Biden Admits We’re On The Brink Of Nuclear Armageddon | Ep. 1588
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Joe Biden tells his donors we are on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
Plus, Joe Biden pardons anyone with a criminal conviction for marijuana possession and the Department of Justice reportedly prepares to prosecute Hunter Biden.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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Text BEN to 87222 for instant access to this free guide Well, Joe Biden is now saying true things about the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
to protect your family. Again, text Ben to 87222 right now to get started with my friends over at the USCCA. While Joe Biden is now saying true things about the risk of nuclear war with Russia, the problem is he has no strategy to deal with it. And when he says these true things publicly, all he does is increase the incentive for Vladimir Putin to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.
See, here's the thing about being president.
It's a different job than what I do for a living.
What I do for a living is I explain to people how politics works.
I try to give a bird's eye view of what is going on on a daily basis from a conservative perspective.
What Joe Biden does is governance.
And governance requires that you actually have an eye on policy.
You have an eye on what exactly you are going to do.
It requires you to, on domestic policy, negotiate sometimes where people like me are speaking to principal.
And on foreign policy, it requires you to actually strategically think about the words that are coming out of your face hole.
When you are Joe Biden, however, you apparently don't think about this.
And this is why it's a real problem what he said to a bunch of donors, even though I agree with much of what he said to the donors.
There are certain things you don't say out loud in public if you're the President of the United States, because you are skewing the incentive structure for your enemies.
And this is a perfect example of that.
So, here's what Joe Biden said, according to the Associated Press.
He said on Thursday that the risk of nuclear Armageddon is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russian officials speak of the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the eight-month invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Biden said that Putin was, quote, a guy I know fairly well, and that the Russian leader was not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.
He added, quote, we have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He suggested the threat from Putin is real because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.
Now, you've heard me say the same thing.
I actually agree with every word of that.
The thing is, I'm not the president of the United States who is currently pursuing an extraordinarily strenuous war with the Russians, including the use of American material and funding.
Here's the problem.
If you're the president of the United States and you're pursuing a strategy that basically says Ukraine wins, Russia loses, this means one of two things has to happen.
One, you think that Vladimir Putin is bluffing.
You think that when he's talking about the use of biological, nuclear, chemical weapons, that he's lying, that that isn't true.
And the reason that that isn't true is because he's so fearful of the United States' response or NATO's response that he's just not going to do it.
And so we are going to call his bluff and we are going to essentially do the militaristic thing.
Right?
And we're just going to continue along our merry way funding the Ukrainians in this war, even if they are pushing into the Donbass region, even if they are not pushing into Crimea, even if they've already pushed beyond the borders of this war from when the war first began, right?
If they're pushing back on the 2014 territorial gains made by the Russians.
So that is possibility number one, is you think Putin is bluffing.
But Biden just took that off the table, right?
He says he doesn't think that Putin is bluffing, which means that you better damn well have a strategic deterrent available in order to dissuade Vladimir Putin from using nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons.
And this is the part that Biden doesn't actually talk about.
He doesn't actually say what it is that we will do to deter Vladimir Putin from using his nuclear weapons, because we obviously take the threat seriously.
So that means that we must have some sort of response that is dissuading Vladimir Putin from using his nuclear weapons.
And Biden apparently said nothing about that, which means that effectively speaking, Putin now knows Biden's mind.
And he knows that he's got Biden over a barrel.
Because if Biden has no strategic response to the possibility of use of nuclear weapons, then that means that there's going to have to be an off-ramp.
And it means that Putin actually has the whip hand in seeking the off-ramp.
See, if you're seeking a credible off-ramp here, What you'd really want to do is say to Russia, listen, we don't fear you.
Your best opportunity to get something out of this deal is to take the off-ramp.
But if what you're saying to Vladimir Putin is, we do fear you, we fear you're going to use nuclear weapons, we have no good strategic response to dissuade you from doing so, who then has the upper hand?
Vladimir Putin has the upper hand in those negotiations.
By the way, the evidence that Vladimir Putin has the upper hand in the negotiations actually comes courtesy of the North Koreans.
Okay, there's a reason why North Korea is suddenly increasing its missile tests.
You may not have noticed it because there's so much going on in the news, but according to The Guardian, millions of residents of northern Japan will have felt a sense of déjà vu on Tuesday morning when they were alerted to a North Korean missile flying overhead.
Five years earlier, they had twice been shaken from their slumber by Japanese government warnings to seek shelter after missile launches by Pyongyang.
The intermediate-range missile involved in this week's test was far from buzzing the rooftops of Hokkaido farmhouses.
It flew at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers as it made its way to the Pacific Ocean, where it splashed down without incident about 303,000 kilometers east of Japan, but it caused a lot of anxiety among residents.
North Korea has been ramping up dramatically its use of missile technology, trying to freak the West out because this is what North Korea does. Basically, North Korea constantly participates in nuclear rent-seeking.
They threaten the use of nuclear weapons. They threaten the use of missiles. And then they hope that somebody hands them money. They basically engage in blackmail against the West. And they tend to ramp that up when they believe that the West is fearful, when they believe that the West is vulnerable. And this happens to be that particular time.
According to the UK Guardian, in strategic terms, Pyongyang's more assertive behavior is a consequence of global political instability that has given it an opportunity to provoke its neighbors without fear of inviting another round of sanctions.
The war in Ukraine has not only become a distraction for Joe Biden, it has opened the door to closer ties between Pyongyang and Moscow, while recent Chinese military activity in the Taiwan Strait has enabled the North to exploit rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.
North Korea is a case in point, like a perfect case in point of if you get one nuke, you can remain in power literally forever.
That's how strong the nuclear deterrent is.
And so the North Koreans are currently looking at how the West is treating Vladimir Putin, taking his threats incredibly seriously, as they should, but without any real sort of strategic attempt at deterrence.
And they're thinking, we can do whatever we want.
We can now blackmail the West in the same way that Vladimir Putin is blackmailing the West.
According to The Guardian, the heady days of unity on display in 2017, when the UN Security Council, including Russia and China, imposed heavy sanctions on the North, are over.
Disunity means more serious provocations lie on the horizon as the North continues to exploit Ukraine, Taiwan, and a hamstrung Security Council to push its status as a legitimate nuclear state.
So again, the evidence that people do not fear the United States and do not fear the West if they have a nuclear weapon, which is why Iran is desperately seeking a nuclear weapon right now.
A nuke means that you can now hold the West hostage.
It's because of language like the language that Joe Biden is using.
When he says that we are very close to nuclear Armageddon, And then again, he is not making clear what he would do if a tactical nuclear weapon were used in Ukraine to dissuade Vladimir Putin from doing that.
Like a credible deterrent relies on the naked display of possibility of power.
That is what happens here.
The great lie of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is that it ended because JFK was strong.
The truth is it ended because JFK made a bunch of concessions about use of American missiles and the American missile shield in places like Turkey.
There was an actual trade of Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the missiles that were being put in Cuba.
But the bottom line here is this.
Biden has now limited his options because he said this stuff publicly.
According to the Associated Press, U.S.
officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced a series of strategic setbacks on the battlefield, though Biden's remarks marked the starkest warnings yet issued by the U.S.
government about the nuclear stakes.
It was not immediately clear whether Biden was referring to any new assessment of Russian intentions.
As recently as this week, U.S.
officials said they have seen no change to Russia's nuclear forces that require a change in the alert posture of U.S.
nuclear forces.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday, quote, So again, Joe Biden is saying what his administration is not, right?
His administration is saying, we're not seeing any sea change here.
We think that it's quite possible that a bluff is happening.
But meanwhile, you have Joe Biden out there saying it's not a bluff.
Biden challenged the Russian nuclear doctrine.
Warning that the use of lower yield tactical weapons could quickly spiral out of control into global destruction.
He said, I don't think there's any such thing as the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.
He added he was still trying to figure out an off-ramp for Putin in Ukraine.
He says, where does he find a way out?
Where does he find himself in a position that does not only lose face, but lose significant power within Russia?
And again, the question really is one for the United States to pose.
What off-ramp are you offering to Vladimir Putin if you're doing this?
What you really need to do is offer both a carrot and a stick.
So if you're going to take the Russian threat seriously, then you have to say on the one hand what David Petraeus said.
The former commander of CENTCOM.
You're going to have to say to Vladimir Putin, if you use a tactical nuclear weapon, we are going to sink every ship in the Baltic.
We are going to take out all strategic Russian forces in the Ukrainian region, all of them, and we will use NATO forces to do that.
So you better not use a tactical nuclear weapon or you're going to end up on the wrong side of the stack.
And simultaneously, we are offering you this carrot.
Here's an off-ramp.
You get to keep certain parts of the non-vassal region, you get to keep Crimea, and that's the off-ramp.
I need a carrot.
I need a stick.
The problem is that Joe Biden is not making clear exactly what the carrot is or what the stick is.
All that he's making clear is that he takes Vladimir Putin incredibly seriously, which means that Vladimir Putin now has the miscalculation of thinking that he has Biden over a barrel because of his threats to use nuclear weapons.
And meanwhile, the Biden administration is being excessively unclear about what it actually means, what are its limits in Ukraine.
So if you really fear nuclear war, then are you really willing to arm the Ukrainians with significant forward weaponry?
Like how far are you willing to go?
Again, you could be willing to do both, but you have to make that clear.
You can say to the Russians, listen, Your best offer, EMP, is now.
And your best offer, EMP, is now because we are about to give significant offensive weaponry to the Ukrainians so they can be on the move in places like Crimea and the Donbass region.
And all the rest of what I just said, right?
If you use nuclear weapons, we're going to take out pretty much all your forces in Ukraine.
We have air superiority.
And by the way, here's an off-ramp.
But he's not doing any of these things.
Like the complete miasmatic approach to policy here, the lack of clarity with regard to policy.
And then, if you're going to be completely miasmatic, then I have to assume from the outside that maybe there are negotiations going on behind the scenes.
But when you go out and you say this stuff publicly in front of Democratic donors, What you're doing is you are skewing means that this happens all the time.
Do you want to know how we got war in Ukraine?
It was through strategic ambiguity in which the president of the United States made very unclear what the United States would do in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin called what he thought was the West bluff and it turns out the West was not bluffing at least economically speaking and in terms of material aid to Ukraine.
And this is frequently how wars get started.
I've made this point over and over and over before when you're talking about the original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
A lot of suggestion that there was an American diplomat named April Gillespie who in negotiations with the Iraqis basically said, listen, if you guys go into Kuwait, it's going to be hands off.
Now she denies that's the case.
There's a lot of questions about what she actually said, what she didn't say, but clearly Iraq thought that they weren't going to get the response from the West that they got when they went into Kuwait.
When World War I broke out, pretty much everybody thought that that was going to be an incredibly short war with small territorial gains made and then everybody goes back to status quo ante.
That's not what happened.
Miscalculation is very often what leads to war.
And the same thing is true, by the way, with regard to World War II.
And the fact is that when Hitler invaded Poland, his thought was that the West was probably not going to respond very strongly to his invasion of Poland.
They were going to make a bit of a fuss and then they were going to shut up.
And that, of course, is not what happened.
Miscalculation is what leads to escalation in war, and clarity is what you need.
And so, again, when you make clear that you fear your enemy, which is what Joe Biden just did in that speech, but then you don't make clear what the response is going to be, what your strategy is, what the off-ramp is, what is Vladimir Putin to take away from that except that he can continue to push where there is strategic mush, which has always been the Russian way of doing business?
And then combine that with the fact that Ukraine is asking for ever more provocative weaponry.
And when I say provocative, I don't mean that the Russians aren't going to put... I mean, the Russians literally started this war.
I don't blame Vladimir Zelensky for asking for more weaponry here.
He's attempting to defend his country.
He's attempting to restore the borders that were taken from him in 2014.
I totally get Ukraine asking for the weaponry.
The question is, what is the West doing here?
And I don't think that Joe Biden can answer that question.
I'm not sure that NATO can answer that question at this point.
Unless you can answer that question, that creates the ambiguity that leads to further escalation.
The Wall Street Journal reporting today, flush with recent battlefield successes, Ukrainian officials are pressing their case for acquiring longer-range missiles to strike deeper into Russian-held territory, including Crimea, raising questions about how aggressively the Biden administration will support Kyiv's war aims.
U.S.
officials have urged Ukraine to focus its battles in the eastern and southern parts of the country, particularly around Kharkiv and Kherson, where it has made its largest gains since Russia's February 24th invasion.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are reviving their pleas for more weaponry, including advanced systems like the U.S.
Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, congressional and U.S.
officials said.
Those long-range missiles are wanted in part to strike into Crimea, which Russia is using as a base to launch Iranian-made drones.
Congressional and Ukrainian officials said President Biden has so far declined to provide Ukraine with those weapons, which would be capable of reaching deep into Russian territory.
So again, complete ambiguity.
What exactly?
What are you willing to give them?
What are you not willing to give them?
What are you willing to do?
What are you not willing to do?
And that confusion is leading to a prolonged exposure here to the possibility of Russia upping the ante.
And what Zelensky is asking for is more involvement.
He's saying, OK, bring more stick.
But again, the U.S.
has not made clear how much tickets it's willing to bring.
Zelensky is now calling on NATO to actually launch preemptive strikes on Russia, which, of course, NATO is not willing to do.
Here's Zelensky yesterday.
He says, what should NATO do?
Eliminate the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons.
But what is important, I want to get an appeal to the international community, as I did before February 24th.
You need preemptive strikes so they'll know what happened to them if they use nukes and not the other way around.
Don't wait for Russia's nuclear strikes and then say, oh, since you did this, take Daphnos.
Okay, well, there's only one problem with that.
If you if you preemptively strike Russian territory, presumably that that's almost a guarantee that Vladimir Putin has to use some sort of nuclear weapon on the battlefield because his military simply is not cutting it.
So, all of this is a complete mess.
When deterrence fails, things escalate.
And right now, deterrence already failed in terms of preventing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And now it's failing again, in terms of nuclear weapons use.
This is a point that Walter Russell Mead makes in the Wall Street Journal today.
He says the question on Putin's mind is would he risk New York in order to keep Odessa free?
The reality is that Putin's failing military skedaddles east across occupied Ukraine at nuclear weapons are looking more attractive.
That's not so much because a tactical nuclear strike would be effective against widely scattered Ukrainian forces in the field.
It's more that Putin hopes the political shockwaves set off by nuclear explosions in Europe would shatter the West's resolve to support Ukraine.
Is Germany willing to lose Berlin to save Kiev?
Are Americans ready to risk New York in order to keep Odessa free?
These are the questions that Putin is asking himself, and the future of the world may depend on his answers.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration faces a terrible dilemma.
To yield to Putin's nuclear blackmail would be a cowardly act of appeasement from which Neville Chamberlain would recoil, and which would open the door to more nuclear blackmail.
But to lead the Western alliance into an open-ended nuclear confrontation with Russia is to risk the most catastrophic of wars.
To avoid these unacceptable alternatives, says Walter Russell Mead, the Biden administration must deter Putin from using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, even as it continues to support Ukraine in its battles to drive the invaders back.
Deterrence is more complicated than it looks.
The Biden administration's efforts to deter Russia have had little success so far.
In February, Putin blew past the Biden administration's barrage of threats and diplomacy to launch that war in Ukraine.
Not deterring Russia's aggression was one of the costliest failures in recent American foreign policy.
But it isn't clear the Biden administration understands what went wrong and how similar mistakes might be undercutting its diplomatic efforts today.
Unintentionally and unwittingly, the administration sent Russia mixed messages last winter.
On the one hand, a dramatic burst of diplomacy worked to coordinate a broad Western response to the potential invasion.
Biden officials broke with precedent to declassify and publicize highly sensitive information about Putin's plans in ways that dramatically undercut Russia's official statements and propaganda.
Then intelligence helped build Western unity in the face of the Russian attack.
Biden officials are right to take credit for that unorthodox but effective campaign.
At the same time, however, senior American policymakers seriously overestimated Russia's military strength and acumen.
They urged allies to evacuate, and they offered Zelensky an airplane to flee.
This is hardly a message of deterrence.
Says Walter Russell Mead, we're going to have to do better this time if we expect to deter him from using nuclear weapons.
Putin already knows fear of a Russian nuclear response has affected American and ally policy.
We have limited Ukraine's access to long-range missile systems that could hit Russian territory.
Other NATO allies, including Germany, have made similar calculations.
So from Putin's point of view, nuclear blackmail is working.
Walter Russell Mead says, the only way to deter any possible use of nuclear weapons is to make Putin believe the consequences of such use will be ruinous for Russia as a state and for him as its ruler and that the West won't flinch when the time for action comes.
And this is right.
You have to offer both.
But Biden is not offering both.
And now he's undercut his own sort of quasi message, which is that Russia's bluffing that Putin ain't going to do this.
As per usual, the president's mouth has now created a massive mess for himself.
And that is going to be a mess for the United States.
The West better get on the same page and they better do it rather quickly because if they do not, the possibility of an actual nuclear exchange with Russia is rising day by day.
It turns out that bad articulation of foreign policy ends with really bad outcomes.
See, the thing about Donald Trump when he was president of the United States, the rip on President Trump, Is that President Trump said whatever came to mind.
And that President Trump was completely unpredictable.
But at least that unpredictability worked for Trump.
Meaning, he was so crazy that you didn't know what he was going to do.
Was he going to fire a missile into Syria?
Or was he going to give Kim Jong-un a bro hug?
You really didn't know what he was going to do on a day-by-day level.
Was he going to threaten North Korea with the mother of all wars?
Or was he gonna write love letters?
I think no one knew.
And so that sort of strategic, not ambiguity, but complete bewilderment, I think, worked in his favor.
With Biden, it just looks like befuddlement.
It doesn't even look like volatility, which sometimes can work in your favor.
Like the craziest guy in the room is the one you don't want to fight.
Biden doesn't look crazy.
Right now, he just looks befuddled and weak.
And that's a serious problem when you're talking about the possibility of nuclear weapon use, particularly on the European continent.
We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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And well, meanwhile, in other news, the federal government is now thinking about prosecuting Hunter Biden, apparently.
The Washington Post says that federal agents investigating President Biden's son Hunter have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase, according to people familiar with the case.
The next step is for the U.S.
Attorney in Delaware to decide on whether to file such charges.
The investigation into Hunter Biden began in 2018 and became a central focus for then-President Trump during his unsuccessful 2020 re-election effort, according to the Washington Post.
Initially, the investigation centered around Hunter Biden's finances related to overseas business ties and consulting work.
Over time, investigators with multiple agencies focused closely on whether he did not report all of his income, whether he lied on gun purchase paperwork.
In 2018, agents determined months ago they'd assembled a viable criminal case against the younger Biden, but it's ultimately up to prosecutors at the DOJ, not agents, to decide whether to file charges.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has made clear that the U.S.
Attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, who was nominated by Trump in late 2017, is supervising the case, and Garland has vowed there will be no political interference.
Now, what's weird about this, of course, is that most of the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden that anybody cares about have little to do with the fact that he lied on his gun paperwork when he said that he had not used drugs, and then he then took that gun and, like, threw it in a dumpster, and all that sort of personal silliness and mess.
Nor does anybody really care about whether Hunter Biden paid his taxes in full.
What people really are wondering about is how much money was funneled to Hunter Biden.
Did any of that money see Joe Biden?
Who was the big guy in all of those messages that were released by Tony Bobulinski, who was the guy who was working with Hunter Biden, right?
That is the stuff that people actually care about.
And so from the outside, what it looks like here, this leak to the Washington Post, what it looks like is a way of getting everybody off your back from the right by saying that we are going after Hunter Biden without actually exposing Joe Biden to any serious legal risk.
That's what this looks like because, again, all that information is public.
And there's no reason to think that Tony Bobulinski was lying when he was talking about his meetings with Joe Biden and Hunter, or that he was lying when he talked about the structure of these businesses.
Instead, it mostly looks like whenever there's a leak to the media, you have to ask, what is the interest of the people who are leaking?
One of the great, I would say, public institutional tragedies of the United States over the course of the last several years, really starting with the advent of the Trump administration, is the leakiness of the so-called deep state, meaning long-term employees in these major institutions like the FBI or the DOJ.
The Obama administration was very not leaky, and the reason the Obama administration was not particularly leaky is because that administration didn't need a leak.
Everybody in the deep state agreed with Barack Obama's agenda, and so you just didn't get the same level of leaks to the media.
Under Trump, all these people wanted to demonstrate that they hated Trump, so they just leaked consistently, and usually against whatever Trump's preferred policy was.
Well now, you're seeing a lot of these agencies leak in defense of themselves, and in order to prevent blowback when it comes to, for example, whether Hunter and Joe were involved in China corruption, or whether Hunter was involved in Ukraine corruption that violated the law.
According to the Washington Post, any charging decision involving the Biden case is especially fraught because Trump and his allies have made accusations of corruption in Hunter Biden's business dealings, a key line of attack against Democrats, both before and after the 2020 presidential race.
The Biden probe has proceeded with relatively little fanfare in recent months amid the much larger and more public DOJ and FBI investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.
Well, I mean, that is true.
It also raises the question of why exactly we have not heard any leaks with regard to Hunter's business affairs in China.
In December 2020, federal agents sought to interview Hunter, leading him to publicly acknowledge he was under investigation.
Hunter Biden's lawyer said in a statement on Thursday he hasn't had no contact whatsoever with any federal investigative agent.
Therefore, a rendition of the case from such an agent is inherently biased, one-sided, and inaccurate.
It is regrettable that law enforcement agents appear to be violating the law to prejudice a case against a person who is a target simply because of his family name.
Well, there are those of us on the right who are suspicious that perhaps the reason that he is not being targeted on the more obvious basis for legal violation is because of his family name.
Because the FBI and the DOJ really would prefer not to involve Joe Biden in a probe of Hunter.
And so they are finding ancillary reasons to probe Hunter Biden and maybe, maybe put him away.
Well, meanwhile, Joe Biden is increasingly desperate.
The elections do not look like they're going to go his way.
A lot of the Senate races we'll discuss in a little while are actually getting closer, not further apart.
The Senate race in Arizona suddenly looks very, very close between Blake Masters and Mark Kelly over in Arizona, which puts another piece of the map on the board for the Republicans, even if it looks like Georgia is beginning to recede as a possibility, thanks to Herschel Walker's personal issues.
Well, what has this prompted Joe Biden to do?
It's prompted Joe Biden to do what presidents very frequently do.
It has prompted him to pander.
We saw this in 2012 from Barack Obama.
So in 2012, Barack Obama, who was in danger of losing his re-elect effort, he started basically parceling off pieces of policy to various what he felt were demographic interest groups, right?
He did the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 in an attempt to garner Hispanic votes.
He came out in favor of same-sex marriage in order to garner gay and lesbian votes.
He talked an awful lot about equity in an attempt to jack up the black vote, right?
This is something that he did routinely in 2012.
And so it is not a surprise that Joe Biden, about a month before the election, has decided that he is now going to issue federal pardons for using or possessing marijuana.
Now this all sounds fine and good to most people because very few people believe that if you smoke a joint you should go to jail just for smoking a joint.
As somebody who deeply believes that pot use is something you are doing that damages you and you should not be using pot and that most of the things people say about pot even if they were once true are no longer true because pot has become significantly more potent in the forms that is currently distributed.
Sometimes it is being laced with fentanyl, which makes it actually addictive.
The notion, by the way, that pot is completely non-addictive is a lie.
There are very, very good scientific studies demonstrating the addictive nature of marijuana for an enormous number of people.
Beyond that, the amounts of brain damage that you do as a young person regularly using marijuana is extraordinarily real.
It is quite serious.
It makes you lazy.
It makes you stupid.
Okay, so you're talking... I'm speaking as a person who is very anti-pot use.
With that said, do I want people going to jail for simply using pot?
The answer, of course, is no.
However, if you are a drug dealer, I would prefer that you be in jail.
Because drug dealers are dealing drugs to minors.
They're dealing drugs to kids.
There are legal pot dispensaries all over the United States, I would say unfortunately now at this point, but if you are dealing drugs illegally, you should go to jail.
So what Joe Biden is now doing is he's really attempting to remove the criminal records of an enormous number of people in an attempt to jack up the vote, particularly among young people and among minorities who are disproportionately represented in the population of people who are in jail for possession offenses.
I'll explain in a minute why this is incredibly stupid.
But here's what he just did.
He put out a statement saying yesterday, quote, as I often said during my campaign for president, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana, which comes as a shock to Kamala Harris, the cop sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit.
Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing and educational opportunities.
And while white and black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted of disproportionate rights.
You can see he's saying the quiet part out loud here.
He's saying black and brown people are going to show more often for drugs, and so I want to free those people of any sort of records that they can presumably vote again.
Today, I'm announcing three steps I'm taking to end this failed approach.
First, I'm announcing a pardon of all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana.
I've directed the AG to develop an administrative process for the issuance of certificates of pardon to eligible individuals.
There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result.
My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions.
Second, I'm urging all governors to do the same with regard to state offenses, just as no one should be in federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana No one should be in local jail or state prison for that reason either.
Third, I'm asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the AG to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.
Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for dangerous substances.
This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification for fentanyl and meth, the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.
Finally, even as federal and state regulation of marijuana changes, important limitations on trafficking, marketing, and underage sales should stay in place.
Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana.
It's time we right these wrongs.
Okay, so the real reason Joe Biden is doing this is obviously as a political pander.
The reason that this is bad policy is because simple possession for marijuana is usually pled down.
The reason that people are in jail for possession of marijuana is not because there are people who are smoking pot in their bedroom and the police bust down the door.
That is not why people are going to jail for marijuana possession.
The reason that people are going to jail for marijuana possession is because that is a plea deal.
Statistically speaking, a very high percentage of people who are in prison for simple possession were originally charged with drug trafficking.
They're people who actually had pounds of marijuana, and they're distributing the pounds of marijuana.
And because our justice system is so wildly overburdened, what very often ends up happening is a prosecutor comes to the lawyer for the defense, and they say, listen, we can go to trial on the drug trafficking offense, and your client goes to jail for 10, 15, 20 years for violating federal drug trafficking statute.
Or, alternatively, your client goes to jail for a year and a half And we plead it down, right?
Plead it down to simple possession.
In other words, many of the people who are now going to be issued pardons are not actually just people who are smoking pot in their basement and being losers.
A huge number of those people are people who were actively trafficking and pled that down, criminally speaking, to a possession charge.
And the only reason that prosecutors pled that down is because possession was a crime.
So if possession had not been a crime, they wouldn't have pled it down.
They would have gone to trial or the plea deal would have involved a lower level trafficking offense.
So, what Joe Biden is actively doing right now, just to be straight about it, who is now being pardoned.
He is pardoning people who are drug traffickers.
Just as a factual matter.
Or alleged drug traffickers.
So, the great lie, of course, here is, again, that this is just dopes at your high school who are smoking pop behind the gym, who are going to jail.
Again, not true.
And when it comes to trafficking, and this is, again, why there's disparate rates in terms of jailing, when it comes to white, black, and brown people using marijuana at similar rates, but black people and brown people being arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates, a couple reasons for that.
One, the notion that everybody is using pot at similar rates.
is reliant on self-reported surveys, which are the worst form of surveys, right?
They just go ask a bunch of people, have you used pot in a certain amount of time?
And then they use that as sort of the proxy for how many people are actually using pot as opposed to, for example, encounters with the police.
Also, again, the number of people per race on a per capita basis who are trafficking drugs is not similar.
And so the people who are being arrested for that sort of stuff is dissimilar.
So that is what Joe Biden is doing right now.
It's a very obvious political pander.
It's an attempt to do what Democrats have been attempting to do across the nation, which is to essentially make it easier for people who are convicted of crimes to vote again.
And the reason they want to do that is because they believe that people who are convicted of crimes are more likely to vote Democrat, which undoubtedly is true.
Now, the reason that Joe Biden is having to make these sort of pandering moves is because, of course, his administration is collapsing on a number of fronts, particularly on the economic front.
We'll get to that in just a minute.
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Also, as you know, the corporate media agenda means the news is extraordinarily biased.
You know what?
I know it.
We all know that.
Thankfully, there's a way to get the most important news of the day without that narrative.
That is by listening to one of the top news podcasts in America, Morning Wire.
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Okay, meanwhile, again, the reason that Joe Biden is attempting to pardon criminals at this point and so they can vote is because he needs more voters.
And the reason he needs more voters is because he is very, very bad at his job.
So OPEC, as we pointed out yesterday, has now decided that they are going to lower the amount of oil that they are putting into distribution.
They are doing so because the price of oil has been dropping rather precipitously thanks to the increase in the interest rates, which means people have less disposable income, which means they're spending less money on gas.
And if they're spending less money on gas, typical supply and demand suggests that producers are going to start producing less because again, the profit margins have now gone way down.
Well, Joe Biden, instead of recognizing that oil is a national security issue and treating energy supply the way that he should, you know, by increasing the amounts of energy actually produced in the United States, like what's amazing right now, and I almost can't get over it.
There's a very famous Bismarck quote that he says that God protects idiots, children, drunkards in the United States of America.
And that seems to be true internationally speaking.
This Ukraine war has resulted in basically every single major Western country now being very much dependent on the United States militarily, economically, in terms of energy.
And Joe Biden is taking advantage of none of these things.
Like none of them.
He is not increasing energy production in the United States so as to help our allies in Western and Eastern Europe.
He's not increasing the military budget in order to make sure that we can protect ourselves against China and also offer some sort of Like America's influence right now could be at its apex.
Seriously, like in American history, we could be at our apex right now.
And instead, Joe Biden is blowing it because he wants to pursue other projects.
And instead, we are now dependent on places like OPEC for oil and natural gas, which is totally crazy because we were oil independent.
We were carbon fossil fuel independent as of like three years ago.
So meanwhile, Joe Biden is relegated to just whining about the Saudis and the Russians cutting off the oil supply.
Here was Joe Biden yesterday.
The trip was not essentially for oil.
The trip was about the Middle East and about Israel and rationalization of positions.
But it is a disappointment and it says that they're a problem.
Are you worried about the climate?
It's a business.
Don't touch it.
Where is he going?
I'm going.
I'm going.
He's like, I was in Saudi Arabia to kiss MBS's butt.
And it was not about the oil.
It was about, it was about, um, bye.
Like that, that slow walk away is just spectacular.
Like, where is he going?
Look at that.
There he goes.
And he's just, he's slowly backing away.
Where is he going?
And then like, he realizes that he has to, that he should have just turned around and walked away when he was by the cameras.
Again, this doddering old fool.
It's just, it's incredible stuff.
That back away is fantastic.
We need to actually photoshop in the Homer Simpson bushes right there because he's legit walking back into the bushes in that clip.
Just spectacular stuff.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's energy advisor, he is suggesting, well, you know what?
In the end, this is really, it's, you know what?
Other countries are just going to hate Russia and Saudi for this.
They're going to be so mad at Russia and Saudi.
Those low income countries, they see that Saudi and Russia are hurting them.
Oh, is that what they're saying?
Is it really?
Or are places like India becoming more dependent on Saudi and Russia and attempting to cut a deal with those countries because they believe that the West is getting off the form of energy they need most?
Here is Joe Biden's energy advisor being an idiot.
We have brought the prices down, but not to a point where it justified a reduction-in-cut announcement by OPEC.
And frankly, a lot of countries around the world, specifically low-income countries, are seeing that Saudi Arabia and Russia are colluding against them.
And that's really unfortunate.
No, what's unfortunate is that we're not taking advantage of that.
If you actually believe that Russia and Saudi are cutting against the interests of a bunch of developing nations who we would like to turn into allies, you know what would be amazing right now?
Is we could just hand them some oil.
Right, Russia and Saudi?
They cut off your oil?
Well, you know who's your friend?
We're your friend!
And here's the thing, the United States is the world's largest energy producer, and could be producing way more energy.
But instead, this administration has a bizarre and pathological commitment to the idea that the United States should produce less energy.
But you know who they will allow to produce energy?
They will allow Venezuela to produce energy.
So we're now making overtures to one of the most brutal dictators in the entire South American continent, in Nicolas Maduro.
Who is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela, who has maintained power simply through sheer force.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela's authoritarian regime.
So at the same time that we're yelling at Joe Biden, at the same time that Joe Biden is yelling at Vladimir Putin about being an evil dictator who invades foreign countries and then we don't like how he's handling his oil supply.
What if we told another dictator who is relegating his citizens to eating dogs in Caracas?
That we will lower the sanctions on him so he can provide oil.
Sounds amazing.
This is a well thought out foreign policy if you were dropped on your head as a baby.
And according to the Wall Street Journal, we are now lowering the sanctions on Maduro so that we can pump more oil from Venezuela.
In exchange for the significant sanctions relief, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will resume long suspended talks with the country's opposition to discuss conditions needed to hold free and fair elections in 2024.
The people said, oh, I'm sure that's going to be very fruitful.
So I guess the fig leaf here is that Maduro gets lower sanctions, we get oil, and he has to pretend that he's going to listen to the opposition for five seconds, which of course he is not going to do.
The U.S., Venezuela's government, and some Venezuelan opposition figures have also worked out a deal that would free up hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan state funds frozen in American banks to pay for the imports of food, medicine, and equipment for the country's battered electricity grid and municipal water systems.
When I say some Venezuelan opposition figures, I would assume we're not talking about, you know, the ones who actually want to replace Maduro.
U.S.
officials said details are still under discussion and caution the deal could fall through because it is contingent on Maduro's top aides resuming talks with the opposition in good faith.
Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said, quote, there are no plans to change our sanctions policy without constructive steps from the Maduro regime.
Well, it's not like the United States has ever been played along these lines before.
It's not as though the West has ever attempted to cut peace deals with some of the world's worst human beings only to see those people spit in their face.
I mean, that happens literally.
It's not as though we watched last year after a supposed peace deal with the Taliban ended and the complete surrender of the country to the Taliban and the subjugation of 38 million people to 8th century barbarians.
It's not as though the United States has brokered peace deals before with actual terrorist groups like the Palestinian Authority, only to watch Yasser Arafat go and speak in Arabic about how Israel needed to be wiped off the map.
Probably we can trust Nicholas Muir of this, but he feels like a trustworthy guy.
Or alternatively, this is a lie and Joe Biden just wants the oil.
Again, you know what could have alleviated this?
If we just drilled, that would have alleviated so much of this.
But again, they're never going to move away from that proposal.
Why?
Because they are committed full-scale to the idea that the only thing that matters when it comes to the energy sector is cutting Reliance on fossil fuels entirely.
So now we are just doing what Europe did.
Europe said, we're going to do, we're going to go green.
It'll be great.
And then they made themselves dependent on a dictator in their hemisphere, Vladimir Putin, for their oil and natural gas supply.
The United States, meanwhile, we are saying, man, we should go green.
Green is amazing because climate change.
And meanwhile, we're like going under the table to some of the world's worst human beings and saying to them, could you please pump us a little more oil?
And then we're getting mad at them when they lower the amount of oil they're pumping.
Truly amazing policymaking from this disaster of an administration.
Alrighty folks, we've reached the end of today's show.
However, if you are a subscriber, there's much, much more coming up, including Kanye explaining that he is actually pro-life.
Plus, we'll get to a brand new documentary coming out from Candace Owens.