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Oct. 14, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
43:39
Did Joe Biden Just Commit An Impeachable Offense? | Ep. 1591
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Joe Biden threatens the Saudis after begging them to pump more oil in advance of the midterms, and it looks a lot like a quid pro quo.
The new inflation numbers come in hot, and the January 6th committee votes to subpoena Donald Trump.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Well, as you all recall, because you're older than three years old, Donald Trump was impeached twice.
The first time he was impeached was obviously not over January 6th.
The first time he was impeached, it was over a phone call with the president of Ukraine in which he allegedly threatened Ukraine with removal of military aid if Ukraine didn't come up with some sort of dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden.
And there was no actual criminal charge named in the impeachment proceeding.
There was a suggestion that there had been bribery or that the use of American power in order to facilitate your electoral demands and to hold up defense aid for an ally on that basis could be impeachable.
And remember, President Trump was in fact impeached in the House before he was acquitted in the Senate.
On those grounds, and you will remember that the New York Times was a big backer of that impeachment effort.
In fact, they put out an editorial in November of 2019 talking about why Donald Trump should be impeached.
And here is what they said.
They said, quote, Americans agree to give their elected officials power over them, and those officials agree to exercise that power on Americans behalf.
If the nation's leaders breach that deal, By lining their own pockets and bartering their interests of their citizens, they break the trust that self-government and democracy depend upon.
The testimony so far indicates it's even worse in this case.
It suggests that Mr. Trump wasn't simply soliciting a bribe, but doing so to try to rig the next election.
It should go without saying, representative democracy cannot work if its leaders are cheating to keep themselves in power.
So again, the idea was Donald Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine.
He had essentially threatened to remove from them the weaponry that they needed in order to stave off a possible Russian invasion, which of course didn't happen while Trump was president.
It happened while Biden was president.
And that he was threatening them with that so that they would go and dig something up on Hunter and Joe Biden for purposes of the 2020 election.
And Trump's case was, well, no, I really I care about rooting out corruption in Ukraine.
That's really why I'm worried about all this, because Ukraine has had serious corruption issues and Burisma is a serious corruption issue.
And his opponents were saying, no, no, no, that's all a bunch of crap.
The reason that you're doing this is for electoral purposes.
The one thing that we were all supposed to agree on, left and right, is that quid pro quos for purposes of domestic political gain are bad.
These are bad.
These are, according to Democrats, impeachable.
The only question was whether Donald Trump had actually done this or not.
But certainly, it was an impeachable offense to, for example, demand that an American ally do a thing for you, specifically for you, for your electoral efforts, and in return, you would give them something that American taxpayers were paying for.
That would be a quid pro quo.
Well, this brings us forward to today, because as it turns out, it looks very much like this administration, the Biden administration, has been participating in a quid pro quo with the Saudis.
In fact, while Ukraine denied that there was a quid pro quo arrangement with Donald Trump during that impeachment proceeding, you remember this, Zelensky came out and he said, no, no, no, well, that's not how I read the phone call.
The Saudis are saying, no, there was an attempted quid pro quo here.
Joe Biden was pressuring us to essentially pump oil for one additional month to get him past the midterm elections to keep those oil prices a little bit lower than they otherwise would be.
And then he would presumably step off the gas himself, figuratively speaking, with regard to his persecution of the Saudi government, his crackdown on the Saudi government.
According to the UK Daily Mail, the Biden administration weighed in with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC Plus members, urging them to hold off for another month before announcing oil production cuts, a move that would have delayed the stunning announcement until after the midterm election.
The administration framed its objections to the production cuts as boosting Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal war in Ukraine.
But according to the Wall Street Journal, the Saudis rejected the admonitions, viewing the administration's objections as a, quote, political gambit by the Biden administration to avoid bad news.
So, you'll notice that the Biden administration did not ask for, say, a six-month increase in oil pumping.
They did not ask for flexibility over the course of the coming year with regards to pumping that oil in order to quash Russian efforts in Ukraine.
No, they asked for a one-month pause.
One month, which is kind of suspicious, brings you just past the election.
And in fact, the Saudis have now put out an actual statement Confirming, effectively speaking, that Joe Biden was pressuring them for electoral purposes.
Their statement says, quote, the kingdom affirms that the outcomes of the OPEC plus meetings are adopted through consensus among member states. They're not based on the unilateral decision by single country. These outcomes are based purely on economic considerations that take into account maintaining balance of supply and demand in the oil markets, as well as aim to limit volatility that does not serve the interests of consumers and producers, as has always been the case within OPEC plus. The government of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia affirms that any attempts to distort the facts about the kingdom's position regarding the crisis in Ukraine are unfortunate and will not
change the kingdom's principal position, including its vote to support UN resolutions regarding the Russian-Ukraine crisis, based on the kingdom's position on the importance for all countries to adhere to the UN charter principles of international law and the kingdom's rejection of any infringement on the sovereignty of territories of countries over their territories.
In other words, Saudi is saying, listen, we voted with you guys against what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
So trying to say that we are sort of in the Russian pocket is just not true.
We're doing this for our own economic reasons.
This is fascinating.
Quote, the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would also like to clarify that based on its belief in the importance of dialogue and exchange of views with its allies and partners outside the OPEC Plus group regarding the situation in the oil markets, the government of the Kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the US administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC Plus decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences.
So that is them very not subtly saying, you asked us for a one month delay and we notice.
And that is not good economics and it's not good for our business.
But the most important thing is that Saudi is confirming that Biden didn't ask for an indefinite delay on production cuts.
He asked for a one month delay on production cuts.
And as soon as it became clear that the Saudis were not actually going to do that, the White House then made clear that they were going to re-evaluate ties with the Saudis.
In other words, it sounds very much like they are threatening an American ally with everything on the table, up to and including the possible removal of military aid in the face of Iranian predations via Yemen in the Houthis or Iran directly.
They're threatening that in order to get Saudi to jack up its oil supply, Just before an election.
That's what it sounds very much like.
According to the Washington Post, President Biden is kicking off a process of re-evaluating and potentially altering the U.S.
relationship with Saudi Arabia following the announcement by a Saudi-led coalition to enslash oil production, the White House said on Tuesday.
Officials said Tuesday Biden is doing so.
They offered no details on how the relationship might shift or what policies the president is considering.
White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters, quote, in light of recent developments and the OPEC plus decision about oil production, the president believes we should review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be.
He said, this is something the president's been thinking about, certainly in light of OPEC's decision.
I mean, they're saying the quiet part out loud.
They're not saying this is the culmination of a gradual breakdown in our relations with the Saudi government.
They're saying, listen, if you guys had pumped the oil, we would not be reevaluating our decision.
You didn't pump the oil, and so we're reevaluating our decision.
And what were we asking for?
A one month delay.
I mean, they're saying the quid pro quo out loud.
It's unbelievable, actually.
Now there's nobody in the media who sees this apparently as a serious problem.
It's totally okay when Democrats do this kind of stuff.
It is totally okay when Barack Obama says to Dmitry Medvedev in advance of the 2012 election that he just needs some flexibility from Vladimir Putin and then he will be able to get past the election and it'll give him the flexibility he needs to treat with Russia in a more Conciliatory fashion, right?
That was totally fine.
And apparently it is totally fine when Joe Biden openly, like in front of your face, asks a foreign ally to do a thing for him, for electoral purposes.
Because again, a one month delay in oil cuts does not really benefit the American public, especially if that is going to be balanced out by more significant oil cuts, which are going to raise the price even further.
So he's doing this for electoral purposes.
And he's saying he's doing this basically for electoral purposes with that timeline.
And then he's saying, well, maybe we'll remove the military aid.
I mean, Joe Biden was literally asked yesterday about the possibility of removing military aid, and he just sort of didn't answer the question.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the wildly untalented White House press secretary, she was out there saying, sure, there are going to be consequences for Saudi not doing what we want them to do.
I can't speak for their intentions or their timing.
That's not something that I can speak for.
But what I can speak about is their decision.
And in the time of global challenges, economic challenges that we're seeing, this was a decision that was a mistake.
And we can speak to that, because it was actually something that we saw them do.
And it's going to hurt, again, economies It was a mistake.
And they're trying to, you know, spin this a little bit like, well, you know, it's really for those low income.
I noticed something about those low income countries, those third world countries.
They're disproportionately siding with Saudi Arabia and Russia.
You know what we could be doing?
We could be providing them the energy supplies that they need, considering that America is, in fact, the world's number one producer of energy.
But we're not doing that.
Instead, we're ripping on the Saudis, and we're begging the Saudis, one month in advance of an election, to make sure that the oil prices are just low enough so maybe the Democrats aren't hurt too bad.
Bloomberg's Jonathan Farrow actually asked the White House budget director, Brian Deese, about whether the White House pressured OPEC Plus to delay cuts for purposes of the election, and Deese essentially attempted to avoid the question.
Did you ask the Saudis to delay that decision for a month?
Are they telling the truth or not?
Look, I'm not going to get on air and disclose private conversations that members of our administration had with counterparts.
But it's not private.
The Saudis have shared it with us.
You've got the opportunity to say it's true or not.
Is it true or not?
What I will say clearly is that the communications that we've had with OPEC members and continuing have been based on our assessment of the economic circumstances of supply and demand in global oil markets.
Okay, that's an amazing statement, right?
He's just refusing to say outright whether they asked for a one-month delay or there's a six-month delay.
Now we know.
He's not rebutting the Saudis.
He's not calling them liars.
So, does that sound like a quid pro quo?
Does that sound like the President of the United States is effectively demanding that the Saudis do a thing he wants for electoral purposes and he's going to threaten them with everything up to and including the removal of military aid in the most volatile region on planet Earth if he doesn't get what he wants?
It's absolutely astonishing.
It's absolutely astonishing.
Okay, but meanwhile, the media are focused in like a laser beam.
Not on that, a thing that is happening in real time right now with the President of the United States threatening to effectually increase conflict in the Middle East.
Okay, the fact is that if this administration had any level of either understanding or decency with regard to the Middle East, what they would be doing is attempting to facilitate the addition of Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords.
They were handed a legacy in the Middle East.
We're sitting in Jerusalem right now, and one of the amazing things that has happened In the Middle East over the course of the last four years has been the Abraham Accords, which has brought to the peace table Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, a bunch of countries.
And Saudi is perfectly willing to enter those Abraham Accords.
All they require are a couple of fairly minor American guarantees.
The Biden administration has been not only completely unwilling to do that, they've been fostering Negotiations with Saudi Arabia's mortal enemies over in Iran, the Ayatollahs, who are busily cracking the skulls of women who refuse to wear hijab.
They're negotiating with the Iranians.
The Iranians, meanwhile, are spreading their terror tentacles through Syria, through Iraq, to Lebanon, to the Gaza Strip.
And then this administration is threatening the Saudis.
This administration is actually making relations worse with the Saudis.
At a time when we could be building a burgeoning American alliance.
A pro-America alliance in this region.
This administration is pursuing precisely the opposite goal and then attempting to blackmail Saudi Arabia for Joe Biden's political benefit.
But apparently we should pay no attention to that.
That is inoffensive.
It's totally not a problem that the President of the United States is effectually engaging in a quid pro quo with Saudi Arabia, an American ally, again, facing down some of the worst people on earth over in Iran.
This does not mean that the Saudis are wonderful humans.
It does not mean that the Saudis don't engage in human rights predations.
They do.
So does pretty much every American ally that we deal with outside of the West.
But it is fairly astonishing the media just don't care about this.
What do they care about?
They care about January 6th.
They care about January 6th.
The January 6th committee held its last hearing on Thursday.
This is the last one before the election.
And they supposedly had a bunch of revelations to present.
They declared themselves victorious, by the way.
Like, Benny Thompson, who's a Democrat, member of the committee from Maryland, he came out and he's like, we proved our case.
We proved that Donald Trump facilitated and made happen the riots of January 6th in an attempt to overthrow Democ- You didn't prove that.
I'm sorry, you didn't.
The thing that you did prove, and that we already knew because we saw it in real time, so you actually didn't have to prove it, is that Donald Trump was attempting to put pressure on election officials in places like Georgia and Arizona in order to overturn the results of those elections and not have the electors certified in those states.
Like, we knew that.
He was publicly doing it.
It was terrible.
It was bad.
But did Donald Trump actively tell people, go riot at the Capitol?
Was he organizing behind the scenes with the Proud Boys to actually riot at the Capitol, which is the charge they are making of him?
I mean, they haven't proved that.
So, what exactly were the takeaways from the last hearing?
Well, the Washington Post has a bit of a rundown.
The big takeaways, of course, are that Donald Trump did not properly respond to the riots on January 6th, which I think, again, we knew because we have a clock.
There's a thing called the clock, and there's a thing called Twitter, and we had availability of both during January 6th.
Donald Trump did not respond with alacrity to what was happening in the Capitol building.
Yes, true.
So what were the big revelations yesterday?
Well, they brought forth some tape of Nancy Pelosi being Nancy Pelosi.
So Nancy Pelosi apparently was on camera and she was watching Donald Trump speak.
And then she was saying things like she was going to punch Trump if Trump was going to come to the actual Capitol building with the crowd or whatever.
I have serious doubts that an 80-year-old woman was about to start jumping on Donald Trump and pummeling her with her bony fists.
But nonetheless, we are supposed to pretend that this is an act of great heroism by Nancy Pelosi.
Fine, whatever.
Here is Nancy Pelosi.
Secret Service said they have dissuaded him from coming to Capitol Hill.
They told him they don't have the resources to protect him here.
So at the moment he is not coming, but that could change.
I'm going to punch him out.
I'm waiting for this.
For trespassing on the Capitol ground.
I'm going to punch him out and I'm going to go to jail and I'm going to be happy.
I've been waiting for this.
Well, if she'd really been waiting for this, then maybe she should have staffed up security at the Capitol building, considering she's the Speaker of the House.
And then there was tape that was revealed of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi begging the Attorney General to get Trump to tweet, to tell people to leave the Capitol building.
So again, we knew all of this.
I mean, this is not big revelations happening right here.
It just underscores bad stuff that we knew Trump was already doing.
They're breaking windows and going in, Obviously, we're untacking our offices and all the rest of that.
That's nothing.
The concern we have about personal safety, personal safety is, it just transcends everything.
But the fact is on any given day, they're breaking the law in many different ways.
And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.
Yeah, why don't you get the President to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility?
A public statement they should all leave.
Okay, and Trump eventually did put out a video, obviously, telling everybody to leave.
What is the purpose of this?
Well, it's color commentary and stuff that we already knew, but again, it's designed to sort of refocus the country from the fact that we have a disastrous economic report, which we'll talk about in just a second, and a failing foreign policy, and a president who doesn't appear to be coherent.
And so let's focus in on Donald Trump.
So what did the January 6th committee actually show yesterday?
Not particularly much.
They showed that Trump prematurely declared victory and that he intended to do so.
That, of course, we knew already.
Again, a lot of this we know already.
There was a suggestion by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump already knew that he lost and that he was doing this despite the fact that he lost.
According to Hutchinson, Trump said something like, quote, I don't want people to know we lost.
This is embarrassing.
Figure it out.
We need to figure it out.
I don't want people to know that we lost.
Hutchinson said that this was not a verbatim quote.
But she said twice Trump had spoken in terms that indicated he knew he'd lost.
Well, unless you have, you know, some actual verbatim quote, again, it's going to be very hard to prove all of that.
Also, as I've said before, Donald Trump has a unique capacity to talk himself into positions, as we know.
He actually believes a lot of things that are quite false, and that's because he's talked himself into them.
They supposedly provided evidence that Trump might have approved of the rioters, but again, not really any hard evidence.
When they say might, again, no evidence really provided.
The committee leans in on the Secret Service according to the Washington Post.
Apparently there are a lot of agents expressing concerns about the January 6th rally more than a week before, which again raises questions as to why security wasn't up to the actual Capitol building.
We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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And then finally, they got to the big story of the night.
And the big story of the night was that there was a unanimous vote to subpoena Donald Trump.
Which is really more a dramatic photo op than anything else, because as we'll discuss in just a moment, there really is no legal basis for compelling the President of the United States to testify in front of Congress.
There have been a bunch of presidents and ex-presidents who have been subpoenaed in the past.
Some have testified, some have not.
It was really more just a dramatic move in advance of the fact that the Democrats are about to lose the House of Representatives, and all this comes to a screeching halt in approximately three weeks here.
And so here was the January 6th committee last night voting to subpoena Donald Trump.
If there's no further debate, the question is on agreeing to the resolution.
Those in favor will say aye.
Aye.
Those opposed is no.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
The clerk will report the vote.
Mr. Chairman, on this vote, there are nine ayes and zero nos.
The resolution is agreed to.
And shockingly, a committee that has no Republicans on it other than Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, shockingly, I can't believe it, they voted in favor of subpoena.
So what exactly does the subpoena mean?
It means nothing.
It means literally nothing because there's no way for them to truly enforce it and every legal expert understands there is no way for them to truly enforce it.
Steve Bannon was convicted of failing to perform in front of a congressional subpoena.
He spent zero time in jail.
Donald Trump is not going to jail over this.
The attempt- Well, they subpoenaed him.
They're gonna throw- No, they are not going to do that.
According to the Washington Post.
Not according to me.
They point out that the committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump to submit documents and provide testimony concerning the events of January 6th.
Trump can refuse to comply with the subpoena.
Lawmakers could ask the DOJ to charge Trump with contempt of Congress.
Stephen Gillers, a professor of constitutional law at NYU, noted federal prosecutors may refuse such a request.
Alternatively, the department could add contempt to later charges if, in fact, they indict him for other stuff.
They could add it on top of, for example, document mishandling, which we'll get to in just one second.
Contempt of Congress, as the Washington Post points out, is a rarely used criminal statute meant to ensure people comply with congressional subpoenas.
Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress in July.
His sentencing is scheduled for October 21st.
Each of the two misdemeanor charges is punishable by at least 30 days and up to one year in jail.
Nobody has been incarcerated for contempt of Congress in half a century.
So yeah, you think that they're going, like, who?
Who?
Like, you think Joe Biden's DOJ is going to throw Donald Trump in jail for, what, 30 days or 60 days for contempt of Congress?
How exactly is that going to work?
Stanley Brand, former counsel to the House of Representatives, who's represented some of the January 6th witnesses, said, quote, there's a very low probability we'll ever see that happen.
How do you make a case for needing to do this when you're a legislative body, not even a grand jury, though you've been acting like one?
This is one of the other points, is that Congress, typically when you have a hearing, there are only a couple of purposes for the hearing.
One is a legislative purpose for the hearing, right?
We are going to investigate what went wrong so we can create legislation for the future.
And then there's an investigative purpose to a hearing, which is we fear that you have abused taxpayer dollars to do something, right?
It's an oversight hearing.
What exactly is this hearing meant to do?
I've said this since the beginning.
What exactly are they discovering here that they're going to do something about?
Where's the supposed misuse of taxpayer dollars that they're going to clean up?
What legislation are they going to pursue?
The answer is none of that stuff.
It's a grandstanding show.
And listen, that's what a lot of congressional committees are.
This is not unique to Democrats.
There are Republicans who have run grandstanding congressional committees before.
That's nothing new.
But to pretend that this is some sort of law enforcement agency, it's a law enforcement body, is of course incredibly silly.
The subpoena has pretty much no teeth.
According to that NYU professor, the subpoena may be the committee's way of giving Trump a formal opportunity to respond to its work, even if it does not expect Trump to show up.
Gillard said, I suspect the committee will not try to enforce the subpoena.
What it is saying with the subpoena is, here's your chance.
Well, Donald Trump, yeah, sure.
He's going to show up and he's going to, what, do battle with Benny Thompson?
Very unlikely.
By the way, there are a bunch of presidents who in the past have been subpoenaed.
And some of them have testified.
Lincoln testified voluntarily, for example, when he was subpoenaed.
But a bunch of presidents have not.
And ex-presidents.
So in 1953, for example, former President Harry Truman refused to comply with a House subpoena after he was accused of knowingly appointing a Russian spy to a position while in office.
The House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Truman.
He refused to comply.
Instead, he gave a national broadcast denying the accusation, and the House let it go.
Two decades later, Nixon cited Truman when he refused to appear before a congressional committee investigating Watergate.
His successor, Gerald Ford, of course, ended up pardoning Richard Nixon, and that ended the subpoena.
Other presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Bill Clinton, have all been subpoenaed, not before Congress, but in civil, criminal, and military proceedings.
There are a bunch of people who have testified, there are some who have not.
But the bottom line here is that there's no way for them to actually compel Trump to testify here.
It's all a grandstanding move.
Now, does this mean that there is no indictment on the way for Donald Trump?
That seems increasingly unlikely.
It seems as though the DOJ, under pressure from the January 6th committee, to do something about Trump.
It seems as though they are probably going to move toward an indictment of him based on the mishandling of classified materials over at Mar-a-Lago, according To the Washington Post, a Trump employee has now told federal agents about moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago at the specific direction of the former president, according to people familiar with the investigation, who say that the witness account, combined with security camera footage, offers key evidence of Donald Trump's behavior as investigators sought the return of classified materials.
Again, one of the things that is so irritating about this particular story is we still have no idea what exactly are the materials that Trump was hiding and why.
Like, was this really just Donald Trump being like, I really like that love letter from Kim Jong-un, and I want to keep it, and I don't care if it goes to the National Archives.
Go get it.
Bill, go pick it up.
Put it in the other room.
Hide it under my mattress.
Like, if so, is that something you're going to send the former president of the United States to jail for?
And the possible nominee for president of the opposing party in 2020?
Like, that's what you're going to go after him for?
So you missed on January 6th, and you impeached him twice, but didn't get him convicted either time.
And this is your backup?
The witness description and footage described to the Washington Post offer the most direct account to date of Trump's actions and instructions leading up to the FBI's August 8th search of the Florida residence and private club.
The people familiar with the investigation said agents have gathered witness accounts indicating that after Trump advisers received a subpoena in May for any classified documents remaining at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told people to move boxes to his residence at the property.
That description of events was corroborated by security camera footage, which showed people moving the boxes.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich declined to answer detailed questions for this article.
Budowich said the Biden administration has weaponized law enforcement and fabricated a document hoax in a desperate attempt to retain political power.
Every other president has been given time and deference regarding the administration of documents as the president has ultimate authority to categorize records and what materials should be classified again.
That seems like a specious piece of legal reasoning, but as always, several things can be true at once.
Trump's irresponsibility with documents Given the Hillary Clinton standard of intent to distribute to nefarious sources being required for actual prosecution, very difficult to get to the point where you think that Donald Trump ought to go to jail for something like this.
According to the Washington Examiner, however, this is exactly the direction that the DOJ is moving.
Apparently, government investigators are working to determine whether Trump committed a host of crimes, including those engaged with the destruction of government documents, mishandling of classified information, and obstruction. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, has dubiously claimed he declassified all of the records. According to former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman, quote, between this and the testimony of Alex Cannon, Trump's M.A.L.
goose is cooked.
That's Mar-a-Lago.
As I have often said, the issue is no longer the proof, but DOJ's will.
Trump's worker told FBI about moving Mar-a-Lago boxes on Trump's orders.
So it looks as though according to former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman quote astonishing levels of evidence that would convince jurors witnesses have told federal investigators after subpoena for federal classified documents Trump told people to move the boxes to his residence corroborated by security camera footage. So there are people who are attempting to defend Trump including former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.
He underscored how the Trump employee, who has not been identified, reportedly changed his story across multiple interviews with federal investigators to admit that he handled sensitive material in moving the boxes at Mar-a-Lago.
Mariotti also emphasized that the subpoena against Trump came in May, before Trump reportedly gave the direction to reposition the boxes.
Mariotti said the employee is unlikely to be charged if he continues to cooperate.
His testimony suggests Trump tried to keep documents from the DOJ.
But again, if he changed the story a lot, that's going to lead to some holes in the story.
Where this goes, again, it seems highly likely at this point that there will be some sort of charges brought by the DOJ here.
The fact that the January 6th committee basically stirred up incentive for a Trump indictment on the document matters is somewhat telling.
It also happens to be telling, as I said before, that the double standard when it comes to document mishandling is so obvious and so clear.
Hillary Clinton is allowed to wildly mishandle classified documents according to the FBI so long as she didn't have intent to essentially distribute them to America's enemies, even if the enemies got a hold of them because she was keeping them on the internet.
That apparently is not a prosecutable offense.
What Trump did is a prosecutable offense.
Meanwhile, Trump can be impeached for quid pro quo with Ukraine when Joe Biden engages in open quid pro quo.
With the full view of the American public and the world public and the Saudi Arabian government effectively confirming the ask for the quid pro quo, that apparently is not any sort of serious Scandal in the media or on the left.
Meanwhile, all of this, all of it, is a distraction from the new economic reports.
Inflation continues to come in extraordinarily hot.
We'll get some more on this in just one second.
First, as you may have noticed, the economy is in a shambles and it's going to get worse in the near future.
Pretty much every economist is now predicting a recession is coming, a worse recession.
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Okay, meanwhile, Everything that is happening with regard to the January 6th committee or with regard to Joe Biden campaign, all of it is an attempt to distract from the simple fact, which is that Joe Biden's economic record is abysmal.
I mean, truly abysmal.
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
consumer inflation, excluding energy and food, accelerated to a new four-decade high in September, a sign that strong and broad price pressures are persisting.
The Labor Department on Thursday said its so-called Consumer Price Index, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, rose 6.6% in September from a year earlier.
That's the biggest increase since August of 1982.
That measure increased 6.3% in August.
It's actually rising faster than it rose last month.
So overall, by the way, the inflation report came in at 8.2%.
And when they say that it rose 6.6%, excluding energy and food, people spend a lot of money on energy and food, as it turns out.
The inflation report likely keeps the Federal Reserve on track to increase interest rates by 0.75 percentage points at its meeting next month.
It also raises the risk officials will delay an anticipated slowdown in the pace of rate increases after that or signal they are likely to raise rates to even higher levels early next year than previously anticipated by policymakers and investors.
Again, they're going to have to slam on the brakes because there was so much easy money that was dumped into the system.
U.S.
stocks tumbled in early trading before reversing to close much higher on the day.
Bond prices fell, while yields, which move in the opposite direction, rose.
Again, people are not willing to buy American bonds because they can see that we're going to have to pay off all of our debts using these inflated dollars.
Prices rose last month for housing, medical care, airline fares, and other services, threatening to keep inflation high for the foreseeable future.
Investors and policymakers follow core inflation closely as a reflection of broad underlying inflation and as a predictor of future inflation.
On a monthly basis, the core CPI rose 0.6% in September.
That was the same as August.
It was up from 0.3% in July.
Bill Adams, the chief economist at Comerica Bank, he said inflation has built up a lot of momentum over the last year.
That's going to keep inflation higher than the Federal Reserve wants it for at least a couple more months, if not a couple more quarters.
No, it's going to be a couple more quarters.
This is not coming down in the next couple of months.
Core services prices, which tend to persist once they start rising because that obviously means increased wages and benefits, rose at a one-month annualized rate of 9.9%.
So the services that you are paying for, whether the dry cleaners or whatever, the sharpest rate since 1982 has now been seen here in terms of the increase in price.
Prices for motor vehicle repair services rose 2.2% in September, month over month.
That's not year over year, that's month over month.
Veterinary services and daycare and preschool increased 2% last month alone.
These are price shocks that are rippling through the American economy.
Unsurprisingly, bond yields ended higher, lifted by the inflation data.
Bond yields are the gap between the price of a bond and the par value of the bond.
So what that means is fewer people are buying bonds because they have very little faith in the American government at this point.
Bonds rallied with stocks later in the session, eroding some of the climb, but unlike stocks, they failed to recoup all of their price declines.
Yields rose most sharply on short-term bonds, which are particularly sensitive to near-term interest rate outlook.
They also climbed on longer-term treasuries, which tend to have a larger impact on the financial markets and the economy.
Taken together, Thursday's moves in stocks, bonds, and currencies were difficult to understand, said Zach Griffiths, senior strategist at the Research Firm Credit Sites.
They provided more evidence of just how volatile markets are and how difficult they are to navigate.
But Treasury yields did tell a coherent story, said Griffiths, with rising short-term yields driven by bets on higher rates and the less rapid increase in longer-term yields reflecting a recognition that recession risks are rising.
So basically, the short-term rate, you're not going to invest in a bond that is paying you off at, say, 3% or 5% over the short term because inflation is going to outpace the actual increase you got from the bond.
You're instead going to hold on to the cash.
Or you're going to use that cash to invest in something else.
You're going to try to buy.
You don't even know what to do with your money is the real issue here.
And then when it comes to longer-term bonds, the question is going to be, if there is a recession, do you really want your money locked up in those longer-term bonds?
So a lot of this is disaster area for the United States economy.
We are starting to see the same sort of squeeze on our bond markets that the UK has been seeing.
Meanwhile, just to re-enshrine inflation and make sure that it becomes a permanent feature of American life, Our cost-of-living adjustments that are built into Social Security came in at 8.7%.
So Social Security checks are now going to be about 9% bigger than they were last year.
That is the largest cost-of-living adjustment to benefits in four decades according to the Social Security Administration.
Now, the administration is championing this.
They actually tweeted out, and the New York Times was tweeting out, well, this is going to be a really healthy boon for older Americans.
Like, well, that's a really weird way of reading in permanent inflation into the economy as a good thing.
According to, you know, people who are receiving Social Security checks, of course they need the extra money.
The problem is that that also is an inflationary pressure.
It's an increasing inflationary pressure.
Next year's COLA increase is likely to hasten the date of insolvency for Social Security Trust Fund, according to the Nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which predicts that full insolvency for Social Security is going to occur in 2034, so not all that far distant.
At that time, Social Security income would be sufficient to pay for about 80% of scheduled benefits, which means radical increases in taxes or cutting in benefits or delay of old age retirement.
Those are the three options that are available when Social Security goes bust.
Again, you're going to see the Federal Reserve increase the interest rates more radically.
They're going to have to continue escalating this thing.
Mortgage rates, too, are jumping tremendously.
According to MarketWatch, the rate on a popular type of home loan increased this week to its highest level in 20 years, according to data released on Thursday.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan increased to 6.92% as of Thursday, according to the results of Freddie Mac's primary mortgage market survey.
That is the highest rate since April of 2002, which means that we are about to see a tremendous cratering in the real estate market when those mortgage rates are hitting 7%.
Who can afford a 7% mortgage in an economy that is this shaky?
Mortgage rates have more than doubled this year as the Federal Reserve has moved to combat inflation.
Sam Kater, Freddie Mac's chief economist, said, quote, We continue to see a tale of two economies in the data.
Strong job and wage growth are keeping consumers' balance sheets positive, but lingering inflation, recession fears, and housing affordability are driving housing demand down precipitously.
Basically, people are taking their money out of the market and they're waiting around on it because they're afraid they're going to lose their job over the course of the next couple of quarters.
And many people will lose their jobs over the course of the next couple of quarters.
All of these bills coming due just before the midterm elections is precisely why Joe Biden was begging the Saudis to pump oil a month before the election.
The Biden economic advisors have no strategy here.
They're just going to try to whistle past the graveyard here.
So you have Brian Deese, White House economic advisor, suggesting that inflation is really not about America.
It's a global challenge, as though America isn't the leading factor in the global economy.
Inflation is a challenge.
It's a global challenge.
I think the first and most important point is that the United States is in a better and stronger position to take this challenge head-on than virtually any other country in the world.
That's in no small part because of the policies that we've put in place and the strong and resilient economic recovery that we have here in the United States.
Oh, we're in a great position, are we?
Because it seems like you're the ones who created the inflationary spiral with your vast bevy of spending.
I thought, by the way, the Inflation Reduction Act was supposed to reduce inflation.
It was like right in the name of the Inflation Reduction Act.
And that is not working.
D says, our policies are making all the difference.
To whom and how?
Explain.
Prices are too high, but the message the president is delivering is that you have a president administration That's waking up every day trying to address that problem head-on and we are making progress We are making progress on energy prices. We are making progress. We just have to we just have to stay at it and so The you know, we we have policies that are going to make a difference We have policies that have already made a difference. We just have to stay the course So I have a few quibbles with that one
One, I disagree with the president is waking up every day.
Uh, and then number two, obviously your policies are not actually moving us in the right direction.
But again, who's, who are you going to believe your pocketbook, your bank account or your, or your Or your administration?
I mean, this is the question.
You have to listen to Joe Biden.
You have to listen to Jared Bernstein, the economic advisor, the chief advisor to President Biden on the economy.
He says everything is moving in the right direction, which is weird because everything seems to be moving in the wrong direction.
I think the question is, are policy makers doing what they need to do?
The president released oil from the strategic reserve.
That contributed to almost a hundred day of gas declines.
I mentioned our work on the supply side.
The Inflation Reduction Act.
Lowering medical care costs.
Lowering prescription drug costs.
Lowering the cost of clean energy.
So all of these are moving in the right direction.
They take time to factor into these price indices.
And we'd like to see that happen a lot quicker.
Um, no.
The answer to all of this is no.
And the reason the answer to all of this is no, by the way, is not purely because of Joe Biden being bad at his job, although it's largely because of Joe Biden being bad at his job.
It's not purely because of Jerome Powell being bad at his job, although Jerome Powell was bad at his job and Janet Yellen.
All these people are bad at their jobs.
You know, the expert class, it turns out, is not particularly expert.
It has to do more with the simple fact that the West has decided they're going to blow out the spending and they will never, never actually receive the consequences of that other than in these vast Recessionary waves in which they blame the private sector.
That's the real underlying problem in all of this.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We're going to get into the underlying problems in the world economy.
Plus, we're going to get to a proposed law in Virginia that would effectively criminalize you not transing your kids.
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