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March 14, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
54:59
The Banking Meltdown Gets Worse
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So yesterday the Biden administration announced that they were bailing out Silicon Valley Bank's depositors, not the bank itself.
This is going to be a serious problem going forward, not because the depositors are going to have their deposits wiped out.
Remember, when you deposit money into a bank covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, what you are doing is having the first $250,000 insured against complete loss.
That is a thing that was put in place in the aftermath of bank runs of the early Great Depression.
But now the federal government has basically suggested that if you put your money in a bank that is supported by the FDIC, then you are going to get back all of your money.
So, all the people who had put their money in Silicon Valley Bank will be able to get their money out, but that doesn't actually solve the entire problem as we're about to discuss in just one second.
Because here is the bigger, bigger problem.
The people who are not going to be bailed out here are the Silicon Valley Bank investors.
All of those investors are probably going to just take it.
And that's true for a large number of these regional banks.
If a regional bank goes under, the depositors will probably be bailed out by the federal government, but all of the investors will not be bailed out by the federal government.
And herein lies the problem if you're looking at the sort of future of where the economy is going over the next two years.
The big problem is that if you are an investor, and you're looking at this formula, and the formula is that depositors are being insured, and so what that means is that the banks are now going to take outside risks, or they have been taking outside risks for years, and you are not going to get bailed out, what's your first move as an investor?
It is to pull your money out of any bank that you think has taken a risky strategy.
Well, what that means is that these banks are then going to have all of the investment capital pulled out of them.
And that means they're going to have a real problem raising new capital in order to do things.
If their stock price drops and they issue new stock in order to raise new capital, they're not going to bring in as much money as they normally would have.
And if that happens, and then let's say you have a bunch of depositors who are going to have to, for example, pull their money out of the bank, your depository, put your money in the bank.
Now you take your money out of the bank because the economy is getting rough, right?
You got stagflation that's set in.
You need to pay your employees.
You take some money out of the bank.
The problem is the money that you put into the bank isn't just sitting in a box with your name on it at the bank.
The bank lends that out or invest it, as it turns out, in bonds.
And now the bank has to fill that back in, right?
You call in the money and the bank doesn't have the money.
So they have a couple of options.
One is they can sell off some of their assets.
The other is they can try to raise new money through new issuance of stock.
If they cannot raise new money through issuance of stock, and if they cannot sell the assets because the assets are now at a loss, then they have a real problem on their hands and the banks start to go under.
And that's precisely what we are starting to see, not just with regard to Silicon Valley Bank, but also with regard to a wide variety of banks, which is why bank stocks yesterday dropped like a stone.
Signature Bank, of course, has now been put essentially into receivership.
The Daily Mail reports, More than $100 billion was wiped off U.S.
banks' value today in a bloodbath on Wall Street sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Trading was intermittently halted on at least 20 regional banks as the velocity of money forced regulators to intervene.
The big four of U.S.
banks were also drawn into the bloodletting.
Citigroup's share price dived 7.45%.
Wells Fargo sank 7%.
Bank of America pledged 5.8%.
Wells Fargo sank 7%, Bank of America pledged 5.8%, JPMorgan fell by 1.8%.
J.P.
But that's nothing compared to the regional banks.
I mean, the big banks, everybody is sort of assuming that they've diversified their risk.
Not only that, they are so big that if the government decides to bail them out, they will bail out everybody, including the investors.
If you're a regional size bank, however, then the assumption by investors is that the government will come and bail out the depositors, but not you if you're an investor in that firm.
So if you're an unsecured investor in the firm, you could lose all your money.
So people are starting to sell off their stock.
And that's exactly what happened yesterday on the stock market.
Among the worst affected regional banks were First Republic.
It fell by 62 percent.
Western Alliance closed with a loss of 47 percent.
Key Corp dropped by 21 percent.
All of that happened because, you know, despite the fact that Joe Biden had suggested that he had now fixed the problem, former Trump White House advisor Steve Moore warned that SVB may just be the tip of the iceberg.
And he's not wrong about that, because when you look at at the unrealized losses that exist in the banking industry right now, it's a real problem.
So the assumption by Silicon Valley Bank to just review what happened in Silicon Valley Bank, Silicon Valley Bank wildly expanded its balance sheet from 2020 to 2022 because of the inflationary economy.
Because the Federal Reserve decided to inject trillions of dollars of liquidity into the system.
Banks ate up all the liquidity.
A lot of that liquidity went into tech companies.
Those tech companies put their deposits down at Silicon Valley Bank.
Now Silicon Valley Bank was looking around and said, where do we put this money?
How do we invest this cash in some safe and secure?
Well, how about U.S.
government bonds?
That seems pretty safe.
I mean, there's a guaranteed return at the end of term.
What they didn't count on is the idea that at some point, inflation would run out of control and the federal government would start to jack up the interest rates.
As we discussed yesterday, when the federal government jacks up interest rates on new bonds, what they do is they tank the market for the old bonds.
Because let's say that you had an interest rate bond that was guaranteeing 4% over the course of the next 10 years.
And now the interest rate on that bond is running 7%.
You can't sell your interest rate bond That gets a 4% return.
There's one on the market at 7%.
You have to sell it at a discount in order to equal the 7%.
So the asset that you bought that was worth a certain price is now worth a lot less money.
Now, for a lot of these banks, that wouldn't make a difference if they didn't have to liquidate the asset right away.
But again, when the depositors start to draw out the cash, if you don't have the assets on hand, you have to liquidate in order to pay off all the depositors.
And that's exactly what happened with Silicon Valley Bank.
The problem is that that exact same problem exists across the industry.
The Washington Examiner points out, quote, fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse has directed attention to a $620 billion ticking time bomb in the banking system that has the potential to spell doom for the financial system.
SVB's meltdown was partly caused by a chasm between its assets and what they were worth in the market.
Eventually, SVP sold some of those assets, spooking investors and triggering a run on the bank.
But SVB isn't alone, because banks across the United States are sitting on $620 billion in unrealized potential losses at the end of last year, per the FDIC.
That whole illustrates why authorities at the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the FDIC were so eager to stave off contagion or panic spread from SVB's demise across the banking sector.
The reason for this predicament is because the banks compiled a plethora of bonds and treasuries during times when the interest rates were near zero.
Now, the Federal Reserve has begun jacking up the rates in an effort to combat inflation, and that has caused a lot of those assets to plunge in value, as we've discussed.
Again, higher interest rates means that new bonds are now more valuable and the old bonds are not worth nearly what they once were.
A consequence of the $620 billion unrealized potential loss is that banks may quickly find themselves with less cash on hand than books might have suggested.
So on the books, you have assets that are worth par value, but in the market, they're worth a lot less than that.
You bought a bond for $950.
It's theoretically worth $1,000 at the time that it matures.
So really, it should be worth something between $950 and $1,000 right now.
But when a new bond comes onto the market, and that new bond is, for your $950, going to give you $1,100, it turns out that your original bond is no longer worth between $950 and $1,000.
It's now worth much, much less because who's going to buy that thing?
And so all these unrealized potential losses, they would stay unrealized unless people start to draw down their money.
And people are starting to draw down their money.
Those unrealized potential losses become realized very quickly.
And the investors are the ones who end up getting shafted.
Well, what does all of this mean?
Well, it does mean that centralized government banking policy has serious consequences for the rest of the economy, which is just another reason why you should diversify into precious metals like gold.
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Okay, so The market stress indicators have been reacting very sharply, according to Yahoo Finance.
Financial stress market indicators reacted sharply on Monday after the failure of three U.S.
banks within five days.
State regulators actually closed down the New York-based Signature Bank on Sunday, two days after California authorities shuttered Silicon Valley bank, crypto-focused bank Silvergate, said last week it would also have to wind down its operations.
So obviously that is freaking people out, but there is another shoe that is yet to drop.
The other shoe that is yet to drop here is the fact that the Federal Reserve is trying to quash inflation.
Remember, in the middle of all this, what caused a lot of this meltdown is the fact that the Federal Reserve injected trillions of dollars in liquidity into the system in 2020, 2021, supposedly to combat the pandemic.
In 2020, you can make the case.
In 2021, you absolutely cannot make the case that that's what the Federal Reserve should have been doing.
They did it anyway.
The Biden administration did it in terms of trillions of dollars of spending, and so you got this inflationary spiral.
Because of the inflationary spiral, 40-year highs in inflation, the Federal Reserve has one tool at its disposal, and that is you increase the interest rates.
You increase the interest rates to suck liquidity out of the system, and that brings down the inflation rates.
There's only one problem.
When you increase those interest rates, what is the side effect of that as we just saw with Silicon Valley Bank?
Well, it turns out all your old bonds are now valueless.
And so, you have a bunch of firms who are holding bad assets on their books.
In the same way that in 2007, 2008, people had marked up real estate assets on their books and all those went south, a lot of people are holding bad financial assets on their books, old bonds.
And those bonds are losing their value the more that the Federal Reserve increases the interest rates.
So now the Federal Reserve is caught.
They're in a catch-22.
If they raise the interest rates, those bonds become less and less valuable, which means that banks have no backstop for their investors, which means investors pull their money out of the banks, helping to sink the banking system.
If, on the other hand, they do not raise the interest rates, inflation continues to rage out of control.
Remember, inflation is still raging at 7% in this country.
Which is more than three times what the normal rate of inflation is supposed to be, according to the Federal Reserve.
They caught themselves in a trap of their own making.
This is the biggest problem in the world when it comes to centralized banks having too much control over the economy.
Mohamed El-Erian.
Was the chief economist at Allianz.
He's been saying for literally years on end that when the central banks are your chief form of economic policymaking, you end up with a real problem because everybody just tries to read what is in Jay Powell's brain or Janet Yellen's brain or whoever's brain is supposedly in charge of the Federal Reserve and you have one person in charge of all of the levers of economic power.
I can run out of control real fast.
And that's precisely what happened here.
They inflated the currency.
They spent too much money.
They did it between 2020 and 2022.
Everybody bought in thinking that the party was going to go on forever.
And then the party did not go on forever.
And the problem is, now that the consequent, now everybody's getting the hangover.
Now that the hangover is coming, there is the tough treatment of the hangover, which is, okay, here's what we're going to do.
We are going to just soldier through this, right?
Which is the way you should do this.
Jay Powell, the Fed, they're going to need to just, the Federal Reserve, they're just going to need to cram through more interest rate increases.
And then if there are banks that took bad risks, we're going to have to put them into receivership.
We're going to have to sell them off.
We're not going to bail them out.
We're going to have other firms that are in better position buy off those assets.
Which is how the market is supposed to work.
Because if you don't do that, you end up with this massive moral hazard of people over and over and over again engaging in risky behavior knowing the taxpayer is going to bail them out.
That's the way this should work.
But the Federal Reserve, especially under Joe Biden, who is now running for re-election, they are deeply afraid of what happens.
If they raise the interest rates, the economy could tank.
You could have banks go under.
More regional banks, you could have in serious, serious trouble.
You could have something that looks more like a financial meltdown.
You have a snowball effect.
When those banks start to go under, then liquidity really drives up.
A lot of the firms that rely on liquidity in order to operate go under.
They could have a serious actual recession.
So that's problem number one.
Problem number two is if you don't raise those interest rates, inflation continues to rage and you get stagflation, which is what you have right now.
Again, there's always a hangover.
Gravity applies in the economic sphere just as it applies in the political sphere just as it applies in real life.
There was a happy, weird moment in American history where there was a literal economic theory put forward by idiots like Elizabeth Warren that you could spend money endlessly with no consequences whatsoever.
And it turns out that's nonsense.
It's always been nonsense.
It will always be nonsense.
It may be a longer delay between when you spend the money and when the consequences are felt.
You may have a long delay between when you binge drink and when the hangover hits.
But the hangover is coming.
And you may think for a brief moment in time, man, I don't feel the hangover yet.
Don't worry.
It's coming.
The hangover.
And right now, the hangover is here.
And the only question is going to be how bad it is.
Again, Jay Powell said a week ago that the Fed might need to raise interest rates again at a faster pace.
And this all follows bad policymaking by the Federal Reserve.
Remember, Jay Powell sort of reversed course.
He said, it looks like inflation is petering out.
Instead of a 50 basis point increase in the interest rates, we're going to do a 25 basis point rate increase.
And the markets went crazy.
Like, oh, look, it looks like inflation is over.
Inflation, number one.
And then he started signaling that he got it wrong.
So inflation is not over.
And also, you don't have the ability to raise the interest rates without bankrupting a bunch of these banks.
It's a disaster area.
Now the media are going to try and play it as a Biden victory because that's what they always do.
Yeah, good luck with that.
We'll get to more on this in a second.
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Politico is trying to play this as a win for Joe Biden.
They have an entire piece leading the website at Politico saying, I love how when Joe Biden does a thing, it is historic.
When we get historic inflation, it's not historic.
When we get stagflation, that's not historic.
It's only historic when he does something that the left-wing press likes or that they can try to play off as an actual victory.
So the federal government, according to Politico, would provide SVPs, depositors, with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty for thousands of venture-backed startups.
Signature Bank would receive the same guarantee.
Also, the Federal Reserve would single-handedly give all other similar lenders access to funds designed to keep them afloat and quell the panic brewing across the country.
And it almost didn't happen.
Joe Biden began the weekend highly skeptical of anything that could be labeled a taxpayer-funded bailout, according to four people close to the situation who are not authorized to speak for attribution.
I love this.
I love that you have people close to Joe Biden like, oh, it's a gutsy call, guys, a gutsy call.
He really didn't want to do it.
He didn't care about doing it.
Of course he's going to do it.
He's bailing, like, since when have Democrats been against bailing things out?
I know they like to pretend they're against bailing things out, but they kind of like bailing things out.
It means more government involvement in the economy.
This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement was always a lie.
It should have been Occupy D.C.
if you actually cared about anything.
It wasn't about Wall Street corruption.
It was about D.C.
sponsoring Wall Street corruption.
The Tea Party was protesting in the right place.
Occupy Wall Street should have been Occupying K Street.
According to Politico, this would be a serious political risk for the president, given that many of SVB's customers were startup entrepreneurs and investors, with so much money deposited in the bank that they far exceeded the federal government's $250,000 insurance limit, signature catered in part to once high-flying crypto investors.
Okay, so Joe Biden did a presser yesterday at 9 o'clock in the morning, which apparently is a big deal, in which he blamed the bank failures on the Trump administration.
Yes, it wasn't his massive inflationary policy or the massive inflationary policy of his Federal Reserve.
Joe Biden did a presser yesterday at 9 o'clock in the morning, which apparently is a big deal in which he blamed the bank failures on the Trump administration.
Yes, it wasn't his massive inflationary policy or the massive inflationary policy of his Federal Reserve.
It wasn't any of that stuff.
Wait for it.
It was Donald Trump, of course.
And it was Donald Trump, particularly with 17 Democratic votes in the Senate, repealing certain parts of the Dodd-Frank bill.
Here is Joe Biden blaming his predecessor, as is our usual arrangement.
Finally, we must reduce the risk of this happening again.
During the Obama-Biden administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, including the Dodd-Frank law to make sure that the crisis we saw in 2008 Okay, this is a bunch of crap.
The reason that you know this is a bunch of crap is because, as you'll notice, he is talking there about the so-called Dodd-Frank bill.
That would be Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again.
Okay, this is a bunch of crap.
The reason that you know this is a bunch of crap is because, as you'll notice, he is talking there about the so-called Dodd-Frank bill.
That would be Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
You know who's on the board of Signature Bank, which is one of the banks that just went under?
Barney Frank, who's the head of the Financial Services Committee for Dodd-Frank.
He's on the board of a bank that just went under.
This is not about under-regulation of regional banks.
This is about them taking a calculated risk on the United States government and then getting the shaft.
Because as I always suggest, when you get in bed with the government, somebody gets screwed.
Always.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out the president blamed panic on the Trump administration, in this case for modifying some of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act rules.
He seems to be referring to the 2018 bipartisan banking law, which raised the threshold for systemically important financial institution classification to $250 billion from $50 billion in assets, but not even Barney Frank believes that is to blame.
The point of the 2018 law was to ease costly compliance burdens on mid-sized banks that made them less competitive with the giants, which benefit from lower cost of funding because of their implicit government backstop.
Excessive Dodd-Frank regulation was driving more deposits to big banks.
Before the 2018 law, most mid-sized banks had to comply with the same regulations as the big banks, but those wouldn't have prevented either bank's failure from their risk management mistakes.
Again, that's the point.
Nobody can actually point to the provision of Dodd-Frank that was relieved, that would have stopped all of this.
So, as always, this is Joe Biden just suggesting, as Democrats always do, that if the government had more control, this wouldn't have happened.
It's because the government has control of the centralized spending policy in the United States that this happened in the first place.
Again, even Barney Frank, the guy who does—his name is on Dodd-Frank.
His bank went under in the middle of all of this.
So it's just a lie.
It's just not true at all.
Joe Biden didn't stop there, by the way.
He said, don't worry, we won't stop at this.
We'll do whatever is necessary.
Whatever is necessary is what we'll do.
Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe.
Your deposits are safe.
Let me also assure you, we will not stop at this.
We'll do whatever is needed on top of all of it.
Let's also take a look at a moment to put the situation in a broader context.
We've made strong economic progress in the past two years.
Okay, but we've made strong economic— In what way?
In what respect have we made strong economic progress?
7% inflation, stagnation setting in, liquidity drying up, and now runs on the banks?
Yeah, that— Sure, Joe.
Just keep snoozing your way through this one.
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Okay, so Again, Joe Biden is congratulating himself on a job well done as banks implode and as he has now caught his Federal Reserve in a vice grip between allow inflation to rise and allow banks to fail.
So here is Joe Biden congratulating himself, growing a third arm to pat himself on the back.
Today, thanks to the quick action of my administration over the past few days, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe.
Your deposits will be there when you need them.
Small businesses across the country that deposit accounts at these banks can breathe easier knowing they'll be able to pay their workers and pay their bills.
Okay, that is true in the short term, but in the long term, as these banks, as their liquidity dries up, they're going to have a much bigger problem, which is, how do you even get your business started?
How do you start a business in an environment where liquidity does not exist?
We're going to have more capital sitting on the sidelines than at any time since 2007, 2008.
Trillions of dollars of capital is just going to sit on the sidelines.
Because what do you do with your money?
You're an investor.
Do you put it in a bank fund?
Probably not.
Depending on whether you vetted that bank fund?
Probably not.
Do you take that money and do you convert it into a U.S.
bond?
Maybe, but they might increase the interest rates, which makes your bond less valuable tomorrow.
Or do you just sit on the cash?
Or do you just sit on the cash?
Well, the problem is if you sit on the cash, it's becoming less valuable too.
So where do people put that money?
The answer is it's going to sit on the sidelines.
Nobody knows where to put their money at this point, which means liquidity is about to dry up in a very serious way in this country.
Joe Biden, you know, when asked a serious question about like why the banks are experiencing runs in the first place, which would really be the question, right?
Why are people taking their money out of the bank in the first place?
He has no answer for this one.
Now we need to keep the program, this progress going.
That's what swift action that my administration over the past few years is all about.
Protecting depositors, protecting the banking system, protecting the economic gains we've made together for the American people.
Thank you.
God bless you.
And may God protect our troops.
See you in California.
Every time he walks, I swear, it is so stressful watching him walk.
Because, like, he is on the same footing as our financial system, apparently.
All it would take is one banana peel from Kamala Harris to end this presidency at this point.
My goodness.
How bad is this presidency, by the way?
Jen Psaki, this is the best clip of the day.
Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary.
She says, you know, it was amazing that Joe Biden got out of bed and actually gave a speech.
This is the new standard.
It is amazing that the president of the United States got his old ass out of bed and made a speech at 9 a.m.
Now, I know for the rest of us, we actually have jobs and we come into work before 9 a.m.
very often.
But, you know, the president of the United States says, Jen Psaki, man, you could tell it was an emergency because he was up and about at 9 a.m.
And that's what people need to hear from him.
Now, it's important to note, President Biden does nothing at 9am.
He is a night owl.
So the fact that he is doing this at 9am anyway, speaks to how vital the White House recognizes it is for him to have his voice out there conveying that to the American public.
Oh, he's a night owl, is he?
CNN, February 2021, quote, Biden is more of an early to bed type.
Oh, so what you mean is that he doesn't work ever because he's not alive?
You mean he goes to bed at 7 o'clock p.m., like my three-year-old, and then he wakes up, apparently at 10 a.m., like none of my children, who actually wake up at a normal hour?
I'm so glad that we have this man in charge of our economy.
Meanwhile, one of the things that, you know, a lot of people on the right have been talking about is the wokeness and diversity of these various banks.
And they're suggesting that that is to blame for their failure.
OK, well, it happens to be true that in times of loose economic money, people invest their time and effort in really dumb ideas like environmental social governance.
Those are stupid ideas.
And the idea that you don't have to take care of your state, your actual shareholders, you take care of the world at large, take care of the stakeholders, you invest in idiotic green boondoggles, because after all, the money is easy and cheap.
Hey, so is wokeness to blame for what just happened?
No, I mean, wokeness actually is not to blame for what just happened.
Wokeness is a predictable result of everybody else paying your bills for years on end with cheap and loose money from the Federal Reserve.
Basically, there's a giant.
Inflatable bag of cash and all of these all of these bank managers were able to jump from the third story of the financial building knowing that there was this giant inflatable bag of cash that could land on.
Well, there's only one problem.
The air that's out of that bag gets real ugly when you hit the floor.
And so now, in retrospect, you look back at all the stupid woke crap that they were doing during the last three years.
You're like, oh, it's because of the wokeness.
No, that was a symptom of the fact that the money was cheap and easy.
Now, does that mean that the wokeness helped?
Of course not.
They should have been a lot more conservative in how they approach both their investment strategy and how they approach their actual job, which is the banking.
But it does make them look quite stupid.
So, for example, you have this SVB video focusing on diversity that came out yesterday.
Here's what that looked like.
We want to help close the Latino wealth gap.
I want to be able to help them build generational wealth.
We want to help close the Latino wealth gap.
I want to be able to help them build generational wealth.
I love access to innovation because of what it stands for.
Giving access to opportunities such as training, such as financing, introductions that people would not necessarily get.
This is part of an initiative that everyone is committed to, from the CEO down.
It's meaningful work that has to be done.
It's meaningful work that has to be done.
By your dollars.
By your dollars, investors.
Again, these banks were perfectly happy to invest.
SVB is committed to advancing Black, Latinx, and women founders, investors, and leaders in innovation.
First of all, there has never been nor will there ever be a Latinx person on the planet because that's not a real word.
Hey, it's Latino or Latina.
And there's not a Latino or Latina on planet Earth outside of the hallowed halls of white Academia that thinks that anyone wants to use the term Latinx.
It just does not exist in the Latino community, does not exist.
But SVB is committed to advancing.
OK, so is that the reason they went under?
No.
But does it show that their priorities were in order?
Also, their priorities were not in order.
Because it turns out that when money is cheap and easy, you can waste money on bad borrowers.
You can waste money on subprime mortgages in 2007, 2008, when everything is cheap and easy.
And you can waste money on bad investments in 2022, when the money is cheap and easy.
When money starts to dry up, things get awkward.
Or, theoretically, over at Signature Bank, another one of these banks that went under, you could spend your money making bad parody videos talking about how you're not a generic megabank.
This is weird.
I don't know why you're spending your money this way, Signature Bank.
This is Barney Frank's bank, by the way.
Here is some of their... This is a video they actually cut.
The managers actually cut this video in which they sang parody songs about how they're not like the generic megabanks.
Right, the generic megabanks are the ones who are still in business, guys.
Oh, unlicensed music from, uh, from... They sell their souls, but we don't.
Oh, no.
This is amazing.
This is Signature.
Signature Banks Managers singing songs.
They're better than the others.
Oh my goodness.
Oh no, this is just, it's a video from the office.
This is like direct Michael Scott office style music videos from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Oh no.
That's, oh no.
Generic mega, oh no.
I'm so glad they spent their money on this.
Can't imagine why they went under.
Okay, so what does all of this mean?
Well, it means moving forward into 2024 that Joe Biden, again, is going to be vulnerable.
The economy is not going to be good.
The systemic problems in U.S.
banking and in the U.S.
economy are not going to go away over the course of the next few weeks.
They're going to remain quite serious.
The Federal Reserve, again, they're caught between a rock and a hard place.
The banks, many of them, are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Liquidity is about to dry up.
It's gonna be very hard for even solid companies to find the liquidity they need to keep on operating.
That means that Joe Biden has some very, very serious issues moving forward into 2024.
So now would be an excellent time for Republicans to take advantage of that.
Would it not?
No, while Joe Biden is soiling his underwear.
Speaking of underwear, speaking of underwear, you should have the world's best underwear.
You like that transition?
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Also, Back in 2021, during a five-hour hearing before Congress, Mark Zuckerberg admitted he didn't let his own kids use Facebook.
That should be enough to make you think twice about letting your kids use any social media, especially TikTok.
Well, we have a brand new book out, published by DW Books.
It is an excellent book.
It is a bestseller already.
It's written by my friends Bethany Mandela and Carol Markowitz.
It drives the point home.
It's called Stolen Youth, How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.
When I read this passage, I wanted to delete every social media app I have and throw my phone away.
Here's what they say, quote, TikTok was the center of a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation, which uncovered how the app targets users with content revolving around sex, drugs, eating disorders and more, calling it an addiction machine.
Investigators created 31 accounts registered to young teens and turned them loose to browse TikTok's 4U feed, the highly personalized, never-ending feed curated by the algorithm.
The article explained, quote, an analysis of the videos served to these accounts found that through its powerful algorithms, TikTok can quickly drive minors among the biggest users of the app into endless spools of content about sex and drugs.
TikTok served one account registered as a 13 year old at least 569 videos about drug use.
Remember, this is by design.
Radicals would like their children to be sick and corrupted.
The good news is you can fight back if you know how.
Stolen youth.
How radicals are erasing innocence, indoctrinating a generation.
It comes out today.
Order your copy on Amazon or wherever you get your books right now.
Well, meanwhile, as the Republicans roll forward toward 2024, they're going to have to decide which person is best positioned to beat Joe Biden in a general election.
And let's make no mistake, Republicans need to make that decision.
OK, the decision is not about which candidate you love on a personal level.
The question is, who beats Joe Biden?
Thinking any other way would be an exercise in foolishness.
Speaking of exercise in foolishness, there's a poll out from Pennsylvania right now and it is showing Doug Mastriano in the lead in a senatorial primary against Dave McCormick.
This makes no sense.
This makes no sense.
Doug Mastriano just got his ass kicked in the gubernatorial race by Josh Shapiro by 14 points.
So your plan is to re-nominate that person for a Senate seat?
Like, do you like to win sometimes or is losing the only thing?
Is losing on principle like a thing?
This is a thing that we should keep in mind as we move forward to an actual presidential election that a lot rides on, as it turns out.
And this brings us to today's episode of Good Trump, Bad Trump.
Well, I think you knew this was coming.
It's the bad Trump.
Donald Trump put out what is one of the worst attack videos I've ever seen.
I mean, truthfully, a horrible attack video, not because the video itself is like morally egregious or something.
It's not as bad as some of the stuff Trump has said, but I don't even understand the angle.
This is a this is desperate flailing from the president of the United States.
He's struggling to come up with an attack angle on the Florida governor that is going to be effective because he can't really attack him from the right on anything per se.
This answers to his right on nearly every issue.
Also, Donald Trump running in 2024 is different than Donald Trump running in 2016.
He's been president.
So many of the things that Donald Trump right now says that he will do, a lot of people are looking at, they're like, well, you were the president.
You could have done that when you were the president.
So he talks about wiping away DEI.
When when he is president again.
Great.
That sounds great.
Also, you should have done that while you were the actual president of the United States.
You can't run as an outsider once you have been the president of the United States.
Right now, you're the ultimate insider.
It's very difficult to run as the guy who's outside the system when you had control over the levers of power.
So he's been struggling to come up with some angle of attack on DeSantis.
And it's been tough.
I mean, first of all, DeSantis hasn't yet declared.
That makes it particularly rough for him.
But beyond that, He was hoping to crowd everybody else out of the field.
It hasn't happened as of yet.
And so he's come up with a couple of nicknames, right?
He's been saying, Ron DeSanctimonious, Ron DeSanctimonious.
Well, one problem with the Ron DeSanctimonious thing is that he doesn't actually understand what the word sanctimonious means.
I'm not kidding.
According to the Washington Post, questioned on whether he regrets endorsing DeSantis when he ran for governor in 2018, Trump replied, yeah, maybe.
This is precisely the wrong angle.
Precisely the wrong angle.
Like, if you want to win again, and you're running against DeSantis, what you say is, I'm super glad I endorsed DeSantis, he's been wildly popular.
The reason that Florida had the popular Ron DeSantis is because of me!
That's what he should say.
He should try to grab some of the credit for Florida's achievements.
Instead, his plan is to rip down DeSantis.
Trump said, he nicknamed DeSantis, run to sanctimonious.
In reference to the lack of gratitude, he claimed that DeSantis had shown after Trump bolstered his political rise.
That's not what the word sanctimonious means.
Sanctimonious does not refer to a lack of gratitude.
I want to find the actual dictionary definition.
Okay, the dictionary definition is making a show of being morally superior to other people.
That is not a lack of gra- Like, what?
I guess in order to give a nickname, you should have to understand the word you're using for the nickname.
We should start with that, but that wasn't- Okay, all of that is just silliness.
Here is where things get very dicey for Trump.
Because he will use anything at his disposal to attack his opponents, up to and including Ted Cruz's father, shot JFK, and his wife is ugly.
Because he will do anything.
That means that he sometimes just attacks randomly from like the far left.
So here was Donald Trump talking down the transformation of Florida that again, he could help take credit for.
He could be saying, it's because of me that Ron DeSantis became governor of Florida.
It's because of me as president of the United States that Ron DeSantis was able to keep Florida open.
Another president would have crammed down national mandates.
I didn't.
Ron DeSantis was able to do what he was able to do because I didn't do that thing.
He could say all that stuff.
He's not saying all that stuff because he wants to go after DeSantis personally.
And so he then decides to take the stupidest angle, which is that Florida is badly run or something, or that it was run amazing before Ron DeSantis got here.
Here was his video yesterday.
For those of you that didn't notice, Florida was doing great long before Ron DeSantis got there.
People are fleeing from New York to Florida and other places.
Because of high taxes and out-of-control crime, it's really bad.
Not because of the governor.
Thank you, Mr. President, for doing that.
So, it was doing amazing before.
By the way, he then name-checks Rick Scott, who he doesn't like particularly much, and Charlie Crist.
He literally, in that video, starts praising Charlie Crist, who just ran against Ron DeSantis, and who is not a good governor of Florida, and who is a Democrat, by the way.
So he's attacking Ron DeSantis, which isn't even a word, and he's doing it by propping up Charlie Crist?
I'm gonna need to see your work on that one.
I'm sorry, I need to see a little bit of work on that one from the President of the United States.
And by the way, if you're looking at the in-migration to Florida, the in-migration to Florida clearly spiked during DeSantis' government, including my own family.
I am personally responsible for bringing me, my wife, our three kids, that's five, my parents, that's seven, my wife's parents, that's nine, my sister's family from New Jersey, that's another six, that's 15, my sister, my other sister, her husband, and their baby, that's 18 people.
I'm personally responsible for bringing 18 people, minimum, that's just my immediate family, down to Florida because Governor DeSantis is very good at his job.
So that dog ain't gonna hunt.
No one believed that Florida was like a giant magnet in the way that it has become under DeSantis.
That is a weak attack.
And I'm sorry, praising Charlie Crist.
No one should ever praise Charlie Crist.
No one.
There is no rationale for praising Charlie Crist.
Then Trump tried another line of attack.
He tried to compare Ron DeSantis to Mitt Romney.
Yeah, good luck on that one, dude.
Ron was a disciple of Paul Ryan, who is a...
You signed bills from Paul Ryan.
...is destroying Fox and would constantly vote against entitlements.
He would just vote against, remember that?
The wheelchair over the cliffs, the Democrats used it.
The wheelchair over the cliff commercial, very effective.
That was about him.
But Ryan, Paul Ryan's a big reason that Mitt Romney, I'm not a big fan of Mitt Romney, lost his election.
Oh.
And to be honest with you, Paul Ryan lost a lot of Mitt Romney.
So I don't think you're going to be doing so well here, but we're going to find out.
out, but those are the facts.
He's literally citing a campaign commercial cut by Democrats showing Paul Ryan murdering elderly people in order to attack Ron DeSantis.
And also in that same speech, he's talking about ethanol and how he's going to blow up the payments for ethanol in the state of Iowa.
This is really weak tea.
I just don't think it plays.
By the way, in the crowd, you can hear it doesn't play.
The crowd is not cheering the lines against DeSantis.
They don't like Paul Ryan very much, but they are not cheering the lines against DeSantis.
DeSantis, for his part, is doing the smart thing.
DeSantis is saying, you know, I'm going to basically just ignore this.
DeSantis is holding Trump out here the way that I hold my six-year-old son when he's in a really bad mood and swinging his arms.
I'm like, hold him out here.
Here is DeSantis answering some questions about this on Fox.
There's a lot of people that want you to jump in.
I don't really know too many people who aren't expecting you to jump in.
But are you worried of being defined before you do it?
Because you watch President Trump come out and try to label you as a Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush type of Republican.
And are you worried about being defined because you're a governor and you're not a candidate yet?
So when you have a record of achievement, people can call you a name, but that's not going to trump the achievement.
And so we've built an astounding record of achievement.
The best is yet to come.
We're going to do a lot more over the next few months.
And that's what people look to.
Okay, and this is the smart play by DeSantis.
Again, don't give air to the giant sort of attention machine that is Trump.
Don't engage in the battle.
DeSantis will at some point have to address some of this stuff, but he's flying above the fray right now, which is indeed smart.
Meanwhile, Trump himself is attacking Mike Pence for January 6th now.
He says he sent the votes back to the legislatures.
They wouldn't have had a problem with January 6th.
So in many ways, you can blame him for January 6th.
In other words, if he had simply destroyed, you know, the certification of the election, then there wouldn't have been January 6th.
Which, by the way, is a tacit admission by Trump that January 6th was not a great thing.
So, all of that is pretty weak tea.
Meanwhile, some criticism is arising for DeSantis that is, you know, at least half interesting.
Not like, he's like Paul Rea, he's not Charlie Critt.
Like, actual interesting criticism.
So, Tucker Carlson issued a series of questions to a wide variety of Republican candidates, ranging from Vivek Ramaswamy to Donald Trump.
That included Mike Pence, DeSantis, Kristi Noem from South Dakota, Greg Abbott, Tim Scott, Chris Christie.
The one that drew the most attention was the answer about Ukraine.
So the question was, is opposing Russia and Ukraine a vital American national strategic interest?
Trump said, no, but it is for Europe, adding that European allies should be paying far more than we are or equal, which is not totally wrong.
DeSantis wrote, quote, While the U.S.
has many vital national interests, securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.
The Biden administration's virtual blank check funding of this conflict for as long as it takes, without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country's most pressing challenges.
He argued that peace should be the objective, and that the United States Should not send F-16s and long-range missiles to help Ukraine move into offensive territory against the Russians.
So a lot of people on the right, some more interventionist sides of the right, are upset with this because they're saying, well, it is a vital national security interest of the United States to continue to push this war.
But what DeSantis is doing there is actually fairly smart politics.
He's actually kind of mushing it a little bit, to be perfectly frank.
He's mushing the answer because what he is saying is that you actually have to have an achievable goal.
What is the achievable goal there?
If peace is the achievable goal, then you have to decide what that peace looks like.
If what we have now is a territorial dispute over the Donbass or Crimea, you're going to have to draw a middle line and figure out exactly how to achieve that middle line.
If what you are saying is that you think that there is no territorial dispute, which no one says, including the Biden administration, and that this war only ends when Russia pushes When Russia is pushed out of all sovereign Ukrainian territory, then you would have to fund them all the way to the wall.
But even the Biden administration is not willing to do that.
So DeSantis is coming under fire for that.
It is interesting that the Republican Party has decided to sort of take a middle line on a lot of this material, and that's going to be the line going forward.
Questionable as to as to whether that would still be the Republican line if, for example, Joe Biden were not president of the United States at this point.
What is clear is that Joe Biden doesn't have a plan has been leading from behind, and I think that's helping to muddy the waters a lot when it comes to Ukraine.
So Joe Biden decided to tell what is my favorite Joe Biden story.
I love this story.
This is the story where he explains that he first became in favor of gay marriage.
When he was, I kid you not, a senior in high school.
Now, some of you may own a calendar.
If you do, I wish you to turn back that calendar to the year 1959.
Because that's when Joe Biden was a senior in high school.
Joe Biden was born in 1942.
1942.
Like we were still at war with Japan when this guy was born.
And there were still three more years of that war to go when he was born.
Which means he was a senior in high school.
In 1959, 1960.
Here's the story he tells about how he became in favor of marriage in 1959 slash 1960 when literally no one was in favor of saying he was just a forward thinker, which is why he spent the next five decades.
Backing traditional marriage in the face of same-sex marriage.
Literally five decades.
He voted over and over and over in favor of things like the Defense of Marriage Act.
He, in rhetoric, backed a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage.
But don't worry.
He is now retconning history.
He's going back in time.
1959 is when he decided he was in favor of gay marriage.
And he's going to tell my personal favorite Joe Biden story.
I can remember exactly where my, uh, epiphany was.
Okay.
I hadn't thought much about it, to tell you the truth, and I was a... I was a senior in high school, and my dad was dropping me off.
1959.
I remember about to get out of the car, and I looked to my right, and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other.
I mean, they gave each other a kiss.
Well, they gave each other a kiss.
My dad said, Joey, that's what love looks like.
It really happened.
I was pulling over.
I was a junior in high school.
And I pulled over a DeLorean.
And he said, Joey, look at those two men and assless chaps banging it out.
That's what love looks like, Joey.
And that's when I decided I was in favor of gay marriage.
And YMCA began to play from the sky.
That's when I decided gay marriage was the thing for me.
The year was 1959.
Okay, and if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to tell you that is not a true story.
He tells it all the time.
That is not a true story, but he is a social radical, which, as always, raises the question, why would they run him?
And as always, the answer is the same.
Because the person who stands behind Joe Biden is, in fact, Kamala Harris.
It's not Pete Buttigieg, right?
Pete Buttigieg, that dude's political career is effectively over after blowing it in East Palestine, Ohio, after taking a two-month paternity leave.
Now, what the left is trying to do is say you're not allowed to joke about his paternity leave.
I'm going to joke about his paternity leave.
I am.
I'm sorry.
He took a two-month paternity leave.
As I've said before, paternity leave is usually constructed around the idea of you have a partner who has had a physical problem because she gave birth.
As a father of three, having watched my wife push babies out of her three times, and soon to be a fourth time, I can tell you, there will be, you know, physical issues that arise from this.
You know where physical issues do not arise?
When you don't actually have to do that because you're a dude.
Paternity leave came from the idea that you need to provide extra support to your partner because your partner has undergone a physical trauma.
Pete Buttigieg took two months off, which means we get to joke about him.
So the White House is very angry at Mike Pence for making a joke about this at the Gridiron Club dinner.
Now, the Gridiron Club dinner is a comedy routine, and Mike Pence made a joke at a comedy routine.
His joke was that Buttigieg took maternity leave after he and his husband adopted newborn twins.
He should have said paternity leave instead of maternity.
He said, Pete is the only person in human history to have, and then he said, trains started going offline and planes started falling from the sky.
He said, Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression.
That's called a joke.
This prompted the White House to suggest that it was homophobic.
Quote, this is Corinne Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented press secretary.
No, he didn't.
No, he didn't.
How is he treating women?
about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline.
No, he didn't.
No, he didn't.
How is he treating women?
What did that have to do with women suffering from postpartum depression?
Guys, it's called a joke.
And I like when you guys pretend the jokes don't exist so that you can yell at people, but it's not really a thing.
But again, the reason that Joe Biden continues to be the person they need on that wall is because the person backing him up is Kamala Harris.
Now, one of my favorite stories that's happening right now ...is the fight between Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, in which I root for casualties.
So, back at the end of January, Elizabeth Warren was on GBH News, and she stopped short of endorsing Kamala Harris as the VP on the ticket.
Could Kamala Harris be his choice a second time around?
You know, I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team.
But they need, they have to be a team.
And my sense is they are.
I don't mean that by suggesting I think there are any problems.
I think they are.
Apparently, Kamala Harris is now angry at Elizabeth Warren.
And she won't talk to her anymore, which I would say is to Elizabeth Warren's benefit.
What can I do so that Kamala Harris would stop talking at me or to me?
That sounds amazing.
Apparently she will not return Warren's phone calls after the senator stopped short of endorsing her as president.
Warren apparently has called Harris twice to apologize for her comments.
But Kamala's like, I'm not gonna.
No, I'm not gonna take those calls.
And then she started laughing all weird.
This prompted the women of The View to say that people don't like Kamala Harris because of racism and sexism, which is hilarious because now they are calling Elizabeth Warren a racist and a sexist, which I'm here for it.
All right.
At a time when voters, I get age is not the most important thing.
But if you're electing someone who's an 82-year-old in 2024, you need to believe that the vice president is able and willing the next day to be the president.
And I think there's some concern about just the lack of a policy accomplishments that she's made as vice president.
I'm surprised that there's concern.
I think it has a lot to do with this.
She's a black woman.
Black women get everything done.
We've saved this country's democracy for centuries.
It's because, Sunny Hassan, it's because she's a black woman.
I agree.
Elizabeth Warren is a racist and a sexist.
Agree.
I'm here for it.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
This is really funny.
So, Greta Thunberg.
Greta, so angry.
How dare you?
How dare you?
Well, apparently, she tweeted out June 21st, 2018, quote, a top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.
Well, just short of the five-year mark, she went and deleted the tweet, which is hysterically funny.
So, apparently, I guess that the tweet is no longer relevant because we didn't stop using fossil fuels over the course of the next five years.
So, apparently, we are now past the tipping point.
It's all over.
We still have three months.
Maybe if we stop using all fossil fuels in the next three months, it can all be fixed.
I look forward to all of the environmental doomsayers deleting all of their forecasts about how the world will end.
Remember when Al Gore did an entire documentary that got him an Academy Award, I believe, in which he suggested all the polar bears would be dead by like 2020, and that didn't happen, and all the polar ice caps would be gone, and we would all be floating.
Like in Iowa, you'd be floating above an ocean.
It was good times.
The environmental doomsayers having to go back and then recapitulate all of their predictions is one of my favorite things.
I really do enjoy it.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
Oh, there are so many things that I hate today.
So I discussed yesterday the Oscars and the fact that everything, everywhere, all at once, all the time, forever, in all eternity, in the multiverse, that that movie won best picture.
And I said I was kind of Luke Cold on that particular picture.
And one of the points I made online, it's drawn an awful lot of flack, is I said, in five years, no one will watch that film.
And so that's a prediction.
I will not delete that prediction because I think that prediction is true.
In five years hence, we'll look at the numbers and we'll see how many people are still watching everything, everywhere, all at once, forever, for all time.
Um, I think the answer is going to be no.
And I think I have a good track record on this because let me point out that no one has actually rewatched a single film awarded Best Picture since about 2007.
No one.
In fact, let me name for you the films that have won Best Picture over the course of the last 15 years.
And you tell me if you have ever rewatched any of them.
So 2021's winner was CODA, or as we like to call it, disability Oscar bait.
I'm going to give some alternative titles.
The movie's fine.
I enjoyed CODA.
Not worth watching twice.
Or how about 2020 Francis McDormand Poops in a Bucket?
That's Nomadland, in which Francis McDormand poops in a bucket.
Has that been a big rewatch for you?
Pulling that one out of the DVD stack lately?
Putting that up on the streamer?
You gotta watch Francis McDormand poop in a bucket 2021?
Nope.
I didn't think so.
For 2020?
How about Rich Korean People Should Be Murdered?
A.K.A.
Parasite.
2019.
Rich Korean People Should Be Murdered.
I know a lot of people are like, I love Parasite.
Just love that movie.
Really?
When was the last time you watched it?
Was it 2019?
Perhaps?
Like when it won Best Picture?
How about, um, how about 1950s racism and homophobia is bad, a.k.a.
Green Book?
How many people actually watched it at the time?
How many people are watching it now?
Are you, like, pulling that one out?
Streaming Green Book, are you?
Or, how about the worst best picture winner of all time from 2017?
I f***ed a fish.
That one, that's a big winner.
The Shape of Water.
Yes, the worst, maybe, forget worst best picture winner, worst movie of all time.
I mean, that one is definitely in competition.
Have you pulled that one out?
Have you rewatched it?
I'm just explaining why.
My prediction that no one will ever watch everything everywhere all at once forever for all time across the multiverse again?
A.K.A.
immigrant Asian families must accept lesbians across the multiverse?
Like, is anyone going to watch that again?
I have serious doubts.
And the reason, again, I say that is because no one has ever watched a Best Picture winner in the last five years later.
Anyone that has won in the last 15 years.
Just going back in time here.
How about Growing Up Gay and Black in Miami, aka Moonlight 2016?
You were watching that.
How about Journalists Are Awesome at Spotlight from 2015?
How about art?
That's Birdman.
Has anyone ever seen Birdman again?
It existed for a brief moment in time during the Keaton Renaissance, and then it was just gone.
How about Slavery Was Bad?
That was 12 years a slave, right?
2013?
Again, I'm not saying all these movies are bad.
I'm saying no one's ever rewatched any of them.
How about Argo?
Remember when Argo was a thing?
A.K.A.
Jimmy Carter wasn't that bad.
Remember that one?
Yeah, like, no, you don't?
You don't?
How about The Artist?
You're watching that one, are you?
The Artist?
2011 Best Picture winner?
Literally the only one of these movies I've ever watched, even two years beyond its sell-by date, was The King's Speech from 2010, right?
The Brits can be good if they're fighting Nazis.
That was the last time we allowed such a movie to win Best Picture.
There was also War is Bad, right, which was The Hurt Locker, 2009.
The first five minutes of the film are great.
The rest of it, I don't even remember any of it.
And then Slumdog Millionaire won in 2008, aka, we're not nominating Dark Knight for Best Picture.
In fact, that was such an egregious non-nomination that the Academy Awards then expanded its Best Picture category to eight to ten films, you recall.
In order to get more popular films nominated and not a single one has won since then.
You want to know why the Oscars are failing guys?
It's because you won't nominate films that people like to watch, that people enjoy watching and don't feel obligated to watch.
I understand that people are pretending right now to like everything everywhere all at once forever for all time.
Some people may like it.
I have some real doubts about that one.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We will be talking with Dave McCormick.
He ran for Senate in Pennsylvania, narrowly lost.
He has a brand new book out.
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