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June 3, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:58
Joe Biden’s Administration Hits The Iceberg Of Reality | Ep. 1508
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Joe Biden tries to distract from economic failure with gun control pandering, and now he's heading to Saudi Arabia after spending two years trying to ostracize its leaders.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment, including the President of the United States delivering a really obnoxious, pandering, insincere speech about gun control.
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Well, Joe Biden's presidency is flailing.
We have yet another article from CNN today talking about how Joe Biden is in over his head and doesn't really understand what it means to be president of the United States.
His approval ratings are at all-time lows.
He is just falling apart as a president.
And this means it's time to redirect to some hot-button social issue he hopes will get people out to vote in favor of Democrats.
And Democrats have tried this before.
They tried this in 2012 after Sandy Hook.
They tried this again after the Parkland shooting here in Florida.
And now they're trying it again.
The problem for Joe Biden is that there is not wide consensus in the United States on precisely the kinds of action that need to be taken with regard to gun control.
That Joe Biden thinks there are.
So he knows, he has to know this down deep.
And that is why he just keeps saying things, platitudinous things, like do something.
So Joe Biden gave a major speech last night.
It was a primetime speech.
Now Joe Biden does not have the power of Barack Obama to command a room.
He doesn't have the ability to speak well into camera.
He doesn't have the ability to speak at all at this point.
So the notion that he is going to mobilize the entire American population on behalf of a wildly controversial Slate of measures that has failed every time it's been brought up for a vote, including when Democrats controlled Congress under Barack Obama.
It's fantasy.
It's a mere misdirect.
And anybody who watches politics knows that it's a misdirect.
It's also a poorly handled misdirect because, again, President Biden, even more than Obama, Obama was a really good order.
President Biden's a terrible order who has very little public support.
Americans don't like him very much.
And so the idea that he's going to suddenly flip the switch and suddenly Americans are going to side with him, side with his ideas, it's just wrong.
But he has to do something.
He has to try to pull his administration out of the tailspin that it is in.
So last night, primetime, he decides to give a big national address.
It's very dramatic.
He walks out in the middle of these lit candles.
There's 56 lit candles, not to represent victims of gun violence per se, but to represent the 50 states and six territories that America covers.
It's Weird imagistically, in the sense that it makes it seem as though he's in a church or something.
It tries to treat him as almost a holy leader.
That is what the imagistics suggest here.
And it does not play.
It does not play.
It just seems like he is performing a bit of theatrics and that seems insincere.
Which is precisely the opposite of what he's going for here.
President Biden has previously supported reinstating the ban on assault weapons and passing universal background checks.
You can see the president now walking through the cross hall, 56 candles to represent 50 states and six territories.
Here now, the President of the United States.
Okay, so that is what it looks like in imagistic terms.
It was very, very weak stuff.
So he began his speech by talking about how he's not interested in taking away guns.
He's only interested in regulating.
Well, that's not really true.
I mean, Democrats and their gun control proposals, we all know are proxies for their real idea, which is what if we just removed all guns from American life?
They can't do that.
So instead, they pretend that if they pair around the edges, it's somehow going to solve the problem they are seeking to solve.
This was Joe Biden's lie last night.
I want to be very clear. This is not about taking away anyone's guns.
I respect the culture and the tradition and the concerns of lawful gun owners.
At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.
It was Justice Scalia who wrote, and I quote, like most rights, the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited.
Not unlimited.
It never has been.
Old man jabbering at you is going to tell you exactly how he's going to fix the problem.
Whenever Democrats say, by the way, that they are not interested in taking the guns of law-abiding people, the question is, then why are your laws targeting law-abiding people in the main?
Why aren't your laws actually specifically targeted at the people who are potentially going to commit acts of heinous violence?
Instead, the idea is that we're going to ban vast swaths of people from owning specific types of weaponry or magazines, or we're going to ban specific types of weapons for hundreds of millions of Americans.
All these laws are aimed at law-abiding people, which is why they are controversial.
If they were only aimed at the non-law-abiding, there are very few Americans who are in favor of non-law-abiding people getting their hands on weapons.
I can't name any, actually.
But Joe Biden, again, he has to fib because if he actually admits that what he wants to do is remove guns from the hands of an enormous number of Americans who are law-abiding, then that is going to play very badly for him in Peoria.
Well, Joe Biden says it's not about taking all of your guns away.
That is not really so true.
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So, what this really comes down to for Joe Biden, in the end, he proposes a slate of ideas here.
He puts forward a bunch of proposed legislation, these sort of sweeping gun control measures.
And none of them are likely to succeed because on their own, they actually don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
Here's some of the proposals that Biden was putting forward.
We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
And if we can't ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21.
Strengthen background checks.
Enact safe storage law and red flag laws.
Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability.
Address the mental health crisis, deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence.
These are rational, common sense measures.
Okay, no one knows. He's not even speaking English in part of that clip. So that makes it kind of difficult to mobilize the American people on their own. Many of the things that he's suggesting don't make a lot of sense. So he talks about banning assault weapons.
There was an assault weapons ban in place in the United States before Columbine.
There is no measurable data suggesting the mass shootings or shootings in general dropped because of the so-called assault weapons ban.
Democrats keep going back to the drawing board on this one because it's the only thing that they've passed that's a major gun measure in the last 25 years.
So they just keep going back on this one over and over and over, but it's not going anywhere.
Again, Barack Obama tried this and Barack Obama was a much more sterling order than this guy.
Then he proposes strengthening red flag laws.
I'm all in favor of a workable version of a red flag law in which somebody actually gets their day in court to prove that they are not in fact crazy or violent and they have their guns removed from them if they are.
But that has to be connected to a system of involuntary commitment whereby if somebody is a danger to themselves or others, they don't end up out on the street.
One of the big problems with red flag laws is that nobody ever calls the cops, and when they do call the cops, the cops don't actually do anything.
I mean, the red flag laws were well in place in Buffalo, New York.
That did not stop a white supremacist from shooting up a black supermarket.
So, those laws, unfortunately, they sound much better in theory than they actually end up being in practice.
And you have them talking about strengthening background checks.
The shooters in these cases, who legally purchased their weapons in the first place, did so by passing a background check, including the shooter in Uvalde, Texas.
So I'm not sure what he means by strengthening background checks.
It's all very non-specific.
When he says lower the age to purchase a rifle from 21 to 18, I'm perfectly fine with that so long as you're willing to raise the age of voting from 18 to 21.
In other words, adulthood is adulthood.
If the idea is that you should be able, at 18 years old, to vote and you can be drafted into the army, but you don't have the ability to defend yourself with a rifle, for example, I don't see the interior logic of that one.
If you're going to make a push that your brain is not sufficiently developed to be able to own a rifle until you're 21 years old, well then, I'm wondering why you're able to vote and why we're able to draft you and put you on the front lines of a war somewhere.
That doesn't make a lot of sense either.
And, again, very little of this would prevent any of what we have seen.
Because when it turns out bad people want to do bad things with guns in the United States, they seem to be able to do so.
Whether they get the guns legally, whether they get the guns illegally, whether they alter legal weapons into illegal weapons, whether they obtain the guns by going to somebody else's house and stealing the guns.
The actual stuff that there is widespread agreement on in the United States, things like, for example, hardening schools, making sure there are armed guards, making sure that the doors of the exterior to buildings are locked, making sure that the police respond with alacrity and actually do what they are supposed to do when they are called, like that there is broad-spectrum involuntary commitment being strengthened.
All these things there actually is broad-spectrum agreement on.
But Joe Biden hasn't proposed any of that legislation.
Instead, he's out there trying to pander.
And the reason that he is trying to pander is because, again, this is electoral for him.
This is why, in the end, what it comes down to for Joe Biden is the idea that we have to just do something.
Joe Biden has become the cheerleader president.
Just all the people on Twitter who spend their days after school shootings saying, do something!
For God's sake, do something!
The Steve Kerrs of the world, the coach of the Golden State Warriors.
Do something!
Just do something!
Do anything!
Joe Biden is the President of the United States.
It is his job to propose to Congress legislation that he believes will actually be effective in stopping school shootings.
And yet, here he is, just shouting at the sky, do something, repeatedly.
Here he is invoking God, which, again, it's always interesting when Joe Biden invokes God, like on guns, and when he doesn't invoke God, like on abortion.
Here is Joe Biden.
We visited Uvalde, Uvalde, Texas, in front of Robb Elementary School.
We stood before 21 crosses.
For 19 third and fourth graders and two teachers.
Standing there in that small town, like so many other communities across America, I couldn't help but think there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields.
Here in America, we spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken, whose lives will never be the same.
They had one message for all of us.
Do something.
Just do something.
Do something, just do anything, do something, do something.
That is not presidential leadership.
And of course then it's Congress must do something.
Well, you know what I noticed, sir, is that your party's in control of the House and the Senate.
So anytime, anytime, but it's do something.
It's not about him doing anything.
It was never about him doing anything.
It was never about his party doing anything.
It was always apparently about trying to militarize this issue in order to garner votes.
That's all.
Here he is railing at Congress to do something.
This time, we have to take the time to do something.
And this time, it's time for the Senate to do something.
But, as we know, in order to get anything done in the Senate, we need a minimum of 10 Republican Senators.
I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican Senators trying to find a way.
But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans Don't want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable.
This is what it's all about.
And then he just spills it right out, right?
Then he just says, if Congress doesn't do what I want them to do, people will go to vote, which is really what this is about.
I'm going to propose stuff that does not have bipartisan support.
I'm going to do so specifically in order so that the American people rebuke the Republicans on the other side of the aisle.
Now listen, All is fair when it comes to politics and pandering, but can we stop pretending for a second that the proposals that Joe Biden is making here actually have anything to do with preventing school shootings?
Because none of the proposals that he is suggesting would actually prevent school shootings.
There is no actual logical connection between the things that he is proposing and things that would actually make our students safer.
I've been in this fight for a long time.
I know how hard it is.
saying the quiet part out loud, which is if I don't get my way, you should vote the guys I don't like out of office because obviously they're evil and bad and are standing in favor of school shootings. I've been in this fight for a long time. I know how hard it is, but I'll never give up. And if Congress fails, I believe this time a majority of the American people won't give up either.
I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote.
Enough, enough, enough.
It's just a campaign speech.
Okay, so this isn't about trying to Get Congress to do something useful.
It's just a campaign speech.
Well, the Biden administration is quite insincere when it comes to these sorts of topics because, of course, what they really want more than anything is to just win elections.
And that means pandering.
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Vice President Harris, for her part, did some more of the same stuff yesterday.
She, of course, is even more of a great order than the President of the United States, who cannot get English sentences out of his face hole.
Here is the Vice President of the United States, who is just so sincere.
What just rolls off of her in waves is her sincerity.
Here's the Vice President of the United States, a predictive text machine come alive.
Of course, all of us hold the people of Tulsa in our hearts, but we also reaffirm our commitment to passing common-sense gun safety laws.
But we cannot, as an administration or those of us who are here, address this alone.
No more excuses.
Thoughts and prayers are important, but not enough.
We need Congress to act.
Again, over and over and over again, it's the same routine from these folks.
And then, when you actually start talking about the problem, when you suggest that perhaps we should harden schools, perhaps we should make it easier to involuntarily commit people who seem to be violent, when we do any of that stuff, then all of a sudden it's, whoa, whoa, whoa, why aren't we talking about guns?
Because we would like to solve the problem.
That's why we're not talking about guns.
Because in the main, the gun is not really the problem.
It's the person who wields the gun who tends to be the problem.
Contra Joe Biden, who suggests that guns themselves are the problems.
Inanimate objects themselves are the problems.
That is a thing that President Biden himself said in his address.
He said that guns are the number one source of child death in the United States.
Well, no, the person wielding the gun is typically the source of the child death in the United States.
I have multiple guns in my home.
My kids are safer because I have a gun in my home and I know how to use it.
Here's Joe Biden.
According to new data just released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America.
The number one killer.
More than car accidents.
More than cancer.
Over the last two decades, more school-age children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined.
Think about that.
More kids than on-duty cops killed by guns.
More kids than soldiers killed by guns.
For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?
Well, I have to say, I do not find him to be sincere.
I just don't.
Call it a subjective opinion, call it whatever you want.
I do not find this to be a sincere man.
Every time he says, for God's sake, I just... It's bad acting.
I'm not saying he doesn't care about kids who get shot.
I'm sure he does care about kids who get shot.
When he pretends that the solutions that he's offering are actual solutions rather than just get-out-the-vote efforts, I don't believe him.
Because it's pretty obvious that these are get-out-the-vote efforts from the President of the United States.
And I would note, on a logical level, when he suggests that more children are dying by gun than on-duty police officers, maybe one of the reasons for that is because, you know, I spot a couple of differentiators.
One of them is that on-duty police officers carry guns.
Kids cannot carry guns, nor should they, obviously.
But the point is that people who are protected tend not to get shot as often.
Even in the most dangerous situations, they tend to not get shot quite as often because they can protect themselves.
So he's making directly the case that he supposedly opposes.
This, by the way, is the case that Democrats are consistently making, is the idea that even a lawful, law-abiding person who knows how to use his gun isn't capable of stopping a bad guy with a gun, which of course is untrue.
I'm unaware of any situation in which the threat of a good guy with a gun has not ended a situation with a bad guy with a gun.
Do folks on the left just think that bad guys with guns randomly give up their guns when they get bored or tired?
That's not how any of this works.
And you have Representative David Cicilline, who's making precisely that case.
I'd just like to add a couple of thoughts.
And the first is, I don't think there is a single incident, and maybe there's one, but I've not found one, of an assailant using an assault weapon that was stopped by a person with a gun.
So this is a Just maybe there's one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of shootings.
But the truth of the matter is school resource officers are an important response to school safety.
I was a mayor of a city.
We hired school resource officers.
But what I also know is it requires special training to be a school resource officer.
And it's up to local communities to decide where that's appropriate, what schools they want to use school resource officers in.
And so having someone who's a retired police officer or someone who used to be in the army may not actually be the best person to be in that position.
I mean, I'm sorry, he's an idiot.
That's idiotic.
He's not aware of a single shooting that is stopped by a person with a gun.
Every shooting is inevitably stopped by another person with a gun.
I challenge him to find a single shooting in which, again, the shooter just decided randomly, you know what?
I'm bored now.
I'm putting down the gun.
I'm leaving.
Bye.
What is he talking about?
And you have the inimitably stupid Eric Swalwell saying the same thing.
He's not shagging Chinese spies, he's saying dumbass things about guns.
Here we go.
What we have come to see across America is that our law enforcement are just outgunned.
We're a country of unrestricted weaponry that continues to put the most dangerous weapons in the hands of the most dangerous people.
And that's what we saw in Ivalde.
And tragically, in 2016, in Dallas, Texas, five brave police officers, SWAT-trained police officers were murdered by a killer with an assault rifle.
So I think we've debunked the idea that the answer to a killer with an assault rifle is to have more quote-unquote good guys with guns.
What does he think the answer is?
Once the killer has the assault rifle, what does he think the answer is?
I understand that he wishes that he had a time machine.
He could go back to like 1775 and just ban all the muskets.
But guess what?
We have 400 million guns in circulation in the United States and 100 million people who own them.
Who does he think is stopping bad guys with guns?
It's always cops.
It's always school resource officers.
It's always an NRA member like that Texas church shooting a couple of years ago.
This is not about solving the problem.
It is always, inevitably, about political pandering.
And you know what?
The iceberg of reality is cold and it is hard.
And these folks are going to run directly into it.
This is not going to mobilize votes.
It is not going to change the nature of the 2022 election.
It is not.
They can try the best they can.
It is not going to do it.
Joe Biden has no intention of actually improving people's lives, apparently.
It's just about making sure that you vote for his party, even though they're doing an incredibly bad job.
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You know what else isn't going to help is the fixation that Democrats seem to have on not making commitments with regard to keeping schools open.
This is a party that is just cruising for a bruising.
Yesterday, there was an insane situation over at the White House.
The White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha was asked a specific question about whether in the fall the schools would be open and whether they should remain open basically regardless of what happens with any new wave of Omicron or something.
And he starts to answer the question and Corinne Jean-Pierre jumps up on the podium and basically wrangles him out of the room.
He's not going to answer.
He's not going to answer.
This administration is so out of touch that they actually think that there's political support for the possibility of shutting down schools again, which is crazy.
You have to go.
Bye.
See you later.
Bye.
By the way, this is the same day that you have the Washington Post running a study suggesting that the pandemic radically disrupted learning for American teens, which of course it did.
But we can't have the White House actually announcing that the schools are going to remain open.
I wonder why people are feeling insecure with this White House in charge.
Meanwhile, their solution is we have to give shots to all of your small children.
Ronald Klain, the White House Chief of Staff, tweeted out yesterday, We are on track to become the first large country in the world to vaccinate kids under five, starting in 19 days.
I don't know why he thinks this is a pitch.
I honestly God don't know why he thinks this is a pitch.
My kids all had COVID.
They're all fine.
Because guess what?
Statistically speaking, kids who get COVID are fine.
The number of kids who have died from COVID without pre-existing conditions is infinitesimally small.
It is extraordinarily small by the CDC stats.
And yet they're still talking about closing down schools and why we need to vaccinate five-year-olds, four-year-olds, three-year-olds.
Why is it a good thing that we're the first large country in the world that's vaccinating tiny kids who are not generally susceptible to serious harm from COVID?
It's an amazing, amazing thing.
Okay, speaking of hitting the iceberg of reality, Joe Biden's foreign policy is just a complete and utter cluster.
There's this amazing situation that is currently happening.
Joe Biden is now visiting Saudi Arabia.
So you'll recall that Joe Biden has spent the last couple of years ostracizing Saudi Arabia to the benefit of Iran.
He's been reaching out to Iran, which is an intransigent evil terror state that has attempted to foster terrorism everywhere in the region, has fostered terrorism in Syria, has fostered terrorism in Lebanon, has fostered terrorism in the Gaza Strip, has fostered terrorism in Yemen.
And Joe Biden has been reaching out to those people who are also seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
At the same time, he has been cracking down on the Saudis.
Now, listen, the Saudis are an unreliable ally of the United States.
They also happen to be the world's largest pumpers of gas and oil.
So you're alienating the people you need to pump the gas in favor of a terror regime that opposes all of America's interests.
And you're doing so because of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is a quasi-journalist.
I say quasi because he was basically a semi-contributor to the Washington Post who was very much in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Saudi Arabia murdered him.
That does not make Saudi Arabia good.
It is also true that Saudi Arabia versus Iran on the, which is a greater human rights violator scale, Iran wildly outclasses Saudi Arabia.
And yet we are reaching out to Iran and we are alienating Saudi Arabia.
And this is part of Joe Biden's broader attempt to transition away from oil and natural gas.
Well, the iceberg of reality has now been hit.
And that iceberg of reality is that it turns out that the single most efficient form of energy on planet Earth is still carbon-based fossil fuels.
And that means that when the gas prices spike, guess who's going to have to go begging hat in hand?
Joe Biden's idiotic foreign policy with regard to oil, gas, and the Middle East?
Led him to try to reintroduce relations with Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, in the perverse hope that suddenly Venezuela would start pumping gas, despite the fact they've been generally unable to pump large quantities of gas for probably a decade and a half because the government nationalized the industry and is wildly inefficient at actually even getting the gas out of the ground.
It's an amazing thing.
So we've gotten no gas, but we have legitimized Maduro.
Meanwhile, we've delegitimized Saudi Arabia and gotten no gas.
That was Joe Biden's idiot plan.
Exacerbated, of course, by the war in Ukraine, which cut off gas supplies from Russia.
So you can thank Joe Biden for the gas price spike, even on a foreign policy level.
Even when Joe Biden says that, you know, it's Russia and Putin and the invasion of Ukraine that has spiked your gas prices.
That is only partially true.
We could have compensated for the spike in gas prices by going to people like Saudi Arabia if Joe Biden had not spent the last several years alienating Saudi Arabia and talking about how the Saudis are the world's worst human rights violators and we have to cut off relations with them and how dare they do what they are doing in Yemen and why don't we make nice with the Iranians.
So now Joe Biden has to go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia because it turns out people don't like high gas prices and they want their gas prices lowered.
So according to the Wall Street Journal, Apparently, Saudis are going to boost their oil production in advance of Joe Biden arriving in Saudi Arabia.
Quote, Saudi Arabia took steps on Thursday to boost oil production and extended truce with Iran-backed forces in Yemen, two significant moves that helped pave the way for President Biden to visit the kingdom later this month.
As the two countries try to reset their strained relationship, Saudi-led OPEC and its allies agreed to a bigger-than-expected oil production increase, allowing Riyadh to potentially pump more crude.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia agreed to extend a two-month-old ceasefire with Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen, where the kingdom has been entangled in a costly and unpopular seven-year-old war.
Well, they were totally fine with extending a ceasefire, so long as the Houthis extend the ceasefire.
By the way, it is worth noting that Saudi Arabia is a much more moderate regime than it was even 10 or 15 years ago.
Mohammed bin Salman, the new leader, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Yes, he is a brutal person who had Jamal Khashoggi killed.
Also, he's modernizing Saudi Arabia's entire investment infrastructure and attempting to make peace with Israel.
The United States has been, in any sort of real politics scenario, you have to acknowledge that major world powers are going to have to make common cause with people who happen to be dictators.
So long as those people happen to share many of our interests.
And if you're stacking up Saudi Arabia's interests with Iran's interests right now, Saudi Arabia shares many more of our interests than Iran does.
So Joe Biden is now having to go back and basically make nice with the Saudis to the consternation of the far left.
According to the Wall Street Journal, both moves were sought by the United States and helped set the stage for Biden to visit Saudi Arabia later this month, as the president looks to set aside longstanding divisions with the kingdom amid high oil and gasoline prices that have driven inflation.
While the visit hasn't officially been announced, Thursday's moves create momentum for the president's trip.
In other words, Joe Biden went to the Saudis and he said, we need you to pump more oil and also give us like some sort of face-saving solution with regard to the Houthis for a couple of weeks so that you can pump more oil and I don't look like a complete dullard.
But here's the thing, Joe Biden does look like a dullard because you have been paying higher gas prices for the last year and a half because Joe Biden decided to alienate the top pumpers of oil on planet Earth via OPEC.
That is Joe Biden's fault.
And he did so despite the fact that Saudi Arabia, again, has been moderating and attempting to make peace with Israel.
Covertly and in many ways, rather overtly, Joe Biden alienated an actual burgeoning, strengthening American ally in the Middle East in favor of the Iranians.
And also because Joe Biden has a perverse notion of environmentalism because he's run by his hard left.
And it turns out that that policy is garbage.
Jennifer Granholm, our energy secretary yesterday, for example, she was rambling about the clean green energy economy.
We're going to do this.
We're going to get to this clean energy economy.
One hydroelectric project.
One solar panel.
One wind turbine.
One geothermal project.
One advanced nuclear reactor.
One electric vehicle.
One battery at a time.
And that is all part of the silver buckshot to get to that 100% clean future.
You're not getting there.
You're not getting there.
Not with the technologies we currently have in place.
It ain't gonna happen.
Realistically speaking, the forms of energy she's talking about are not nearly as efficient as carbon-based fossil fuel.
Every single human who knows anything about basic chemistry knows this.
It does not matter.
Joe Biden is run by his hard left.
And by a hard left, by the way, that is so hard left.
I mean, the environmentalist's hard left is just, I'm sorry, they're out of their minds.
In the undercover story of the week.
It's been on my schedule for literally a week at this point.
I just didn't have a chance to get to it.
NPR reported that a man in a wig was detained after throwing a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa.
Quote, a man who seems to have been disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa in Paris.
Video posted on social media shows security guards at the Louvre escorting the man away Sunday as he spoke in French about the planet.
Think of the Earth.
There are people who are destroying the Earth.
Think about it.
Artists tell you.
Think of the Earth.
That's why I did this, he says, according to the Associated Press.
Another video showed someone clearing the cake off the glass protecting the Mona Lisa as onlookers held up their phones to film the incident's aftermath.
The 36-year-old man was detained and sent to a psychiatric unit.
And the basic notion here is somehow throwing cake at the monuments of Western civilization, like the Mona Lisa, that this is going to convince people that they ought to lower their carbon emissions and embrace clean energy.
Fortunately, we have idiots like Sonny Hostin on The View to explain why this is actually a good thing.
I think those kinds of stunts, like he wore a wig and he dressed up as an elderly woman in a wheelchair to smuggle it in.
We're talking about that as opposed to what the issue is that he's actually protesting.
So I think that stunts like that don't work at all.
I think they work.
I mean, we're talking about it.
We're not talking about climate change.
I think climate change is something that we ignore so much, not only in this country but around the world.
Obviously, we're talking about this issue.
The Mona Lisa is about this big, I learned when I went to the Louvre, and it also is in this case.
Yeah, it's this big, and it's somebody else's art.
And how dare you try to destroy somebody else's art?
I don't think it can be destroyed, because again, it's a bulletproof thing, and he threw some whipped cream at it.
Yeah, Sunny Hostin defending, because of course, climate change is so important.
Yeah, well, Joe Biden has that same philosophy, except with regard to the American economy.
Yeah, we can throw cake at the American economy.
We could damage the American economy.
You can pay higher gas prices at the pump.
All in favor of a bizarrely utopian notion of how energy is produced, combined with the utopian notion of how foreign policy ought to be done.
And it only cost you, you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of the last couple months to play out Joe Biden's green and foreign policy fantasies.
Again, that iceberg of reality is slamming Joe Biden's Titanic.
Well, with the economy on the brink of chaos, thanks to the bad policy of the Biden administration, you're probably spending a lot of time in that office chair these days.
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Alrighty, folks.
It is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire member you've been waiting for today.
It's Vanessa on Twitter, who understands what it takes to get through a long day at the office besides the Xchair.
In this pic, Vanessa is donning her scrubs while proudly displaying the world's greatest, most elite beverage vessel.
The caption reads, got my leftist tears tumbler from real Daily Wire this morning.
It's going to be a long day in the x-ray room, so I definitely need the coffee.
Indeed.
Glad we could help and keep up the good work.
Thanks for the pick.
Thanks for being a Daily Wire member.
All right, folks.
What is Woman?
I've been telling you about it all week.
We are so proud of this project here at Daily Wire.
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If you haven't seen the clips, you should go look at some of the clips because it's amazing.
You need to watch it.
Your friends need to watch it.
The country needs to watch it so we can stop the insanity.
Here's what some others are saying about it.
Tim Pool says it's extremely well done and a must watch.
Megyn Kelly says the film has a very serious message.
One you're going to want to hear.
Editor-in-chief of the Federalist, Molly Hemingway, says it's funny and thought-provoking.
It is fantastic.
And listen, this is what we do here at Daily Wire.
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So meanwhile, while Joe Biden is now realizing, hey, wait a second, maybe I shouldn't have alienated OPEC.
Maybe I shouldn't have alienated the Saudis on behalf of the Iranians and my green energy base.
Inflation continues to boost.
So, for example, the Federal Reserve's Lael Brainard says it's actually too early to say if inflation has peaked.
There could be more inflation on the way.
With our number one challenge being the need to get inflation down, we do expect to see some cooling of a very, very strong economy over time.
So you think we're starting to see that already?
I think it's too early to say.
I'm going to be looking for a consistent string of data on both the strength of demand, labor market coming into better balance, and of course, importantly, a string of decelerating inflation data to feel more confident.
Separately, the Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said the central bank could encounter greater financial market volatility and higher unemployment in its quest to push down inflation Loretta Mester said this will take fortitude.
There will be bumps in the road.
This will be painful, but so is high inflation.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is attempting to divest itself of its $9 trillion portfolio.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve began the process Wednesday of shrinking its $8.9 trillion asset portfolio.
When the Fed shrinks its asset portfolio, it's not selling bonds.
The Fed dramatically expanded its portfolio in March 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal, to stabilize dysfunctional markets.
And then it continued to purchase Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in huge quantities in order to stimulate the economy.
So they just started buying product and injecting money into the economy.
It ended those purchases in March of 2022.
It's been keeping its holdings steady by reinvesting the proceeds of maturing securities into new ones.
Well, starting June 1, the Fed is going to allow up to $30 billion in treasuries and $17.5 billion in mortgage bonds to mature every month without investing the proceeds, meaning they're not going to buy up more assets.
The central bank is shrinking its holdings passively or by attrition because they don't want to flood the market with all of these securities and then undermine the price of the securities.
The Fed is saying over the long run, it wants to own primarily treasury security, selling mortgage assets, but more quickly shift the composition of its asset holdings toward treasuries.
The Fed is desperately attempting to bring down the inflation rate, and it's not having its desired effect.
Not nearly.
Jamie Dimon, he says that a hurricane is coming our way, economically speaking, is the head of JPMorgan.
It's a hurricane.
Right now, it's kind of sunny.
Things are doing fine.
Everyone thinks the Fed can handle this.
That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way.
We just don't know if it's a minor one or Superstorm Sandy or Andrew or something like that.
You better brace yourself.
I mean, all of this bodes ill.
Once again, that ship of state is heading directly for an iceberg.
Peter Doocy asked Corinne Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, about inflation.
Like, why don't you admit you were wrong?
And of course, she's got nothing.
The Treasury Secretary says that she was wrong, so why doesn't anybody here at the White House?
Okay, what the Secretary was pointing out, this is talking about yesterday when she was doing her hit, her TV hit with CNN, is that there have been shocks to the economy that have exacerbated inflationary pressures which couldn't have been foreseen 18 months ago.
Just that I understand, the Treasury Secretary says that she was wrong, but the White House was not wrong about inflation.
Here's the thing, we have achieved a... First of all, I explained to you what she was trying to say, so I just laid that out.
This is Putin's price hike, which the president refers to, and that is what Secretary Yellen was referring to, if you read the entire transcript, and that's what I'm trying to say to you.
Man, they're going to try and happy talk their way through this one and it is not going to work.
Joe Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein, he's still refusing to say whether the stimulus contributed to inflation.
Obviously it did.
Injecting money into an already hot economy contributes to inflation.
This is basic econ 101.
And you have the chief economic advisor of the President of the United States who can't say it.
We've had many economists on this show over the last couple of weeks, and in fact months, pointing to some of the pandemic-era stimulus packages.
Do you believe that those packages are contributing to the inflation we're seeing today?
The inflation that we're observing right now is very much a function of high levels of demand and constrained supply.
Now that relates to COVID, that relates to some things that certainly weren't in the picture.
And sure, fiscal policy is always going to contribute to the demand side of the equation.
But I am not here to, at all, look at this in any sort of one-sided way.
Yeah, I noticed.
You don't want to look at it one side away because it turns out the side you're on happens to be the wrong side.
Now, meanwhile, again, all of these things are connected.
The domestic American economy, the inflation problems that we're having, the price of gas, all of these problems are interconnected and they are deeply connected with further foreign policy issues like the increasing aggressiveness of China.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China is now poised to launch its newest, most advanced aircraft carrier in a major step that will enable its Navy to expand military operations on the high seas.
New satellite imagery reviewed by the Wall Street Journal shows that after several years of work in the Xiangjiang Shipyard in Shanghai, China's third carrier, known as Type 003, may be afloat in the coming weeks or even days.
The Type 003 is China's third aircraft carrier, its largest and most advanced.
It uses new electromagnetic catapult technology akin to what the United States and French carriers have to launch aircraft.
According to Matthew Funayol, the senior fellow at the China Power Project at the CSIS, once operational, China's third carrier will greatly expand its ability to secure its near sea interests while also enabling the Chinese Navy to project power further away from the Chinese mainland. The ship's launch reflects China's steady progress expanding its naval fleet.
According to Funayol, all signs point to this progress continuing for its fourth, fifth, maybe even a sixth carrier. All of this is deeply disturbing because China is seeking to expand its power at the expense of American interests.
Now, what you would do if you are smart and the leader of the United States is you would strengthen America's economy by taking the shackles off.
You'd get rid of the regulations.
You'd stop talking about so much taxation.
You would allow the Federal Reserve to do what it needs to do in order to bring down inflation.
That's what you would do.
Not the Biden administration.
If you were actually taking seriously foreign threats, you wouldn't be making overtures to Iran.
You'd be making overtures to Saudi Arabia, which owns an enormous amount of oil and gas, and actually is not diametrically opposed to American interests.
You'd be strengthening our allies in the Middle East as they make alliances with one another.
These are all things that you would be doing.
You would also, presumably, be encouraging some sort of end to the war in Ukraine.
So you can take Russia off the table.
Russia has been thrown into China's camp dramatically.
It now appears that Vladimir Putin is suffering from some sort of late stage cancer.
Those are the latest reports.
According to the United States intelligence report, apparently Putin was treated for cancer in the United States in April.
This is according to Newsweek.
The classified U.S.
report says that Putin seems to have reemerged after undergoing treatment in April.
Apparently there was also an assassination attempt on Putin's life in March.
So Putin is insecure and that insecurity is leading him to try to strengthen his grip in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, he is saying that Russia currently holds 20% of the entire country.
And it is unclear which direction this war is going at this point.
According to the Washington Post, Ukraine is suffering significant setbacks in parts of the East amid grueling street-by-street battles in the key city of Severodonetsk, with the British Defense Ministry saying most of the city is now in Russian hands.
After nearly 100 days of fighting, Russian forces control 20% of Ukraine.
That would include most of the oil-rich regions of Ukraine.
Doesn't mean that Russia is winning.
It does mean that China has been basically shoring up Russia, buying up all of its oil and gas assets at extraordinarily cheap prices.
China is strengthening its geopolitical hold.
So forcing Russia to the table and also leaving a door open for negotiation would be vital at this point.
Joe Biden seems to have no idea what to do on any of this.
And so what you end up with is elevated prices at the pump for you, a strengthened China, you end up with high inflation rates, and you end up with a shrinking economy in the long run.
Because, again, who's going to invest into an economy that is this confused and confusing?
I mean, I talk with major institutional investors on a regular basis, and nobody knows where to put their money.
Because they don't know which way the economy is going.
Because Joe Biden has not made clear what exactly the economic policy of the United States is going to be, or who's going to get punished.
Or if firms that don't get their ESG score, their environmental social governance score proper, on the NASDAQ are going to suffer significant legal and financial setbacks.
All this is creating an enormous feeling of chaos.
And no matter how much Joe Biden tries to talk his way out of this by citing to gun control, it isn't going to work.
Feelings of uncertainty were downed against the party in power.
The party in power right now is the Democratic Party.
Joe Biden is the president of the United States.
He ran for this office.
The crises that we are now experiencing are largely of his making.
It is only the president of the United States who has the power, theoretically, to help get us out of these problems.
Joe Biden doesn't have that power.
He doesn't have that capacity.
And everyone can feel it.
All righty.
We'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
First, you can't forget to end your week by tuning into The Andrew Klavan Show.
Drew shows every Friday.
He's got an exciting evening planned for you.
Head on over to dailywire.com, 7 p.m.
Eastern, 6 p.m.
Central, and tune in.
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