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May 19, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

47:01

The Short-Lived Biden Ministry Of Truth Is Dead | Ep. 1498

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Time	Text
	Nina Jankiewicz resigns from the Biden Ministry of Truth.
	The stock market plunges in dramatic fashion as recession fears loom.
	And Democrats on the Hill call their friends to talk about abortion.
	And it isn't a pretty conversation.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	I talk about them every single show.
	Why haven't you gotten a VPN yet?
	Get ExpressVPN right now at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
	All right, we'll get to all the news in just one moment first.
	Here's a reminder, soaring inflation is now pushing the Fed to raise rates quickly and aggressively.
	They did it last week.
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	Well, the stock market took a massive dive yesterday.
	It continues to be on a severe downturn thanks to recession fears.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
	stocks fell sharply.
	Two of the major indices suffered their worst day since 2020, as the latest set of disappointing earnings from large retailers raised investors' fears of a recession.
	Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Wednesday down 1,164.52 points or 3.6% to 31,490, its lowest closing level since March of 2021.
	The S&P 500 dropped 4% or 165 points to 3,923.
	The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite slid 4.7%.
	The Dow and S&P recorded their worst percentage declines since June of 2020, which was like dead center of the summer swing of the pandemic.
	The moves marked a U-turn from a day earlier when technology shares led a rebound in markets.
	Major retailers said their profits were hurt by rising costs, sluggish sales, and supply chain disruptions.
	Shares of Target sank 25%, or $53.67 to $161 after the company posted quarterly earnings that missed analysts' expectations.
	Shares of Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Costco Wholesale recorded their largest single-day percentage declines in years in Costco's case since 2003.
	That, of course, is very scary for all the folks who are relying on the hot demand to continue to support an inflated economy.
	The results are prompting Wall Street to wrestle anew with the idea that the global economy could be headed for recession.
	Though that debate is far from settled, it has rattled stocks and other risky assets throughout the year, with the latest data illustrating the degree to which inflation has hit U.S.
	consumers.
	A couple of weeks ago, you had the economic experts estimating that about 28% shot there'd be a recession in the next six months.
	And I said at the time, it seems more like 50-50 to me.
	Well, it's been a couple of weeks and now it's looking a lot more than 50-50 at this point.
	Nick Giacomicus, president and founder of NIRG Wealth Management said inflation is hitting every aspect of an earnings report, whether it be the transportation side or supply chain disruption.
	Customers are no longer buying the more expensive items they would typically buy.
	All this trickles through to an earnings report.
	Consumer discretionary consumer staples were the worst performing sectors in the S&P 500 on Wednesday.
	Both recorded their largest single day percentage losses since March of 2020.
	As it turns out, when you just pay people to stay home for a very, very long time.
	And then eventually they have to go get jobs and inflation.
	Because of that fire hosing of the money has outpaced wages, you end up with people shopping less.
	That is not a particular shock at this point.
	And yet everybody is treating it as though it is a shock.
	And you're starting to see more and more sources openly stating that we are on the road to a recession.
	Goldman Sachs' CEO, for example, he came out yesterday and he said the recession is coming and there's pretty much no way to stop this.
	David Solomon.
	From your perspective, the House view, the David Solomon view, what does it look like?
	Are we in a recession?
	Well, the House view is slowing economic activity, higher rates, and probably a 30% chance of recession as you look forward over the next 12 to 24 months.
	Okay, but just because when he says recession, recession has a technical definition, that means two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
	That is what a recession technically means in econ speak.
	So you can have a really slow, sluggish, bad economy without it being a full-scale recessionary economy.
	A 30% shot of, like, two straight quarters of negative GDP growth is really, really, really bad, considering the fact that, again, we had a historically good economy before COVID, and then governments all over the world decided to basically anesthetize the economy.
	And then the coma was supposed to be ended about January of 2021, and instead what we've got is inflation running unbelievably hot, and now all the consumer demand is starting to drop off.
	Wells Fargo is now seeing an end-of-the-year U.S.
	recession.
	They cut their GDP view, according to Reuters.
	Wells Fargo Investment Institute said on Wednesday it reduced economic expectations of the mild U.S.
	recession now on the horizon in its base case scenario for the end of 2022 and early 2023, making it one of the more bearish big U.S.
	banks.
	Goldman Sachs calculated the odds of recession, as you just heard, at perhaps 15% for this year and 35% for the next two years.
	Morgan Stanley says 25% probability for recession starting in the next 12 months.
	Bank of America most recently said it sees recession risks as low for now but elevated for 2023, which of course would be a disaster for Joe Biden.
	In his reelection efforts, Wells Fargo's research arm cut its year-end 2022 GDP growth targets to 1.5%, which is extraordinarily weak, from 2.2%.
	It cut its year-end 2023 target to a decline of 0.5% from its previous expectation for GDP growth of 0.4%.
	That is a full percentage point dip on their 2023 target growth.
	These are bad, bad numbers.
	While the first quarter 2022 economic contraction was due primarily to strong imports and inventory changes, Wells Fargo notes that consumer activity has weakened since then.
	It cited the development of all three major risks identified in its December 2021 outlook, including new COVID-19 outbreaks and restrictions, higher for longer inflation, and a much stronger dollar.
	It said these issues were due to Russia-Ukraine war and aggressive Federal Reserve policy, said these shocks are taking an economic toll.
	The Biden administration has no answer for all of this.
	Karine Jean-Pierre, the Incompetent new White House press secretary.
	What you can say about Jen Psaki is Jen Psaki was a good liar.
	Karine Jean-Pierre happens to be a bad liar, which may say more for her character, frankly.
	Here's Karine Jean-Pierre trying to answer the stock market dump that has been happening.
	The Fed chair, you know, the Federal Reserve is independent.
	We leave them to make their own policy decisions.
	We do not get involved in that.
	And nothing has changed on how we see the stock market.
	We do not, that's not something that we keep an eye on every day.
	They don't keep an eye on the stock market every day, guys.
	Nobody in the White House has ever looked at the DJ, the DJIA.
	No one.
	Isn't that amazing?
	Or alternatively, they're lying and they know that the stock market is really bad and that it's an indicator that this administration is doing a particularly terrible job.
	And it could get a lot worse.
	According to Spencer Jacob, writing for the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
	stocks could well bounce back from their awful start to the year.
	How they do in the longer run is another matter.
	Heading into 2022, expectations were great.
	And a Texas survey of individual investors in 24 countries in 2021 showed U.S.
	investors had the highest projections of the group at 17.5% annual returns going forward.
	The difference between that and historical experience is stark.
	Compared with long-term annual U.S.
	stock returns of around 9.8%, a $10,000 investment would grow to about $50,000 in 10 years instead of $25,000.
	But even stocks more restrained long-run returns seem aspirational now.
	Investors' optimism is easier to understand if one looks at the 10 years through the end of 2021, during which the compound annual return of the benchmark S&P 500 was a very good 16.6%, not so far from what those surveyed extrapolated.
	Pundits like to talk about earnings growth, but it hardly accounted for the excellent decade that ended last December.
	S&P 500 earnings per share grew at an average of 7.7% per year, according to figures from Semper Augustus Investments Group.
	That rapid pace was achieved when corporate profit margins went from an already respectable 9.2% to a nosebleed 13.4%.
	Returns would have been about 4 percentage points lower if margins hadn't expanded.
	In other words, businesses seemed to get more efficient.
	And there was earnings growth, so there was more spending over the course of time.
	But with labor and material costs rising and the Trump administration's corporate tax cuts behind us, it is not unreasonable to expect that margins will boost, stall, or reverse.
	That margin boost may stall or reverse.
	Even during tech and housing booms, it was unusual for S&P 500 operating profit margins to exceed 9%.
	So you might start to see those margins come down.
	Plus, if people have less money to invest in the stock market generally, then they're just not going to be spreading that money around as quickly in the stock market.
	And that means that the increase in the stock market price is not going to be nearly as fast.
	The Fed has a perfect record popping bubbles.
	They aren't likely to fail this time, according to Christopher Bloomstrand, a value investing veteran who's president of Semper Augustus.
	Another prominent value investor, Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of the asset manager GMO, wrote in January, U.S.
	stocks had entered their fourth super bubble of the past hundred years.
	He expected them to drop by half.
	In addition to quantitative reasons, such as statistical deviation from long-term trends, he cited a more subjective, historical cue akin to ringing a bell near the top.
	Crazy speculation, this time in meme stocks, EV makers, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs.
	As sour as the mood has seemed lately, the S&P 500 would drop by another 45% if both margins and price earnings multiples reverted to their long-run averages, which is what Grantham has been suggesting, taking the benchmark back to a level it first crossed five years ago.
	That sounds alarmist, but stocks' level in 2031 could be the same, whether Grantham is right or not about a sharper bear market.
	The alternative could be a milder selloff and recoveries along the line of what we've experienced recently.
	So in other words, you don't have to be a catastrophist to see that the stock market could be in really, really dire trouble here over the course of time.
	And that, of course, would contribute to lack of liquidity in the markets.
	That'd make it much harder to do IPOs.
	It would mean that lenders are less sanguine about giving out money for businesses to start.
	And it means that your pension fund is worth a lot less.
	Again, Arthur Laffer is warning that we may see a full lost decade here.
	We read about this at the beginning of May.
	At the beginning of May, it was Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore suggesting that we might see a full decade in which the Dow is basically stuck at maybe 29,500.
	They wrote, again this is just a few weeks ago, if Biden does not change course and the bear market cycle from the late 60s through the early 80s returns, the DJIA would fall from its recent peak of $36,800 to less than $29,500 in 2038.
	Adjusting for inflation, the index would drop even further.
	Right now, by the way, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is hovering around $31,500.
	I mean, these again are really, really bad directional numbers.
	And Joe Biden was foreseeing that his own economic policies would create a big boost at the beginning.
	And then within like three, four years, you were going to get 1.5% GDP growth, 1.6% GDP growth.
	Nothing really blow the doors off good.
	Regulation, higher taxes, a massive deficit that requires debt servicing.
	All of that would be really bad for the long-term and mid-term U.S.
	economy.
	So what exactly is this administration planning to do about it?
	The answer is pretty much nothing.
	They are just going to keep talking happy talk.
	So you got Jennifer Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, saying that if Americans are worried about gas prices right now, the solution is electric vehicles.
	I mean, listen, I can afford an electric vehicle.
	The vast majority of Americans cannot afford an electric vehicle because a good electric vehicle is going to cost you at a minimum $35,000 and a great electric vehicle could cost you $100,000, $120,000.
	Is that going to make up for the fact that gas is $5 a gallon?
	$6 a gallon?
	$7 a gallon in places like California?
	Here's Jennifer Granholm, your Energy Secretary, talking about how electric vehicles are going to solve the problem.
	If China opens up and they increase more demand for oil, and that will put more upward pressure on prices.
	If the EU decides, as they have been contemplating, to also ban Russian oil, that will put additional upward pressure on prices.
	So ultimately, what we need to do, the strategy that will work best, is to reduce demand by moving to electrification.
	Okay, that is not a solution.
	That is like saying, you know, the solution in 150 years to the gas prices right now, somebody will finally discover the secret of cold fusion.
	That ain't going to solve the problem.
	So Democrats can't talk about the economy because then people might notice the economy is bad and not vote for them.
	So they're going to talk about a lot of other stuff, including...
	Jesus.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
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	Democrats have to talk about something beside the economy, because if they talk about the economy, they're just going to get wrecked.
	As Donnie Deutsch said on MSNBC, we don't have the economy, so this means let's talk about race.
	Always the go-to.
	Always the go-to.
	Here's Donnie Deutsch on MSNBC just sort of saying the quiet part out loud.
	We don't have the economy on our side as Democrats.
	So you have to scare the bejesus out of people.
	The way to scare it is say, you know, this replacement theory, this is not just coming from some dark corner of the web.
	This is the Republican platform.
	Make them own it.
	Democrats run from this fist fire.
	I know in the previous segment, Eugene Daniels, he talked about the president not wanting to call out names.
	Call out Tucker Carlson.
	Call out the politicians and make this, make them own it.
	This is a Republican platform.
	It's the racist Republican replacement theory.
	We don't have the economy.
	Let's talk about the Great Replacement Theory.
	Let's talk about race, which is always the go-to for the Democratic Party because, again, their entire electoral strategy is based on extraordinarily high minority turnout in communities they think are very supportive of them and college-educated white women.
	That is the Democratic coalition.
	They've been banking on this since about 2012, and they're just going to continue to double down on this.
	And so you're seeing them focus in laser beam-like on the argument that America is discriminatory, that half of your neighbors hate your guts because of your race or your sex.
	Kamala Harris, Racism is real in America.
	at this out there yesterday, making this case, talking about racism and sexism, which, by the way, if these were the dominant forces in American life, it would be very hard for a black woman to be the vice president of the United States.
	But here is a person who is the vice president of the United States, specifically because she is a black woman, talking about how America is rife with racism and sexism.
	Racism is real in America.
	It has always been.
	Xenophobia is real in America.
	It has always been.
	Sexism too.
	Wow, I mean, profound words.
	Yes, it's true.
	Racism exists and sexism exists.
	But the Democratic Party platform is basically that everyone I don't like falls into those categories, which is why you should continue to give power to me, despite the fact that I'm really bad at my job.
	Not only should you give power, as it turns out, we should also crack down on dissemination of any ideas that we don't like by labeling them racist and sexist and demanding top-down control of those ideas.
	This is why you have Kathy Hochul.
	Yesterday, the governor of New York, I mean this is really ugly stuff, the governor of New York saying that there are no protections for hate speech in America, which is just not true.
	There is no technical category called hate speech in law in the United States.
	It is protected under the First Amendment, hate speech, because again, these are terms that have no content.
	The left calls it hate speech when you say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man.
	Caitlyn Jenner is a man, that's not hate speech, that's biological fact.
	There's Kathy Hochul saying it shouldn't be allowed to be said, these sorts of things.
	I'll protect the First Amendment any day of the week, but you don't protect hate speech.
	You don't protect incendiary speech.
	You're not allowed to scream fire in a crowded theater.
	There are limitations on speech, and right now, we have seen this run rampant.
	Okay, first of all, you are actually allowed to shout fire in a crowded theater.
	Shank is bad law.
	Second of all, when she says that there are no protections, she's a defender of the First Amendment, there are no protections for hate speech.
	Definitionally, this means you are not a protector of the First Amendment.
	Definitionally, that is what that means.
	And this, of course, has been the agenda for the Democratic Party and for this White House for a while, which is why it is heartening to see that the White House had to pull back from its plans for the Department of Homeland Security to have a Ministry of Truth.
	According to CNN yesterday, the disinformation expert hired to run the Department of Homeland Security's newly created disinformation board has resigned after the department paused the board.
	Nina Jankiewicz, a disinformation expert with experience working on Ukraine and Russia issues, was tapped to helm the Disinformation Governance Board earlier this month.
	The interagency team was meant to coordinate department activities related to disinformation aimed at the U.S.
	population and infrastructure.
	The problem, of course, is that they hadn't properly defined disinformation because the left has spent the last several years conflating disinformation, meaning like actual Russian propaganda, from misinformation, meaning stuff I don't like.
	And in fact, Nina Tchenkovich had basically trafficking both disinformation and misinformation when she suggested that Hunter Biden's laptop was actually just a Russian plant with no evidence whatsoever.
	According to CNN, Jankiewicz's appointment quickly drew condemnation from GOP lawmakers and right-wing media, who pointed to her past tweets and statements regarding Hunter Biden's laptop and Christopher Steele, the author of the so-called Steele dossier.
	Jankiewicz told CNN Wednesday evening she resigned because the board's future was uncertain.
	Quote, I had hoped we would be more transparent about how the board was going to operate, what it was going to do.
	For whatever reason, that didn't happen.
	The information vacuum only grew.
	I think the information vacuum kind of directed a lot of the attacks and digging around in my personal life.
	By the way, the digging around in her personal life was mainly relegated to looking at her old tweets and videos of her singing about disinformation, like Mary Poppins.
	I mean, it was very weird theater kid kind of stuff.
	Ultimately, she said that she had resigned because she wasn't sure whether the board had a future after the debacle of the last few weeks.
	She said she was deeply disappointed by the administration's announcement it would conduct a review of the board.
	She thinks it should continue even in her absence.
	She said the board was simple and anodyne and largely revolved around coordinating efforts within DHS to combat misinformation related to threats to public safety, like natural disasters.
	Okay, but that's not what you actually said.
	That's not what you actually said.
	Despite her expertise, critics argued she held biases on certain issues.
	For example, in a TikTok video posted prior to her appointment to lead the board, Shankwood singled out Rudy Giuliani and TikTok influencers to a Mary Poppins jingle.
	They didn't quote her, of course, because if they quoted her, it would demonstrate that she shouldn't have been in charge of this office and that the office never really should have existed in the first place.
	The White House, for its part, tried to defend Jankiewicz and simultaneously explain why it was getting rid of the Ministry of Truth.
	So, Corinne Jean-Pierre, again, not good at her job.
	Yeah, man.
	says, Jankowicz had very strong credentials.
	Uh, yeah, man.
	Uh, no.
	Neither Nina Jankowicz nor the board have anything to do with the censorship or with removing content from anywhere.
	Their role is to ensure that national security officials are updated on how misinformation is affecting the threat environment.
	She has strong credentials and a history of calling out misinformation from both the left and the right and that's our focus.
	Uh-huh, uh-huh.
	Well then, uh, Kareem Jean-Pierre was asked a very awkward question, which is, okay, so, you're saying, and you guys have been saying, that the reason you are disbanding this Ministry of Truth is because it's not a Ministry of Truth at all, it's actually a disinformation board, and so, you're basically just caving to what you call a bunch of conservative-oriented lies.
	So, you're ditching the disinformation board because of disinformation?
	Here's Peter Doocy.
	So if it's pausing because you think the board was mischaracterized, then the disinformation board is being shut down because of disinformation?
	Is that what's happening here?
	Look, I mean, the board was put forth for a purpose, right?
	To make sure that we really did address what was happening across the country when it came to disinformation.
	It's going to pause.
	There's been a mischaracterization from outside forces.
	And so now what we're going to do is we're going to pause it and we're going to do an assessment.
	The Washington Post trotted out the world's worst journalist, Taylor Lorenz.
	Jankowitz goes away because she was awkward.
	And we just sort of quietly bring this thing back and start targeting political opponents.
	The media for its part is doing its best to spin on behalf of the administration and on behalf of the Ministry of Truth.
	The Washington Post trotted out the world's worst journalist, Taylor Lorenz.
	She's not a journalist, she's an activist who specializes mainly in digging up old tweets of people she doesn't like and also whining an extraordinary amount about how rough her life is.
	And then crying on MSNBC about how everyone is mean to her by digging up her old tweets and by pointing out that she's really bad at her job.
	That is sort of her job at the Washington Post.
	And the editors of the Washington Post like to frame everything They allow her to frame every story through the prism of how does it affect Taylor Lorenz and why is Taylor Lorenz the most important person on planet Earth.
	She sort of replaced Jim Acosta in the pantheon of journalists who have actual shrines to themselves, surrounded by seven different mirrors.
	There's infinities of Taylor Lorenzes in every direction.
	So the Washington Post runs a piece by Taylor Lorenz today called How the Biden Administration Let Right-Wing Attacks Derail Its Disinformation Efforts.
	And the article is quite astonishing.
	Alrighty, coming up we'll jump right into the Taylor Lorenz piece.
	Man, she is horrible at her job, so I'm so glad that she's at the Washington Post, which increasingly is horrible at its job.
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	Here's what Taylor Lorenz writes today, quote, On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board with the stated goal to coordinate countering misinformation related to Homeland Security.
	The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankiewicz, a well-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism, as the board's executive director.
	In naming the 33-year-old Jankiewicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in the field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent an important issue.
	The author of the books, How to Be a Woman Online and How to Lose the Information War, her career also featured since in multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits, and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions.
	But within hours of the news of her appointment, Janklitz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating.
	The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission.
	Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorca said it could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn't.
	But Jenkiewicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing internet.
	She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse, while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.
	By unchecked misrepresentations of her work, do you mean that we played actual clips of her talking on shows like this one?
	And that people just brought up her old tweets?
	Which is literally what Taylor Lorenz does for a living?
	Taylor Lorenz, for a woman who's obsessed with herself, apparently she has an unbelievable capacity never to actually see what she is in a mirror.
	She sees herself, but she doesn't quite see herself, you know?
	According to Taylor Lorenz, just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being paused, according to multiple employees at DHS, capping a back-and-forth week of decisions that changed during the course of reporting this story.
	On Monday, DHS decided to shut down the board.
	By Tuesday morning, Jankiewicz had drafted a resignation letter.
	By Tuesday night, Jankiewicz was pulled into an urgent call with DHS officials, who gave her the choice to stay on, even as the department's work was put on hold because of the backlash it faced, according to multiple people with knowledge of the call.
	Nina Jankiewicz has been subjected to unjustified and vile personal attacks and physical threats, a DHS spokesperson told the Washington Post, in congressional hearings and in media interviews The secretary has repeatedly defended her as eminently qualified and underscored the importance of the department's disinformation work, and he will continue to do so.
	So basically what happened here is that it became clear that Jankowicz was going to get thrown under the bus, and then it was clear that the administration was going to get flack for that.
	So now the administration is wildly backtracking and pretending that they actually had Jankowicz's back after throwing her out there.
	Chankowitz's experience, says Taylor Lorenz, is a prime example of how the right-wing internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative, and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them.
	This is solid reportage, right?
	This is journalisming at its very finest.
	The hot, sticky journalism just getting everywhere.
	It also shows what happens when institutions, when confronted with these attacks, don't respond effectively.
	This article goes on and on and on.
	And the whole idea here is that it's evil right wingers who dug up stuff that she said.
	Oh, no.
	That's wow.
	I mean, people pointed out what she what she said.
	That's crazy.
	Just hours after Jenkins tweeted about her new job.
	Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec, says Taylor Lorenz, posted tweets accusing the Biden administration of creating a ministry of truth.
	You mean people questioned the establishment of a government agency with no clear agenda that called itself a disinformation governance board?
	Wow.
	I mean, that is scandalous that people noticed.
	You mean people questioned the establishment of a government agency with no clear agenda that called itself a disinformation governance board? Wow, I mean that is scandalous that people noticed it's bad. Unlike the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 that became a derogatory comparison point, neither the board nor Jankowicz had any power or ability to declare what is true or false or compel internet providers, social media platforms, or public schools to take action against certain types of speech.
	In fact, the board itself had no power or authority to make any operational decisions.
	So then what exactly was the point of the board?
	The board's purpose has been grossly mischaracterized.
	Well, not police speech.
	A DHS spokesperson said quite the opposite.
	Its focus is to ensure that freedom of speech is protected.
	Yeah, I don't believe you.
	And most people, it turns out, didn't believe you.
	Dozens of websites, including Breitbart, the Post Millennial, and Daily Caller, and New York Post began mining Jankiewicz's past social media posts and publishing articles to generate controversy.
	Some were simply mocking, making fun of her for parodying a song from Mary Poppins to talk about misinformation.
	In another instance, a performance where Jankiewicz sings a popular musical theater song about a person's desire to become rich and powerful was misrepresented to imply that Jankiewicz herself was after money and power and would sleep with men to get it.
	What?
	As this online campaign played out, DHS and the Biden administration struggled to counter the repeated attacks.
	And by the way, there are a bunch of sort of libertarian and civil rights-oriented groups, ranging from the ACLU to Reason Magazine, with some pretty serious questions about this Disinformation Governance Board and what it was going to do.
	None of this gets mentioned by Taylor Lorenz.
	It was all just Jack Posobiak and the Postmillennial and the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire, etc.
	It was all just about how everyone is mean.
	A textbook disinformation campaign, says Taylor Lorenz.
	Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook, and it's crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycle operates.
	The campaigns invariably start with identifying a person to characterize as a villain.
	Attacking faceless institutions is difficult.
	So a figurehead, almost always a woman or a person of color, is found to serve as its face.
	What does that person mean to you?
	So basically, the entire article is about how the Disinformation Governance Board was not going to be targeting political opposition.
	And then the entire article is about how really we do need something to stop political opposition from mobilizing.
	We really need to stop all of these right-wingers from, you know, posting old posts of people.
	We really need to cut that out.
	Amazing solid stuff there from Taylor Lorenz demonstrative once again of the fact that what the left really would like to do is police speech.
	And they'd like to police speech because when they are losing, this is what they do.
	One of the ways they would like to police speech is by going after corporations.
	Corporate wokeness is their newest and most Powerful tool.
	This is the new thing they've come up with over the course of the last 20 years, and that is seize the governing boards of major American corporations and then twist them to your own political design, whether it is Disney or whether it is Target.
	Take a major corporation, get it to buy into pretty much all of your priorities, and then say the free market has spoken.
	Now, the free market hasn't really spoken because, of course, you're intimidating all of these corporations into getting involved in ultra crepedarian pursuits, pursuits that are outside of their purview.
	You're basically saying to them via the power of anti-discrimination law or through sexual harassment law or through laws in the state of California telling you how you have to compose the board of your company.
	You're doing all of this and saying to them, if you do the things that we want you to do, we will leave you alone.
	If you don't do the things we want you to do, we won't leave you alone.
	We will initiate media coverage of you.
	We will try to astroturf boycotts of you.
	We might mobilize governmentally against you.
	We'll structure laws in order to change the incentive structure for you as a company.
	We'll do all of these things.
	And corporations, by and large, have gone along with this, at least up until the last five minutes or so.
	So it's no shock to see that the White House is now trying to encourage Tucker Carlson's advertisers to drop him, right?
	This has been a longtime sort of media matters goal to go after the advertisers of people they disagree with.
	Now, on this program, I've said before, advertisers should advertise, you know, pretty much everywhere.
	And there are advertisers who advertise on Pod Save America and good for them.
	That's fine.
	I don't believe that all those advertisers hold the exact same priorities as Pod Save America.
	And in fact, go ahead and advertise on that program and this program and all the other programs.
	It's fine.
	The left doesn't feel that way because of course their goal is to leverage all of these corporations into doing their dirty work.
	Their goal is to act as sort of a Henry II Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest attitude toward corporations?
	If you do our dirty work, then we don't have to do our dirty work.
	And if you don't do our dirty work, then we will cudgel you in some way, shape, or form.
	So, according to Mediaite, senior White House aides are now suggesting that Fox News host Tucker Carlson's advertisers would be more effective than Joe Biden at pushing him over the racist great replacement theory that inspired the Buffalo mass murder.
	Politico's Jonathan Lemire and Eugene Daniels performed a deep dive on the president's decision not to name and shame people like Carlson and Republican Representative Elise Stefanik and others who espoused Replacement Theory.
	Now again, this has just become now a truism in the media, including mediaite, that this is what Republicans do.
	They espouse Replacement Theory.
	That is not true.
	There is a radical difference, as we've talked about in depth, between Replacement Theory, which suggests the racial stock of a country is being perverted and lessened somehow by Jewish Elites bringing in brown people versus the idea that demographics matter when it comes to voting patterns, which again, the left is the one that initiated that conversation in the first place.
	The White House has given a series of explanations for not naming names, including a tantalizing notion from unidentified senior aides who put the onus on Carlson's advertisers.
	quote is from Politico, senior aides have felt that pressure from fellow Republicans and importantly advertisers would be more effective in pushing individuals like Fox News host Tucker Carlson to distance themselves from replacement theory.
	As one senior aide put it, there's no desire to give Carlson a clip of a presidential attack that the host could use in his A block every night.
	We totally understand the desire to call people out who have been pushing this disgusting rhetoric, but I also think it's worth remembering that many of these demagogues would love nothing more than the oxygen and attention that come from the president blasting them.
	A person familiar with the White House's thinking said, And in turn, that attention and notoriety may help them further spread those lies.
	It doesn't mean you never call them out, but I think it means you need to be judicious about doing so and cognizant it may have unintended consequences.
	So instead, the White House is trying to create a groundswell of pressure on Carlson's advertisers.
	That is pretty amazing.
	I mean, the White House openly now pressuring advertisers to drop media members they don't like is a demonstration, once again, that trusting these folks with the basics of free markets and free speech is a very, very bad move.
	And one other area in which this is cropping up is, of course, in the attempt to target Elon Musk.
	So the latest attempt to do this is the attempt to remove Tesla from the S&P 500 ESG index.
	So ESG is Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance index.
	The ESG index is basically just a proxy for leftism.
	If your corporation is not a leftist corporation, that doesn't mimic all of the stakeholder interests of the left.
	Then you don't get listed, right?
	So we'll give you a cookie if you're a good little corporation and you do exactly what we want you to do.
	So just to get that straight, the world's leading manufacturer of electric vehicles, Tesla, has now been removed from the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance Index.
	Environmental, the world's lead... No, don't worry guys, it's not a leftist proxy group.
	They have real principles about environmentalism and all this.
	As Elon Musk pointed out, Exxon is rated top 10 best in the world for environment, social, and governance by S&P 500.
	Tesla didn't make the list.
	ESG is a scam.
	It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.
	This, of course, is completely correct.
	It is completely correct.
	He tweeted out, despite Tesla doing more for the environment than any company ever.
	And then he tweeted a meme of Dwayne The Rock Johnson saying, what is an ESG score?
	And there's a woman in backseat saying, it determines how compliant your business is with the leftist agenda.
	Dwayne The Rock Johnson looking all freaked out about it.
	And this is correct.
	They're targeting Tesla because Elon Musk came out the other day as a Republican and explained why he was going to vote Republican and because he has gone after Twitter.
	He tweeted the other day, Yeah, well, the first step on that is remove the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles on planet Earth from the ESG index.
	the party of division and hate so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.
	Now watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold.
	Yeah well the first step on that is remove the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles on planet Earth from the ESG index.
	Again, woke capitalism must die.
	It must die.
	I'm a big fan of what my friend Vivek Ramaswamy is doing and trying to challenge woke capitalism by providing counter incentives here.
	But it just demonstrates, again, the reason you don't trust the government with things like a ministry of truth is because those same people are very interested in using governmental power to pressure and cudgel all these corporations into doing what they want and getting their allies in the media and the corporate sphere to do exactly the same.
	Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to another topic that Democrats used to want to talk about, now they don't want to talk about so much anymore because it's super awkward for them, namely killing the unborn.
	We'll get to that in a moment.
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	Alrighty, when NBA players knelt during the National Anthem for a league-wide demonstration in support of Black Lives Matter, only one player in the entire NBA stood.
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	Then, right after that, at 8 p.m.
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	♪♪ Now, speaking of narratives, the Democrats have attempted to weaponize.
	They did the racism narrative, and they've also tried to do the sexism narrative You notice how fast abortion has sort of disappeared from the headlines?
	There's this Buffalo shooting and the entire media swiveled into place in unison, as a unit, because that is what they are.
	They are just an adjunct of the Democratic Party.
	And they all started talking about Great Replacement Theory and how the entire Republican Party was racist.
	Well, that was after having swiveled in unison to call the entire Republican Party sexist.
	Well, that abortion Narrative, it sort of just disappeared.
	You notice that?
	Like, people just aren't talking about it anymore.
	It seems like that would have had more legs, right?
	I mean, if you were going to cover the overturning of a half-century Supreme Court world-shaking precedent in Roe versus Wade, you would imagine it might have more legs than like a week and a half of news coverage, but apparently not.
	Well, maybe one of the reasons for that is because every time Democrats talk about this issue for more than 32 seconds, it gets extremely ugly.
	That was on full display yesterday.
	It was on full display When the Democrats in the House held a hearing at which they welcomed a variety of pro-abortion witnesses.
	And things just went really, really sideways.
	It was very, very awkward.
	What do you say a woman is?
	I believe that everyone can identify for themselves.
	Do you believe then that men can become pregnant and have abortions?
	Yes.
	Okay, so that is a Democratic witness trying to explain that abortion is a sexism issue.
	Her name is Amy Arambide.
	And she is a pro-abortion activist.
	She calls herself this.
	And she's asked if men can give birth.
	Hard to make the case that this is a sexist issue if you're saying that men can give birth.
	Also, she fails to understand apparently basic biology because men don't have those parts.
	I know this is really difficult for Democrats.
	Somehow, I gotta tell you, it's amazing.
	I can ask my two-year-old daughter, and invariably she can tell the difference between boys and girls, but you can ask sophisticated pro-abortion witnesses in front of Congress what a girl is and they can't explain it.
	Truly, these people are either the greatest sophisticates the world has ever seen, uncovering new truths day by day, or they are some of the biggest morons that have ever been capable of performing basic breathing functions on this planet.
	Anyway, she also had some other words to say that were quite ugly.
	So she was asked by a congressman named Johnson, She was asked about abortion, and when abortion is appropriate, and can you make any logical distinction between aborting a two-year-old child who's already been born, or a nine-month-old child, or a baby who is just about to be born?
	And here's her answer.
	So abortion should be allowed then, by your definition, for any reason, for any purpose, at any stage, right?
	I trust people to make decisions about their body, and then when relevant, I think that they need to consult their medical Listen, let me just ask you this question.
	If it is not lawful and morally acceptable to take the life of a ten-year-old child, I assume you agree with that, right?
	That would be wrong, correct?
	I believe that is wrong.
	And a two-year-old child, same thing, that would be murder.
	We would all agree that's wrong.
	Then what is the principal distinction between the human being that is two years old, or nine months old, or one week old, or an hour old, than one that is eight inches further up the birth canal in the utero?
	What's the difference?
	I trust people to determine what to do with their own bodies.
	Wow.
	Full stop.
	Wow.
	Full stop indeed.
	Full stop.
	Full stop.
	You gotta love the verbal fry there.
	Full stop.
	Yeah.
	I trust women.
	These people have not thought through the issues.
	There is this really funny moment in that clip where he asks, you know, I assume that you think killing 10 year olds is wrong.
	And she actually has to pause for a second because she's trying to figure out where he's going with this and now it's going to be awkward for her.
	It's like, so killing 10 year olds is wrong, right?
	Yeah.
	I guess.
	Hey, well, that should be an easy one, right?
	But it's not an easy one.
	Because when you've been brought up to believe that every dumb sentence that comes out of your mouth is some sort of pearl of wisdom, this is how you get there.
	Of course, this is not a shock because there is a quick indicator, honestly, there's a quick indicator as to people that you should trust when it comes to science.
	Or morality, as it turns out.
	And that is whether they list their pronouns in their Twitter bio.
	If you do this, if you're a pronoun lister in your Twitter bio, And you don't happen to be a transgender person who's attempting to get people to call them by biologically inappropriate and inappropriate pronouns.
	You're just a cisgender person who does this, and this means that you've bought into a completely non-scientific ideology that has nothing to do with reality.
	And so, I don't think we should trust you on these issues.
	When you lead off your congressional testimony by announcing your pronouns, things get awkward.
	Here is this same witness.
	My name is Amy Arambide.
	I use she, her pronouns, and I'm a We Testify abortion storyteller.
	and the Executive Director of Avow, an organization that strives for unrestricted abortion care and reproductive rights for all Texans through community building, education, and political I don't know why she identifies as she-her.
	I mean, pronouns are just descriptors of nothing, apparently, because you can just determine what you wish to be called at any given time.
	So that's exciting stuff.
	She was called in the affirmative.
	I mean, like, the Republicans should have called that witness.
	That is not a good witness.
	Speaking of bad witnesses, the Democrats also called a witness to testify as to when there should be abortion restrictions.
	And this witness is like, never, ever, at all, for any reason, ever, What point in pregnancy should having an abortion no longer be an option?
	As a medical doctor, I understand that every pregnancy is unique and different.
	I also understand that patients need to have access to care, pregnant people, as the pregnancy progresses, and that may be for various reasons.
	Okay, so that is Dr. Yoshiko Robinson explaining that you should be able to abort a baby, like, forever.
	Like, all the way.
	And one of the representatives there says, if a child is halfway delivered out of the birth canal, is it permissible to have an abortion?
	She said, I can't fathom that ever happening.
	And the congressman said, I'm not asking if you can fathom it.
	Can you support it?
	And the doctor said, I can't imagine.
	I can't answer a question that I can't imagine.
	Um, what?
	So, you've never answered these questions?
	Perhaps the dumbest defense of abortion was left to Democratic Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee.
	This is just idiotic.
	Here he is trying to explain that the Constitution protects abortion because it doesn't say the word fetus in it.
	Now abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, but fetus is not mentioned in the Constitution either.
	And the Constitution doesn't say anything about when life starts.
	That is something the courts have to decide because it's not mentioned in the Constitution.
	And for the courts to Absolve themselves of it and get away from it is wrong.
	That's amazing!
	So he says it's not mentioned in the Constitution, so the courts have to decide.
	No, that's not the way this works.
	If it's not mentioned in the Constitution, legislatures get to decide.
	You're a member of a legislature.
	Ugh.
	You wonder why Democrats moved on from that abortion issue so fast?
	Remember, this was supposed to be their big get-out-the-vote effort?
	And they moved off of that real fast because it's bad for them.
	You know what else is bad for them?
	The economy.
	You know what else is bad for them?
	Race talk.
	People don't like it.
	People are annoyed by it.
	They're annoyed by it because it's usually predicated on basic lies about the nature of your neighbors.
	Most Americans don't actually believe that their neighbors are vicious, horrible racists.
	What they do believe is that their money is going less far.
	So Democrats, they're cruising for a bruising.
	All of these misdirect tactics are not going to work, and they are beginning to realize it, which means things are going to get a lot uglier before they get better in this country pre-election.
	All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
	In the meantime, go check out The Michael Nolan Show that's available right now.
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	The abortion industry sends its best and brightest to flop on Capitol Hill.
	Joe Biden compares mass murder in Buffalo to the Capitol protest on January 6th.
	And the Disinformation Governance Board takes a brief pause.

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