All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 15, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:46
Biden’s America: Massive Inflation, Chinese Spy Balloons, And Exploding Trains | Ep. 1669
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Inflation won't come down as Joe Biden keeps touting his big spending agenda.
We still have no clue why the military keeps shooting down random objects in the sky.
And Nikki Haley declares a presidential run.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data.
Join them at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
So Bidenflation, it's not just there, it is actually in some ways getting worse.
The reason I say this is because the media have declared that actually inflation is cooling, guys.
It's actually cooling.
Why do they say this?
Well, the January inflation numbers came in and they suggest a 6.4% year-over-year increase in the inflation rate in the United States.
Now, the biggest problem here Is that the media have declared that this is actually a slowing pace because it was 6.5% in December.
The problem is you had 500,000 job pickups in January and a 6.4% inflation rate and the consumer price index went up.
And the biggest problem of all, the thing that the media have been completely ignoring is that when you're looking at year on year statistics, you actually have to look at the prior year and how much it increased last year from the year before.
And what you're actually getting right now, you're getting an aggregation of inflation rates at this point.
So Joe Biden is out there and he's suggesting the inflation report is good.
I want you to hear what he has to say before we completely debunk everything he's saying right now because it makes no sense.
The good news is that inflation in America is continuing to come down this fall in seven straight months.
There's more to go.
Food prices in the grocery store are coming down.
Gas prices are down $1.60 since their peak.
Real wages for working Americans are up over the last several months and living in welcome breathing.
Melissa, my dad used to say, all I'm looking for, Joey, is just a little breather at the end of the month.
It's like my dad used to say, Joey.
Whenever Joe Biden says, it's like my dad used to say, Joey, whatever comes next is not true.
His suggestion that everything is going fine on the inflation front is just wrong.
According to the Wall Street Journal, still elevated inflation cooled slightly at the start of 2023 to 6.4% in January from a year earlier, with energy, housing, food, and other items keeping some pressure on prices.
The increase in the Consumer Price Index, a closely watched measure of inflation, edged down from 6.5% in December, according to the Labor Department, and marked the seventh straight month of easing inflation since peaking at 9.1% in June, which is the highest reading since 1981.
But the cooling trend is moderating.
So if you had hoped that those ratcheting up of the interest rates were going to cool down the inflation in any serious way, well...
That is stalling out.
On a monthly basis, the consumer price index actually rose 0.5% in January from December, compared with a previous 0.1% increase, which means actual loss in real wages over the course of the last year.
There's a reason the markets were really choppy yesterday.
Core CPI, which excludes energy and food prices, rose 5.6% from a year earlier, down from 5.7% in December.
But again, the fact that we are now petering out in terms of the quashing of inflation is the real problem.
So if you look at the below the headline stats, things start to get truly ugly.
As Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air says, the consumer price index for all urban consumers rose 0.5% in January on a seasonally adjusted basis after increasing 0.1% in December, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 6.4% before the seasonal adjustment.
So this is the third time that Joe Biden has declared victory over inflation.
But what you actually see is that there has been an increase in the consumer price index in August, September, October, November, December, and January.
The last time there was no increase in the consumer price index, seasonally adjusted, was in July.
The White House is hoping that you just forget about all this because, again, we went from 6.5% in December to 6.4% year-on-year inflation.
The problem is, and this is the biggest problem, of course, is that CPI, having drifted downward from last summer, does not adjust for the fact that we are now making a comparison with months, right?
It's year-over-year.
We are now comparing January 2023 to January 2022.
2023 to January 2022.
While the problem is in January 2022, you'll recall the inflation rate was 7.5%.
Which means the January 2023 is 6.4% higher than that.
Right, so you're actually compounding now.
So, if you had a giant jump from January 2021 to January 2022, a 7.5% increase, and then you had from there a 6.4% increase, you're talking about, over the course of two years, significantly more than a 10% inflation rate.
Over the course of two years.
And the same thing is going to happen next month.
In fact, if you look at the U.S.
inflation rate by month, here is how it goes since Joe Biden took office.
January of 2021, 1.4 percent.
February, 1.7 percent.
March, 2.6 percent.
That is the last time that the inflation rate was anything close to normal.
Those are the year-over-year inflation rates.
Then you had April of 2021, 4.2, May 5.0, June 5.4, July 5.4, August 5.3, September 5.4, October 6.2.
It started picking up and picking up and picking up to the point where January 2022, you had a 7.5% year over year increase in the inflation rate.
And January 2023, again, a 6.4% increase year over year.
point to it started picking up and picking up and picking up to the point where January 2022 you had a 7.5% year over year increase in the inflation rate and January 2023 again a 6.4% increase year over year.
So what's February going to bring?
Well, I mean, it ain't going to be great because remember year over year, February of 2022 compared to February of 2021, that is a 7.9% inflation rate.
Year over year in February of 2022.
So let's say that the inflation rate cools slightly year over year to like 6.3%.
Well, that means, again, that using that compounding, that over the course of two years, the inflation rate has increased significantly more than probably 12 or 13%.
That is a real problem.
As Ed Morrissey points out, we are stuck in an inflation rut.
Washington Post economics reporter Heather Long pulled out some of the key data in the tables.
Groceries are up 11.3% in the past year.
Eating out is up 8.2% in the past year.
year. Eating out is up 8.2% in the past year. Natural gas is up 26.7% in the past year.
Electricity is up 11.9% Rent is up 8.6% in the past year.
Airfare is up 25.6% in the last year.
Vehicle insurance 14.7% and pet services 8.4%.
And this means a loss in real pay for workers.
Average hourly earnings fell 0.2% for the month.
and pet services 8.4% and this means a loss in real pay for workers.
Average hourly earnings fell 0.2% for the month.
They were down 1.8% from one year ago according to a separate Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
So Joe Biden's economy is in real trouble and all the happy talk we're seeing last week.
Maybe we're going to avoid a recession.
Maybe everything is going to be OK.
Maybe we've hit the soft landing.
No, not even close at this point.
And the simple fact is that the authorities lied to you about this sort of stuff.
They lied to you about a lot of stuff.
They lied to you about the fact that, for example, they can see your data.
So the authorities work hand-in-glove with Big Tech.
Big Tech provides them the data on you.
Why would you give them your data?
Because this is how Big Tech makes its money and this is how the government keeps track of you.
Instead, do what I do and use ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN makes sure that there can't be somebody out there 24-7 who's watching everything that you do.
Your ISP is tracking and logging every single website you've ever visited.
They can legally sell that information to anyone or simply make it available to the government.
This is why I use ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN reroutes your internet connection through their secure servers so your internet provider can't track your online activity.
Now you might be wondering, if I'm rooting all my data through a VPN, can't that VPN log my data instead?
That does in fact happen, but not in the case of ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN is the only VPN I trust that uses trusted server technology that makes it impossible for their VPNs to store the data.
They literally have no ability to store your data.
Stop letting people keep logs of what you do online.
Your data is your own.
Visit expressvpn.com slash ben right now.
Find out how you can get three extra months for free.
That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben.
Again, expressvpn.com slash ben.
Okay, so again, Joe Biden is just going to try to lie his way through this.
I've read you the stats.
Life is significantly more expensive than it was one year ago, and it's way the hell more expensive than it was two years ago.
And Joe Biden can try to blame that on Ukraine.
It ain't Ukraine.
Joe Biden can try to blame that on the pandemic.
The pandemic's been over for at least a year and a half at this point, if you date the end of the pandemic to the widespread availability of vaccines, which even the most conservative people on COVID really should do.
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre over at the White House, she is claiming that there's a decline in real wages, but that is showing that Joe Biden's plan is actually working.
So we now have, once again, complete unfalsifiability in politics, when if the wages go up, that is evidence that the plan is working, and if the wages go down, that is also evidence that the plan is working.
Here's Karine Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented White House press secretary.
Administration officials have said growing real wages is an important marker for the economy.
How do you view the setback in today's numbers?
So, a couple of things.
I do want to say that what we have said many times is that we believe that the President's economic plan is indeed working and it's giving people a little breathing room.
You heard me say this at the top, how we have seen the plan actually working.
We're seeing inflation moderate.
Okay, again, the plan is not, in fact, working and everybody knows it.
But again, I understand.
I mean, she's got a rough job.
Karine Jean-Pierre has to go out and lie on behalf of a liar.
That's a very, very difficult job.
Here she was yesterday suggesting that Joe Biden deserves a lot of credit.
I mean, I would say blame, but sure, credit, if this is the way that you see the world.
Americans, you know, want to know if there's more to this beyond just sort of talk and keeping it up public.
So look, the president's not going to give up on this, right?
He's going to keep at it.
He's going to make sure that we keep the American people, American families, American communities safe.
Now, if you remember, if you look at the last two years, this is a president that deserves a lot of credit.
We've gotten a lot of things done.
If you think about the executive actions that he took, more executive action than any president at this time.
One of the fun things in politics is trying to spot the tells in various people in politics and when they're fibbing.
For Corinne Jean-Pierre, that is the fast blinking, the use of right, and the constant nodding.
When she's doing those things, she's lying.
So when she says, things are going amazing and everything is great, Don't you know?
Right?
I mean, that's what we're saying, right?
Okay, you know that she's not telling you the truth.
Meanwhile, Cecilia Rouse, who is one of the economic advisors to the president, she's out there suggesting that President Biden is focused like a laser on inflation.
If this is him focused on inflation, I'd hate to see what it looks like when he's not focused on inflation.
As prices climb, experts worry that older individuals who are in poor physical or mental health or who have lower incomes are at greater risk for not having enough food or for eating less healthy foods.
The squeeze also has the potential to isolate them socially if they back away from activities like eating out with friends.
I'm just thinking, what would you say to those folks, Cecilia?
Absolutely.
Inflation is painful across the economy.
And that is why the Federal Reserve is taking the action it is taking.
It is why President Biden is focused on inflation.
So if we go to seniors in the Inflation Reduction Act, he was focused on decreasing costs for them.
Oh, that's what he's been focusing on is the Inflation Reduction Act, which again, they even changed what they claimed it was supposed to do.
You remember that when they were pushing the Inflation Reduction Act, it was supposed to decrease inflation, which it has not really done in any marked way.
And remember, I will say again, the Federal Reserve is tasked with keeping inflation at a 2% annualized rate.
We have not seen a 2% annualized rate in this country since February of 2021, the month after Joe Biden took office.
Since then, we're now at triple year-on-year what the inflation rate is supposed to be.
And that is after a year where there was a quadruple inflation rate, what it's supposed to be.
And nearly 8% inflation rate January 2022.
And now we have a 6.5% inflation rate in January 2023.
And these doles are out there saying everything is working amazing.
So what does this mean?
It means the Federal Reserve is going to have to ratchet up those interest rates even more.
So all of the talk The happy talk in the markets about, well, you know, the Federal Reserve, they're probably going to back off right now.
Things are starting to work.
It's all going to be fine.
The economy is just running too hot.
Jason Furman, who is an economic advisor to Barack Obama, he says inflation is going to stay above 3% unless we get a serious recession.
And he is totally right about this.
I think the markets are just ridiculously complacent about the inflation situation right now.
I look at tips.
I look at swaps.
They have break-evens of inflation of around 2%.
I just don't see that.
I don't see how we have inflation much below 3% this year.
I don't see it coming down below that without a decent-sized recession.
He's right about this.
The actual retail sales in January jumped 3%.
So people are continuing to spend money and that is driving up the prices.
People still need to buy the necessities and they still have, again, we spent more money in 2020, 2021 and 2022 than any time in human history.
And so people had all of this money pumped into their pocket and now they're spending all that money and it is jacking up the prices for everything.
And so that's not going to stop until the economy cools.
This is what happens.
When the government plays with the money supply.
This is what happens when the Federal Reserve decides to essentially buy up every asset in sight in order to inject liquidity into an economy instead of saying, hey, maybe we should hold back and wait off a little bit and then people will go back to work.
There's also the problem with a shutdown economy that was pursued in 2020 by a wide variety of high income states.
Doing that, as it turns out, just injects tons of liquidity into the economy, and it goes into people's pockets, they save it for a couple of years, and then they spend all of it.
And so until that is exhausted, what you're going to end up with is these elevated rates.
And meanwhile, you also have supply problems.
So one of the things that's happened, obviously, is that oil supply in the country is not meeting demand right now.
When Joe Biden took office, the price of a gallon of gas was about $2.40 a gallon.
Today, it is a buck more than that.
Despite all of Joe Biden's talk about how wonderful he has been on the gas and oil issue, even Joe Biden is now being forced to admit that new refineries are not being built because of him.
It's kind of amazing.
Sometimes the doddering old man accidentally says something true.
We'll get to him saying something true accidentally in just one second.
First, I gotta tell you, I'm not getting the kind of sleep that I'm normally accustomed to.
And I'm not normally accustomed to tons of sleep.
I have three kids.
I have a puppy.
This means I'm up at all hours of the night.
So the only thing that is keeping me sane and rational these days is black rifle coffee.
Black Rifle Coffee is fueling Americans before they go out and do epic things with their lives.
Led by a team of military veterans, the guys at Black Rifle Coffee are hyper-focused and hyper-vigilant in everything they do.
They're obsessed with making great coffee because every great adventure starts with a great cup of coffee.
Their founder, Evan Hafer, has actually scoured the planet for the perfect beans, ensuring that they've passed the most stringent standards of excellence.
They're constantly coming out with new roasts to try, like their most recent, Beware the Delaware roast.
Not to mention, Black Rifle is doing amazing work for our nation's veterans.
This year alone, Black Rifle Coffee donated over 120,000 bags of coffee to veterans and first responders.
They've also expanded their own team of active duty service members, veterans, and veteran family members.
Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com, use promo code Shapiro at checkout for 10% off your purchase and your first coffee club order.
That's BlackRifleCoffee.com.
Use promo code Shapiro for 10% off.
You can also find Black Rifle Coffee in grocery and convenience stores near you.
That's Black Rifle Coffee, America's coffee.
Okay, so Joe Biden, here he is admitting the truth that the reason gas prices are really high is because he keeps trying to undermine the oil and gas companies here to us yesterday.
You had the oil companies, you know how much they made in profit this year?
$200 billion in the middle of an energy crisis.
Because they bought back their stock and they're not investing.
And refineries, repairing them or maintaining them.
Now they're saying, and it's a legitimate argument they make, they say, Biden, you want to go green and in 10 years you won't need this.
Well, guess what?
We're going to need oil for a long time, gas for a long time.
It's not gonna go all go away.
Man, that's what they're saying.
It's illegitimate.
He's arguing against his own inflation reduction act now.
His entire premise is we need to go green and we'll spend trillions of dollars in order to go green.
And also the oil companies need to keep pumping and building refineries and investing in future production of oil and natural gas while we tell them that we want to move away from that.
He's boxed himself in and he knows that he has boxed himself in.
Or maybe he doesn't and he's just saying things.
Or maybe the hair plugs have finally seeped down into his neural Activity.
Something has happened here that is forcing him to tell the truth right there.
The economy is, in fact, on a knife's edge.
He's gotten away with it.
Largely because, again, people are not feeling the immediate effects other than on the inflation rate, which is very, very serious, and people definitely are feeling that.
But that has not been brought home to Democrats because, again, the 2022 elections sort of spared Joe Biden the act.
Come 2024, that is likely not to be the case.
Now, that is only one major issue that is plaguing this administration.
There are a bevy of major issues plaguing this administration.
It turns out that wild incompetence combined with significant ideological problems lead to a myriad of issues for this administration.
So we still don't know why the U.S.
military is now shooting down random objects over the United States.
We still have no clue.
And we are now finding out, apparently, that the U.S.
actually tracked that giant Chinese spy balloon from its launch on Hainan Island along an unusual path, according to the Washington Post.
By the time a Chinese spy balloon crossed into American airspace late last month, U.S.
military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, watching as it lifted off from its home base on Hainan Island near China's south coast.
U.S.
monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over Guam.
But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S.
officials, who said analysts are now examining the possibility China did not intend to penetrate the American heartland with its airborne surveillance device.
The balloon floated above Alaska's Aleutian Islands, thousands of miles away from Guam, and drifted over Canada, where it encountered strong winds that appeared to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States.
And then, of course, it was shot down after it traversed the entirety of the continental United States.
This new account suggests the ensuing international crisis that has ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing may have been, at least partly, the result of a mistake.
So I have a question.
If we were tracing it from points of origin, why didn't we shoot it down when it went over Alaska?
Why didn't we shoot it down over Canada?
We've been shooting down objects over Alaska and Canada, have we not, over the course of the past week?
So what exactly would you say that you do here if you're in the intelligence agencies and you're watching a giant Chinese spy balloon miss Guam and hit Alaska?
At a certain point here, you gotta be like, uh, guys, maybe we should shoot that thing down.
That is not going the way we thought that that was gonna go.
But apparently, they're like, no, it's probably fine.
It's probably okay.
And then, of course, in reaction to their own incompetence, they start shooting down pretty much everything in sight.
And it's like, hey, look, it's a random drone above Lake Huron.
Let's shoot that thing down with a sidewinder that costs 400 grand.
Hey, look, there's another octagonal object that's somewhere over Canada.
Probably we should shoot that down.
So you went from absolutely complacent about a giant Chinese spy balloon that is visible to the naked eye above Montana, floating across the entirety of the continental United States.
Absolute complacence about that.
To insane trigger happiness over, oh my god, it's a plastic bag floating in the wind.
Shoot it!
Shoot it, guys!
We have to do something!
Now, if you think that's part of a thought-out policy, it's because you're an idiot.
This is not part of a thought-out policy.
Everyone is incompetent.
Again, first rule of politics, Hanlon's razor, everything that only that which is not attributable to stupidity should be attributed to malice.
This is a stupid administration filled with stupid people.
Now, again, there are a lot of people in politics who are very stupid on all sides of the political aisle.
As I say to most people, when we talk about politics, one of the things that bothers me the most is this assumption that everybody is ill-motivated because they're just super uber-competent.
No one is competent.
Think about your own industry.
Think about the people who you are in business with.
How many of them would you consider really, really smart and competent?
The answer is probably not all that many.
For most people, they think about their own business like, yeah, man, everybody in my business is kind of a dummy.
People just do stupid stuff.
The same thing is true in politics, and it's particularly true of the Biden administration.
What makes that threatening is they take that incompetence and then they say, we need more control.
And the failures that they have actually created then become evidence that they need more control so that they can then pursue more failures.
We're seeing this on the economy with inflation.
We need to spend more money, guys.
The real problem is we haven't spent enough money.
We need more control, more regulatory control over your life.
We are stupid.
And so we created this massive inflation cycle.
Obviously, the solution is give us more power.
And now we're seeing the same thing with regard to the Chinese spy balloon.
We're incompetent, so we allowed this thing to float across the entire continental United States.
Now you should trust us if we shoot down every single thing that we see.
Okay, you don't even know what you're shooting down.
I mean, they're admitting they don't know what they are shooting down.
Which should frighten us, because frankly, that means that a foreign adversary could take advantage of the fact that we have a lot of dum-dums in charge.
And if all of this makes you a little bit depressed, I'm going to tell you something even more depressing right now.
You are going to die.
You didn't see that one coming, did you?
But the reality is that since we are all going to die, that means we should all have life insurance.
It is a smart thing to do if you have a family that is dependent on you.
You should have life insurance in case, God forbid, something should hit you.
You're just walking along the street and suddenly...
Joe Biden's Air Force shoots down a random object in the sky, and as it's plummeting toward Earth and you're directly in its sights, you think to yourself, man, I shouldn't have voted for that guy.
And also, I probably should have gotten life insurance with Policy Genius.
With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $39 per month for $2 million in coverage.
Some options offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams.
PolicyGenius's licensed agents can help you find coverage options in as little as a week.
They work for you, not the insurance companies.
That means they don't have an incentive to recommend one insurer over another, so you can actually trust their guidance.
There are no added fees.
Your personal information is private.
Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net, and you deserve a smarter way to find and buy it.
Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description.
Get your free life insurance quotes.
See how much you could save.
That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro, policygenius.com slash Shapiro.
Now, the place where stupidity turns to malice is when you keep doing the same thing over and over and over.
At a certain point, if a stupid person just keeps doing the stupid thing and then claiming that they're doing the right thing, now it's turned to malice.
And so I just, we may have turned the corner on that with regard to the Biden administration and how it is handling random objects in the sky.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this administration still doesn't know what the hell it's shooting down.
So in order to cover up for the fact that the president of the United States was a coward over the Chinese spy balloon.
And again, I say that advisedly because the president of the United States was also a coward in pulling out of Afghanistan in the way that he did.
People tend to have this bizarre vision of quote-unquote dark Biden wearing the aviator sunglasses like this guy is some sort of muscular presence in foreign policy.
This is a guy who literally reported that he sat in the room where Barack Obama was greenlighting the raid on Osama bin Laden and encouraged him not to do it.
Joe Biden bragged about that.
That's who Joe Biden is.
And then we made him president because we're idiots.
Again, everyone is stupid is the theme of today's show.
But apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the United States hasn't seen any evidence that the three objects shot down since Friday over the United States and Canada were part of China's spy balloon program.
Those searchers have yet to recover debris from them, a senior White House official said.
So we don't know that they're part of the Chinese spy balloon program.
We're just shooting down random stuff without finding out what it is.
Which is weird because the excuse for not shooting down the Chinese spy balloon originally was, we don't know what it is and we need to recover the debris.
The search for the remnants of the objects is hampered by the remoteness of the search area and frigid conditions there, said John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for Strategic Communications on Tuesday.
That's really, really well done.
Here was John Kirby reporting that, um, he, John, so John Kirby says that the objects were likely benign now.
So he went from, these are a, these are a threat to American airspace.
We must shoot them down too.
They were very likely benign.
He says, we don't know of any evidence right now that confirms they were in fact doing intelligence collection by another government.
But again, we don't have the debris, so we have no clue what we were shooting down.
We are all in the best of hands.
Kirby did say that he's comfortable, pretty comfortable, in ruling out they were U.S.
government objects, but they could have been commercial or research balloons.
Genius level material here from the administration.
The important thing, however, is that obviously Joe Biden is in control of himself.
According to Corrine Jean-Pierre, by the way, Joe Biden has still not spoken about any of this.
You recognize Joe Biden has not given a press conference.
He has not given a speech.
He's not explained what we are shooting down, what our relationship with China is.
None of that.
He's just been completely silent.
He's been missing on this issue, completely MIA.
But he does have the world's worst press secretary out there saying that Joe Biden has received briefings, which is of no, honestly, no comfort to me whatsoever, considering the man does not have brain function.
Yes, this leftist serious tumbler has also received intelligence briefings.
It is an inanimate object and is incapable of making decisions.
Very similar to our president, President Houseplant.
Here's Corine Jean-Pierre.
The U.S.
does not shoot objects out of the sky every day.
Why hasn't the president come forward and spoken to the American people about this?
So I know your colleague asked my colleague this earlier today during his gaggle.
And look, the president is taking this very seriously and he's receiving briefings regularly from his national security advisors.
Oh, there's no need to panic, is there?
I mean, I don't think anybody's panicked.
as much information as we can, as possible.
But we do want to make sure that the Americans, American people understand that there's no need to panic.
Oh, there's no need to panic.
Is there? I mean, I don't think anybody's panicked.
The only thing that panics me is when you tell me not to panic.
Until now, I was pretty okay.
Now I've got Karine Jean-Pierre telling me not to panic, and I'm like, a little panicked, because she lies for a living.
So maybe it is the aliens after all.
I don't know.
Joe Biden doesn't know.
They don't know.
They don't know anything.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, he won't tell you what the hell is going on with the objects in the sky that we are shooting down.
And he doesn't really have much convincing to say about the massive inflation rate.
He also doesn't have much to say about the giant train explosion in Ohio, in East Palestine.
Nothing from the President of the United States about creating a giant toxic mushroom cloud directly outside of a town of 5,000 people and poisoning the groundwater, apparently.
Nothing from the President about that.
There's a lot to say about lead in the pipes during his State of the Union address.
Nothing about his EPA blowing up trains filled with toxic materials.
Nothing there.
But he does have some words about gun control.
He's lying again, by the way.
Here was Joe Biden yesterday.
He's pushing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting at Michigan State University.
And here he was yesterday doing this routine.
To the families who lost a piece of their soul, I have some idea how hard it is today.
It brings us all back, everybody back, just like you heard the news a moment ago.
But what I admire most about all of you is how you've found purpose through your pain.
You've helped me take more executive action to reduce gun violence than any of my predecessors at this point in their presidencies.
We've reined in ghost guns, cracked down on gun trafficking, increased resources for violence prevention.
And we've stood together as I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years.
But there's so much more to do.
We have to ban assault weapons, like the one used in Parkland, used just five years ago today.
And in so many of the mass shootings in America, the lives lost, the lives we can save as a nation, we must say enough is enough.
I would like to point out here that, as always, this is completely disconnected from reality.
The MSU shooter used a handgun.
So banning assault weapons would have achieved precisely zero things.
A mass shooter shoots people with a handgun, and Joe Biden's solution is, what if we ban an AR-15?
We ban a long gun.
Genius-level stuff, again, from our genius president.
As the Washington Examiner also points out, this person was already breaking the law, and it turns out that a local DA let this person off the hook for what would have been a felony gun charge a couple of years ago.
Well, once again, it was a preventable shooting.
It could not have been prevented by passing more gun control laws.
It could have been prevented if local prosecutors had enforced existing gun laws.
The shooter was arrested in 2019 and charged with carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit.
This is a felony.
It carries a potential five-year prison sentence and would have prevented the shooter from being permitted to own a firearm once his sentence was up.
Instead, he pled down to possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle, which is a misdemeanor, and then prosecutors dismissed the felony charge and he served 18 months probation and remained eligible to purchase and own guns.
So, again, well done.
Soft on crime.
Prosecutors letting people off the hook.
And then the person goes on to commit a crime.
And Joe Biden's solution is ban the long guns.
This administration is such a disaster area and the disaster area permeates every area of the administration.
I mean, I was just going through almost agency by agency yesterday, the failures of this administration.
So you have the defense apparatus, which can't even tell us what the hell they're shooting down over American skies after apparently watching a Chinese balloon float across the entirety of the United States from inception in China.
You have the economic apparatus inside the Biden administration which is generating year-on-year inflation rates of triple the norm and is lowering real wages by significant margins while spending more money than God has ever seen.
You have Rochelle Walensky at the CDC who is still proclaiming that we have to mask up the kids.
She did that yesterday, so that's excellent.
You actually have to wear the mask for it to work.
Okay, so there are lots of studies now in Georgia... Dr. Walensky, why are we masking our kids today?
You know, thank you.
Also, so our guidance for school-based masking is related to our COVID-19 community levels, and fortunately we're in a place now in this country where most of our country is in green or yellow.
So what is your timeline for updating, re-evaluating these guidance?
You know, our masking guidance doesn't really change with time.
In those situations, we actually don't recommend masking.
We recommend it for high COVID-19 community levels.
So what is your timeline for updating, reevaluating these guidance?
You know, our masking guidance doesn't really change with time.
What it changes with is disease.
Okay, so in other words, they continue to maintain that kids should mask up to prevent And as you'll recall, the CDC this week tried to declare that the COVID vax should be given to small children as part of the recommended vax list for kids, like measles, mumps, rubella, which is absurd.
Meanwhile, the Health and Human Services Department, they actually have a website that features a video training kids on mask wearing.
This is, it's so ridiculous.
It's so ridiculous.
I know masks can take time to get used to, but I like how cool your mask is.
Painted it!
Good God.
I see that.
You painted your mask to make it extra special.
Off!
Off!
Oh, honey, do you want to take your mask off?
Look, why don't we practice wearing it for just a little bit first, okay?
Fluffster?
Oh, of course.
Fluffster and I will both practice with you.
Here.
Just wear it while I count to five, okay, honey?
Flupster, you ready?
Okay, here we go!
One... Two... Three... Four... Five!
Yay!
You wanna take off your mask, small child?
I will force you to wear this mask!
The HHS via Sesame Street.
Good stuff right there.
By the way, it is worth noting here that there is now new data, which pretty much everybody already understood and has understood for a long time, that masks are completely ineffective at preventing transmission.
The notion that they were ever preventing transmission against Delta or Omicron was utterly untested.
The only test case that was ever done was with regard to the original variant, and even that, the data was really shoddy.
That was the Malaysian study.
That they came out fairly early on in the pandemic.
And again, the data were really shoddy, particularly with regard to anything that wasn't a KN95 that was glued to your face.
But you still have the HHS pushing that.
So the incompetence is at every level of the administration.
The Transportation Department, led by a person who is very bad at his job, but is gay, which I guess alleviates most of your problems.
Now, the Secretary of Transportation, he's had pretty much nothing to say about this, Pete Buttigieg.
He does have things to say about paternity leave.
He does have things to say about apparently too many white people in the construction industry, which raises the question as to whether he has ever seen a construction crew anywhere in the United States.
Um, but he, um, he apparently has nothing to say about the fact that according to the Washington Post, 11 days after a train derailed, spilling toxic chemicals and causing a massive fire in East Palestine, Ohio, officials told residents to use bottled water until testing could confirm whether the local water supply was safe to drink.
As questions continue to swirl around the cause of the February 3rd accident and the official response to it, the disaster's still-emerging list of effects became clear.
Water officials are tracking a large plume of contamination flowing down the Ohio River.
About 3,500 fish in local waterways have been killed by the chemical release.
Cleanup crews are excavating a grossly contaminated 1,000-foot area around the train tracks where butyl acrylate, puddled, and vinyl chloride burned.
Ohio Health Director Bruce Vanderhoef said, for right now, I think bottled water is the correct answer.
Things are going amazing.
Every department of the- just like clockwork, man.
I mean, they're really making the trains run on- well, I mean, you can't really say that they're making the trains run on- at least they're not blowing up- well, you can't really- you can't really say that.
Just doing an amazing job.
Every aspect of this administration firing on all cylinders.
Meanwhile, by the way, the SBA, the Small Business Administration under Joe Biden, is not even going to try to claw back fraud.
According to the Daily Wire, the federal government will not even attempt to recover some coronavirus-related loans that did not meet the conditions for forgiveness.
In what could amount to a greenlighting of theft from an $800 billion program, the SBA said it will not seek to collect on loans that should have been paid back, but were not, as long as the amount is $100,000 or less.
Why?
Well, because equity, of course, That's the real reason is because if we do that, then equity is going to be endangered.
Because apparently, I guess it's racist or something to tell people they should pay back loans that they actually took.
And every area of this administration is a disaster area and people are going to notice this sort of stuff.
Over at the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, the only Republican member of the FTC, has now resigned.
Why?
Well, because of the abusive use of the FTC as a political tool by Lena Kahn, who is attempting to remake federal antitrust laws to target political opponents via the FTC.
A woman named Christine Wilson, who is the only Republican appointee to the FTC.
She says, Since Ms.
Khan's confirmation in 2021, my staff and I have spent countless hours seeking to uncover her abuses of government power.
That task has become increasingly difficult as she has consolidated power within the office of the chairman, breaking decades of bipartisan precedent and undermining the commission structure Congress wrote into the law.
So again, the FTC has been used for corrupt purposes by President Biden.
quote, under President Biden, FTC leadership has abused the merger review process to impose a tax on all mergers, not only those that hinder competition.
Progressive tried but failed to enact a legislative moratorium on mergers in early 2020 and to pass other restrictions since.
And now Ms. Khan does it by fiat.
And so now the Republican appointed commissioner at the FTC has resigned in protest.
Meanwhile, as we'll get to in a second, the State Department is bankrolling groups that are secretly blacklisting conservative There is not an area of this administration that is not permeated by either incompetence or malice.
There's not one area of this administration.
It's astonishing.
It's like political cancer that is now metastasized to every department in the federal government.
Speaking of the medication that is necessary, let's talk about your family for a second.
So the reality is, let's say that you are living in East Palestine.
You've now been forced to flee your home because the federal government decided it would be a great idea to blow up phosphine gas near your house.
Well, one of the things that you might need is Jace Medical.
You might need the Jace case because You left your medications at home and the local CVS ain't open.
I mean, they fled that CVS as well.
This is one reason why Chase Medical is useful.
Anytime there is a disaster, one of the things that happens is it becomes very hard to get the medications that you need.
I mean, the FDA just declared a global shortage of certain medications and warned that critical antibiotics are right now in extreme short supply.
So do yourself a favor and get the JACE case right now.
It's a pack of five prescription antibiotics you should have on hand at all times.
For common emergencies, we have this at our house, visit jacemedical.com.
Take a few minutes, fill out their online form.
Your information is then reviewed by a board-certified physician.
Your medication will be dispensed by a licensed pharmacy at a fraction of the regular cost.
Enter code BEN at checkout for a discount on your order.
That's J-A-C-E medical.com, promo code BEN.
Also, to celebrate President's Day this year, The Daily Wire is running our President's for Sale sale.
40% off new annual memberships.
The big guy?
Probably got 10%, but we are giving you 40%.
Joe Biden would take that deal.
Get access to the world of Daily Wire Plus with fearless documentaries, gripping movies, Dennis Prager's The Masters program, the entire library of Dr. Jordan Peterson's work, including New productions like Exodus, Logos & Literacy, and On Marriage all available to watch right now, coming down the pipeline to a TV or laptop near you.
New episodes from my series, The Surge, or Jordan's Exodus Part 2, which I actually took part in, or are much anticipated.
DW Kids content.
Yes, I know, you're looking at Disney and thinking to yourself, when does DW Kids come?
It's coming.
Also, our first dramatic series, Pendragon, is coming out later this year to sweeten the deal, like Joe Biden's favorite ice cream flavor, chocolate.
We're also giving you up to 40% off select items in the Daily Wire shop.
Take advantage of the Our Presidents for Sale sale right now.
You know he would.
Just go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Become a member today.
That's dailywire.com slash subscribe.
So as we say, the Biden administration, every area of it has been infected by incompetence and banality.
And this is also true of the State Department.
That, of course, is no shock.
The State Department is the most isolated of the federal government, is a repository of all scum and villainy.
The State Department is just terrible.
The Washington Examiner and Gabe Kaminsky report this week that the Department of State has now funded a deep-pocketed disinformation tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media.
Costing the news organization's vital advertising dollars.
Apparently, the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S.
nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged disinformation.
That same disinformation group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government.
So you basically have the State Department funding nonprofits to push boycotts of particular conservative media.
GDI compiles a dynamic exclusion list that it feeds to corporate entities like the Microsoft-owned advertising company Zander, according to emails.
Zander and other companies are in turn declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.
So again, every area of the federal government has been corrupted by the perversity of the ideology of this administration, and this is where stupidity flips over into malice pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden is quite vulnerable in 2024, which means the Republican side of the aisle is going to fill up quite quickly.
Because Joe Biden is an incompetent president, because Joe Biden has no personal magnetism or charisma, because Joe Biden is effectively just a dead body the Democrats have stapled to some sort of dolly and are wheeling around upright, trying to make sure that the nominee is not Kamala Harris, this means that there are a lot of Republicans who are going to jump in the water.
So the other day, Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and former Trump ambassador to the United Nations.
She launched her own 2024 campaign.
This makes her the first official candidate outside of Donald Trump on the right side of the aisle.
That pool, as I say, is going to fill up very quickly.
Here is a bit of the ad that she put out launching her campaign.
I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.
Not black.
Not white.
I was different.
But my mom would always say, your job is not to focus on the differences, but the similarities.
And my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.
Some look at our past as evidence that America's founding principles are bad.
They say the promise of freedom is just made up.
Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history.
China and Russia are on the march.
They all think we can be bullied, kicked around, You should know this about me.
I don't put up with bullies.
I'm Nikki Haley and I'm running for president.
So by polling data, Nikki Haley is charting in the low double digits, which is not a bad place to start.
Now again, she's the only other candidate other than Trump who's actively declared at this point.
There's widespread expectation that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is probably going to run for president.
He has a giant war chest that he has amassed for his last gubernatorial run.
A lot of that money was left over.
He also has very high popularity ratings inside the Republican Party.
What the polls show right now is that theoretically, Nikki Haley could play a spoiler role in a three-way race between Trump and DeSantis.
That she could actually deprive more votes from DeSantis than she takes from Trump, and in the process, elevate Trump to the nomination.
But, let's just analyze her candidacy on sort of its own merits.
So, here are the good things about Nikki Haley's candidacy.
Obviously, she's articulate.
She's very photogenic.
Nikki Haley did an excellent job as UN ambassador.
That also happens to be, like, the world's best job.
Being ambassador to the UN is great.
It really is.
You just go into a place where everyone is garbage, and you call them garbage.
It is the world's best job in government.
You are faced with dictators and you say you're a dictator and a bad person.
It's a great, great job.
She was a good, fairly popular governor of South Carolina.
She's run into some issues with her base.
She got crossways of the base for taking a sort of moderate line with regard to the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol.
And it was placed in a museum instead, for example.
She also got a foul of the base after January 6th when she took a very harsh line against Donald Trump post-January 6th, and then seemed to sort of reverse herself a little bit.
Also, obviously, one of the elephants in the room with regard to her candidacy is that she had said she would not run if Trump would run, and obviously she's reversed herself on that now.
I don't take any of those sorts of promises seriously.
When people say, I won't run if X runs, or I'm not going to run, or I promise on... Who cares?
I don't care.
The real question is, would she make a good president?
And the answer is Nikki Haley would in fact make a good president.
The drawbacks of her candidacy, sort of broadly speaking, are that Americans tend to not be as focused on foreign policy as they are on domestic policy.
So you would assume that she's going to have to focus a lot on her tenure as the South Carolina governor, as opposed to her tenure at the UN.
Because when it comes to foreign policy, like probably Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, is going to run for president.
Americans don't care that much about foreign policy until it's immediate.
And so running as a foreign policy guru really doesn't do you a hell of a lot of good.
Americans right now are particularly focused on domestic policy.
That's going to be difficult for her to sort of outflank people like Ron DeSantis on those issues or say Brian Kemp if he decides to run for president from Maryland or Glenn Youngkin if he decides to run for president from Virginia.
She's also sort of has just run this sort of gauntlet because she was a member of the Trump administration.
The left is going to tie her to Trump.
And because she left the Trump administration early and has had some things critical of Trump, some on the right who really like Trump are angry at Nikki Haley.
This makes her candidacy complicated.
But she, again, is a very talented politician.
The thing that I find fascinating about her her announcement of her run is the way the left has reacted.
And it really demonstrates how much the left loves and wants Trump.
They really do.
So imagine, for a second, that you really don't want Trump to be the guy, right?
Let's say you're on the left and supposedly Trump is Hitler, right?
The only thing that separates them is the little mustache.
You're on the left and you're one of these people who believes that Trump is essentially a Nazi who's putting America in danger of authoritarianism.
So, anybody who declares against Trump, you should immediately be like, ah, this person would be great.
This person would be like, man, I would rather have Nikki Haley as the nominee than Donald Trump.
If you're on the left and this is your perspective, wouldn't you think that's the case?
Instead, the media immediately left to attack Nikki Haley with extraordinary alacrity.
They're really angry at Nikki Haley for running.
Because they kind of want Trump to be the nominee.
Number one, he's ratings.
I mean, that dude is absolute ratings gold for a lot of these networks.
And two, they think that he's much more beatable than some of the other candidates on the right side of the aisle.
So their immediate reaction to Nikki Haley is to attack her in some of the dumbest ways I've ever seen.
So there was an article in Politico that suggested that Nikki Haley had on a government state form, and here she is touting her diversity as an Indian-American woman.
And on her forms, early government forms, she lists herself as Caucasian.
Yes, because there was no actual category for Southeast Asian or South Asian rather.
There was no actual category on that on the forms.
And so Indian Americans had to choose between black and white.
And so she chose white.
But Politico put like five reporters on that story.
And then there was the meme that was going around the other day that Nikki Haley is... She says America's not racist?
Well, why she use the name Nikki?
After all, her full name is more Indian sounding.
Her middle name is Nikki, and she's been going by Nikki like her entire life.
That is not unusual.
And then, of course, you have Joy Reid, one of our nation's most unintelligent commentators, suggesting that the thing about Nikki Haley is that she's just a Trumpie.
She's Trump's person, which is weird since she's now running against him.
Stuart, she's tried to inoculate herself by that, by saying, no, no, no, I'm not one of the bad ones.
I hate the 1619 Project just as much as you do.
And you know, she's had this sort of, she talks about her Indian American heritage, but she focuses not on her Sikh background, but on her conversion to Christianity.
Like, she's definitely tried to fit in.
But I just want to put up the 2016 cast of characters that ran against Trump.
They all said Trump was no good.
Trump was an anathema to conservatism.
Trump wasn't a real conservative.
Trump wasn't a real Republican.
Trump was disgusting.
Trump was misogynistic.
And they all took the knee.
So did Nikki Haley, Stuart.
In the end, everything she tries to say about being an alternative to Trump, no she's not.
She's Trump's person.
She's Trump's person, guys.
Which is weird since she's now running.
But again, everyone must be lumped in with Trump so you can say that they're bad.
Do I love nothing better than for Donald Trump to be the nominee?
Will B. Goldberg doing the same thing?
Does Nikki Haley has lost her mind for even running?
Has she, though?
I mean, I gotta say that the people you guys are talking about running on your side of the aisle, if Joe Biden should plot, are people like Kamala Harris, the world's most untalented person.
Like there's never... Karine Jean-Pierre is only the world's most untalented press secretary.
Kamala Harris is the world's most untalented human.
Like of all the humans on Earth, she has the least talent.
It's like God sucked every element of talent out of her before he created her in a laboratory.
In any case, here's Whoopi Goldberg saying that Nikki Haley is a crazy person, says Whoopi Goldberg, a person who has literally said that everyone in America is racist and everyone in human history might be racist, except for Hitler, who is not racist because Jews are white.
Here's Whoopi Goldberg, a genius.
So, Nikki, you know, since you have been asleep all this time and you just woke up, You're just finding out that there are things about our country that are not perfect.
And for us to pretend that it is and that nothing happened is ridiculous.
So you're not saying anything new.
And you of all people should know better.
Because you used to actually have some sanity and knew right from wrong.
And then you lost your mind and went in some new direction.
Oh, you used to have sanity, and you're right.
Why is it that the minute that any Republican declares for president, this is when they lose their mind?
They did the same routine with John McCain, by the way.
They loved John McCain, precisely until the point he won the Republican nomination, at which point John McCain became a rabid right-winger in the mold of George W. Bush, right?
This is the way that they always work.
Listening to Whoopi Goldberg declaim on politics is just an amazing experience.
It's almost an out-of-body experience watching someone this stupid talk about politics.
This is a person that, presumably, some people watch on The View.
Um, and this is a person who literally said yesterday that she can't tell the difference between Rick Scott and Tim Scott.
There are some differences, Whoopi.
We deserve to have two strong parties.
This is a massive step up.
We do deserve to have two strong parties.
So, you know, Tim Scott, black Tim Scott, right?
Because there are two Scots, and I don't know how to differentiate them without a picture.
Rick Scott and Tim Scott.
Tim Scott is black, right?
Okay.
Oh, wow.
Nailed it, Whoopi.
Nailed it.
Tim Scott, speaking of, is another person who may be running for president as well.
Now, the great fear for people who don't actually like Donald Trump the best among all the nominees is that you get a repeat of 2016 in which there are so many Republican candidates in the pool that it basically fragments the field and Donald Trump runs the gauntlet with like 20-25% support.
That could theoretically happen, right?
Tim Scott is also a good candidate.
He also wants to run for president.
Tim Scott actually is surprisingly not all that young.
Tim Scott is 57 years old.
Actually, Nikki Haley is only 51.
But Tim Scott wants to run, presumably.
You got Rhonda Sands who wants to run.
Glenn Youngkin might want to run.
Brian Kemp wants to run.
There's been talk about Kristen Uno from New Hampshire running.
Larry Hogan from Maryland talking about running.
So you could have a very full stage once again.
And if Donald Trump's the most prominent person on that stage and the rest of the field doesn't consolidate, that does in fact put him, statistically speaking, in the driver's seat.
Now I think that the field is going to clear a little bit, but You know, the question is going to be, how fast?
Meanwhile, Democrats are going to do their best to rip down everybody who is not Donald Trump.
Because, let's just face it, this is a Democrat strategy.
They have the same strategy in 2024 that they had in 2016, which is they think that Donald Trump is the most beatable.
Now, they may get their wish and then find that their wish has been thwarted by the monkey's paw, that Donald Trump gets the nomination, then he wins.
That is certainly quite possible.
However, if you're just looking at how the media are treating the possible alternatives to Donald Trump, it's very obvious that they prefer Donald Trump to the alternatives because they think that this will allow them a better shot at victory.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
Nicola Sturgeon has now been forced out.
She was the leader of Scotland.
She said that she was stepping down after having been the first female and longest serving First Minister.
She called it the privilege of her life to have led the country's devolved government for eight years.
She noted that many will be upset by her shock announcement.
So what exactly drove her out?
Well, one of the things that drove her out was outrage over her gender recognition reform, which would have allowed anybody in Scotland over the age of 16 to change gender designation without a medical diagnosis.
She tried to claim that this was not the final straw, that this is not what pushed her out.
It kind of pushed her out.
So you will recall that there was a big scandal in Scotland because a rapist, a male rapist, had been talking, they were talking about moving that male rapist to a women's prison.
Where presumably he could be very rapey, some more, with his very female penis.
And Nicholas Sturgeon be like, no, he's a lady.
He's a super duper lady.
The reform was hailed by transgender campaigners as a landmark move, but according to the New York Post, anger boiled over last month when it emerged a shaven-headed rapist was sent to a female prison after declaring she was a transgender female.
I love the fact the New York Post is still going to Go along with this in its very language.
Stop doing this, members of the media.
It turns out that a clean-shaven male who rapes women with his female penis is not a female.
He's a dude.
Sturgeon said, I have been and always will be a feminist.
She went after JK Rowling because JK Rowling had accused her of being a destroyer of women's rights.
By the way, the face-tattooed bald woman was a man.
Yeah, that might be the reason why she had to step down.
She said, I will stand up for any stigmatized, discriminated against, marginalized, and vulnerable group in society.
Yes, that is a stigmatized, discriminated against, marginalized, vulnerable person is the very male rapist who wishes to locate himself inside a female prison.
Really strong stuff there from Nicola Sturgeon, but now she's gone.
So that is the thing that I like.
I'm glad that we have now seen the back of Nicola Sturgeon and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Speaking, by the way, of insane stories surrounding transgender issues, our show here, Crane and Company, The folks there sat down with an NCAA women's swimmer named Riley Gaines to talk about Leah Thomas because Riley Gaines was on the swim team with Leah Thomas and it was quite shocking.
Here's a little bit of what it sounded like.
If we let it, there will be men pretending to be women that ruin women's sports.
But ranking first was a person I had never heard of before.
And of course, this name was Leah Thomas.
Leah Thomas did, in fact, formerly swim on the men's team for three years.
I thought, surely the NCAA wouldn't let this person compete with us.
The NCAA official looks at me and says, great job.
Y'all tied.
The trophy goes to Leah.
And he said, well, for photo purposes, Leah has to have it.
Wow.
Leah Thomas, who used to be Will Thomas, is now dating someone that used to be a man that's now a woman, and they consider themselves lesbians.
Very interesting dynamic.
The things they practice actively are interesting.
They cut off parts of their male parts, but left other parts.
These testicles are in a jar.
Stop.
We were being sidelined to validate the feelings and the identity of a man.
Okay, so you can go check out that interview over at Crane & Company.
It's pretty shocking stuff.
They also have a Twitter thread out today going through some of the details about Leah Thomas.
This is not the most womanly woman who ever womaned.
I'm just gonna put that out there.
And not the kind of dude that you would want in a locker room with the ladies.
I hate to say it.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So we have a follow up from our good friend Chelsea Handler.
So Chelsea Handler is angry that people were making fun of her for a really bad comedy video that she dropped on Valentine's Day.
It was a comedy video in which she explained how wonderful it was to be a single alcoholic woman who smokes a lot of pot.
And she talked about how it was great to be childless.
She was the happiest person.
Who is childless, she said, through her very obvious tears.
And she made this issue the issue, right?
None of us were talking about Chelsea Handler and her decisions not to have kids because, frankly, no one cared.
And you decided to make it front and center.
Well, this drove her on the set of The Daily Show yesterday.
The Daily Show is just getting unfunnier and unfunnier.
I mean, like, they've now reached a comedy vacuum.
There is no actual physical matter in this comedy space for The Daily Show.
It's just a complete vacuum.
And nature abhors a vacuum, so apparently they've put Chelsea Handler there or something.
So, Chelsea Handler had another monologue about how happy she is.
She's so happy, you guys!
She's so happy!
She's the happiest person!
Why are you calling her sad and a wine lady?
Why are you?
She's so happy!
Here we go.
One thing that I have made abundantly clear is that I do not want children.
I say it on stage, I say it in interviews, it's the first thing I say to myself in the mirror when I wake up each morning, right before I tell myself, God, you're a dynamic woman.
Kids don't respect me, and quite frankly, the feeling is mutual.
And the fact is, there are millions of women just like me, but for some reason, every single one of us, at some point in our lives, is shamed by society for not wanting a baby.
These Fox News trolls are right about one thing.
I am miserable.
In fact, I was just scrolling through my Instagram feed the other day, realizing how miserable I am.
I'm miserable on the beach.
And then here I am, miserable on the top of a mountain.
And then here I am, miserable scuba diving.
And then I'm miserable again, smoking a joint in a hot tub.
She, well, I mean, she's gonna tell you how not miserable she is.
Does she look like a happy person to you?
Does she seem like a very, very happy person?
She's so overjoyed?
Okay, so here's the thing.
Whether she chooses to have kids or not, you know, frankly, I don't care.
What I do care about is that society actually should favor the choice to have kids over the choice not to have kids.
It's very important that people have kids.
It makes them better people, obviously.
I mean, I don't think Chelsea Handler is anybody's idea of a saint.
But beyond the individual fulfillment that comes from having children, a society that is not built around the future generation is a selfish and stupid society.
And that is precisely what we have constructed for ourselves.
Not only that, it is a society that is demographically doomed to destruction.
And so when you change the norm from it is good to have kids to we are utterly indifferent as to whether people have kids.
What you end up with is a dying civilization.
And that is precisely what we are seeing today.
There is a Pew Research Center poll from November of 2021, and it shows a growing share of childless adults in the United States don't expect to ever have children.
Quote, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that a rising share of U.S.
adults who are not already parents say they're unlikely to ever have children.
Their reasons range from just not wanting to have kids to concerns about climate change and the environment.
So, I mean, this would this would be the giveaway.
Who doesn't want to have kids?
Lefties.
That is the giveaway.
Because the reason, if you're not having kids because you're worried that it's gonna be hotter in a hundred years than it is today, let me explain to you the vast span of human history when temperature has changed fairly radically, and also when we have air conditioning and people can expect to live eight decades.
I mean, like, to pretend that your kids are in some innately greater danger because of gradual changing of the climate over the course of a century, and so you shouldn't have the kids, is insane.
It's totally crazy.
And then there are the people who just say they don't want to have kids because obviously they want to be like Chelsea Handler and be able to take Instagram photos of themselves for the pleasure of strangers smoking a joint in a hot tub.
And apparently this is how you find fulfillment and true meaning in your life.
As you get topless into a jacuzzi the way that Chelsea Handler would and you smoke a joint and you put it on your Instagram and then randos cheer for you and it makes you feel really good for a second before you drink a bleep load of wine as I said yesterday and then fall asleep on your couch while drooling into your cat's fur.
According to Pew Research, some 44% of non-parents aged 18 to 49 say it's not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday.
That's an increase of 7 percentage points from the 37% who said the same in a 2018 survey.
Meanwhile, 74% of adults younger than 50 who are already parents say they are unlikely to have more kids virtually unchanged since 2018.
So what does this mean for society?
Well, it means that we're going to go bankrupt.
I mean, let's say that you're a big fan of the social welfare state.
Congratulations on having trashed the entire pyramid scheme that you guys rely upon, the demographic pyramid scheme.
One of the things that is very obvious is that countries that enter demographic decline because of a values change have a very tough time reversing that demographic decline.
There's an article in the New York Times from Andrew Jacobs and Francesca Perez titled, Can China Reverse Its Population Decline?
Just Ask Sweden.
And they point out that China's population has now begun to decline.
And they say even places that have not begun to lose population yet, like Australia, France, and Britain, have been grappling with demographic decline for years as life expectancy increases and women have fewer children.
History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little its government can do to reverse it.
As a country's population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing cost of caring for a larger, older one.
So it turns out that there are in fact societal consequences to a cultural shift from caring about the future and having kids to not caring about the future and not having kids.
We are a society that doesn't care very much about our children.
We don't.
We've decided, in large scale, at least according to our cultural arbiters, that kids are mainly useful so you can go on Instagram and virtue-signal about how you're transing them.
This is the thing that really, really matters, is how liberal you can make your kids, or how you can screw up your kids, and then you can brag to your friends about how tolerant and diverse you are.
Or, alternatively, don't have kids at all, because the best life is the life that is lived without reference to time and the future.
Countries such as the United States and Germany have been able to rely on robust immigration, even with relatively low birth rates, according to the New York Times.
And of course, when you mention this, when you say, well, probably the United States, we should actually start having kids of our own.
No, you're a racist.
We should continue to import people from places where they have more kids.
That's a strategy, I suppose.
The good news is that the Chinese government is fully aware of the problem, said Yang Kai, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The bad news is there's very little they can do about it.
So two decades ago, Australia tried a baby bonus program that paid the equivalent of nearly $6,000 a child at its peak.
At the time the campaign started in 2004, the country's fertility rate was around 1.8 children per woman.
By 2008, the rate had risen to a high of two.
By 2020, six years after the program ended, it was 1.6.
So in other words, you'd have sort of a temporary boost in birth.
But what ends up happening is that you're actually front-loading the birth.
What the studies tend to show is that when you pay people to have babies, then parents who are going to have three babies will have three babies, but they'll do it in a shorter time span in order to take advantage of the government money.
But it's very difficult to convince somebody who doesn't want to have a baby that now they should have two babies because you're going to offer them money.
John Bongard's demographer at the Population Council says, you're not going to reverse the trend.
If you throw in the kitchen sink and make childbearing more attractive, you may be able to prevent the population from falling off a cliff.
Even the success of some of these efforts has had limits.
No country has been able to reach a sustained return to a 2.1% replacement rate.
The United States rate fell below 2.1% in 1970s, and then slowly rose back toward the replacement rate by 2007, then collapsed again after the Great Recession.
Sweden has done the same thing.
In 1980, they introduced what they called the speed premium, which was, if you have babies within a certain amount of time, then you get a subsidy.
It increased the population increase to about two.
The population growth rate.
And then it started to decline again.
Birth rate in Sweden fell throughout the 1990s.
Over the last 50 years in Sweden, the fertility rate has fluctuated significantly, rising roughly in tandem with economic boons.
You've seen the same thing in Hungary.
Hungary has really incentivized childbearing through financial rewards.
And what they've seen is a slight uptick in the number of kids by family.
At the time that efforts began in Hungary by Viktor Orban in 2010, Hungary's fertility rate was just over 1.2.
That was among the lowest in Europe.
Over the 2010s, the rate climbed to around 1.6.
It's unclear whether it's going to be able to sustain.
Or whether it's going to dip off again.
Now, what is the reason for all of this?
Well, it's true that in every country, as countries get richer, people tend to have fewer kids.
That is because traditionally, in societies that are poorer, people tend to see kids as economic assets, and as societies become richer, your kid becomes an economic burden.
Just in pure econ terms, right?
The amount of money that you're going to spend on the education and upbringing of your kid in a rich country Tremendously outweighs the economic benefit of having a child.
If you're in a very poor country, kids become labor very early, they become part of the family farm, they are sources of efficiencies.
That does not hold true in richer countries.
So you start to see birth rates decline.
This happens literally everywhere.
But, there are certain cultures where people continue to have kids.
Even in developed countries.
Even in economically advanced countries.
Which parts of those cultures?
You guessed it.
The parts that take religion seriously.
Mormons are still having kids.
Religious Catholics are still having kids.
Orthodox Jews are still having kids.
Religious Muslims are still having kids.
Anyone who takes the injunction to have kids seriously on a moral level and recognizes that there is a generation beyond their own, that the height of human existence does not lie in taking a picture of yourself scuba diving and putting it on Instagram when you are 50 years old the way that Chelsea Handler is.
Any part of society that recognizes those fundamental truths is likely to continue growing.
Any part that does not is likely to continue fading.
Secularism, in other words, bears the seeds of its own destruction because it leads to societal sterility on a population level.
And that is what you are seeing in the West.
And so if you wish to reverse this decline, then perhaps our society should stop on a cultural level.
Normalizing and championing child-free living as though it is an alternative good to choosing to have kids.
It is better to have kids than not to have kids.
That should not be a controversial statement.
The fact that it is signals why our civilization is in a state of serious decline.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be talking with Marissa Strait over at Prager University about the predations of social media and how it's cracking down on conservatism.
If you're not a member, become a member.
Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
▲
Export Selection