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June 15, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:01
Joe Biden Is Running The Economy Into An Iceberg | Ep. 1515
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The stock market continues its drop as the Federal Reserve considers spiking interest rates, Joe Biden compensates by screaming at Americans, and Democrats begin dreaming of an alternative to Joe Biden.
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.
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We'll begin today with a piece of news that should send some shockwaves through the democratic establishment.
That news seems like it might be sort of minor news, except that it really isn't because it says what kind of seats are in play come November.
That news is that Republican Mayra Flores has now defeated Democrat Dan Sanchez Tuesday in a special election in Texas to replace former Representative Philemon Vela.
So this is the second biggest Hispanic majority district in the nation, but it's not a particularly huge election.
The grand total number of votes it was cast certainly is in the tens of thousands, the winning number of votes cast may be 14, 15, 16,000.
But what this says is something very bad for the Democrats, because again, this is a majority Hispanic district.
I mean, an 84% Hispanic district that just went to the Republican, that district went to Joe Biden by 13 points.
According to the Texas Tribune, the special election was unique in that it was held under the previous lines of the 34th district, which Joe Biden won by only four percentage points, but redistricting made the district more friendly to Democrats.
In November, when the Democratic nominee is U.S.
Representative Vicente Gonzalez.
So the idea here is that hopefully this doesn't mean there's a 13 point margin that Republicans had overcome.
There's like a four point margin that Republicans had overcome, except for the fact that according to the latest results, the winner in this particular race, Mayor Flores, won by seven points, which is an 11 point spread.
on behalf of Republicans, which puts Democrats in deep, deep trouble and reinforces the idea that they are in real trouble with Hispanics, which is something that every poll these days is showing. Remember, the Democratic coalition was built on the idea that there would be a majority minority coalition that arose to defeat the prevailing white patriarchy.
There would be single college educated white women.
There'd be black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans.
They would all come together to defeat the prevailing orthodoxy created by white heterosexual men.
And it turns out that none of that is true.
It turns out that Hispanics are not fond of Joe Biden's governance.
They're not fond of Democrats pushing the idea that boys can be girls, girls can be boys, and that Latinx is a thing.
They're not particularly fond of 10% inflation, wholesale inflation rates.
They're not fond of people being indoctrinated in public schools.
It turns out there is no cure for bad democratic policy other than to throw them out.
And I think that everyone is beginning to recognize that now.
This is becoming even more of a pressing issue given the fact that the economy continues to tank.
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
stock indices had a mixed Tuesday, a day after the S&P 500 slid into a bear market on fears that red-hot inflation will prompt more aggressive rate increases from the Federal Reserve.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4% on Tuesday.
The Dow Industrials were down 0.5%.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite was up just slightly 0.2%.
Cryptocurrencies continued to drop.
Bitcoin fell further below $23,000 as investors dumped their most speculative holdings.
All of this is in anticipation of what the Federal Reserve is going to do this week.
And according to Bloomberg, the market route is now evoking memories of trading before Lehman Brothers exploded.
According to Bloomberg, Quincy Crosby couldn't wait for Monday's trading session to be over.
I was glued to the screen, LPL Financial's chief equity strategist said in an interview.
It was just one of those days with losses so gigantic that solely looking at stocks wasn't enough. Her eyes strayed to bonds, to credit default swaps and elsewhere as she tried to figure out how bad things were and might get. What she saw was ugly.
Even by the standards of this volatile year, Monday's wild ride through financial markets stands out.
Two-year U.S.
Treasury yields surged 29 basis points as bond prices tanked.
The yield jumped 54 basis points since Thursday night, the biggest two-day increase since 2008, a sign of just how rapidly traders are adjusting where they think the Federal Reserve will take interest rates.
All but five stocks in the S&P 500 tumbled.
The benchmark posted a more than 20% loss since its January peak.
It was enough for some to resurface scary memories of the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.
Christine Hoffman, portfolio manager for Thornburg Investment Management, said market liquidity has deteriorated so much she's thinking about the dark days of 2008.
Liquidity in the market is worse than it was leading up to layman's, said Hoffman, who worked at the firm that imploded back then, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
It's the kind of problem that can exacerbate losses in a big way.
That creates even more risk.
Because if the market doesn't have liquidity, it can gap down very quickly, meaning if people are not injecting more money into the markets, you're going to start to see firms go under.
Since the surprisingly hot inflation report Friday, according to Bloomberg investors, have become increasingly worried the Fed will have to tighten monetary policy so aggressively that it tips the economy into a recession.
According to JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Omura Holdings joined their peers at Barclays and Jefferies to call for the central bank to announce a 75 basis point hike on Wednesday, which would be the biggest increase since 1998.
Instead of serving as a haven, the treasury market and its huge spike in yields has become a catalyst for a market-wide plunge.
It reminded Priya Misra of former President Bill Clinton's political advisor, James Carville, who famously observed she'd like to be reincarnated as a bond market, given how intimidating it is.
It was quite a day, like the freight train approaching and you can't turn anywhere for help, said Misra.
Today, the bond market was present in all ferociousness.
Okay, so this is all a giant mess, exacerbated by a Biden administration that insists that they are doing everything right.
Wholesale prices, by the way, rose 10.8% in May.
That is near a record annual pace, according to CNBC.
The producer price index, a measure of the prices paid to producers of goods and services, rose 0.8% for the month, 10.8% over the past year.
The monthly rise is in line with Dow Jones estimates and a doubling of the 0.4% in April.
Excluding food, energy, and trade, so-called core PPI still rose 0.5% on the month, slightly below the 0.6% estimate, but an increase from the 0.4% rating the previous month.
We had heard that inflation had already peaked because there were small declines in April.
Well, nope, those declines went away and rose again in May.
Two PPI measures remained near their historic highs, 11.5% for the headline, 7.1% for the quarter.
Both hit in March.
The data is significant, and the prices at the wholesale level feed through to consumer prices.
Consumer price index increased 8.6 annually in May.
Inflation continues to rise, and there are other people who inflate their claims.
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And so, all of this bodes very, very ill.
And so, the Fed is going to have to figure out exactly what to do.
And they have very few options here.
Option number one is that they can do less than people think is necessary.
And that option has the benefit of presumably avoiding recession.
It does, however, mean that your savings are worth very, very little.
It means that the wages that you're earning are worth less.
But at least it won't tip us into a full-scale recession.
And there are some people who are thinking that maybe this is exactly what the Federal Reserve is going to do, that they're going to soft-pedal the interest rate increases.
So as to avoid the possibility of a full-scale recession, because if there's a full-scale recession, then Donald Trump comes back into power.
That is the theory of Holman Jenkins over at the Wall Street Journal today.
He says, because inflation is a cost spread lightly over everyone, whereas unemployment lands especially hard on specific individuals and families, it's natural for economists to urge the Federal Reserve to accept a little more inflation a little longer to protect employment and strive for a soft landing.
This is a reasonable argument.
Many are making it.
The problem is, It will remain appealing after the midterms and is likely to become even more so in the run-up to 2024 if Donald Trump is running.
Don't underestimate how much the determination to prevent a Trump restoration now permeates the establishment with quite a few Republicans on board.
You may have noticed Democrats are investing big in a January 6th pseudo-prosecution for one reason.
To inoculate America against a Trump revival that Democrats would likely only be able to oppose with a lackluster Joe Biden or the lackluster Kamala Harris.
It's not too soon to begin thinking about the consequences if control over inflation is to be sacrificed in this effort.
So he is thinking perhaps the Federal Reserve is trying to avoid a recession so hard that they allow inflation to become a permanent feature of the American economic landscape, which could sink the economy for a decade, all in an effort to keep Donald Trump from rushing back into office if Donald Trump is indeed the nominee in 2024.
Meanwhile, the Fed is mulling a game changer, according to Steve Matthews over at Yahoo Finance in Bloomberg.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who's carefully telegraphed interest rate hikes over four years, looks likely to abandon gradualism and move more forcefully to stamp out inflation, along with growing concerns it will persist.
The Fed Open Market Committee is expected to raise rates 75 basis points by Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, and Barclays.
The Fed will announce a decision and publish fresh forecasts on Wednesday.
Powell is likely to hold a press conference about 30 minutes later.
So the Federal Reserve is trying to figure out exactly how far they can go.
And all of this is having a pretty serious impact on a lot of companies whose valuation is based on sort of speculation about how profitable they will be.
Now, when money is easy, what are you going to do?
Just sit around on the money?
You're going to take it and you're going to put it into speculative stocks.
You're going to think, okay, well maybe this one will be the one that hits.
But when money becomes a little more tough to come by, all the speculative stocks, all of those big inflated valuations, those start to go down.
And only the firms that actually can show a P&L, only the firms that can show profit, That actually are in the black, those firms will be the ones that reap the benefits.
All the firms that really require a few years run up to profitability, those are the ones that are going to take it directly on the chin.
According to the Wall Street Journal, many investors contend that the worst in markets might soon be over given the extended declines in many market sectors this year and the generally healthy state of the United States economy.
They say buying the dip has fallen out of favor during this year's route, but that negative sentiment is often a precursor to an extended rebound.
But even many optimists in the stock market concede a rebound would have to contend with significant obstacles.
First and foremost, the continued high levels of valuations, which over time tend to be one of the strongest factors for predicting market performance.
Even with the S&P 500 down 22% in 2022, many investors and analysts fear stock market valuations have further to fall because they were so inflated in the first place.
People just throwing money at speculative companies.
Well, all of this, again, is really, really bad for Joe Biden.
And this means that Joe Biden, what's he going to do?
He's not going to change his policy priorities, as we'll discuss in a moment.
He's just going to keep doubling down on stupid.
And this means he is left with the unenviable task of trying to convince people through his sheer force of charisma that actually you're wrong about the economy and things are going great.
This is the idea that Joe Biden is going to push.
And he's going to do it in some of the safest places he can imagine.
Like, for example, he did an AFL-CIO rally yesterday.
Now, let's be clear about this.
Unionization, which puts a damper on the supply side, creates inflation.
Unionization raises wages artificially, which is going to raise prices.
It plays directly into the wage-price spiral that inflation stems from.
When you restrict supply, which is what unions are designed to do, because after all, what they are stumping for is fewer working hours, or more cush positions, or better benefits.
When you restrain the supply side, what you end up doing is restraining the amount of supply in a market.
Less supply, continued demand, means inflation.
So why is Joe Biden visiting the AFL-CIO?
Because in the end, he doesn't really care about the results of his own policy.
He cares about pandering to his own political base.
Which is the reason, by the way, why this administration spent a year saying that maybe kids should still have to wear masks in schools.
Maybe we should still lock down schools.
That was due to another union, the teachers' unions.
This administration, as most democratic administrations are, is deeply in hock to the labor unions, which represent fewer and fewer Americans.
The private sector is largely non-unionized, specifically for the reason that unions tend to kill companies.
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Well, so Joe Biden decided he was going to go over to the AFL-CIO and he was going to act like a crazy person.
And somehow this was going to cudgel Americans into believing that he could fix everything.
So he started whispering and then he started screaming as per his usual arrangement.
The gentleman from Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson, is back at it again, trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for pre-existing conditions.
A hundred million people have pre-existing conditions.
The only reason the insurance company has to cover it is because of that law, and they're never going to stop going after it.
Hesitant applause.
Is he yelling at us?
It's a plane of Senator Scott trying to walk back, but it's clear the last thing they want to see is workers with power in this country.
It's clear they're the last thing I want to see in this country.
But let me tell you, that old Joey.
Okay, I'm not convinced.
I think most people are still looking at the inflation statistics, Joe.
Okay, and again, he has to double down on bad policy, because what's he gonna do?
He does not have the, I'm shocked to say this, he does not actually have the backbone of Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton campaigned as a moderate in 1992.
Then he came in and he governed exactly as Joe Biden is doing.
He tried to push Hillarycare, he tried to ratchet up taxes, and in 1994, he got his butt kicked all the way around the block, and then he came back after the 1994 elections, And he proceeded to cut the capital gains tax.
He proceeded to do welfare reform with Newt Gingrich.
He proceeded to moderate his spending plans.
Hillary care went by the wayside.
Joe Biden is not doing any of that.
Joe Biden is so fully convinced of his own moral rectitude that he just continues to stomp his foot on the accelerator, even though this car is already off the cliff.
And there ain't no parachute.
I mean, this is Thelma and Louise style governance here.
So Joe Biden, he starts talking about unions.
Again, this is all political pandering.
He says, unions have never let the country down, except for the entire 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when the American auto industry became a secondary industry, thanks to the victory of Japanese auto industry and foreign auto industry.
I mean, the unions basically destroyed one of the most powerful industries that America has ever had, the American auto industry, requiring multiple bailouts because of it.
But Joe Biden tells you the unions, they are the backbone of America, the unions.
Unions are going to play a critical role in that future.
America's always counted on union workers.
Give us half a chance.
You have never, ever, ever, ever let the country down.
We're counting on you again to build this country for all of us.
Really, never, ever, ever let the country down the unions?
Strange, strange, because I think that that's not true.
And really, what does this come down to?
It comes down to, will you go out there and fight for old Joey?
Go out there, win one for the Gipper, the Gipper Amity.
So he says the AFL-CIO has to get out there and knock on doors.
Again, one of the most corrupt bargains in all of American politics is the fact that unions, particularly public sector unions, unions that work with the government, essentially Negotiate contracts with the people that they get elected to the positions to negotiate contracts with them.
It's super corrupt.
Here's Joe Biden saying, we need the unions.
Help old Joey out, man.
Old Joey needs a hand.
Help build an economy that works for working people.
And I promise you, I'm going to keep fighting for you.
Are you prepared to fight with me?
Well, let's build it together.
Let's continue to give working families a fighting chance.
Face our challenges head on.
And let's keep building a better America, because we can do it!
No, you can't.
And actually, you are failing dramatically to do it.
My favorite part of this particular speech is where Joe Biden said that there are a lot of complaints about his spending.
He says, right, but I spend the money to change people's living, their lives, their lambadeezyboosh.
And yeah, you made them poorer.
That was not great, Bob.
Here we go.
Republicans like to portray me as some kind of big spender.
We have spent a lot of money.
Let's compare the facts.
Under my predecessor, the deficit exploded.
By the end of the fiscal year, we will have cut the federal deficit by another $1.6 trillion in one year.
One year.
So when they come to you and talk about big spenders, let them know.
Almost $2 trillion.
And deficit reduction.
I don't want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending.
We're changing people's lives!
I don't want to hear about how we spend too much money!
I changed your life by making you poorer!
Very convincing stuff.
And then finally, Joe Biden threatens new taxes because that's exactly what Americans need.
Their wages are worth less.
Companies are having a tough time finding people to invest in them.
It's harder than ever to take out a line of credit.
And so new taxes are probably the solution.
Here we go.
Anybody out there think the tax system is fair, raise your hand.
Look, under my plan, I made this commitment in the beginning and nothing's changed.
No one making less than $400,000 a year will pay a single solitary penny more in federal taxes.
Nobody.
But we'll no longer have this situation.
Where 55 of the largest Fortune 500 companies made 40 billion dollars last each year, last two years, and paid zero.
Zero.
Oh my gosh, so we're in an inflationary spiral and he's talking about higher union costs, and he's talking about higher taxes, and he's talking about a bunch of policies that are likely to make inflation worse!
Don't talk to me about big spending!
I like spending money!
After all, what is it for?
It's in your wallet!
What are you gonna do with it?
Set it on fire?
I'm going to raise taxes, and that's going to lower inflation by restricting supply, which is going to increase inflation, which will decrease inflation by increasing it.
Why is he having a tough time, guys?
Why is he at 35% in the approval ratings?
I can't imagine.
It's all a mystery.
It's all just a giant mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Who knows?
Who can figure it out?
The good news is he has his night nurse squad to try and clean this thing up.
He's got Brian Deese, who is one of his chief economic advisors.
I love that they just keep saying this word over and over and over.
They keep saying the economy is in a transition.
To what?
To what?
I mean, in other contexts, I guess that makes sense.
That you are lopping off body parts from the economy because it's in transition.
But it seems like that's not great.
Most Americans are not enjoying the process.
Here's Brian Deese.
We are in a transition.
We are moving out of what has been the strongest economic recovery in modern American history to what can be a more stable period of growth where we don't have to sacrifice all of those economic gains.
And the key, I think, here is that we face real challenges and prices being first among them, but we also have real economic strengths.
Mm.
Mm.
But do they really have any answers?
So I think the most indicative clip of the last couple of days is Corinne Jean-Pierre, who's the new White House press secretary, again, wildly incompetent at her job.
And when you say that, when you wonder why I say she's incompetent at her job, I offer this as exhibit A to the court of why Corinne Jean-Pierre is really bad at her job.
She's asked about whether there is anything new on the baby formula shortage that has now continued for months and is depriving parents of the formula they need to feed their small children.
And here was her answer.
What is the latest update the White House has received on the current info formula situation across the country?
Yeah, let me see if I have anything new for you on that.
I think it's been a couple of days since we have been asked that question.
Okay.
I don't have anything new.
I know we made some announcements last week.
I just don't have them in front of me.
But if you want to come back and we'll talk through the things that we... Guys, that was like 20 seconds of her just flipping through a binder.
20 seconds of her flipping through a binder to come up with, yeah, got nothing new.
That would sum it up, would it not?
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Meanwhile, Americans are looking at the price of oil and they're thinking, man, this is sure effed beyond all recognition.
The average price of gas in the United States is now over $5 a gallon.
And remember that time that what we were actually doing, it was necessary for us to take the hit, right?
This is the case.
The case that Joe Biden was making is that it was necessary for us to take the hit when it came to oil and gas, because after all, we were stopping Russia from invading Ukraine.
And this is going to deprive Russia of the money that it needed in order to maintain the invasion of Ukraine.
So first of all, the invasion of Ukraine, It's now turning in the Russians' favor.
The Russians have deployed heavy artillery.
The Ukrainians do not have the material necessary to respond properly.
And so likely the Russians are just going to continue to keep this up, particularly since it now appears pretty obvious that Vladimir Putin is in the throes of some deep, serious illness.
So he appears to be nearing the end of his life, which means that he really has nothing to lose.
But how about that oil revenue?
We were told that this was going to sink the Russian economy.
New York Times today, Russia's oil revenue soars despite sanctions, study finds.
Oh, that Didn't work.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered global condemnation and tough sanctions aimed at densing Moscow's war chest, yet Russia's revenues from fossil fuels, by far its biggest export, soared to records in the first 100 days of its war on Ukraine, driven by a windfall from oil sales amid surging prices, a new analysis shows.
Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros in revenue from exports of oil, gas, and coal in the first 100 days of the country's invasion of Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organization based in Helsinki, Finland.
About two-thirds of those earnings, the equivalent of about $97 billion, came from oil, most of the remainder from natural gas.
The current rate of revenue is unprecedented because prices are unprecedented and export volumes are close to the highest on record, says Laura Milvirta, an analyst who led the Center's research.
Maybe that's because the entire West, led by people like Joe Biden, decided to forswear oil and gas and didn't develop any new sources of this.
I mean, let's be clear about this.
Joe Biden said this is what he was going to do.
I mean, when someone says they're going to do it, and then they do it, and then it happens, and then they say it's not their fault, I don't believe them.
Joe Biden during the campaign said he was going to end fossil fuels.
This is a thing that he said repeatedly.
He said he's going to stop giving out leases.
He said he's going to shorten up the oil and gas development.
And here is Joe Biden saying this during the 2020 campaign.
But kiddo, I want you to just take a look, OK?
You don't have to agree, but I want you to look in my eyes.
I guarantee you, I guarantee you.
We're going to end fossil fuel and I am not going to cooperate.
But now Joe Biden is going to pretend that this is all the oil companies.
It's the evil and the greed of the oil companies.
It's just so very terrible.
And so he has now sent a letter to the oil companies saying, why don't you guys give me more oil?
Why don't you give me more oil?
So here's Joe's letter, quote, dear executive, they released this from the White House.
They didn't even insert the name of the executive.
It's like a form letter that they sent out to all the oil executives.
I'm writing to you about the high prices our fellow Americans are paying at the pump and how we can all play a part in addressing them.
Since the beginning of this year, gasoline prices have increased by more than $1.70 per gallon.
Vladimir Putin's war of aggression and bipartisan and global efforts counter it has disrupted the global supply of oil and driven up the global price.
But the sharp rise in gasoline prices is not driven only by rising oil prices, but by an unprecedented disconnect between the price of oil and the price of gas.
The last time the price of crude oil was about $120 per barrel in March, The price of gas at the pump was $4.25 per gallon.
Today, gas prices are 75% higher, and diesel prices are 90% higher.
That difference of more than 15% at the pump is the result of the historically high profit margins for refining oil into gasoline, diesel, and other refined products.
Since the beginning of the year, refiners' margins for refining gasoline and diesel have tripled, and they are currently at their highest levels ever recorded.
Maybe that's because there is increased demand and there is still short supply, and so that puts a lot of pressure on the limited number of refineries that are actually capable of refining The oil into gas.
To be sure, the shortage of refining capacity is a global challenge and a global concern, says Joe Biden.
Around 3 million barrels a day of global refining capacity have gone offline since the onset of the pandemic, inhibiting our ability to ramp up supply of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
I'm working with allies and partners in countries around the world to encourage global refinery capacity to come back online.
But in the United States alone, oil refiners significantly reduced their capacity during the pandemic.
Yeah, because there was no demand because you told everyone to stay home.
In the year before I took office, refineries in the United States reduced their capacity by more than 800,000 barrels a day.
So it's Trump's fault.
It's Putin's fault.
It's definitely not my fault, says Joe Biden.
It's your fault, actually.
Your companies and others have an opportunity to take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product you are producing and supplying to the U.S.
market.
With prices for your product where they are today, you have ample market incentive to take these actions.
And I encourage, I recognize that some of you have already begun to do so.
I also encourage you to continue maintaining and expanding fuel supply safely.
Um, so I have a question.
If the market is already incentivizing this and people are already doing it, what are you writing about?
And the answer is, he's just going to say that he's going to do stuff and then he's not going to do stuff.
He is announcing that he's releasing more oil and gas from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which, again, is not going to lower the gas prices in any significant way, and it will also deplete the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is supposed to be accessed in times of war, like in times of actual severe crisis shortage, not because you and your green friends refuse to greenlight the process whereby new refineries can come online and where new oil and natural gas can be produced.
So Joe Biden says that he is prepared to use all reasonable and appropriate federal government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term and to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied.
The lack of refining capacity?
And the resulting unprecedented refinery profit margins are blunting the impact of the historic actions my administration has taken.
You're mean!
You're so mean!
Why are you blunting my historic actions?
Okay, so here is the problem with all of this.
Literally the day before Joe Biden sent this ridiculous letter to the heads of the oil and gas industry, the American Petroleum Institute sent a letter to Joe Biden asking for a bunch of specific regulatory measures that could actually be removed to ensure more flow of oil and natural gas.
They say, quote, As the world witnesses the atrocities of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, American leadership has been critical in forming a unified response with our international allies.
The U.S.
oil and natural gas industry supports your administration's actions in addressing Russia's actions and is committed to assisting your efforts in maintaining global stability, security and peace.
But several factors have led to a significant and sustained supply and demand imbalance in global oil markets.
Demand for energy, specifically crude, has surged as global economies have rebounded from the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In part, supplies have not kept pace due to global underinvestment in recent years, driven by geopolitical and market forces, public policies, and investor sentiment.
In other words, there wasn't enough investment in new oil and gas leases.
Why?
Because people like you stopped those leases from happening.
So they say, the United States ought to take a bunch of measures, including lifting restrictions on development on federal lands and waters, designating critical energy infrastructure projects, fixing the National Environmental Policy Act process by establishing agency uniformity in reviews and limiting reviews to two years, accelerating LNG exports and approve pending LNG applications.
Unlocking investment and access to capital.
The SEC should reconsider its overly burdensome and ineffective climate disclosure proposal.
Your administration should ensure open capital markets where access is based upon individual company merit, free from the environmental social governance standards that the S&P 500 and the SEC try to put on people.
Dismantle the supply chain bottlenecks rescind steel tariffs.
So basically, the API just sent a letter the day before Biden did this.
They sent a letter saying, here are the things you could do to lower the gas prices.
And Joe Biden was like, I'm not going to do any of these and it's your fault.
Because it's all just ridiculous.
It's all lies.
And Joe Biden is still wedded to his vision of the universe, even if that vision of the universe is at complete odds with the reality that most Americans are living.
I mean, literally yesterday, Joe Biden was out there still saying that when he thinks about global warming, he thinks about jobs.
What he means by this is more green investment.
That's not what we're looking for right now.
What we are looking for is not more green investment.
It's how do we actually produce more oil so people can get to work?
Here was Joe Biden yesterday.
When I think global warming, I think jobs.
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Good-paying union jobs.
Jobs you can raise a family on.
Jobs you can't be outsourced.
Look, the infrastructure law is about more than rebuilding our infrastructure.
It's about rebuilding the middle class.
And that's why we made sure that the infrastructure law Included significant labor protections.
I mean, this this moron is sending out John Kerry, his climate envoy, to still say, to still say we don't need more oil and natural gas.
Again, this was yesterday.
So while Joe Biden is writing mean letters to the oil industry executives, calling on them to put their greed aside, he's got John Kerr taking his private jet across the sea to discuss why no one needs oil and natural gas.
Energy security worry is driving a lot of the thoughts now about oh, we need more drilling of gas We need more drilling of this. We need to go back to coal.
No, we don't we absolutely don't and we have to prevent a false narrative from entering into this or again Pun intended we are cook John Kerry.
These people, why, again, why wouldn't Americans blame them for a bad economy?
I mean, it's not as though they just said that they were going to destroy the oil industry, and then they destroyed the oil industry, and then oil is really expensive.
It's not as though they said that they were going to spend and spend and spend, and then inflation cropped up, and now they say they're going to spend some more.
It's none of that.
It must just be that people don't understand them.
Or maybe the problem is, guys, we all understand what you're trying to do.
We all understand what you're trying to do.
Your policies are garbaggio.
They are terrible.
They're a dumpster fire.
I mean, in the middle of all of this, in the middle of an economic downturn, you have Senator Alex Padilla from California out there saying that we ought to be giving free college tuition to illegal immigrants.
Like, you guys think that this is winning policy?
Seriously?
We shouldn't have one situation keep us from doing right by the millions of immigrants, both documented and especially undocumented, that deserve better.
That it's in our national interest.
Undocumented students are generally barred by federal law from accessing in-state tuition and financial aid, but some states, and I'll give credit to Texas for having been the first, followed soon after by my home state of California, passed laws to make in-state tuition and financial aid available to undocumented students.
Well, Democrats are out of touch with America, but you should not be out of touch with your own portfolios.
So right now, the markets are just a mess, and it's unclear where everything is going.
Now, I am a believer in crypto, which is why I own some of the biggest coins, right?
I own some Ethereum, I own some Bitcoin, and I'm a believer that there is a dip going on right now, which actually might not be a horrible time to start dipping your toe into the markets.
I mean, when the price is low, it's a better time than doing it when the price is really, really high, like it was like four months ago.
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Alrighty, last night, folks, was the premiere of our summer blockbuster, Terror on the Prairie.
Long awaited.
Now it is available to you, but only if you are a member.
Let's rewind.
It was 18 months ago when Disney cancelled Gina Carano and The Daily Wire swiftly took action.
I called up Gina and we said, let's do a movie.
And she said, let's do it.
Well, that's Terror on the Prairie.
You can watch it right now.
The film is just a blockbuster Western.
It's just, it's fantastic.
Gina kicks some serious butt.
The Daily Wire's mission is to bring you fearless films that challenge the viewer with no agenda except to make great movies.
I'm pumped for people to see the film.
It's a good old-fashioned Western.
You are going to love it.
Go to dailywire.com slash Gina to become a member and watch the film.
That's dailywire.com slash Gina right now.
Also, our members, we have all sorts of great privileges for our members, which is why you should become a subscriber right now at dailywire.com slash Gina.
One of those great privileges is you get to hang out with me on my third Thursday book club.
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club, you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So the basic idea here, of course, is that the agenda for the Democratic Party is totally at odds with what most Americans are thinking about, right?
You got Senator Alex Padilla saying free college tuition for illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security, this is an amazing story.
They say that they are now set to discipline multiple horseback border patrol agents involved in the infamous non-whipping incident of Haitian migrants at the US-Mexico border back in September.
You remember this controversy?
It was a fake controversy.
There was a photographer.
He took a picture of a border patrol agent who was holding the reins of his horse and was holding them to the side of the horse to direct the horse.
And they said, they lied.
They said that he was trying to whip the migrants from Haiti.
And there was a full investigation.
It turns out none of that happened.
They're going to punish the border patrol agents anyway.
That's what they're doing.
And then they wonder why it is that most Americans think they're soft on border policy.
Maybe it's because you don't care about stopping illegal immigration.
In fact, you're relieving all of the regulations that allow us to stop illegal immigration, but you're punishing border patrol agents for literally doing nothing.
According to Fox News, a federal source said, an announcement on the matter is expected within the coming days.
The source said DHS will be putting forth proposals to discipline the agents who will have a chance to respond to the charges.
The charges are administrative violations.
They don't amount to criminal conduct of which the agents were previously cleared.
So they can't actually explain what these people did wrong, but they're going to punish them anyway.
Because, you know, it would be a bad headline to admit that they were wrong.
Meanwhile, remember, the Democrats are trying to misdirect from all of their bad policy by talking about things like gun control.
The person who led the way on all of this, of course, is Beto O'Rourke, right?
Beto, who has switched his position several times on gun control.
He went from, I'm not here, dude, brah, to take your AR-15 to, Yeah, dammit, I'm going to take your AR-15, too.
I'm not going to take your AR-15.
I'm running for governor of Texas.
You know, you're going to keep it, too.
Yeah, I want to take it, and I'm going to come in your house and take it.
He just keeps going back and forth.
It's amazing to watch.
Well, it turns out that him running on gun control in Texas was a very stupid idea, according to the latest polls.
He is down by 20 points to Greg Abbott.
By the way, the Democrats are still talking about him running for president again, this guy.
He lost to Ted Cruz.
He's about to get his ass kicked by Greg Abbott.
He had the entire national media descending on Uvalde, Texas, and then he was grandstanding by going to an actual event with parents to take the microphone.
And he's still losing by 20 points.
A survey conducted by Blueprint Polling released Monday shows Abbott with a 19-point advantage over his Democratic rival among likely voters.
The survey asked, in the race for governor, the two candidates are Abbott and O'Rourke.
If the election were held today, which candidate would you support?
48.5% said Abbott, 7% said they were leaning toward voting for the governor.
Only 32.9% said they would definitely vote for O'Rourke.
Another 4.3% said they are leaning toward voting for the Democrats.
7% said they are unsure.
So, yeah, it turns out that you attempting to ban guns in the state of Texas is not going to go particularly well.
And as we mentioned earlier, we have now the second largest majority Hispanic district in America going for a Republican.
All of this bodes very ill for the Democrats.
And here's the problem.
This means that they're wed to what they've got.
They're wed to what they've got, you know, in Joe Biden, mainly because if Joe Biden were to go the way of the dodo bird, if Joe Biden were to leave office for any reason or not run again, or God forbid something were to happen to him health-wise, if that were to happen, then there would be such a bloodbath inside the Democratic Party.
It would be incredible because no one is going to hand this thing to Kamala.
No one is sitting there going, oh, what a godsend Kamala Harris is.
Oh, she's so inspiring.
She's a disaster area of a politician.
So they took all the spare parts from all the other politicians and Dr. Frankenstein put her together.
And then she's going around going, oh, and then, oh, she's amazing.
You know, she's a black woman.
So I mean, clearly she's incredible at this.
No one in the Democratic Party is going to concede the nomination to her, including particularly Bernie Sanders.
There's been a lot of talk about Bernie running again.
Well, Bernie came out yesterday and he said that if Joe Biden runs again, he is not going to run himself, which means Joe Biden has to run again.
Right?
I mean, Democrats don't have a choice.
Manu Raju of NBC News, he said, just asked Senator Bernie Sanders if he would challenge President Joe Biden in a 2024 primary and would back him if he runs.
I think it's a little too early.
I think Biden will probably run again.
And if he runs again, I will support him, he told me.
If he runs again, I'll support him.
So that is the guarantee they have to have Biden run.
They have no choice because otherwise you have Kamala Harris versus Bernie.
Bernie's going to take 30% of the Democratic primary base.
You're going to get the same thing that you had in 2020, only a lot bloodier because no one likes Kamala Harris.
And if you think Pete Buttigieg is staying out of that race, you're crazy.
You're just going to get a repeat of 2020 with a bad economy and with a bunch of bad radical policy.
So Democrats have to, they got to stick with what they, they got to dance with the one who brung them.
Even if that person is no longer ambulatory, And so this is why you're seeing more and more Democrats coming out of the woodwork to proclaim Joe Biden a genius, even though the man has not too active brain cells to rub together at this point.
So Sheila Jackson, the representative from Texas, she came out and she said, well, you know, the inflation problem is unavoidable.
The truth is Joe Biden is kind of a genius.
That's really what's happening here.
Food prices and other commodities that are needed by Americans are driven by transportation costs, are driven by fuel costs.
And that's where we are.
This would have happened if any other president would have been in place.
We went through a horrific pandemic.
The president was a genius in putting forth the American Rescue Plan that saved people from absolute despair and disgrace, if you will.
When I say disgrace, thrown out on the streets, no food for their children.
Here we are in a situation where inflation is unacceptable.
We realize that.
We are working real hard to deal with it.
This is, um, oh, oh, he's a genius.
That's what's going on here.
He's just, just genius, genius.
That's what's, that's what's happening here.
Or alternatively, they are stuck with him.
They know they're stuck with him and there's nothing they can do about it.
Because again, a bloodbath breaks out if Joe Biden is gone.
Led by the likes of Sonny Hostin, who on The View yesterday laid out the Democratic case against Ron DeSantis in Florida, which apparently is just calling him Death Santis a lot, calling him a fascist, and then gushing over the good looks of, of androgynous Ken Doll Gavin Newsom.
If you can name me a Republican who has a shot.
Yeah.
That's what I'm more interested in.
I hope it's not Death Santas over in Florida because I think he's a fascist.
What do you call him, Death Santas?
Death Santas.
I think he handled COVID miserably.
I think he's a fascist and a bigot.
Those are his good points.
Exactly.
But I do think there are plenty of, you know, Democrats that have tons of verve and energy.
I mean, I like Gavin Newsom because he's really pretty to look at and I think he does a great job in California.
Oh, well, that's a solid case there for Gavin Newsom.
By doing a great job in California, you mean he drove pretty much every business out of the state, including mine.
But, you know, these are the geniuses in the Democratic Party, so they have to stick with Biden.
They just have to.
And the only way that they think they can stick with Biden is to do something that really underlines how politically cynical they are.
So Democrats keep suggesting over and over that the great danger to the Republic is the quote-unquote, ultra-MAGA Republican.
That's Joe Biden's line.
Ultra-super-duper-pooper-scooper-mega.
The republic is going to die because of these terrible people.
Well, if you really believe that, wouldn't you try to stop them in the primaries?
That's not what Democrats are doing.
They're trying to boost them in the primaries.
Because they believe the only people they can win against are the ultra-mega.
So, according to Axios.com, Democratic groups are buying ads touting some of the most extreme pro-Trump candidates in Republican primaries around the country, meddling in GOP contests to set up more favorable matchups in November.
According to Axios, the risky gambit assumes general election voters will reject candidates who embrace conspiracy theories or lies about the 2020 election, but it could dramatically backfire by vaulting fringe Republicans into national office.
Ahead of last week's primaries, the Nancy Pelosi-affiliated House Majority PAC funded a 30-second TV ad promoting self-declared Trump conservative Chris Mathis against moderate Republican Representative David Valadao in California's 22nd District.
House Majority PAC Communications Director C.J.
Warnke told Axios the group is confident Democrat Rudy Salas will flip this district blue no matter who MAGA Republicans nominate.
But they're putting out explicit ads directed at the people who they supposedly fear the most.
The people who can never be put in charge of America's government.
So simultaneously they're holding these January 6th hearings declaring that Republicans are the most dangerous people in the history of the Republic.
And then they're picking specifically the people they say are most dangerous and trying to boost them in primaries because they think they're more beatable.
That should make you suspect something about what they actually feel about politics, but not what they are suggesting.
Bottom line is this.
Democrats are not avoiding the clocking that's to come.
There's no way for them to avoid it.
So they better batten down the hatches, because unless they make a Bill Clinton-style triangulation move, what's about to hit them in 2022 is going to be a tsunami.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with additional content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Miller Show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Biden's fully vaccinated Secretary of Health and Human Services contracts COVID for the second time in 25 days.
Joe Biden blames Republicans for inflation and New York's highest court rules that elephants are not people.
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