even let them export terrorism and develop ballistic missiles with the money that you are allowing to be funneled over there.
The pallets of cash that you're shipping over there.
And that'll make them friendlier.
Nope, it didn't.
And this is Joe Biden all over.
Now he's doing it with Venezuela.
He's doing it with Iran.
And then he's surprised when the Saudis and the Emiratis are like, shove it, dude.
You can do this on your own.
Then we're all supposed to be surprised when the state of Israel, which is caught between a Russia on its northern border in Syria, And the Iranian funded Hamas in itself on the Gaza border were surprised when they're like, yeah, we're going to try and stay out of this conflict with Ukraine because frankly, we have some competing interests right here.
This is the thing.
If people don't trust you, they are not going to give you what you want.
If they don't trust you, they're not going to give you what you want.
And you'll hear people on the left say, yes, but you have to make peace deals with your enemies.
Well, in order to make good peace deals with your enemies, you first have to show your friends that you are, in fact, their friends.
And this does not mean excusing Saudi predations on the human rights front.
Saudi violates human rights all the time.
But in the world of real politique, it's funny, all of the hard-headed Natcons that I hear from a lot, all of them seem to be bewildered by what's going on with Saudi Arabia.
I'm not bewildered by it.
Why should you?
It's perfectly in their interest.
Right now, everybody is acting rationally, including Vladimir Putin, by the way.
Everybody is acting rationally.
The incentive structure changed.
The United States looks weak, and so everybody is taking advantage, and everybody who's allied with the United States is feeling the pressure.
And so they're beginning to get worried, as they should be at this point.
I mean, the simple fact of the matter is that if you're an Eastern European country, why would you trust the United States?
The United States, under Joe Biden, under Barack Obama, continuously refused to listen to Eastern European countries who were saying that the Russians are predators on our border.
Why don't you arm us up?
Why don't you bring us into the family of nations and arm us up?
I mean, it's Barack Obama who was saying that he would not arm up the Ukrainians, because after all, if Russia walked in, it would be a cakewalk for them anyway, so what exactly was the point?
It was Joe Biden in the 90s who was like, yeah, you know those Baltic states?
We should just leave them out there for the Russians.
And now the Baltic states are very worried again, as they should be.
When you are an untrustworthy country, people do not pay attention to you.
They're not interested in paying attention to you.
Why should they?
We're not going to get what we want as a country unless we start keeping our commitments.
And it appears that we no longer have an interest in keeping our commitments.
We do it sporadically.
And a country that keeps its commitments sporadically is a country that does not keep its commitments in any serious way.
When you engage in intermittent reinforcement of the bad guys, Then they are going to be reinforced, which is what is happening globally speaking right now.
And by the way, this is going to have ramifications for how the situation ends in Ukraine.
Speaking of which, we should talk about how the situation is going to likely end in Ukraine.
So the way the situation is likely to end in Ukraine right now is that the Ukrainians are likely to cave to many of the Russian demands in a way that NATO is not going to like.
And you can't blame them.
You can't blame them.
So, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who's been hailed as a Churchillian hero, yesterday, he spoke in front of the UK parliament via satellite, and he was talking about how he would never surrender to Russia.
Here's what that sounded like.
And I would like to remind you the words that the United Kingdom have already heard and which are important again.
We will not give up and we will not lose.
We will fight till the end at sea, in the air.
We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.
Okay, but at the same time, Vladimir Zelensky did an interview with ABC's David Muir, in which he said he was now prepared to drop his demand to join NATO.
And the reason that he is saying he's prepared to drop his demand to join NATO is because NATO hasn't done what they were supposed to do, namely protect from Russian predation.
So here is Vladimir Zelensky basically leaving the overture to peace open here, because the deal that's going to get done here, and this is the most likely outcome here, because Russia does not want to continue to pour hundreds of thousands of troops into Ukraine, taking away from all the other places on earth where it wishes to extend its military power.
It doesn't want to take troops out from near the Kazakh border in order to shift them over to Ukraine, for example.
And they also are not loving these sanctions.
So they're looking for a way out and Zelensky is looking for a way out.
So my guess is that we are closer to a deal than people think we are.
And the deal is not going to please a lot of the people in the West who've been cheerleading Ukraine under the impression that Ukraine's solution looks exactly like our solution, which is utter defeat of the Russians.
The Russians leave, the battle goes on.
Zelensky is making clear that he will return to a non-aligned status that is somewhat friendly to Russia, and he might have to take that deal.
And the reason for that, again, is because the West didn't make commitments early enough, didn't make those commitments strong enough.
So if you're a non-aligned country, you have to walk that razor's edge.
Here's Zelensky yesterday.
I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago, after we understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.
The alliance is afraid of controversial things and confrontation with Russia.
I never wanted to be a country which is begging something on its knees.
And we're not going to be that country, and I don't want to be that president.
Okay, so he's now saying that he might give up his demands to join NATO or his attempts to join the EU, which is one of the Russian demands to end this war.
In the end, a negotiated peace probably looks like Russia slices off regions of the Donbass, slices off Crimea completely.
And ends up with a commitment in the Ukrainian constitution not to formally join NATO or the EU.
Now, presumably, the Ukrainian government then starts buying as many weapons as humanly possible to deter a future invasion by the Russians.
But why exactly would Zelensky trust NATO?
Why would he trust the United States when, for example, the Pentagon yesterday nixed a plan to get MiGs to the Ukrainians?
That was yesterday.
It's really amazing.
It's an amazing, amazing thing.
So yesterday, the Polish government said, they sort of announced it just publicly because they figured that they were getting nowhere with the Americans.
The Polish government wants to see Russia defeated in Ukraine because the minute that Russia wins Ukraine, suddenly there's now a border with Poland again.
And so this is something the Polish don't want.
So the Polish are like, okay, we want to get the MiGs in, but we can't get the MiGs in directly.
We don't have the ability to do that.
So what we would like to do is use the Ramstein base in Germany in order to ship the MiGs in, and then you are going to reimburse us for the cost of the planes.
You're going to bring us new planes.
We'll take our old planes, we'll give them to Ukraine, we'll use Ramstein as sort of the thoroughfare, and then you get us new planes.
And they announced this publicly because they want to make clear, they want to shame Joe Biden and the United States into going along with that deal.
And the Pentagon nixed it.
So if you're Ukraine, why would you trust the United States?
They won't even ship you the MiGs when the MiGs aren't even coming from you, they're coming from Poland.
According to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, quote, we are now in contact with the Polish government following the statement issued today.
As we have said, the decision about whether to transfer Polish-owned planes to Ukraine is ultimately one for the Polish government.
So you guys are on your own.
You guys are on your own.
Yes, we're the world leaders.
We're not leading from behind.
But also, you Poles, you're on your own in the same way the Ukrainians are on your own.
We will continue consulting with our allies and partners about ongoing security assistance to Ukraine because, in fact, Poland's proposal shows just some of the complexities this issue presents.
The prospect of fighter jets at the disposal of the government of the United States of America departing from a US-NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.
It is simply not clear to us there is a substantive rationale for it.
Well, no, there is in fact a substantive rationale for it.
The substantive rationale is that Russia does not want to go to war with the United States any more than we want to go to war with them.
And we're not talking about establishing a no-fly zone now.
We're talking about flying in military assets into Ukraine, which is not the same thing as a no-fly zone where we would establish complete air superiority over Ukraine and down any Russian jet that got in our way.
John Kirby says, We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents.
We do not believe Poland's proposal is a tenable one.
So, in other words, if Poland tried to fly planes into Ukraine's Iraq, we would be like, eh, maybe.
But if NATO tries to do it via Ramstein, that'd be a... But here's the problem.
NATO is a member... Poland is a member of NATO.
So if Poland flew a plane into Ukraine, and then the Russians shot down that Polish plane, that would probably be an Article 5 violation and require an intervention by NATO.
So all the United States is basically saying is they're going to allow not only air superiority over Ukraine to Russia, which at least is understandable because you don't want open conflict.
They're not even willing to ship planes into Ukraine, which is the one thing that allows Ukraine to stave off Russian air superiority in the country.
So why exactly would Zelensky not look for some sort of capitulation here?
Why wouldn't Zelensky try to cut some sort of deal?
And so the West is going to be all hot and bothered if this happens.
But the truth is that the West's interests and Ukraine's interests diverge here.
Mainly because the West wants something from Ukraine that Ukraine is not willing to give.
Namely an endless war in which millions of people are made into refugees.
We already have over 2 million people who are refugees from this particular war.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of people forced to escape Ukraine has passed a milestone of 2 million as the civilian toll of the Russia-Ukraine war mounted along with international efforts to press Putin to halt the Russian offensive.
A Russian military convoy opened fire near a checkpoint in the besieged northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, interrupting evacuations in violation of a brokered ceasefire.
In many cities, Russia continued to obstruct civilians fleeing violence by firing in their vicinity and fighting nearby established humanitarian corridors.
As heavy fighting continued across the country on day 13 of this Russian invasion, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said an additional 1 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine after fleeing their homes as well.
Meanwhile, the United States intelligence, they're announcing that 4,000 Russian troops have died.
Now, the United States is perfectly willing to continue supplying just enough material for the Ukrainians to continue killing Russian troops.
And we are willing to undergo sacrifice on behalf of the Ukrainian people to the tune of a couple of extra bucks at the pump, and also a bunch of dead Ukrainians who are going to have to face down the threat of Russian tanks in their cities.
So they seem perfectly happy with the fact that 4,000 Russian troops have been killed by the Ukrainians, but it may be that the Ukrainians get tired of this.
And they're like, you know what, if we go back to something resembling status quo ante, With a commitment that we are not going to join the West.
Maybe that's the best we can get out of this.
After all, what did the West ever do for us other than shipping us insufficient weaponry to actually maintain the country?
Here is the head of U.S.
intelligence talking about how many people have been killed, how many Russian troops have died.
Lieutenant General Scott Barrier.
Are you able to say in open session how many Russian troops have been killed?
With low confidence, somewhere between two and four thousand.
That number comes from some intelligence sources, but also open source and how we pull that together.
So we may be satisfied with that, but it seems unlikely that the Ukrainians are going to be satisfied with that because they have a lot of people who are dying to and two million people who have been displaced.
Meanwhile, China is getting involved in Russia.
They're helping out.
And so if you are if you are, again, Ukraine and you look to the east and what you see is a Chinese-Russian alliance, That seems to be growing stronger, not weaker.
Not in terms of global power, but in terms of the connections between the two countries, meaning that Russia can do this indefinitely.
Are you going to attempt to cut some sort of deal?
China, by the way, is gaining a lot from this because China is now buying up Russian assets on the cheap, knowing that eventually there's likely to be a deal and then those stocks are likely to rise again.
And people are going to retain their dependency on Russian oil and natural gas because, again, the Greens on the left are insistent that they not increase production or get production from the United States.
According to the Business Standard, China is now considering buying or increasing stakes in Russian energy and commodities companies like Gazprom and aluminum producer United company Rusal International, according to people familiar with the matter.
Beijing is in talks with its state-owned firms, including China National Petroleum, China Petrochemical, Aluminum Corporation of China, So when you reshape the world order in ways that do not actually demonstrate long-term strength, you have a problem on your hands.
assets, those people said any deal would be to bolster China's imports as it intensifies its focus on energy and food security, not as a show of support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but because now there are a bunch of assets that are available to China that weren't available to China before.
So when you reshape the world order in ways that do not actually demonstrate long term strength, you have a problem on your hands.
And there are going to be other opportunities for China here as well.
So as the West cuts off China economically and as corporations pull out of Russia, that Russia China Iran access is going to grow is going to grow stronger and stronger.
Which, again, is not exactly the problem.
The problem instead is that a lack of strength and fortitude on the other side, without America in position as global leader, is likely to embolden that access in a variety of ways that are really inimical to the interests of the United States.
A bunch of American companies, by the way, are already pulling out of Russia.
Ford Motor Company suspended its joint venture with Russia's Solar's OJCC and halted sales to the country, citing concerns over the invasion.
Volkswagen has cut relations with the company.
Toyota is suspending production in Russia.
Boeing is suspending.
Airbus is suspending.
BP is suspending, Exxon is suspending, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, all suspending operations in Russia.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi have decided to halt sales of their brand.
McDonald's is closing its 850 stores in Russia, which, by the way, demonstrates the stupidity of the golden arches theory of foreign policy promoted by Thomas Friedman, who once suggested that any countries with McDonald's wouldn't fight each other.
So that lasts precisely as long as they don't fight each other and McDonald's doesn't pull out.
It seems that, as they say, McDonald's has now established a no-fry zone in Russia.
Starbucks is suspending operations at Russia locations as well.
Again, the sort of pulling apart of the world's order in the absence of American power is clear to see.
AWS, by the way, is also Preventing customers from Russia and Belarus from getting web space as well.
So the polarization of the global economy, the polarization of the global system continues to pace.
And all of that was driven by a simple fact.
The Russians thought they could get away with anything.
And the reason they thought they could get away with anything is because historically they had gotten away with pretty much anything.
And supply lines are growing more attenuated as well.
There are a bunch of ships that are now trapped by the Ukraine war, endangering sailors and global trade, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The war in Ukraine has severely hobbled shipping in the Black Sea, with broad consequences for international transport and global supply chains.
Dozens of cargo ships are stranded at the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, shipping trackers said.
An estimated 3,500 sailors have been stuck on some 200 ships at Ukrainian ports, according to the London-based shipping tracker Windward Ltd.
More ships are stranded around the globe than at any point since World War II, according to maritime historians.
The result is a shutdown of the world's second-largest grain-exporting region.
Ukraine accounts for 16% of global corn exports.
Together with Russia, 30% of wheat exports.
Global wheat prices have jumped more than 55% since the week before the invasion.
It turns out that when the world order collapses because of reaction to American weakness, things get worse for pretty much everyone.
Which is why it seems imperative that the West stop showing weakness.
And yet that is precisely what the Biden administration continues to show on the energy front by making overtures to Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
It's pathetic.
And that's going to have more.
Doubling down on stupid is not a good strategy when it comes to foreign policy or anything else.
The first rule of holes, as they say, is to stop digging.
Joe Biden has that shovel and he is digging a hole all the way to China.
All right.
We'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Knowles show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Editing is by Adam Saievitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
Joe Biden blames Putin for his own disastrous policies.
U.S.
officials worry that Russians will seize biolabs that we funded in Ukraine, another conspiracy theory proven true.
And the Department of Health and Human Services is recommending Americans enroll in an after-vaccine health checker to monitor any injuries they might sustain from the 100% totally safe COVID vaccines.
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