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Jan. 13, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:52
Joe Biden’s Garage Is Full Of Classified Documents | Ep. 1646
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Time Text
The same president who declared Donald Trump's handling of classified materials irresponsible was keeping classified materials in his garage next to his Corvette.
Kamala Harris continues to spew word salad and Pete Buttigieg is blowing up on the tarmac.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, well, well, if it isn't karma who has arrived to take revenge upon Joe Biden.
It is amazing how pretty much in order every major Democratic candidate for 2024 is taking the hits this week from Joe Biden all the way on down the chain to Pete Buttigieg, but mostly Joe Biden.
So coming off of an election cycle in which he barely escaped the guillotine because the Republicans decided to raid the local homeless shelter for candidates, Joe Biden has now enmeshed himself in a controversy.
Now, this controversy began actually before the election.
Which is in and of itself part of the controversy, because it turns out that on November 2nd, Joe Biden's lawyers found a bunch of classified documents at the Penn-Biden Center for International Diplomacy and Boondoggles over in Washington, D.C.
And this was not made public until two months after the election, which raises some serious questions as to how law enforcement does its work, as to why certain material is leaked to the press and certain material is not leaked to the press.
OK, fine.
And the Biden administration immediately claimed, well, you know, that's an accident.
That's sort of stuff that happens to anyone.
Number one, Not clear this is true.
If you are a doctor working at the VA and you accidentally take somebody's medical records into your car in like a briefcase and you drive off the premises of the VA, you can be prosecuted for a misdemeanor.
This has been happening in American law for quite a while.
In the last year alone, there have been several prosecutions of people who have taken so-called classified materials, notes they took to themselves, to their hotel room, they've been prosecuted for that sort of stuff.
So, simply claiming, oops, my mistake, that doesn't necessarily get you off the hook.
But okay, fine.
Let's say that Joe Biden, it was just a mistake.
It was just an oopsie.
It was an oopsie where all of these documents ended up kind of Massaged into all of his other documents at the Penn Biden Center for International Nonsense or whatever.
Well, it turns out that there was another batch of documents and these were held at Joe Biden's home in Delaware, in his garage, next to his Corvette.
This does not seem particularly secure to me.
The line about Donald Trump.
Remember, the whole reason we are doing this routine right now is because the FBI decided to raid Mar-a-Lago based on the idea that Donald Trump had been keeping highly top secret, super secret, super double blind secret documents.
With the nuclear codes in a closet that was locked at Mar-a-Lago.
And this was a national crisis, a crisis of epic proportions, a crisis that required the intervention of the federal government, a vast public bureaucracy dedicated to prosecuting the former president.
And we were told this isn't just about Trump.
It's not just about Trump, right?
It's not just that we have to get Trump and we have to get him off the public scene.
And there's a great opportunity to hit Trump.
No, no, no.
It's because we take classification so darn seriously.
And many people on the right were saying, well, hold up just one second.
Didn't Hillary Clinton have dozens and dozens of classified documents on her private server at home?
Well, yes, yes, yes, but Hillary Clinton, you know, she, she, she, yeah, yes, but, but, and there's no really good answer as to why that was significantly better than what Donald Trump had done by taking a bunch of classified documents home and putting them in his locked closet.
Okay, fine, but they were going to go after Donald Trump anyway.
And you had President Biden out there saying that this was just it was unthinkable to take classified documents home to your house.
Well, as it turns out, Joe Biden just didn't didn't just take these documents home to his house.
He actually put them in his garage in a box next to his Corvette, which is not super secure.
Let's be real about this.
How secure is the stuff in your garage?
Do you consider that stuff incredibly secure?
I don't.
I don't consider stuff in my garage particularly secure.
I wouldn't put top secret materials in the box next to my car.
But according to the New York Post, President Biden admitted on Thursday that more classified documents were found inside his Delaware garage.
Now remember, when the media initially reported this, they said, in a second location.
And it was pretty obvious the second location was going to be his home.
And apparently, it wasn't just that he kept it in this second location, it was in an envelope that said on it, like, private and confidential.
Which, if you separate out the documents, and you put them in an envelope that says that sort of thing, that sort of implicates your level of knowledge about what is in the envelope.
In any case, And Biden admitted that these documents were found inside his Delaware garage near his prized classic Corvette.
After the revelation on Monday, the 10 sensitive documents were found at Biden's former think tank in Washington, D.C.
The jaw-dropping disclosure comes as the DOJ reviews whether Biden mishandled classified information, a potential crime, after he left office as VP in 2017.
All of this prompted the Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Robert Herr, a former Maryland U.S.
attorney, as a special counsel to examine the matter.
So things are going amazing.
We now have two special counsels investigating a former president and a current president of the United States.
And I will tell you, the buddy comedy that is going to result from both of these guys sharing a cell is going to be just unbelievable.
Or alternatively, both these prosecutions are going to be dropped and this is going absolutely nowhere.
We'll get some more on this in just one second.
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So the sort of blowback began yesterday with Peter Doocy asking Joe Biden, what was he thinking?
And Biden being like, come on, man.
Come on, man.
Here we go.
Let me, uh, I'm going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon.
But as I said earlier this week, people, and by the way, my Corvette's in a lock garage.
Okay.
So it's not like you're sitting out in the street.
It's in a locked garage.
And Biden's like, yes, as well as my Corvette.
There's only one problem.
You can literally see the boxes with the classified documents in pictures of Joe Biden next to his garage with the Corvette.
This is not where you keep classified documents, my friends.
This is not how any of.
Our country is run by complete morons, by complete morons.
Stop giving them this much power.
They are stupid people who are stupid.
They're all idiots.
Joe Biden, Captain mashed potatoes for brains over here.
He's out there talking about how he really respect.
He said yesterday, I take classified documents.
Super, super serious, man.
Serious monogamy.
Here we go.
People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.
No, we don't.
I also said we're cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department's review.
As part of that process, my lawyers reviewed other places where documents from my time as Vice President were stored and they finished the review last night.
They discovered a small number of documents of classified markings in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and my personal library.
Oh, in his home, his personal library as well.
So now have three separate locations where he's classified documents were being kept.
By the way, you can hear that Joe Biden is reading off a piece of paper.
So his lawyers formed for him a piece of paper.
That he is reading off of, which is always a really good sign that this is a person who's totally in control of the situation when you're reading paper that your lawyer has provided for you.
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented press secretary, she was asked yesterday about Joe Biden, and she repeated this nostrum.
If you just say it often enough, it becomes true.
It's like clapping for Tinkerbell.
You can keep Tinkerbell alive.
So if you say often enough that Joe Biden takes classified documents very seriously, then that lie remains alive.
So clap for Tinkerbell, guys.
Clap for Tinkerbell.
Here we go.
As the President said, he takes classified information and materials seriously, and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate.
Oh, well, okay.
Well, I mean, if he, if you say so, then he probably takes it super seriously, which is why he keeps the classified documents next to his car in his garage, next to his old golf clubs and a picture of a place that he went with his wife 20 years ago.
Like that, that's, that's where I keep all my most important stuff is in the garage, in a box.
The stuff that I don't want anybody to be able to break into the most secure location I can think of is in a box in my garage next to my car that I open daily so that I can take my car out of the garage.
Genius stuff here.
Karine Jean-Pierre says, here's the real thing.
We've been super transparent here.
As you will see, this is not true.
We've been so transparent.
So, I mean, like we're clear, like a sheet of glass transparent.
So just to, you said transparent.
I want to say that we have been transparent here.
That is why the minute that his lawyers found those documents, they reported it.
is allowed to be transparent about that if that was already known and not discussed up front.
So just to, you said transparent.
I want to say that we have been transparent here.
That is why the minute that his lawyers found those documents, they reported it.
They reached out to the archives and the department of justice and they did that voluntarily.
Transparent with whom?
With whom?
With the American people?
Because I checked my calendar and I noticed that January 13th is a lot later than November 2nd.
And that there was an intervening event called an election that happened six days after his lawyers knew about it.
So fully transparent stuff happening right here.
His lawyer, by the way, is a human named Richard Sauber.
This is the White House Special Counsel.
He said, quote, Following the discovery of government documents at the Penn-Biden Center in November 2022, and coordinating closely with the DOJ, the president's lawyers have searched the president's Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware residences, the other locations where files from his VP office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition.
Lawyers completed that review last night.
During the review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers a small number of additional Obama-Biden administration records with classified markings.
All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the president's residence garage.
One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room.
No documents were found in the Rehoboth Beach residence.
His lawyer said, as was done in the case of the Penn-Biden Center, the DOJ was immediately notified.
The lawyers arranged for the DOJ to take possession of these documents.
After the appointment of the special counsel, Sauber said, quote, we are confident a thorough review will show these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of the mistake.
Now, we will note, as we're going to go through the statutes, that intent is not an element of the crime.
So if you wish to actually prosecute Joe Biden under the statute, you totally could.
And if you wish to get Donald Trump under the statute, you would have to apply exactly the same standard that would allow for the prosecution of Joe Biden.
So this is all over guys.
Ain't no prosecution coming from Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the special counsel against Donald Trump over the mishandling of classified info.
It's not a thing that's going to happen.
Same thing is true for Joe Biden.
All of this is going to disappear into the ether because the rule is that as soon as a law is equally applied between Republicans and Democrats, it must never be applied again.
This is the rule under the current DOJ.
If the rule can be applied only to Republicans, then it's totally fine to apply it.
But if it will require you to actually apply it against both parties, well, then better that the rule should never be implemented at all.
By the way, when we are talking about dangers to public security, Joe Biden was keeping this in his garage, right?
There's only one problem.
I mean, there are many problems with this, but here is an additional problem with this.
According to the New York Post's Miranda Devine, Hunter Biden owned that house in 2018.
Yes, Hunter Biden snorting Parmesan cheese off the carpets, hanging out with the Chi-Coms, brokering million-dollar deals where 10% went to the big guy.
Hunter Biden had access to the garage.
Now, I don't mean to say that Hunter Biden probably rifled through the garage and grabbed those documents and was trading them and is naturally a traitor and was committing espionage.
What I am saying is, if you are talking about risks to national security, your son, who is a bag man for foreign powers, who then sends him on various Sort of larks to meet with his father and to different countries to negotiate on behalf of his own addled self.
That guy having access to the classified materials is a lot bigger problem than Donald Trump keeping all this stuff in a locked closet at Mar-a-Lago.
According to Miranda Devine, in 2018, Hunter Biden claimed he owned that house where Joe Biden kept the classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage.
Whoopsie doodle!
Oops!
Also, the White House was asked whether or not they would release visitor logs of his residents.
Because it's not enough to know now whether, you know, who's meeting with Joe Biden over at the White House.
Now we're talking about the period in which he was keeping classified documents in his garage.
So this would require us to know who actually went to his house.
Like, if you take classified materials pretty seriously, what you don't want is him inviting over people who are scurrilous and they have access to the documents, right?
That's a serious problem.
Well, apparently, the White House has answered, and their answer is, no, we're not releasing any of those visitor logs.
The White House deflected when asked if the visitor logs would be provided, according to the BBC.
The Justice Department has already appointed an investigator to look into the files.
The White House said, well, we did open the White House visitor logs.
Okay, well, that is a completely unrelated question that no one asked.
We're asking whether you're going to release the visitor logs from your house.
You know where the documents were.
So yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland, forced into a corner, announced a special counsel.
Now, all of these special counsels, I have to say, I'm not a big fan of special counsels, just generally speaking, mainly because they're a way to provide a false sense of insulation for the head of the DOJ from prosecutions the DOJ itself will have to do.
There is no body in American government that is independent of the branch in which it serves.
The Unitary Executive Theory suggests that the DOJ operates under the auspices of the President.
The DOJ operates under the auspices of the Attorney General of the United States.
You can appoint a Special Counsel.
The Special Counsel makes a recommendation, but the person in charge of the particular agency is not at any orders to actually obey the Special Counsel, for example.
So Merrick Garland has been attempting to avoid any sort of blowback by appointing special counsels for everything.
He's not going to.
If he doesn't prosecute Trump, the left will be very mad at him.
If he prosecutes Trump and he doesn't prosecute Biden, the right is going to be very mad at him.
And if he prosecutes neither, which is probably what he's going to end up doing now, then everybody will be mad at him for some reason or another.
He appointed a special counsel anyway.
Here he was yesterday.
pursuant to Department of Justice regulations governing such matters.
In keeping with those regulations, I have today notified the designated members of each House of Congress of the appointment.
I'm joined today by John Lausch, the U.S. Attorney General.
Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who conducted the initial investigation into the matter that I will describe today.
Based on Mr. Lausch's initial investigation, I concluded that, under the Special Counsel regulations, it was in the public interest to appoint a Special Counsel.
In the days since, while Mr. Lausch continued the investigation, the Department identified Mr. Herr for appointment as Special Counsel.
This morning, President Biden's personal counsel called Mr. Lausch and stated that an additional document bearing classification markings was identified at the president's personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Okay, so by the way, it is worthwhile noting here that there was in fact a gap of one month between the time that Biden's lawyers found documents at the Penn Biden Center for Wasteful Spending and the Joe Biden home.
There's a month gap between the search of one place and the search of the other place.
The White House still has not answered why the discovery was not disclosed when it occurred, according to CNBC.
So the appointment of the special counsel, the big danger for Biden here is that any special counsel has broad remit to actually investigate anything.
Now, theoretically, the special counsel could do what Robert Mueller did and just keep digging and digging and digging and digging, because once you've appointed a special counsel, basically their raison d'etre, the reason for their existence, is so they can keep digging and digging and digging and digging.
Is that likely to happen here?
Probably not.
Probably this person will investigate the documents, declare that Joe Biden didn't do anything on purpose, and that's enough for them.
That will require a changing of the reading of the statute, which is what our Attorney General seems to be in the habit of doing.
It's what James Comey did with regard to Hillary Clinton, is when you don't want to prosecute somebody, you just read intent into the law, because here is the problem.
When it comes to unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material, that's a strict liability crime under the law.
Under 18 U.S.
Code 1924, quote, whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and by virtue of his office, employment position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years or both.
For purposes of this section, the provision of documents and materials to Congress don't constitute an offense.
I mean, clearly he has violated this law, correct?
He was an officer of the United States.
He was vice president of the United States.
And in the waning days of the Obama administration, he shipped himself these documents.
And apparently he knew about it because they were in like, in one case, an actual separate manila folder that said on it private.
So obviously he knew.
So that is a violation of statute.
What is likely to happen is they will read intent back into the statute.
But as Andrew McCarthy points out, by the law, Biden's already guilty.
Quote, In announcing her appointment, Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the facts of the case that drove him to the decision.
Biden, while he was a private citizen after the conclusion of his term as VP, retained batches of classified information in unauthorized locations.
That is enough evidence of a federal penal offense to warrant a criminal investigation and potential prosecution.
The reaction to the special counsel appointment by Richard Sauber, the lawyer Biden brought into the White House to help deal with the investigations, was remarkable.
He said the president was confident the special counsel investigation would find the documents in question were, quote, inadvertently misplaced.
But that's not a defense to the charge of mishandling classified information.
It's tantamount to an admission of guilt.
For conviction, federal law requires prosecutors to establish that the defendant was grossly negligent.
There's no need to prove that an accused was trying to harm the United States, just that he was trusted with classified information and carelessly flouted the standards for safeguarding it.
So it appears that Biden isn't challenging that documents were classified, which is what Trump did, right?
Trump said, these are all declassified.
I'm the president.
I can wave, I can wave my hand and now they're declassified.
Poof!
Right?
He, he was in fact, Joe Biden was not.
Joe Biden didn't even have that power.
But Biden is, is not challenging that documents were classified, that the locations in which he kept them were not authorized and that he didn't keep track of them.
So all of the elements of the offense have already been established.
So Andy McCarthy says no doubt because sufficiency of the evidence is only one of the two questions prosecutors must ask before charging someone with a crime.
The second question is whether even if the person is guilty, an indictment is in the public interest.
It appears Biden's approach will be to avoid discussing the slam-dunk evidence and spin the equities of prosecutorial discretion to his advantage.
He'll say the number of documents was comparatively small, that he self-reported the violation as soon as it was discovered, that he immediately turned the documents over to the National Archives, and that he cooperated fully with the investigation.
The subtext, of course, will be that he compares favorably to former President Donald Trump's conduct.
But the subtext doesn't change the fact that Biden is apparently guilty of basically the same offense as Trump.
So, again, the real precedent here is Hillary Clinton, which is that Hillary Clinton, as I've said all along, the real standard when it comes to mishandling classified info is Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton did mishandle classified info.
James Comey then re-read the law to turn a strict liability crime into an intent crime.
When he did that, he basically exonerated Trump and exonerated Biden.
If that's the reading of the law, everybody gets away with it.
Now, I understand why this exacerbates feelings from the American people that everybody is full of crap.
Because the reality is if it was you, if you were found with classified documents in your garage next to your throwback Corvette, you would be prosecuted.
You would!
Because you're not a famous rich person who's in politics.
That's the way this would work.
And this is one of the reasons why you have these populist revolts that are on hand pretty much constantly now.
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Meanwhile, the Democrats are moving to defend Joe Biden.
No shock there.
Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming House minority leader, he says that he has full faith and credit in Joe Biden, which is weird.
I didn't realize that he had credit in Joe Biden as well.
Like, what?
Okay, here we go.
I have full faith and credit in President Biden.
I believe that he's doing everything to take the appropriate steps to determine what happened and how to move forward in a responsible fashion and I'm confident that he will continue to do so.
My favorite thing about politician talk is when they start lying, they start moving their hands a lot.
I mean, I have full faith and credit in the President of the United States.
By the way, full faith and credit does not mean what you think it means.
If we're going to talk about... Every time people make gaffes in American public life, we say that they are foolish.
Full faith and credit is a reference to Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, and it talks about how states have to give full faith and credit to acts of other states.
Across boundaries, for example.
So yeah, he's just misusing the language there, but they trust Joe Biden.
They trust him.
Why?
Because he's a trustworthy guy.
All of which comes back to the bottom line here.
When it comes to political prosecution in the United States, all too often what seems to be happening is that our methods of law enforcement go after the person, not after the crime.
If they were going after the crime, Hakeem Jeffries' level of trust in Joe Biden versus Donald Trump would be completely irrelevant.
And so would Merrick Garland.
It would just be about who actually committed a crime, but we don't do that anymore.
Ayanna Pressley, one of the most progressive members of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, she says that Joe Biden, this is a man of integrity.
He is full of integrity.
Well, he's certainly full of something.
Are you concerned about the way that President Biden has handled classified documents?
Well, I'm learning about this in real time, just like you are, so I don't have any unique insights.
But what I would say is that the president has been moving with cooperation, moving proactively, excuse me, moving with integrity, which is more than I can say for the twice impeached former occupant, Donald Trump.
Oh, so we're just going to completely we're going to completely rewrite.
The actual issue here.
Again, the issue is, did you mishandle classified information?
If you want to try to charge Donald Trump with obstruction, that's a completely different crime.
But if you're talking about the classified information stuff, Joe Biden did the exact same thing as Donald Trump, period.
He took classified documents to his home and he left them there in far less secure circumstances than actually Donald Trump, as it turns out.
All of which has prompted the more radical members of the Democrat-Left coalition to suggest conspiracy theorizing.
Which was fun.
Remember that time that Donald Trump suggested that the documents might have been planted at Mar-a-Lago and everybody laughed at him because it was silly?
Because it is silly?
Well, now the left is doing the exact same thing with regard to Joe Biden.
So you have the, um, the morons over at The View combined IQ 7, suggesting that Republicans maybe planted the documents, right?
That's how they were going to get him, gang.
They're going to go into his garage in Delaware and plant documents.
Also, Joe Biden admitted it and his lawyers admitted it.
Aye, aye, aye, aye.
Someone explain to me, A, how it's possible that after all this time, nobody knew?
Because to me, if you're missing classified information, I don't mean to laugh, but in my house, if stuff is missing, I know it's missing.
Does it feel like OPPO research to you?
Does it feel like the Republicans are behind it?
It feels like Republicans are behind it.
His own lawyers turned it in.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have it.
Joe Biden is totally transparent and totally honest.
And man, he's really handling this with alacrity.
He's doing this quickly.
He's doing this expeditiously.
And also Republicans planted it.
That's not how this works.
Representative Hank Johnson.
Alleged classified document showing up allegedly in a position of Joseph Biden.
going to tip over, suggested that the documents might have been planted as well.
These are very serious members of Congress.
Again, our country is ruled by morons, by the stupidest people alive.
Alleged classified documents showing up allegedly in the possession of Joseph Biden. You know, I mean, there's so much that needs to be investigated.
And that's what I call for, is for everything to be investigated.
But I'm suspicious of the timing of it.
I'm also aware of the fact that things can be planted on people.
Places and things can be planted.
Things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently.
Things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently by the president's own lawyer in the president's home because the president put documents there.
Solid, solid.
Now here's the problem for the Democrats.
They are tied to Joe Biden's leg at this point.
They are tied to that old man.
That old dude cannot string together two sentences, has trouble reading a script written for him by his lawyers.
Who has now made himself subject to the same exact scrutiny that Donald Trump is currently under.
That guy, they're tied to him.
Because the Democrats escaped the blade in 2022, this gave Joe Biden a little pep in his step.
It means that Democrats look at him and they say, this is a world-beating president.
This is a powerful man.
This is a person that we must all solidify behind.
Now, the other reason that they have to do that is because all their other candidates suck.
It's a serious problem for them.
The Democrats have no bench.
The person standing right behind Joe Biden with a letter opener is Kamala Harris.
And Kamala Harris, who is legitimately the worst politician in human history, constructed in a laboratory to be awful at her job.
Kamala Harris, as an example, you can pick any given day when Kamala Harris does a public appearance.
The level of Michael Scott awkward cringe that comes off the vice president is just astonishing.
It is an amazing thing.
It vibrates off her.
It changes the electromagnetic dynamics of the planet.
How much cringe comes off of Kamala Harris on a regular basis.
So here yesterday, for example, was Kamala Harris talking about climate change.
And, um, and she, what she says is so meaningful and she says it so meaningfully with so many pauses that are meaningful with repetitions of phrases that are meaningful with meaning and pregnant with meaning that have meaning that are meaningful.
Here we go.
I think of this moment as a moment that is about great momentum.
Inspired by, yes, optimism, inspired by a crisis, no doubt, but inspired by also our collective ability to see what can be unburdened by what has been.
What does what in the what?
That's not even English.
That's not even English.
I will say once again, Kamala Harris is a predictive text mechanism come to life.
She's significantly less lifelike than chat AI.
There's no question about this.
We're not going to need a vice president of the United States.
We'll just put a chat AI bot in her place and it will do a significantly better job of predicting what she should be saying.
It is a moment when there is so much moment for the momentum of moments filled with inspiration to be inspired by the inspiration of what has been unburdened by what has been But aware of what is to come, but also present with us in the moment, inspirationally.
The good news is that the vice president of the United States, the person standing in the wings with a vaudeville hook for the current president of the United States, who are ready to hit the button that opens up the trapdoor, the alligators are underneath, Kamala Harris.
Yesterday, she also got very excited about Venn diagrams.
It's like every day.
Her life must be the most boring one.
Like, I understand that the vice presidency does not actually, it's not a real job.
But, like, I've never seen a person so excited about Venn diagrams.
Like, because I don't think this person exists.
She's so excited about Venn diagrams.
The level of excitement for Kamala Harris when it comes to circles that overlap with other circles is astonishing.
Here we go.
She's excited about the Venn diagrams again, gang.
Think of the movement through the lens of something I love, which is to always think about complex issues through the frame of a Venn Diagram.
I love Venn Diagrams.
I do, I love Venn Diagrams.
Again?
See what I'm saying?
She is nerdy, I'm just saying.
No, it's not that she's nerdy.
You can do more.
Nobody says a Venn Diagram has to only be three circles, right?
Explain Venn Diagrams more, Kamala.
Do it!
Can you explain all the Venn Diagrams?
How about a pie chart?
Can she explain a pie chart?
I would love to hear her explain a pie chart.
It's like a pie, but it's a chart.
It's both delicious and informative.
I love Jennifer Granholm, the current Secretary of Energy, stepping in to try to save her.
It's because she's so nerdy, guys.
She is nerding out on the Venn Diagrams.
No, she's just awful at her job.
If you liked Venn Diagrams in third grade, you're a nerd.
If you like Venn Diagrams when you are 50 and Vice President of the United States, this makes you a dolt.
But that's not the only thing she likes.
Apparently there are two things she likes above all others.
So I used to say that she was on her My Favorite Things tour, like Julie Andrews from Sound of Music.
But she is in fact not.
She only likes a couple of things.
She loves phone diagrams.
Loves them.
Like, if Venn diagrams were a human, she would divorce Doug Emhoff and marry the Venn diagrams.
But, the other thing that she loves, she loves electric school buses.
Loves them.
They are the greatest thing that she has ever heard of electric school buses.
She has talked about it routinely.
Yesterday was no exception, it was a day ending in Y. Among the many things, I'm excited about electric school buses.
I love electric school buses!
I just love them!
For so many reasons.
Maybe because I went to school on a school bus.
Raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus, right?
Raise your hand if you breathe air!
Raise your hand, guys, if you have ever been in a vehicle.
We're unified, guys.
We've all been in a vehicle.
Raise your hand if you have ever ridden a school.
And that's why I'm so excited.
Okay, so you wonder why the Democrats are taking a dead old man and stacking him on top of a horse and running him in 2024?
That right there would be the reason.
That one.
Because if you're a Democrat and you look at the possibility of that in a presidential race, you want to stick your head in the gas oven you want to ban.
Okay, but there is one other person who is being held.
to the side as a possible presidential candidate.
And he's also having a super crappy week.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
Well, folks, today is the anniversary of one of the greatest moments in the history of the Daily Wire.
After months of leading the legal battle against the federal government and a national do not comply campaign, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's outrageous Bax mandate.
That mandate would have set a dangerous precedent for giving the unelected OSHA power over the personal medical decisions of American citizens.
Remember, they want to make every single person in employed life vaccinate.
The Supreme Court recognized that this was a gross power grab and they made the right decision.
We as a company are really proud to have led the charge in this fight.
We're the only major media company that actually filed a lawsuit against the federal government to ensure that our employees and employees like you did not have to get the vaccine.
Thousands of you joined the Daily Wire.
Over a million Americans signed our petition against the mandates to celebrate.
We're offering 40% off our annual memberships with the code.
Do not comply.
This meant a lot to me personally.
You know, this is a serious risk for our company.
We have hundreds of employees.
The fines that OSHA was threatening if we had not complied with the mandate would have been crippling for our company.
We went ahead and did it anyway because it's the right thing to do.
I'm very proud that we are a company that does things like that and that we were part of ensuring that you got to make your own choice about the vaccine.
So, today is indeed a day to celebrate.
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Also, this weekend we have a brand new episode of my Sunday special.
It features a very special guest, Father Pavone.
Father Pavone was, of course, defrocked recently by the Catholic Church for Unspecified crimes?
It's not really clear what he did.
He has been the head of Priests for Life, and apparently he was a little bit too loud in opposing abortion.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
When I see the Democrat Party destroying life, destroying religious freedom, destroying America, destroying our history, our memory, our symbols, when the church stands up and points with a very clear finger, this is evil.
That's not the church being political.
That's the church being the church.
It's a fascinating episode.
We go into the contrast between Judaism, Catholicism, what they have in common, what the standards should be for priests.
Early access to this episode of the Sunday special is available over at Daily Wire Plus at midnight tonight.
It will be widely available on Sunday on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
So as I say, one of the giant problems for the Democratic party is the fact that they have no backup plan to Joe Biden, which is why they're going to take this octogenarian dullard and put him out front in the 2024 presidential race.
That is particularly true since Pete Buttigieg, he must have been cursed by some sort of witch.
I don't know if he came across a monkey's paw.
Like what exactly happened?
As one of my friends said, to Pete Buttigieg, that he has offended the gods so, because I've never seen a Secretary of Transportation be in the headlines as much.
Quick, name the past three Secretaries of Transportation.
You cannot.
The reason you cannot is because nobody even knows what the Secretary of Transportation does, because typically speaking, transportation in this country works pretty well.
You get on your plane and it goes where it's supposed to go and it arrives when it's supposed to arrive.
Your trains arrive on time to ship all of your goods.
You get on the highways and you are able to take those highways to places.
Unfortunately for Pete Buttigieg, he's very bad at his job and the reason that he got his job in the first place is because he was a famous gay candidate for President of the United States.
He had no history in transportation.
His entire resume with regard to handling issues like shipping problems was that he liked choo-choo trains and airplanes and had made out with his husband in an airport or something.
Because he loved planes.
This, as it turns out, does not actually qualify you to be Secretary of Transportation.
Or at the very least, it doesn't exempt you from having to do your job even if you are on paternity leave.
Even if you are, apparently, the greatest person in the world for having taken two months of paternity leave without anybody noticing.
As it turns out, the failures of the FAA over the last few days, the single worst flight outage since September 11th of 2001, which as you'll recall was prompted by an actual terrorist attack.
This particular outage at the FAA was caused, they're not blaming it on one person.
They're blaming it on one person who essentially pulled the plug.
So it sounds almost like the movie Airplane, where you have a weird guy who literally pulls a plug out of the control tower, causing crisis.
That's apparently how the FAA works.
But the real problem here is that the system that broke down has been in need of repair for a very long time.
And Pete Buttigieg was very, very busy going around talking about paternity leave on CNN.
So here is the Wall Street Journal reporting, federal aviation regulators, lawmakers, and air safety advocates have for years warned about outdated technology and other problems with the pilot alert system that brought US air travel to a halt this week. Technology that supports the Federal Aviation Administration's Notice to Air Missions or NOTAMS alert system is quote, failing vintage hardware that needs to be quickly replaced according to the Transportation Department's most recent budget request for the FAA.
Pilots and industry officials said the format and distribution system for the notices, which can contain extraneous information, can make them difficult for pilots to digest.
This is critical infrastructure, said Michael Huerta, a former FAA administrator under both Obama and Trump, who now serves on the board of Delta.
It may not be as glamorous as new airports or new bridges, but without it, the system can't function.
The administration and Congress need to make this a priority.
A breakdown of the NOTAM system led the FAA to halt all domestic departures for nearly two hours early on Wednesday, snarling thousands of flights and contributing to around 1,300 cancellations.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said the FAA tried unsuccessfully to switch to a backup system, and the agency then ordered a nationwide ground stop shortly after 7 a.m.
Eastern Time.
Apparently, the FAA said on Thursday its preliminary investigation taken into the cause of the problem with its no-tamp system was the result of actions taken by, quote, personnel who failed to follow procedures.
So you are telling me that one dude screwed up the entire air traffic system of the entire country?
The system has undergone updates but is largely based on legacy technology that is about 30 years old, according to current and former government officials.
So, sort of like the power grid in California, everything has not been updated for decades.
The sprawling agency, which oversees everything from drones and jet manufacturing to the air traffic control system, has faced challenges revamping the software and hardware its staffers rely on to keep the country's increasingly busy airspace operating smoothly.
When the Transportation Department made its annual budget request to Congress last year for the FAA, it sought $29.4 million to accelerate development of a program that would let the agency eliminate what it called that failing vintage hardware that currently supports the NOTAM alert system.
The system has failed at least two other times since early 2021, but in those cases, the FAA was able to avoid widespread impacts to flights.
So what exactly has Pete Buttigieg, the big problem solver, done about any of this?
The answer, of course, is he has done nothing.
He has done nothing.
He has been very concerned, though, about ensuring the political correctness of the FAA.
According to Breitbart, the Federal Aviation Administration has been focused on LGBTQI plus inclusivity and gender-neutral language under President Joe Biden.
So at least they're handling the issues that you really care about, not your plane getting there on time, but making sure that we use gender-neutral language in all of the systems that actually are not working.
They've been tweeting out consistently about why Women's History Month is so important to the FAA.
And Hispanic Heritage Month, very important to the FAA.
Why equity in aerospace?
Well, I mean, I guess there was equity.
There was complete equality the other day because no one could actually get off the ground.
Hilariously, Representative Nancy Mays of South Carolina, she filed a bill on Wednesday that would require Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and staff to fly commercial until a Southwest Airlines debacle and FAA computer glitch have been investigated and resolved.
Which is hilarious because, of course, Pete Buttigieg has been jet-setting around on military aircraft to various public events.
There have been prior secretaries of transportation like Ray LaHood who actually had to resign for that sort of thing.
The bill, Commercial Cabins for Cabinet Members, would require the Secretary of Transportation to only fly commercial just like every other American until the FAA reauthorization is completed.
This should provide enough time to investigate Southwest and the FAA.
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
A DOT spokesperson told Fox News Digital that 111 of Buttigieg's 129 flights for the DOT have been commercial, given that it's the cheapest way to fly.
But that leaves 18 flights that I'm sure cost a lot of money to fly Pete Buttigieg around to do honorary ribbon cuttings in various places.
So, Pete Buttigieg having a rough go of it.
Again, this is why they are addicted to Joe Biden because what do they have in the wings?
And the answer is they got nothing.
They have absolutely zero things in the wings.
Okay, meanwhile, the economy continues to sort of teeter on the brink.
The latest inflation reports came in.
Inflation is indeed slowing, which is precisely what you would expect when you jack up the interest rates, which is what the Federal Reserve has been doing.
This is leading to a little bit of outsized optimism on the part of the market.
Every time inflation stats come in a little bit lower than they were last month, the market goes, oh man, I'm sure the Federal Reserve is going to let up now.
That seems unlikely at this point.
It looks as though a quarter point increase is in the cards.
I would imagine they're going to have to go higher than that.
According to the Wall Street Journal, fresh data showing inflation eased in December are likely to keep the Fed on track to reduce the size of interest rate increases to a quarter percentage point at its meeting that concludes February 1st.
The Labor Department reported Thursday consumer prices fell in December, largely reflecting lower energy prices.
The consumer price index declined 0.1 percent from November.
The index is still up 6.5 percent for the year.
That is down from a recent peak increase of 9.1 percent in June.
The Core CPI Index, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% from November.
The 12-month increase edged lower to 5.7% from 6.6% in September.
On a three-month annualized basis, core inflation is down to 3.1%.
Now, they're supposed to be down at about 2% on an annualized basis, so they still have some work to do.
It is a decrease from where they were, but it is not where they need to be as of yet.
Fed officials have kept their options open on whether to raise rates by either a quarter percentage point or a half percentage point at their next meeting.
But the improving inflation data suggests officials will strongly consider the smaller increase of a more traditional quarter point or 25 basis points.
Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said in remarks Thursday morning, in my view, hikes of 25 basis points will be appropriate going forward.
Now again, we're going to have to see the impact on the economy of the increases in the interest rates that have already taken place.
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said, I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to core services X housing because I'd like to see some improvement there.
That subset of prices rose 0.26% in December, well below last monthly average of 0.5%.
So right now, it seems as though there is likely to be some sort of recession.
The question is going to be how long that recession is, how severe the recession is, and whether we just end up with very slow growth.
So not quite a recession, but really, really long-term stagnation.
Kind of low levels of inflation, 3% to 4% range, plus long-term stagnation.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is claiming that he's going to veto anything Republicans send his way because they make inflation worse.
Yes, the captain of creating 40-year highs in inflation is explaining how he is going to lower costs for American families, a thing that he hasn't done.
He's had to rely on the Federal Reserve to do it.
Is this how House Republicans are starting a new term?
Cutting taxes for billionaires?
Raising taxes for working families?
Making inflation worse?
Well, let me be very clear.
If any of these bills make it to my desk, Not the creepy whisper, Joe!
Don't do it, treating that microphone like a 14-year-old girl.
Yes, Joe Biden, you have been a stalwart in terms of fiscal responsibility, spending more money than any president in American history.
So really well done right there.
Again, they're stuck with this guy.
They're stuck with him.
And for all of the optimism of the moment, the reality is that Joe Biden's bad policies are still going to come home to roost.
He went down to the border.
He created no actual real change with regard to the border situation.
So that's a crisis that's going to continue to roll on.
Joe Biden is going to have a serious economy to face in the next couple of years.
Inflation is coming down, but economic stagnation is coming.
This was the problem when Biden took office.
It will continue to be the problem long term.
I've been predicting this for full-on two years at this point.
The major problem was not going to be inflation.
It was going to be economic stagnation.
Joe Biden is going to have to face that down.
Plus, the dude was keeping classified documents in a box next to his Corvette.
So yes, the Democratic Party has a lot more problems than we have been led to believe by the last election cycle.
Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We will be getting into how Stanford cracked down on a professor who is speaking the truth about COVID, plus a couple of former Republicans who have declared they will not be Republicans any longer.
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