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July 14, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:07
Joe Biden’s Economy Is In Flames | Ep. 1534
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Inflation gets even hotter as the White House struggles for a response, Joe Biden heads to the Middle East, and abortion hearings in Congress continue to reveal just who has the moral high ground.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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We'll get to all the crap economic news in just one moment, which reminds me, you probably should buy some gold.
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I didn't fully understand.
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Well, unexpectedly, so unexpectedly, the inflation rate has hit another 40-year high, shattering every record.
That's what Joe Biden is here to do.
He's here to make history by shattering every bad record there is to shatter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer inflation accelerated to 9.1% in June, a pace not seen in more than four decades.
Adding pressure on the Federal Reserve to act more aggressively to slow rapid price increases throughout the economy, the Consumer Price Index advance for the 12 months ending in June was the fastest pace since November 1981, according to the Labor Department.
A big jump in gasoline prices, up 11.2% from the previous month, nearly 60% from a year earlier, drove much of the increase.
Shelter and food prices were also major contributors, but there are no areas of the American economy that are not inflating.
At this point, the June inflation reading exceeded May's 8.6% rate, which, by the way, gave the lie to the idea that we had hit an inflection point on inflation last month.
There was a lot of talk that we had already hit peak inflation.
It turns out that was not true.
The June inflation, again, was higher than May.
That prompted investors and analysts to debate whether the Fed would consider a 1 percentage point rate increase rather than a 0.75 point rise later this month.
The truth is, they probably need to wallop everybody with like a 1.5% increase.
All of these incremental increases, they ain't going to do it.
I was listening to a podcast the other day with Mohamed El-Erian of Allianz.
He's been a guest on this program.
And Mohamed El-Erian was saying correctly, That the big problem here is that the Fed had the opportunity to hit the brake hard enough to actually stop the inflation, but they risk tipping over into a recession.
And instead they decided to sort of tap, tap, tap, tap the brakes.
And the problem is the car has not slowed down nearly enough.
And so now they're going to have to slam the brakes.
They're not going to have to hit the brakes firmly.
They have to slam the brakes.
And the problem is when you slam the brakes, there's a very good shot that the passenger ejects right through the windshield because ain't nobody wearing a seatbelt around here.
Slowing demand is the key, is key to the Fed's goal of restoring price stability In an economy that is still struggling with supply issues, according to the Wall Street Journal, raising interest rates elevates the risk of a recession.
Core prices, excluding volatile food and energy, increased by 5.9% in June from a year earlier.
That is slightly less than May's 6.0% gain, according to the Labor Department.
On a month-to-month basis, core prices rose 0.7% in June.
That's a little bit more than they did in May.
Stocks declined on Wednesday after wavering for much of the day, with the S&P 500 index falling by 0.5%.
Bond yields jumped following the inflation report.
Yields on longer-term Treasuries quickly gave up those gains.
Nobody knows where to put their money at this point, considering there are no safe havens.
Retailers' ability to shut unwanted inventory could test whether pricing is returning to pre-pandemic patterns.
Some retailers like Target have already said they are planning big discounts in order to get rid of all of their unwanted inventory.
A lot of others with robust warehouse capacity like Walmart are likely to hold on to their excess inventory, according to analysts.
Discounts haven't shown up prominently in inflation figures so far.
Prices for apparel, home goods, both of those were on the rise.
And again, all of this is the result of terrible economic policy from the Biden administration.
Yes, there have been supply chain shocks.
Yes, COVID created those supply chain shocks.
Sure, war in Ukraine isn't helping things.
But the simple fact of the matter is that the inflation rate in the United States is not, as Joe Biden likes to lie, the lowest in the Western world.
In fact, it is one of the highest in the Western world.
And that is because Joe Biden's proposal, indeed his entire economic strategy, was rooted in fire hosing money at people.
Because this is part of Democrats' core ideological belief, which is that all inequity in the system, all evils in the system, can be fixed by helicopter cash.
If you just drop money on people, this will magically fix all of the problems, it will rectify all of the inequalities that plague the evil systemic American society.
Well, there's only one problem with that, which is that what you do when you helicopter cash is you inflate things.
And this is axiomatic.
And yet, the axioms were supposedly never going to apply again.
And the evidence for that was that in 2008, 2009, during the Great Recession, that there was a rather large increase in spending in the United States and inflation didn't follow.
But that's because demand was already leveled off.
Here, you had demand that was super hot because we had heated up the amount of money in the economy, and then you had supply chains, and then you decided to pour more money on top of all of that.
Well, I think it's worthwhile remembering here that all of these supposed experts in the Biden administration were telling us, not all that long ago, that everything was going to be fine.
You'll remember that it was transitory inflation according to the Federal Reserve until a few months ago.
And you'll remember that back in December, Joe Biden said that inflation had already hit its peak, that we're already on the way down.
This is in December.
I note that the calendar, according to my calendar right here, it says that it is now July.
Here is Joe Biden circa December.
I think it's the peak of the crisis.
Do you think this is the peak of those prices or is it Americans first when it comes to the prices of the commodity?
I think it's the peak of the prices and I think you'll see it change sooner, quicker, more rapidly than it will take, than most people think.
Every other aspect of the economy is racing ahead.
It's doing incredibly well.
We've never had this kind of growth in 60 years.
That was in December.
So yeah, that was just wrong.
In June of 2021, Ron Klain, who's trying to tweet his way through this crisis, he just goes on Twitter and he finds some mild piece of good news and then he tweets it out.
So yesterday he was spending all of his day tweeting out news that the gas prices had dipped over the past 30 days to $4.60 a gallon, which is still a whopping price that is penalizing Americans for the great crime of driving to the grocery store.
Ronald Klain, June 16th, 2021, quote, There are going to be transitory impacts of restarting an economy that was shut down.
At a key point in the Fed forecast today, inflation projected down to 2.1% in 2022.
If by 2.1% in 2022, they mean like 9%, then they got that one right, just nailed it.
2.1% in 2022, they mean like 9%?
Then they got that one right, just nailed it.
Ron Klain, right on the money as per our usual arrangement.
Now, this has some serious impacts on average Americans.
We're not just talking about your spending too much money at the grocery store.
We're talking about the fact that all the wage gains that got created over the past several years have now been eaten up by inflation.
According to Fox Business, the average American worker has lost $3,400 in annual income as a result of skyrocketing inflation since Biden took office 18 months ago.
Overall, the CPI surged 9.1% year-over-year in June.
This means a decline in actual income.
That amounts to roughly $3,400 yearly for income decreased for the average worker.
That is $6,800 for each family.
Just in the last 18 months.
That is a massive reduction.
According to E.G.
Antoni, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, quote, there are plenty of families, but that's more than their food budget for the entire year.
I can't emphasize how much this is really crushing consumers.
And it's true, by the way, that you're seeing these bottlenecks in like every area of the American economy.
If you talk to local business people, local business people are suffering.
They cannot find people to work the jobs because they don't have enough money to pay the inflated wages that would get people off their can.
Because there's a real shortage of labor in the market, right?
The unemployment rate is still really, really low.
They are running into supply chain issues at every turn and running out of like basic products.
I was at a restaurant recently, it was a breakfast restaurant.
They literally run out of cream cheese and they were like, we have to wait until next week to get some more cream.
It's like a bagel shop.
So all of this is really crippling American businesses.
And when that happens, you're likely to see a recession.
And that recession is only going to be exacerbated by the moves that the Federal Reserve does have to make in order to tamp down the inflationary spiral that we are currently in.
Now the White House is, of course, taking the world's dumbest tack because this is what they do.
So Corinne Jean-Pierre, the eminently untalented press secretary for the Biden White House, she tweeted out, The anti-inflation reconciliation bill the president is fighting for would lower inflation by empowering Medicare to negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs and save consumers and taxpayers money at the same time.
Congressional Republicans oppose it. Tooth and nail.
So by anti-inflation reconciliation bill, she means the giant trillions dollar large Build Back Better plan.
They're now trying to rebrand it and then throw it back out there as though this is going to fix the economic problem.
It is incredible that when faced with the prospect that they have dug themselves into a massive hole, their solution is to immediately try to find some sort of digger and then just keep digging all the way until they actually hit China.
Like physically hit the core of the earth and just keep going all the way through.
The first rule of holes is to stop digging.
But for this White House, the first rule of holes is, why won't the Republicans come on in here with a shovel and help me dig even deeper?
The fact that they're still pushing a form of Build Back Better is insanity.
It also happens to be politically inept.
And the simple fact is Joe Manchin in West Virginia ain't gonna vote for that.
He's already said he's not gonna vote for that.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden put out a statement of his own.
This is the White House statement and it is so unbelievably toned up because when people are enmeshed in economic suffering, the thing that is not going to help them is when you say to them, you must be crazy, everything's fine.
First of all, it's pretty rare that that solution has ever worked in any sort of political relationship.
I mean, from marriage on up.
When is the last time your spouse was really, really ticked about something?
And you're like, you know what?
Calm down.
Everything's fine.
When was the last time that has worked?
And when you're talking about the American people who are losing thousands of dollars every year thanks to your inflationary policies, Joe Biden sitting there going, everything's roundu!
That is not exactly going to calm the roiled waters here.
Here's President Biden's statement.
I mean, this is so tone deaf, but I mean, he may actually be fully tone deaf at this point, like physically.
He says, quote, while today's headline inflation reading is unacceptably high, it is also out of date.
Energy alone comprised nearly half of the monthly increase in inflation.
Today's data does not reflect the full impact of nearly 30 days of decreases in gas prices that have reduced the price of the pump by about 40 cents since mid-June.
Those savings are providing important breathing room for American families.
Do you feel the breathing room?
Do you feel it?
Americans, do you feel that breathing room?
Thanks to Joe Biden's excellent energy policy.
Other commodities like wheat have fallen sharply since this report, says Joe Biden.
Importantly, today's report shows that what economists call annual core inflation came down for the third month in a row.
And it's the first month since last year where the annual core inflation rate is below 6%.
Wait, who was president last year?
And I noticed that 6% is still really, really high.
The Fed's target for inflation is 2%.
You are now at triple that and you are bragging about this?
Inflation, says Joe Biden, is our most pressing economic challenge.
It is hitting almost every country in the world.
It is little comfort to Americans to know inflation is also high in Europe and higher in many countries than in America.
But it is a reminder that all major economies are battling this COVID-related challenge made worse by Putin's unconscionable aggression.
Tackling inflation is my top priority.
We need to make more progress more quickly and getting price increases under control, says Joe Biden's White House.
Here is what I will do.
First, I will continue to do everything I can to bring down the price of gas.
I will continue my historic release of oil from our strategic petroleum reserve.
By the way, that is the biggest boondoggle pile of nonsense ever.
He's released some millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that has marginally lowered prices.
I mean, super marginally for a very specific period of time.
It does not increase the future supply of oil in the United States.
He says, I will continue working with our European allies to put a price cap on Russian oil, sapping Putin of oil revenue.
How is that what?
So if we sap Putin of his oil revenue, why is he going to continue to sell us the oil as opposed to, say, India or China?
And I will continue to work with the U.S.
oil and gas industry to increase production responsibly.
Already, the U.S.
is producing 12.1 million barrels of oil per day and is on track to break records.
And so now he's going to pretend that he's pro-oil and pro-natural gas, which, of course, is eminently untrue.
So number one is I'm going to bring down the price of gas by doing And then he says, I'm going to continue to insist, as I have with urgency recently, reductions in the price of oil must produce lower gas prices for consumers at the pump.
The price of oil is down only about 20% since mid-June, but the price of gas has so far fallen only half as much.
Well, I mean, that's because there's a lag time between the production of oil and the production of gas.
You have to refine oil into gas, you moron.
So that means that some of that reduction in price is going to take a while to hit the market.
Oil and gas companies must not use this moment as an excuse for profiting by not passing along savings to the public.
Well, maybe they are also saving up for the fact that the minute that this price spike is over, you are going to absolutely crunch them again.
Everybody knows that.
I mean, this is why people started saving up during the pandemic.
When the government firehose money into your pocket, why do you put it in the bank?
Why weren't you spending all of it?
I mean, you were supposed to pass that on in spending.
Well, some of you put it in the bank because you knew that at some point the firehose would stop.
Second, says Joe Biden, I will urge Congress to act this month on legislation to reduce the cost of everyday expenses hitting American families from prescription drugs, utility bills to health insurance premiums to make more in America. So that is spending more money, which creates more inflation.
So solution one, I'm going to yell at the oil companies and also I'm really not going to increase oil production in any serious way.
Second, I'm going to ask people to spend more money in an inflationary cycle to bring down inflation.
You see.
Third, I'll continue to oppose any efforts by Republicans to make things worse by raising taxes on working people or putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years.
Wait, what?
Social?
What?
What is it?
Our entitlement programs, which are mandatory spending under federal law, What exactly are you talking about?
And then he says, finally, I'll continue to give the Federal Reserve the room it needs to help it combat inflation.
Well, I mean, he doesn't really have any ability to do anything otherwise, and that is literally their job, and they are supposed to be an independent agency.
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So all of this is bad policy.
It is likely to result in nothing much.
And what that really means is that Joe Biden just has to count on the Federal Reserve.
Now, the problem is that the Federal Reserve, as we say, is going to have to slam on the brakes at this point.
Paul Volcker, in order to actually stop inflation in the early 1980s, had to jack up the interest rates to like 20%.
Right now, the interest rates in this country are still at 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%.
We're going to need to get, according to Lawrence Summers, who was first on the ball on this stuff, we're going to need to be at like 5% to 6% to even talk about tamping down inflation at this point.
So a 0.75% point increase in the interest rates, 75 basis points, that ain't going to do it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, three Fed officials who spoke Wednesday didn't say whether they would favor a move to actually increase the interest rates by a full percentage point, which it hasn't done in decades at a meeting later this month, but they wouldn't rule it out.
Everything is in play, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostock told reporters in Florida.
We don't have to make that decision today, said Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
Fed officials are set to begin their pre-meeting quiet period on Saturday, leaving little time to shape expectations around their policy plans.
But here's the problem.
The American people have no trust in the Fed.
It's actually cut down on inflation.
Which means that the American people are not going to leave that money sitting in the bank.
They're going to spend that money before it's worth a lot less, which means more inflation.
The way that you enter an inflationary cycle is people have money in the bank.
Instead of holding on to that money because they're afraid of inflation eating up the value of the money in the bank, they take the money and they spend the money.
And then you get inflation, because if you spend too much money, and it's the same number of goods, all the prices go up.
So when people lose ability to trust the Fed, what you end up with is a price-wage spiral.
You end up with increased inflation.
The Federal Reserve has not earned the trust of the American people at any point in here.
They clearly don't know what they're doing.
And so the notion that the Federal Reserve is going to be single-handedly bringing the inflation rate up and thus tamping down, bringing the interest rates up and then tamping down inflation, That seems rather pie in the sky without any sort of pain whatsoever.
And again, I just come back to the fact that the Biden administration is now trying to claim that there's nothing happening that's bad.
That is an amazing thing.
I mean, Joe Biden's statement that everything is hunky-dory, Kevin Bacon in Animal House standing in front of large-scale explosions in the background saying, all is well, everything is fine.
It's pretty amazing.
And it's particularly amazing given the fact, I do love the idea, they're like, well, you know, this is old data.
They're going to pull the same routine when we're in a recession.
So right now we are probably in a recession.
The way that you measure a recession in the United States and in the Western world is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
We already have one.
That was the first quarter.
Quarter two, we don't actually have a final number on yet.
So when people say we're in a recession, people like Joe Biden say, well, we're not technically in a recession because you can't actually know whether we're in a recession until we actually release the stats on Q2.
And then the minute that we find out that there was negative growth in Q2, and we say, okay, so I guess we're in a recession, he said, no, no, no, because now we're past Q2, we're in Q3.
So we're going to play this dumb little time lapse game and try to pretend that people aren't feeling the pinch.
So, I mean, this really calls for bringing out the big guns.
That means time to call out the most articulate person in American public life, of course, Kamala Harris, the predictive text mechanism of a human being.
So here's Kamala Harris, our intersectional, supremely talented vice president of the United States, to explain that it's all in your head.
Before I begin, I will address this month's CPI report.
There is no question that we still have work to do.
But it is important to note that these numbers do not fully reflect the recent drop in gas prices.
Average national gas prices have fallen every day for nearly 30 days.
Since mid-June, prices are down 40 cents a gallon.
Fighting inflation is one of our administration's top economic priorities, which is why we have taken action to lower the cost of living for Americans, millions of Americans.
We are releasing one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices at the pump.
Again, they got nothing.
They got nothing.
If this is the best they can do is Kamala Harris out there saying that she's going to do more, good luck to you.
Greg Ip has a good piece over at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that everybody should be a little bit wary about the suggestion that the Federal Reserve is going to be your friend here.
He says inflation has peaked.
The Fed's tightening has accomplished its mission.
Strong labor market and consumer fundamentals will keep any recession mild.
These are among the storylines providing a tailwind to stocks in recent weeks.
They feed hopes the Federal Reserve has achieved a soft landing, bringing inflation down to 2% without pushing up unemployment or tipping the economy into recession.
A reality check is in order.
A soft landing is certainly possible.
These storylines look more like wishful thinking than a tough-minded appraisal of the Fed's task.
Let's review.
First, they claim the inflation threat has passed.
Though inflation hit a four-decade high of 9.1% in June, market sentiment on inflation has improved markedly.
Since early last month, the Bloomberg Commodity Index has fallen 18% from its 2022 peak.
Since early June, expected inflation over the next five years, based on the pricing of inflation-indexed bonds, has dropped 0.4 percentage points.
So, has the inflation threat passed?
No.
It is certainly better to have bond and commodity markets expecting inflation to go down rather than up, but the Fed has made it clear it wants to see actual inflation go down.
Inflation sentiment alone is not going to cut it.
And right now, the real question is going to be, after they cut down on the inflation by jacking up the interest rates, what is the baseline level of inflation going to be?
It is a big gap between 9% and 2%.
I mean, we are at more than four times what the Fed is shooting for right now.
That's going to mean pain.
Greg Ip also points out, people are saying that the Fed is going to shift its priority to recession from inflation.
But this reflects a pre-2021 mindset, when inflation was usually around 2% and there was no need to force a lower by strangling the economy.
Thus, a recession was always a policy error, the result of tightening too much or easing too little.
When growth weakened or the financial system seized up, the Fed could rush to the rescue by slashing rates, buying bonds or both.
Stocks then rallied.
This became known as the Fed put, named for put options which protect investors against losses.
None of that applies today.
Underlying inflation is far above 2%.
If it takes a recession to get it back down, that's unfortunate, but it is not an error.
In options that speak, the Fed put is deeply out of the money.
Obviously, there are a lot of questions as to how Joe Biden is running the country at this point, and that includes questions about crime.
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The serious underlying problems of the economy continue to mount under Joe Biden.
And again, this is so tied to Joe Biden's actual policy failures.
He's still sending out members of the Democratic Party to talk about green energy in the middle of a gas price spike.
He's got Democratic Representative Jason Crow of Minnesota saying that climate change is still our largest national security threat.
Really?
Is it though?
Bottom line is that the Democratic Party and the House Democratic Caucus is the party of national security in the 21st century.
We are the party that's dedicated to rule of law, to affirming our connection with our allies, to addressing the largest national security threat facing our planet and our country, that is climate change, which is both a threat multiplier and a threat magnifier, and dedicated to doing this in the right way.
Okay, if what they truly believe is that what the United States needs to do is embrace green energy, prepare for more pain at the pump.
Maisie Hirono, the world's dumbest senator, she said the same thing yesterday.
We're in the middle of an inflationary spiral where gas prices are still way higher than they need to be.
And Maisie Hirono's out there like, let's speed up our transition to green energy.
These people are so committed to their utopia.
They don't care how many bodies are in the way.
Congress can and should provide individuals and businesses with long-term incentives to speed up the transition to cheaper, cleaner sources of power, higher energy efficiency, and more affordable transportation options.
Congress should also support clean energy manufacturing, and supply chains right here in the United States.
As we deal with high oil and gas prices now, we need to keep our eye on how we can accelerate the transition to more affordable options while making our country much more energy self-reliant in the long term like Hawaii is doing.
Aren't these fools?
I mean, they're so foolish.
And by the way, if you want to see how well these sorts of policies work out, take a look at Sri Lanka, where the entire government has just fallen, thanks to the fact that they embraced Green New Deal-esque solutions on the environment, and then totally undercut their ability to do things like farm.
Look at the farm riots that are happening up in the Netherlands right now, thanks to the fact that they've decided to essentially outlaw family farming.
There are real-world effects to your dumb garbage policies, and those real-world effects are going to be felt in the polling data.
Joe Biden is getting madder and madder over the fact that he's wildly unpopular.
He was asked about it the other day, and he became his usual sort of grumpy self.
Mr. President, what's your message to Democrats who don't want you to run again?
They want me to run.
Two-thirds say they don't.
Read the polls.
Read the polls, Jack.
You guys are all the same.
That poll showed that 92% of Democrats, if I ran, would vote for me.
A majority of Democrats say they don't want you to run again in 2024.
92% said if I did, they'd vote for me.
Okay, well, I mean, if you can't find 92% of Democrats to say that they wouldn't vote for the Democratic candidate, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about.
The polls say that they don't want Joe Biden to run.
Period.
Read the polls, Giacomo, Giacobluni, Messerschmitti.
Okay, so things are not going well for Joe Biden on the domestic front.
Well, maybe they'll go a little bit better on the foreign policy front.
Now, the way they could go better on the foreign policy front is if he went to the Middle East and just doubled down on what President Trump did.
That was the brightest spot of President Trump's presidency.
He had two major bright spots, President Trump.
One was the appointment of Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and guarded gun rights and decided to hobble the ability of the bureaucratic state to make up its own rules.
That was a major victory by President Trump.
And the other major victory was bringing peace to the Middle East, which is something that so many presidents have attempted a Nobel Prize for and none have achieved, except for the guy that they all hate, President Trump.
Well, early on in his administration, it seemed like Joe Biden was going to try to undercut all of the gains that had been made in the Middle East.
And the good news is that it seems like even Joe Biden, as befuddled as he is, even as misguided as he is on foreign policy, even he has to see the writing on the wall.
The ground has changed in the Middle East.
So Joe Biden went to the Middle East.
There are his usual foibles.
There was a lot of talk about whether he was going to shake hands with people.
The White House had released The suggestion that perhaps he wasn't going to shake hands with people because of COVID.
What that really was is a way to end around the possibility that he'd have to shake the hand of Mohammed bin Salman, who is the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia at this point.
First Biden is going to Israel, then he's going to Saudi Arabia.
Biden, early in his administration, tried to alienate the Saudis.
He tried to rip on the Saudis for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a American green card holder who also happened to be allied with Muslim Brotherhood.
He was a kind of quasi-journalist and he was murdered by the Saudis on Turkish soil.
It was very ugly.
That's also called the Middle East, where nearly every country, with the exception of Israel, engages in massive human rights violations on a regular basis, including the killing of dissidents.
In any case, Joe Biden had sort of alienated the Saudis.
He had made pretty clear that he was going to try to revitalize the Iran deal.
And then it turns out the situation on the ground had just moved too far.
It turns out the Iranians are entrenched in their opposition and hostility to America and to the West.
It turns out that the Saudis actually did Want to normalize relations with the Israelis.
It looked like the winning horse in the Middle East right now is not the Iranians.
Barack Obama ironically, by attempting to cozy up to the Iranians, actually indirectly brought peace to the Middle East by forcing the Saudis into the same camp as the Israelis, which is why you now have Bahrain and UAE and Morocco and all these other countries that have made peace with Israel.
Dan Signore, who's a great commentator on Israel, has a good podcast of his own.
He wrote the book Startup Nation about Israel.
He points out, in Israel's entire 72-year history, there have been two peace agreements with Arab nations, one with Egypt, one with Jordan.
In 2020, there were four in one year.
That was because Barack Obama forced all the Sunni nations to recognize that their common enemy was Shia Iran.
The common enemy was not the Jews.
And there's a lot to gain if a relationship is formed.
So Joe Biden came in and it seemed like he kind of wanted to blow things up.
But it turns out the reality on the ground is just too much.
So Joe Biden had made all these excuses.
He didn't want to shake the hand of Mohammed.
He's going to have to shake Mohammed bin Salman's hand.
And it's going to be real ugly for him among the progressives.
And he could tell them to shut up and just let it go.
We'll see whether he does that or not.
Anyway, he arrives in Israel.
He has a few of his usual gaffes.
So, for example, he gets off the plane.
He's very tired.
He's not with it.
He's kind of shuffling around.
If you watch the tape of him, he's got all of his aides steering him like you would steer your grandmother in a nursing home if the floor had just been waxed.
He's doing that on the tarmac.
Joe Biden gets in front of the microphones and he proceeds to flub on the Holocaust, which is not really a great idea in the state of Israel.
I will once more return to the hollow ground of Yad Vashem to honor six million Jewish lives were stolen in the genocide and continue, which we must do every, every day, continue to bear witness to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust, horror of the Holocaust, honor those we lost so that we never, ever, ever forget that lesson.
Yeah, not, not, not ideal.
Okay.
But I am going to give credit to Biden where it's due.
So he had some good moments here.
He did.
As much as I think that President Biden is the worst president of my lifetime, you have to give credit when the guy does something right.
So he did visit Yad Vashem.
There were a couple of Holocaust survivors who were there at Yad Vashem.
They get up to try to pay homage to Biden and he does the right thing.
He tells them to sit down and then he proceeds to kneel down so he can speak to them face to face.
It's actually a very nice moment.
Here he is, he's telling them to sit down.
And then he sort of bends down to talk to them.
It's a classy moment.
Again, credit where it's due from the President of the United States.
And here's the thing.
Joe Biden is about to run up squarely against his own progressive base, which is the thing that would have made him popular.
Here's this amazing thing.
If Joe Biden had come into office and then he had run against his progressive base, which is what he did with Bernie Sanders to defeat him, he'd be a much more popular, much more successful president today.
And in the Middle East, it looks like he's starting to do this a little bit because the reality on the ground is not in his control.
And he can either jump on the train created by Donald Trump or he can stay off that train and be run over by it.
The situation on the ground is just different.
Right now, there are dozens of flights every day that are traveling between the UAE and Israel and they're using Saudi airspace in order to do so.
Right now, the Saudi regime is like this close to normalizing relations with Israel.
All it takes is a little bit of a shove from the United States and that will happen.
Or a little bit of subsidization from the United States and that will happen.
Joe Biden can either get on board or he can get left behind.
The situation is just beyond his control at this point.
And so all of the progressive wishes and hopes that he would go there and he would side with Iran, that he'd go there and he'd call Israel an apartheid state, for example, which is a lie and an anti-Semitic lie at that.
All of that went immediately by the wayside.
So Joe Biden was on Channel 12, which is the big news channel in Israel.
And here he was saying that anyone who calls Israel an apartheid state, they're just wrong.
It's not true.
There are a few of them.
I think they're wrong.
I think they're making a mistake.
Israel is a democracy.
Israel is our ally.
Israel is a friend.
And I think that I make no apologies.
We've provided for my administration $4 billion plus another billion for Iron Dome.
And we're working on a laser project to be able to replace Iron Dome.
It's overwhelming our interest that Israel be stable.
Again, moderate Joe Biden is better Joe Biden.
Simple fact of the matter.
Joe Biden also said during this interview that he would keep the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorist list.
This is a major bone of contention.
People like Jake Sullivan inside his administration reportedly wanted him to dump that as a demand so they could cut some sort of crap deal with the Iranians.
And Biden said to the Israelis, he's not going to do that.
He's going to make sure that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stays on the terrorist list.
Are you committed to keep the ROGC on the foreign terrorist organization list, even if that means that kills the deal?
Yes.
Yeah, we'll have to see if the White House walks that one back.
But one thing that the White House actually did walk back is Jake Sullivan, who again is a horror show on Middle East policy because he used to work for Barack Obama, who was overtly anti-Israel.
Israel.
Jake Sullivan had attempted to sort of push the narrative that the United States was going to create a Palestinian consulate in East Jerusalem, which would have essentially said that America does not recognize a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
And that didn't happen.
Joe Biden and the team over at the White House walked that one back as well they should, because there is no support inside Israel for any of that.
And for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that the Palestinian Authority is an actual terror organization, and the last time Jerusalem was divided.
The side that was controlled by Jordan was completely not open to people of different religions, while the side controlled by Israel was completely open to people of all religions.
So Joe Biden is actually acting like quite the moderate.
He's going to have to continue to do that because realities on the ground do not favor him.
When he goes to Saudi Arabia, which is really the bigger part of his trip that's coming up, when he goes to Saudi Arabia, he's going to have to actually shake hands with Mohammed bin Salman.
He's going to have to actually negotiate with Mohammed bin Salman.
He needs the oil.
He needs the win.
He needs the peace deal between Israel and the Saudis.
And in fact, it looks like there are going to be incremental moves in that direction.
According to CNN, In the lead up to the trip, U.S.
officials have been working to deepen Israeli-Arab security coordination and broker agreements that will inch Israel and Saudi Arabia closer to normalization.
People familiar with the matter said Saudi Arabia is expected to announce this week that it will allow all commercial flights to and from Israel to use its airspace.
I mean, that's an amazing thing.
That is, that is flights filled with Jews flying over Saudi airspace and allow Israel's Muslim minority to take charter flights directly to Saudi Arabia.
That means for the first time, like actual direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia, Biden will also fly directly to Saudi Arabia from Israel.
He called that a symbol of the budding relations between the two nations.
And again, I know Saudi officials who overtly will say that they wish to normalize relations with Israel.
Now, Biden is trying to slow talk this and he's trying to say normalization between Israel and Saudi will take a long time.
Maybe because he doesn't want to do more in this direction.
It would be too audacious for him.
It would undercut his progressive base.
But the truth is that if Joe Biden actually wanted it to happen, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel this month if Joe Biden actually wanted that to happen.
Here was Joe Biden yesterday.
Well, maybe I can ask you to give you a preview of what to expect on that, exactly on the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Well, that's going to take a long time.
But increasing the relationship in terms of acceptance of each other's presence, the working together on certain things, it all makes sense to me.
No, actually, it's not going to take all that long.
All it takes is a little bit of a push.
And it takes Joe Biden actually standing up to his progressive wing.
And what this trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia demonstrates is that if Joe Biden actually embraces the moderation that was supposedly his program in 2020, he will actually be a much more successful president.
But that requires him to abandon this notion that he has always held very deeply.
That he is going to reflect the center of the Democratic Party.
So when that moves to the left, he's going to reflect them.
There are a few core areas where Joe Biden refuses to go all the way.
And those happen to be the areas where he's more popular.
Joe Biden is more popular than the progressives are when it comes to economic planning and when it comes to the police and crime and when it comes to the Middle East.
It's when Joe Biden tries to cater to the progressives, or when he agrees with the progressives, like pulling out of Afghanistan for no apparent reason, that things really go to hell in a handbasket.
Joe Biden as a moderate would have been a lot more successful.
Joe Biden as a progressive has been a giant failure.
Sadly, he is no longer with us and also has been acting like a progressive and thus has been a failure.
There's one thing in your life that you just can't afford to fail right now, and that of course is your car.
Getting your car parts replaced is a giant pain in the neck with all the supply chain bottlenecks, with the fact that all the big box stores, they rarely have the part anyway, they're ordering it online.
Why not head on over to rockauto.com?
I'm gonna let you in on a bit of a secret here.
When you go to the auto parts store, the guy at the counter, he's just ordering the parts off his computer anyway.
He has the interwebs.
You have the interwebs.
So why are you using the middleman?
Instead, go to rockauto.com from that smartphone in your pocket.
Why would you choose to spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same auto parts at a chain store or new car dealership?
RockAuto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
Head on over to RockAuto.com shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
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Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
Best of all, prices at RockAuto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
Well, I spend up to twice as much for the same exact parts.
Go to rockauto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Shapiro in there, how did you hear about us, Box?
So they know that I sent you.
Well, folks, if you hadn't heard, big news.
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Meanwhile, there are a series of hearings that are going on the Hill with regard to abortion law.
And the left seems to think that since the overruling of Roe versus Wade in Dobbs, that the winds of change are with them.
They seem to think that the American people have sided with them on the question of the morality of abortion, and they are not reading the room correctly.
Most Americans have a sort of wishy-washy, in-the-middle opinion on abortion.
It seems to be what all the polling shows.
Americans want heavy restrictions in the last trimester.
They want some restrictions in the second trimester.
They don't want nearly as many restrictions in the first trimester.
That seems to be what the polling shows.
None of that suggests that women have a right to choose from point of birth all the way backwards.
Nobody actually thinks that.
That is a that is a position held by a vast minority of the American population.
And yet that's precisely the argument Democrats are making.
Democrats, all they have to do is say that there is a tradeoff in development and that you have this would not be an intellectually honest argument, but it would be a politically effective one.
There's a tradeoff in the development of The of the human embryo from an embryo to a fetus.
And as the child grows more developed, it now has more of an interest in life that has countervailing interest against the choice rights of the mother.
And thus, as you grow later in the pregnancy, there should be more restrictions.
But earlier in the pregnancy, when the child is not as developed, then we should be less restrictive.
And that seems to be what what Americans feel, even if it isn't particularly coherent.
But Democrats can't make that argument.
And so instead, what they have decided is that it is a fundamental equality principle that women be able to abort kids at whim all the way up until birth.
And if you deny this, this is because you are denying women.
And as they now call them, pregnant people or people capable of being pregnant.
And so you've seen Democratic witness after Democratic witness get up there in front of Congress and just make fools of themselves.
Sound demonic in the way that they describe pregnancy and the way that they describe the treatment of pre-born children.
So for example, one abortion witness was named Sarah Lopez.
She was testifying in front of the Senate hearing on abortion and women's health care.
And she described the abortion that she got.
And this is just It sounds like direct from the mouth of Satan.
I mean, that is what this sounds like.
It's unbelievable.
And I'm not a person who invokes Satan a lot, but this sounds satanic.
What these restrictions are intended to do is try and stop people from having abortions, but abortion is healthcare.
My abortion was the best decision I ever made.
It was an act of self-love, and I'm here today to make sure that everybody who currently needs an abortion, who has had an abortion, or will need an abortion, is not alone, no matter what the state tries to force upon us.
The best decision she ever made?
Like, all the decisions in her entire life?
What if she'd made a better decision with regard to not getting pregnant in the first place?
It was the best decision she ever made.
Ever.
Like truly.
The killing of the pre-born baby.
All the decisions.
It wasn't a decision she made with regret.
It wasn't that she had to weigh the balances of the scales of human life against her future hopes.
It wasn't any of that.
It wasn't safe, legal, and rare.
It wasn't a woman in anguish attempting to Deal with the realities and hardships of parenting.
It wasn't any of that.
It was the best decision.
It was an act of self-love.
Now that at least is honest.
It was an act of self-love.
It was an act of other hate, but it was also an act of self-love because it was really about loving yourself at the expense of an actual other human being.
Earlier, producer Bradford was asking me, do these people even hear themselves?
And the answer is they do, but they think that no one else hears them.
Other than, like, they think, in their bubble, they believe they are the greatest people who have ever lived, and therefore, everyone else must hear them that way, because all they've gotten for years is validation by other people who agree with them about this perverse cultish view.
When she talks about abortion there, she sounds horrific.
I mean, name a person who has committed an evil act of death upon another person who didn't believe that it was an act of good for them.
That's typically how it works.
I don't know how people believe that the left has the moral high ground on these issues when they speak like this.
I really don't.
That wasn't the only Democratic witness brought forth.
There was an abortion witness named Dr. Kristen Brandy, and she testified that abortion is liberation.
It is worth celebrating.
Shout your abortion.
For some, abortion is liberation.
There's a lot of good that comes from a people's ability to access abortion, and I want to celebrate that.
Celebrate it.
It's worth celebrating.
There's so much good that comes from it.
This is not the regretful attitude toward abortion that most Americans have, even if they are pro-choice.
This is a perverse view of why you are the center of the universe and everything ought to revolve around you.
And this is a two-year-old view of the universe in which everybody is there to serve you and you have no obligations to anyone else.
And it is worth celebrating.
And this stuff is incoherent.
And if Democrats really want to run on this nationally, they're going to get clocked and they should be clocked.
Meanwhile, the president of the National Women's Law Center I was hoping that you could define what a woman is for us in this committee hearing.
Well, as the president of the National Women's Law Center, you can imagine I say woman a lot in my day job.
literally run a thing called the National Women's Law Center.
So what is a woman?
No answer.
I was hoping that you could define what a woman is for us in this committee hearing.
Well, as the president of the National Women's Law Center, you can imagine I say woman a lot in my day job.
OK, so I'm just asking for the definition.
And so what I'll tell you is I am a woman.
That's how I identify.
But I wonder, however, if in part the reason that you're asking a question is that you're trying to suggest that people who don't identify as women can't define it.
I am simply asking the question and I simply want an answer.
And so I think it's actually really important to be very clear here that there are people who identify as non-binary, I think about 5% of young people.
We're not going to go there.
I was hoping maybe you would...
I was hoping that maybe you would say something that maybe we learned in high school biology that has to do with X and Y chromosomes, which define male and female, but I guess we're not going to get there.
Okay, and of course we're not going to get there, because these witnesses have no relationship with reality.
She says, I say the word women a lot, it has to define it.
And she's like, well, I won't.
Then what do you do for a living?
What is it you would say that you do around here?
Now, in the end, When they're really confronted with these questions, Democrats then have to go to their fallback argument, which is that if you dare question why a woman would have an abortion, it's because you have a low opinion of women.
Women actually do have anguish.
Well, you can't have it both ways.
Either it's worth celebrating and it's an act of self-love, or it's something you ought to be anguished over, in which case there should be restrictions on it.
This is how you end up with the fallback sort of position of Georgia State Representative Renita Shannon.
Here she is trying to explain that if you believe that some women Starting with Ms.
Lopez, I assume you agree with infanticide, the killing of a child, a perfectly healthy child at birth?
of pregnant women, which again is a mutually exclusive argument with the idea you ought to celebrate abortion.
I'm starting with Ms. Lopez.
I assume you agree with infanticide, the killing of a child, a perfectly healthy child at birth?
I don't accept the basis of that question, but I do believe abortion is health care.
I'm talking about do you agree, I know, I get that, but do you agree, I mean, are you in, do you support infanticide, killing a child after he's born?
I do not agree with the basis of that question.
What's the basis?
But I do believe that abortion is healthcare.
Okay, so I'll take that as a yes, you do agree with infanticide.
Ms.
Shannon, do you agree with infanticide?
Well, I think you're using inflammatory language to basically describe a situation that does not happen.
We don't have infanticide happening.
Doctors would not do that, and neither would folks who have carried pregnancies.
Okay, would a healthy child, do you agree, if a healthy child is born, that it's that woman's right to decide if it lives or dies?
What I think is, based on your question, you have a very low opinion of pregnant people.
It's amazing.
I mean, why don't you just say, no, I don't believe that it should be a woman's right to choose.
But you can't say that.
Instead it's, well, to even ask the question means you have a low opinion of pregnant people.
It's all a mess.
It's a complete mess.
Okay, so, we now need to correct the record.
So, there was a story that was going around, and it was called into question by a variety of sources, including the Attorney General of the state of Ohio.
It was the rape of a girl in Ohio, a 10-year-old girl, and she supposedly was referred across state lines to go get an abortion in Indiana.
And there were a lot of questions about this, because there was no record, at the time, of any of this Having happened or having been reported.
Well, it turns out that on deep investigation, the Washington Post, by the way, said there was no evidence that this had happened, but then reported it that it was fact because so many people have said it.
Well, it turns out that the case actually did happen and it is real.
And the person who raped this little girl was arrested, but only on Tuesday.
Only on Tuesday, which seems sort of strange to me, like after all of these reports.
Here's the Columbus Dispatch reporting.
A Columbus man has been charged with impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl who's traveled to Indiana to seek an abortion, led to international attention following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and activation of Ohio's abortion law.
Gershon Fuentes, 27, whose last known address was an apartment on Columbus' northwest side, was arrested Tuesday after police say he confessed to raping the child on at least two occasions.
He's since been charged with rape, a felony of the first degree in Ohio.
Columbus's police were made aware of the girl's pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children's Services that was made by her mother on June 22nd, according to detective Jeffrey Hunn.
He testified Wednesday morning at Fuentes-Zarayman.
On June 30th, the girl underwent a medical abortion in Indianapolis.
So first of all, it looks as though the mother made the police report.
It does not look as though we have any information about the doctor who this girl saw making a police report, which is actually required by law.
Hoon also testified that DNA from the clinic in Indianapolis is being tested against samples from Fuentes as well as the child's siblings to confirm a contribution to the aborted fetus.
Franklin County Municipal Court Judge Cynthia Ebner said the case did not warrant Fuentes, who is believed to be undocumented, to be held without bond.
So this story is likely not to be covered for very much longer, because as it turns out, the rapist in this particular case seems to be an illegal immigrant.
Which means that then we're going to have to get into a broader discussion that the left really doesn't want to have about the damage that illegal immigrants sometimes do when you have no idea what their criminal background is and they are just living willy-nilly in the United States.
There's also a question here.
Ohio law enforcement has said that it's possible that this girl could have gotten an abortion even in the state of Ohio, because there's an exception for the life of the mother, and typically 10-year-old girls are not capable of bringing children to term without endangering their own lives.
That is at least what the law in the state of Ohio says.
Now, when it comes to the question of edge cases like this, I mean moral edge cases, ones that are really, really sympathetic, obviously.
All you can have is sympathy for a girl who was raped.
And the rapist should be castrated or killed, obviously.
When it comes to edge cases like this, the left likes to argue the edge cases because arguing the edge cases allows them not to argue the central case.
Arguing the case of the 10-year-old girl who was raped and now wants an abortion, and apparently she was raped when she was 9, arguing that case does not justify the other 99.99% of abortions which do not involve 10-year-old girls being raped.
And the reality is, of course, that if many Republicans, including Mitt Romney, if many Republicans were to suddenly come out and say, listen, there should be a rape exception for abortion, that would not solve the problem for the left, because the left's answer is that there should be abortion across the board.
Instead, the media like to focus in, Joe Biden likes to focus in on these edge cases because they don't want to argue the main case.
It's the same thing as Alexander Ocasio-Cortez arguing about ectopic pregnancy.
They like to pick edge cases or cases that actually don't fit the fact pattern and then pretend that that is the central case when it comes to abortion in order to try to grant that moral high ground that they were unable to achieve on its own.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, the criminal charges and testimony from the Columbus detective further confirmed the disturbing story.
The Indianapolis Star, again its sister paper of the dispatch, first reported this particular story.
The story went viral.
It appeared in outlets around the globe.
It became a top talking point for abortion rights supporters, including President Joe Biden.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost questioned the validity of the count during an appearance on Fox News this week.
He told Fox News host Jesse Watters his office had not heard a whisper of a report being filed for the 10-year-old victim.
He says we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs, not a whisper anywhere.
Yost doubled down on that in an interview with USA Today Network Ohio Bureau on Tuesday, saying the more time passed before confirmation made it more likely that this was a fabrication.
During Wednesday's hearing, the Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Dan Meyer requested that Fuentes be held without bond.
He said Fuentes is not believed to be in the country legally.
There are questions about his identity.
Apparently, Fuentes admitted to having sexually abused the girl.
He would face a potential life sentence in prison.
So, you know, all of the, um, this is likely to reignite the debate over edge cases, but it really doesn't change the underlying logic when it comes to pro-choice versus pro-life.
It just happens to be an incredibly sympathetic and horrifying case.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration pushing forward full scale with its plans to make abortion as prevalent as humanly possible.
According to Politico, senior Biden administration officials announced on Wednesday they're reminding tens of thousands of pharmacies around the country they risk violating civil rights laws if they refuse to fill orders for contraception or abortion medication or discriminate based on a person's pregnancy status.
So if a nine-month pregnant woman comes into a pharmacy and asks for a really, really big dose of abortion pill, you're supposed to just give it to them, according to Joe Biden.
The action comes a few weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and gave more than a dozen states a green light to ban abortion and aims to respond to a wave of reports that pharmacies in those states are refusing to not only fill prescriptions for abortion and contraception pills, but also other medications they speculate could be used off-label to terminate a pregnancy.
The new guidance from the DHHS sent to 60,000 retail pharmacies says, quote, Well, I mean, federal civil rights law means that you're not supposed to fire women for being pregnant.
past pregnancy, potential or intended pregnancy, and medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.
Well, I mean, federal civil rights law means that you're not supposed to fire women for being pregnant.
It doesn't mean that you are not supposed to have a law that prevents women from terminating their pregnancies.
The civil rights laws that they are talking about, like the Civil Rights Act, that's the federal Civil Rights Act of the United States.
Roe v. Wade didn't become law until 1973.
So obviously that's not true.
Citing provisions in the Affordable Care Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the memo argues that pharmacies that receive federal funding can't discriminate based on their views on contraception and abortion in regard to supplying medications.
The guidance includes several examples of situations that could be a legal violation, including a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for the abortion pill Myfpristone for someone experiencing the kind of early miscarriage that the pill is used to treat.
On Monday, the White House sent memos to hospitals around the country warning that failure to provide an abortion for a patient in a medical emergency could violate the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
But of course, that is a moot point anyway, because virtually all pro-life laws around the country guarantee the life of the mother.
The fact that the White House is focused Like a laser beam on guaranteeing more abortions demonstrates where their head is at.
And it really is not about 10-year-old girls who, God forbid, get raped and then get pregnant.
That is not the central case here that the left wants to focus on.
It's just their fallback position when it turns out they're wrong-footed on the morality.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is being sued by Twitter.
The question, of course, is whether Twitter is going to be able to sue Elon Musk into buying it.
According to J.B.
Heaton and M. Todd Henderson, Over at the Wall Street Journal.
Keaton being a managing member of an investment research firm in Henderson, a law professor at the University of Chicago, Twitter's going to have a real tough time forcing Musk to buy the company.
They write, Twitter has sued Elon Musk, seeking to compel him to buy the company for $54.20 a share.
Many observers think the company will prevail, or that Musk is likely to pay at least a billion-dollar breakup fee.
They are wrong.
He's likely to walk away largely unscathed, a belief reflected in Twitter's stock price.
This case will be a good lesson on the limits of boilerplate merger agreements and the difference between a corporation and shareholders.
The merger agreement in this case could be read in a way that permits a court to order Musk to buy Twitter through a remedy known as specific performance.
Specific performance is you and I sign a contract, and I say that I'm going to provide a service for you, and then I abrogate the contract.
A court could make me provide the service for you.
Although litigation is always uncertain, it is difficult to imagine a court would force the purchase of a $44 billion corporation.
Specific performance is generally used fleetingly, and for good reason.
It's the ultimate act of coercion.
It makes sense only when there's no alternative.
If one agrees to sell Hearst Castle, but tries to back out when a higher bid emerges, a court may specifically enforce the contract.
There's only one Hearst Castle, and no other remedy can make the jilted buyer whole.
But where alternatives exist, other remedies usually make more sense.
Imagine the contract was to paint Hearst Castle, and the painter walked away.
A court would be reluctant to force the painter to go ahead and do the job.
No one wants to have his house painted by someone under court order.
For this reason, Delaware courts rarely order specific performance in merger agreements.
If Musk doesn't want to buy Twitter, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a court to make him do it.
Twitter might be worse off under his ownership at that point.
There are other potential buyers for Twitter.
What happens if the court orders specific performance and Musk just says no?
Well, the only means the court has to compel him to line up financing and affix his signature is by holding him in contempt.
But it isn't Mr. Musk that promised to buy Twitter, but two entities that are actually under his control.
The court could theoretically hold the entities in criminal contempt, but as Lord Thurlow observed, corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned.
Mr. Musk promised to cause these entities to consummate the deal, but a court is unlikely to jail him if he shirks or refuses.
Mr. Musk could play a high-stakes game of chicken that ultimately reveals that courts are extremely limited in cases like this.
Damages are easier to enforce.
It's possible that they could get some money out of Musk.
But, Twitter shareholders aren't party to the agreement.
Only Twitter, Inc.
is the party.
It's a separate and distinct legal entity.
So Twitter would have to prove harm, such as lost profits.
So where exactly are the lost profits here?
Hard to find them.
Twitter could have raised the stakes for Musk by including a requirement he pay damages to the shareholders if he walked away, but they didn't actually do that.
So the only thing left really on the table here is the billion-dollar breakup view for Musk.
Courts will be much more likely to make Musk pay to walk away than force him to walk down the aisle, but it isn't clear he's going to have to pay that much.
Because breakup fees are supposed to reflect the damages caused by the breach of contract.
They aren't supposed to act as a penalty.
Twitter isn't obviously worse off by a billion dollars, if at all, so it's possible a court might balk at imposing that high fee in the first place.
So bottom line here is that it looks like, again, Musk has Twitter over a barrel here.
Which makes sense.
I mean, he had Twitter over a barrel basically from the point that he made the offer.
So either he is playing 4D chess, or he has just played himself into a winning hand again.
To the consternation of all the members of the media, by the way.
Which is, again, going to remain a hilarious aspect of Elon Musk just trolling the media.
The left hatred for Musk is one of the most bizarre aspects of modern American media life, considering the fact that he is the founder of the largest electric vehicle company on planet Earth.
But, you know, the minute you say that you're willing to tolerate the presence of the right, this apparently makes you a rabid right-winger who must be destroyed.
Alrighty, we'll be back here today with more content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Molls show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
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