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July 10, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:35

The Trump Wave Builds

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	So, I've said that every election is essentially a referendum on one candidate or the other candidate.
	And the going assumption, including by people like me, has been that if the 2024 race is between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that the election will actually be a referendum on Trump.
	Because Trump is so toxic in terms of the media, because independents generally don't like Donald Trump, because we've already run this race at least one time before.
	And Donald Trump is not a wildly popular candidate with the American people.
	His unfavorable ratings are really, really high.
	But the 2024 race, due to exogenous events, due to the bad governance of Joe Biden, could in fact turn into the 2016 race rather than the 2020 race.
	And this looks increasingly like a very serious possibility.
	So in 2016, the entire media, me included, thought that the election was going to be a referendum on Trump, because he was so spectacularly interesting, because all the spotlights were on him, rather than on Hillary Clinton.
	And what everybody, including me, ignored is that the election was actually a referendum on Hillary Clinton.
	People would not show up to vote for her.
	Now, take a look at the Trump vs. Biden race.
	I was looking at the polls over the weekend.
	I was spending some time with them.
	And it's fascinating because the chief pitch for Ron DeSantis vs. Donald Trump for a long time was electability.
	Ron DeSantis would be more electable than Donald Trump because Ron DeSantis does better with independents because women aren't off-put by him because he hasn't run two races before in which he won less than 47% of the national vote.
	However, all of the national polls right now have Trump not only within striking distance of Joe Biden, many of the polls have Trump on top of Joe Biden in these polls.
	Right now, the RealClearPolitics polling average puts Donald Trump at 44.1% and Joe Biden at 43.5%.
	The last two polls, Economist YouGov and Messenger HarrisX, Both of those polls have Trump up nationally, 44 to 40 in one, 45 to 43 in the other.
	All the other polls, NBC, Emerson, Yahoo News, those polls that have Biden ahead, have him ahead by less than five points.
	They have him within five, within four, or within one.
	And there are a couple of polls from Harvard Harris and Rasmussen that have Trump actually up a lot more.
	They have them all the way up to six points.
	What exactly is happening there?
	The answer is not the wild popularity of Trump.
	When we talk about a Trump wave that is happening right here, what it really is is an anti-Biden wave in the same way that 2016 was an anti-Hillary wave.
	When you look at these polls, the thing that jumps out about these polls is not the overperformance of Trump.
	Trump does not break, as far as I'm aware, 45% in literally any poll for the last month and a half.
	The real story here is that Joe Biden can't break wind.
	I mean, he can't break anything.
	It's amazing.
	He cannot... The man is stuck at 43, 44, at the most, 46%.
	Now, if you look by way of contrast at the Obama-Romney matchup from 2012, which is the nearest comp because you have an incumbent Democrat president running against a Republican.
	If you look at the polling data during that time, Barack Obama never sunk below 46% in the national polling at any point during that race.
	If you go all the way back to the comparable period in June of 2011, July of 2011, what you find is that Barack Obama was polling in the 47 to 48 percent range.
	The very lowest that he got any time in the race was in September of 2011 when he was down at about 45 percent.
	Joe Biden in these matchups against Donald Trump is averaging 42, 43, 41%.
	These numbers are four to 5% lower than Barack Obama at his lowest.
	And they are consistently low for Joe Biden, which leaves a question.
	Where are the rest of the votes?
	That's a real question.
	I look at these polls and what you see is, for example, the latest, the latest echelon poll, which right now shows that Donald Trump is up in the battleground states over Joe Biden, 48 to 40.
	That still leaves 12% of the race undecided effectively.
	10% of people in that particular poll in the battleground states say they are unsure about who they will vote for.
	The presidential race overall in that echelon poll has Trump up 43 to 42.
	It also has an independent like Cornel West pulling something like 4% of the vote.
	When you add all of that up, that is still leaving you with like 11% undecided.
	Who are the undecideds?
	Who are these people?
	Right?
	Because one of the assumptions here is you already have an opinion about Joe Biden.
	You already have an opinion about Donald Trump.
	One of the great assumptions going into this election is there really is no swing vote.
	Who are the swing voters?
	The answer is there are no swing voters.
	It's not about swing voters.
	The real question is who's going to stay home?
	Joe Biden could cause Democrats to stay home because he is a very, very bad president.
	People do not like him.
	People are not enamored of him.
	He doesn't excite anyone.
	So it is quite possible that Donald Trump could sneak in, not because of a Trump wave, but because of a Biden wave of apathy.
	You could get the exact 2016 scenario where people in Wisconsin, who were kind of okay with Hillary Clinton, just didn't care enough to show up.
	Or they were off-put by Hillary Clinton.
	They're like, you know what?
	She's probably gonna win anyway.
	Don't care.
	You could get an exact repeat of that dynamic.
	For example, latest Economist YouGov poll, which shows Trump up 44-40 over Joe Biden, 7% of people, I mean, look at that number, 44-40, that means only 84% of people say that they know who they're going to vote for between Trump and Biden, which leaves 16% of the population who don't know.
	7% of those people say they will not vote.
	About half of that percentage, 45% of those people, say they will not vote in the election.
	Another 5% said they would vote third party.
	Only 5% said they were not sure.
	In other words, low voter turnout.
	Low voter turnout in this next election cycle, at least on the Democratic side, could help Trump.
	There are not a lot of Republicans who are not going to show up to vote against Joe Biden.
	But there are a lot of Democrats who might not show up to vote against Trump.
	And Joe Biden, he's been running on the simple, single basis that people hate Trump enough that they'll put him in office again.
	I'm not sure that assumption is true, particularly if the economy continues to stagnate or slide into recession.
	The same sort of statistics are available from the messenger, Harris X. That particular poll shows Trump up 45 to 43 over Joe Biden.
	It shows 21%, one-fifth of all independents, are undecided.
	Now, are they really undecided or are they just not that interested?
	What these polls are showing is a huge percentage of the American population doesn't like this election.
	And the assumption has been they don't like the election, but at the end they'll decide for Biden.
	What if that's not true?
	What if they're undecided and at the end of the day, many of them decide, you know what?
	I don't care.
	I hate both of them.
	I'm staying home.
	That certainly benefits Trump.
	Emerson College, same thing.
	That poll has Biden up 44-43 over Donald Trump.
	9% said they would vote for somebody else.
	Another 4% said they were undecided.
	Again, the number of apathetic voters in this upcoming 2024 election is going to be way higher than in 2020.
	So Republicans said in 2020, how is it possible that Joe Biden, this elderly dotard, this zombie candidate, could win 81 million votes?
	And the answer was twofold.
	One, a lot of people hate Trump.
	But two, because of the pandemic, everyone voted remote.
	Because of the pandemic, there were more votes in the 2020 election than at any time in American history.
	The number of votes in that election surpassed by leaps and bounds any other election in the history of the United States.
	He won, Joe Biden did, 81.2, 81.3 million votes.
	And Donald Trump won, 74 million votes.
	When you add those together, you're looking at 155 million voters.
	If you look back at the 2016 election results, what you see is that the total number of voters In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won 63 million votes and Hillary Clinton won 65 million votes, 66 million votes.
	That amounts to like 128 million voters.
	Okay, so you had an increase of 23 million voters.
	23 million voters in the 2020 election cycle.
	You could very easily see a situation in which this thing recedes back to the norm.
	The 2020 was actually an outlier election in terms of voter turnout.
	If that happens, then Trump has a real shot.
	And Joe Biden is exciting absolutely no one.
	It's a disaster for the Democrats.
	And we'll get to more of that in a second because it creates this fascinating scenario where we really are on a razor's edge in an election cycle where people don't love the candidates particularly much.
	We'll get to more on that in a second.
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	So again, use polling data.
	What they show is that Joe Biden, the real outlier here is not Donald Trump's performance.
	Donald Trump is stuck exactly wherever Republican candidate has been stuck since 2012,
	somewhere between 44 and 48% at the very, very highest.
	The real outlier here is how Joe Biden is performing.
	And he's performing much more like Hillary Clinton circa 2016 than he is like Barack Obama circa 2012.
	That is a very scary result for Democrats.
	And so you're starting to see a little bit of a drumbeat that maybe Joe Biden needs to go away.
	Because if the only candidate that Joe Biden can beat is Donald Trump, maybe he can't.
	Maybe he can't.
	Maybe he's weak.
	Now the media are stuck in this weird situation.
	There's no one backing up Joe Biden.
	Now there's a lot of romantic talk about Gavin Newsom.
	Gavin Newsom is not a good candidate.
	Gavin Newsom appears to be slimy.
	He looks like a movie villain from 1987 in an Oliver Stone flick about what's going on on Wall Street.
	He's got the Gordon Getco haircut.
	I don't know who decided to do his look, but it's very strange.
	He happens to be a not competent governor of California.
	Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan has a lot of strikes against her.
	And of course, the vice president of the United States is the single most unpopular vice presidential office holder in modern American history.
	No one likes Kamala Harris, including Venn diagrams and electric buses.
	No one likes her.
	So they have to, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
	They have to uphold the old man, but they know the old man is fading.
	And so you end up with stories like this one from Axios, quote, In public, President Biden likes to whisper to make a point.
	In private, he's prone to yelling.
	Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper, some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him.
	Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast.
	The president's admonitions include, According to current and former Biden aides, who've witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts.
	The beginning of the piece, this is Democrat ambivalence at its finest.
	The beginning of the piece is how terrible Joe Biden is.
	Unstable.
	Possibly senile.
	Screaming at aides.
	aviator sunglasses and ice cream.
	So the beginning of the piece, this is just, this is Democrat ambivalence at its finest.
	The beginning of the piece is how terrible Joe Biden is.
	Unstable, possibly senile, screaming at aides, being vacillating and simultaneously eruptive.
	Some Biden aides says Axios think the president would be better off occasionally displaying
	the temper in public though, as a way to assuage voter concerns
	that the 80 year old president is disengaged and too old for the office.
	.
	There's no question the Biden temper is for real.
	It may not be as volcanic as Bill Clinton's, but it's definitely there, said Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life, inside Joe Biden's White House.
	But apparently, Joe Biden's temper, maybe it makes him presidential, according to Axios.
	Again, because there's that, there's that wavering.
	They're right.
	They know that Joe Biden is a bad candidate.
	And so the media want to go after him, but they can't because they're constrained by the simple fact that they also want him to retain the presidency.
	According to Axios, Biden's temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums.
	He'll grill aides on topics until it's clear they don't know the answer to a question, a routine that some see as meticulous and others call stump the chump or stump the dummy.
	Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say.
	If Biden doesn't yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn't respect you.
	But some Biden aides argue the president's rages reflect his high expectations for his staff.
	Speaking Biden is a particular skill, they said.
	It can take years to learn to navigate his moodiness and anticipate what information he's going to ask for in a briefing.
	Biden defenders acknowledge he can be tough, but they also say he can be more generous and compassionate than many powerful politicians and can make them feel like family.
	So again, the idea here is that Joe Biden is simultaneously senile, but also super tough.
	And they don't know what to do with this.
	They don't know what to do with this because they need him.
	They need the zombie candidate.
	They need El Cid riding the horse.
	They need Weekend at Bernie's Joe.
	They need to staple the old dead man to a gurney and turn it upright because they think that if they don't, who exactly are they going to have run?
	And every iota of video that comes out that shows Joe Biden this way, It wouldn't hurt him, except that he's a very, very bad president.
	So over the weekend, for example, Joe Biden goes to the beach and he takes off his shirt.
	I don't know what would possess him to do this.
	Honestly, just a matter of presidential imagistics.
	It's like precisely the opposite of the image that he wishes to project, which is that he is vigorous and healthy.
	Here he is shuffling along at the beach shirtless.
	Apparently nobody noticed he was there.
	And everyone's like, well, isn't that, that makes him a man of the people.
	Nobody noticed he was there.
	You know, I know no one noticed that Joe Biden is there.
	How often do you look at the 80 year old guy without the shirt at the beach?
	Like, seriously.
	We all have a stigmatism when it comes to various types of people walking around shirtless at the beach.
	Joe Biden is one of those.
	There's a giant blind spot.
	So anyway, here's Joe Biden walking around shirtless at the beach to the delight of the media.
	Here he is.
	I mean, he can barely look at this.
	He's trying to sit down.
	He can't move his chair.
	He literally cannot move his chair.
	There he is sunning himself at the beach.
	No one cares because, again, like, Just amazing stuff from the President of the United States.
	He's here.
	Oh my gosh.
	This is the vigorous, young, cool guy riding in the Corvette that they've been trying to project.
	He can barely walk, look at this!
	He can't even walk.
	Okay, now.
	In a normal election cycle, if you were doing an amazing job and people thought he was great, that wouldn't hurt him too bad.
	Because, after all, he's not threatening.
	But!
	It's not a matter of threatening.
	It might be a matter of apathy.
	If apathy is the unspoken factor in this election cycle, Joe Biden has a serious problem on his hands.
	And that's exacerbated by the fact that he is a rambling idiot when he starts to talk in public.
	Here he was rambling about infrastructure the other day.
	The whole notion of this new ring road that's going to put around, are you going to invest in other nations?
	Well, it's ended up producing dead in a noose.
	These countries are in real trouble.
	Uh, and so, but it requires us to be more responsible.
	The West, I've been pushing very hard to get our European colleagues to invest in infrastructure in Africa, in South America, and to generate the kind of growth that they should have.
	I mean, does anyone know what language he's speaking anymore?
	He's just variously botching topics.
	Would that matter?
	It wouldn't matter if you're actually doing a good job.
	But that's the problem.
	He is not doing a very good job.
	We'll get to that in one second.
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	Okay, so the biggest problem that Joe Biden has is personality driven, obviously, but it is also that he's doing a very bad job.
	Again, him being non-sentient at this point would not be a big driver, except that people don't like what he is doing with the economy.
	The numbers on the economy for Joe Biden are just terrible, and there's a widespread feeling that the other shoe has yet to drop.
	The inflation rates in the United States have not dropped back down to the 2% range.
	Over the course of the last couple of years, people have seen their prices, when aggregated, inflated by 10, 15, even 20% on some products.
	They've seen real wage declines in nearly every area of American life.
	And there's a feeling that things are going to get worse, not better.
	That right now, we're skirting the edge of the abyss by having the Federal Reserve sort of tapping the brakes by increasing those interest rates.
	They'll raise them, then they'll stop, then they'll raise them again.
	Last month, they paused.
	They're probably going to go forward with more interest rate increases this month because of the surprising durability of the job market.
	But there's a feeling like at some point, this thing is going to tip over a cliff because if overspending and blowing money into the economy had the predictable result of 40-year highs in inflation, Then what happens when you jack up those interest rates into the 6% to 7% range?
	Isn't that going to have the predictable result of keeping money out of the markets, getting rid of liquidity, making it harder for people to borrow, and therefore dumping asset values?
	Isn't that the next logical step?
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the last mile of the inflation fight will be the hardest.
	There's good news on the inflation front in store for Americans, says the Wall Street Journal.
	This week, the Labor Department is expected to report overall inflation fell to about 3% in June, the lowest in two years.
	Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core consumer price inflation is expected to drop to around 5% in 18-month low from 5.3%.
	Which, again, food and energy prices right now are coming down somewhat, but that core consumer price inflation is still at about 5%, which is high.
	Economists think core inflation could have further in the coming months to between 3.5 and 4%.
	The bad news?
	Getting inflation down further from there to the Federal Reserve's 2% target will prove difficult if the economy keeps chugging along.
	Core inflation has proven stubborn this year.
	Analysts see two big reasons for improvement.
	The first reason for optimism comes from a slowdown in rent growth.
	Housing accounts for 40% of core CPI and 20% of the Fed's preferred gauge.
	So that is reason number one, is the housing tumbling.
	And also they think used car prices are going to decline a little bit more.
	But again, there is going to be a consequence to raising the current interest rates as high as they are.
	The interest rates on the Fed overnight rate are currently at 5%.
	Last year, they were at 1.5%.
	If you think that's going to have no impact on investment strategy, you're wrong.
	As an investor, I'm a person who's keeping his money out of the market right now because I expect that asset values are going to decline over the course of the next six months.
	There will be predictable side effects to all of this.
	That's also the reason why you're seeing a recharged bond route that's unnerving investors, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which rises when bond prices fall, topped 4% for the first time since early March, extending a two-month stretch of gains.
	The yield on the two-year note hit its highest level since 2007.
	Why?
	The unwinding of bets that the Federal Reserve's interest-fighting campaign would rapidly cool inflation or even precipitate a recession.
	Last week's readings on a still-tight labor market heightened worries the Fed would have to raise rates to a higher level than previously expected and then keep them there for longer.
	While rising yields tend to come with economic growth, they can spell trouble for investors.
	This is the next step.
	The next step here is that all of the bonds that people have been reliant upon, they bought into the bond market two years ago, and you see a lot of Silicon Valley bank copies in the near future because all of the bonds they've been reliant upon, if it turns out they can't pay their bills because of the high interest rates.
	And then it turns out they can't sell their bonds to pay the bills.
	You're going to start to see a lot of people fall into the hardship of bankruptcy.
	They're falling into the red where they would have been in the black if the interest rates weren't quite so high, thus changing the math on their bond asset prices.
	The simple fact is that Joe Biden's economy is weak, and that is a real problem for him because everyone is expecting, as I say, the other shoe to drop.
	We'll get to the Ukraine war in just a second, because that is the other pillar of Joe Biden's sort of re-elect effort, is look what I've done in Ukraine, look what I've done on the economy.
	Those are the real two pillars of Joe Biden's re-elect effort, and I do not imagine that that is going to go absolutely great for him.
	We'll get to that in one second.
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	Okay, so.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden's big pitch was Bidenomics.
	Bidenomics is a giant fail.
	His other big pitch has been, look at our world leadership in Ukraine.
	Well, there is a problem in Ukraine, and that is that Joe Biden has no actual strategy there.
	I've been talking about this for a year.
	He has no strategy in Ukraine.
	The original idea that we had to provide Ukraine with the weaponry necessary to repel the Russian invasion, not only did I fully agree with it, I fully supported the idea of devastating the Russian military.
	Russia is a nefarious force on the world stage.
	Russia has spread its tentacles into Africa, into the Middle East.
	Russia has been aggressive on its own borders.
	Russia has destabilized countries that are friendly to the United States.
	Meanwhile, Russia has threatened countries that are friendly to the United States in
	Europe.
	So the Russian invasion of Ukraine needed to be repelled.
	Forget about all of the internal problems in Ukraine, which continue to exist, continue
	to militate.
	Ukraine has deep and abiding corruption problems.
	Those did not go away just because a war is being fought over there.
	Undoubtedly, a lot of the money that's being sent over there is being shaved off the top
	by oligarchs in Ukraine, because that's how things work over there.
	None of that changes the basic facts on the ground that repelling the Russian invasion
	into Kiev was a good idea.
	The problem is once the United States has achieved its objectives in Ukraine and once everybody knows how this conflict is going to end, which is there will be a negotiated settlement in which Russia ends up keeping Crimea and large percentages of Donbass.
	Then it's just and in exchange, Ukraine is going to get security guarantees from the West, actual treaty obligations from the United States and from the rest of the West to defend them in case of another Russian invasion and presumably serious rearmament of the Ukrainian military to deter just such an invasion.
	Everybody knows that's how this is going to end.
	But Joe Biden refuses to actually say that.
	And the reason he refuses to say that is because he is on foreign policy a coward.
	He did not actually lead from the front on Ukraine, he led from behind.
	You'll recall that the Ukraine invasion was launched in part because Joe Biden made idiotic comments like there were certain parts of Ukraine that if they were invaded wouldn't necessarily constitute an invasion.
	Also on the back of the Afghanistan pullout, leaving an entire country the United States had guaranteed security for in the hands of the world's most barbaric people, Vladimir Putin looked at Ukraine and said, I could probably do the same thing and get away with it.
	It was a miscalculation, but an understandable, on a sort of geostrategic level, an understandable miscalculation by Putin.
	The problem right now is everybody knows how this is going to end, but it keeps dragging on.
	And the reason it keeps dragging on is because the United States and Europeans have failed to take an actual leadership position in a war that they are funding.
	Right now, they're making the case that Zelensky ought to be leading the negotiations.
	Well, Zelensky has already said openly to his own people that they are not going to stop until they win back all of Crimea and all of the Donbass.
	No serious military student believes that that is going to happen.
	So, for example, the Ukrainian counteroffensive right now is really, really slow going, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	On a hilltop near the occupied southern Ukrainian town of Polohi, Russian forces set up an observation point that can spot Ukrainian soldiers more than six miles away.
	Four times, Ukrainian forces destroyed the Murom-M surveillance system.
	Four times, the Russians promptly installed a new one.
	Ukraine successfully outmaneuvered Russia's far larger invading forces last year, despite being outmanned, outgunned, and vastly overpowered in the air.
	With a nimble approach, superior knowledge of terrain, and the efficient use of drones and digital tech,
	its units were able to repel a far larger army that often seemed lumbering and mired in bureaucracy.
	That's all over.
	Ukraine is now attempting to dislodge an entrenched enemy, one of the most daunting operations any military can
	undertake.
	Russian troops have spent months building physical defenses that include bunkers, tank traps, minefields, some more
	than 15 miles deep.
	In this phase of the war, Ukraine's lack of resources is proving as much of a
	challenge as the dug-in Russian defenses.
	Despite the delivery of new Western weapons in recent months, and a promise by the United States on Friday to send deadly cluster munitions in the future, Kiev's efforts to push south through Russian-held territory toward the Sea of Azov has stalled, though Ukrainian officials say they're making progress and have reclaimed a handful of villages in the Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions over the past month.
	They also acknowledge the Herculean nature of their task.
	If we kill a whole unit, a hundred soldiers, the next day they bring in another unit.
	And the day after another, says Lieutenant Colonel Talehin of the Ukrainian forces.
	In other words, this giant counteroffensive that was supposed to be the prelude to negotiations has essentially stalled.
	And according to CNN, this is going all the way back to February, Ukraine was burning through ammunition faster than the United States and NATO could produce it.
	In fact, the United States currently, for its own military, has a serious lack of things like Javelin missiles because we have sent so many over to the Ukrainians.
	This has prompted Joe Biden to take a bizarrely chaotic approach to the situation.
	Now, here's what he should do.
	Everybody always says you criticize, but you don't offer a plan.
	Here's what he should do.
	What Joe Biden should do, and what the Europeans should do, is they should make a deal with Putin.
	They should.
	They should go to Putin, and they should say, listen, we all know how this is going to end.
	And we will convince the Ukrainians to sign on to this, because we're the ones with the leverage.
	In fact, we will publicly cram down a deal on the Ukrainians.
	And Zelensky will pitch a fit and he'll scream.
	But here's the thing.
	Zelensky will like that.
	The reason Zelensky will like that is because right now he has boxed himself in.
	He cannot stop the war unless they win every inch of territory.
	They're not going to win every inch of territory.
	So he has made a promise that he cannot keep to his own people.
	What allows him out of that box to retain the leadership position in Ukraine while simultaneously being able to end the war?
	What allows him out of that box is an outside actor saying that it's our deal.
	It's not Zelensky's deal.
	We crammed it down.
	Zelensky needs to be able to go back to the Ukrainians and say, listen, I wanted to go the whole hog.
	I couldn't.
	Joe Biden wouldn't let me.
	I wanted to go all the way.
	I couldn't.
	The Europeans wouldn't let me.
	And so we had to cut this deal.
	Zelensky is not in a political position inside his own country right now to play Charles de Gaulle.
	He can't.
	Instead, he's going to have to do something else.
	He's going to actually have to say to his own people that it was crammed down.
	In order for that to happen, Joe Biden has to play the bad guy.
	And Joe Biden is not willing to play the bad guy.
	And neither are the Europeans.
	They're going to sit there and they're going to keep dumping resources into Ukraine to
	achieve feet of movement at the cost of probably tens of thousands of lives for years to come
	because no one has the actual courage to be the bad guy in this situation, even if it
	means ending a war on the ground.
	So instead, Joe Biden has decided that he's going to escalate.
	So Joe Biden is now providing cluster bombs to the Ukrainians.
	Now if ever there's been a case to use cluster bombs, this would probably be it.
	The reason I say that is because the real danger of cluster bombs is using them in populated
	areas.
	mom is it has essentially a very wide radius. It does extraordinary damage.
	Right now, the areas that cluster bombs are being used are kind of on the outskirts of forests where there are no civilian populations.
	With that said, cluster bombs are a form of munitions that the West has been attempting to rid battlefields of because they then lie embedded for years in the ground and stuff.
	We've been trying to rid the battlefields of this for years.
	This is pretty controversial stuff here.
	Here's Joe Biden talking about why cluster bombs are now being deployed to Ukraine.
	We're in a situation where Ukraine continues to be brutally attacked across the board by munitions, by these cluster munitions that are, have dud rates that are very, very low, I mean very high, that are dangerous to civilians, number one.
	Number two, the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.
	uh... the ammunition that is to call one five five millimeter weapons this is a this is a war relating to munitions and uh... the running out of those that ammunition and we're low on it and so what i finally did it took the recommendation of the defense department to not permanently but to allow for in this transition period where we get more one five five Weapons with the shells for Ukrainians to provide them with a something as a very low dud rate
	I mean, listen to that.
	There's one phrase there that is really insane.
	He's saying publicly, we are low on these munitions, not Ukraine.
	We, meaning the United States, the most powerful force in world history.
	We are low on munitions because we have sent so many to Ukraine.
	Does this bode well for the future of United States military policy to keep pouring resources into a country where there is no actual off ramp?
	There is no actual solution.
	And Joe Biden refuses to allow for the possibility of such a solution.
	Martha Raddatz actually confronted John Kirby of the of the national security staff on the cluster bomb question.
	I want to ask you why the U.S.
	has never banned them before.
	They're obviously a threat to civilians if they don't explode.
	Why is the U.S.
	not banning them, period?
	We are very mindful of the concerns about civilian casualties and unexploded ordnance being picked up by civilians or children and being hurt.
	Of course we're mindful of that.
	And we're going to focus with Ukraine on demining efforts.
	In fact, we're doing it right now and we will when war conditions permit.
	But these munitions do provide a useful battlefield capability.
	Okay, but really, the reason we're sending is because they're short on munitions and we're short on munitions, so we are broadening the scope of the munitions that we are going to actually provide.
	Right?
	That is what's actually happening here.
	And Joe Biden has set up a Catch-22.
	So, there's a big NATO meeting in Vilnius today, and at that NATO meeting in Vilnius, there will be a recommendation that at some point down the line, Ukraine should join NATO, but that won't be today.
	Now, what's amazing about that particular position is that the position that NATO is apparently taking is that The big strategic issue is that Ukraine wants membership in NATO.
	Should it get membership in NATO?
	I don't think it's ready for membership in NATO, but here's the deal.
	point until the war is over.
	Right. This is the position they're actually taking.
	Here's Joe Biden articulating that position, however, poorly.
	The big strategic issue is that Ukraine wants membership in NATO.
	Should it get membership in NATO?
	I don't think it's ready for membership in NATO, but here's the deal.
	I spent, as you know, a great deal of time trying to hold NATO together because I
	believe Putin has had an overwhelming objector from the time he launched 185,000
	troops into Ukraine.
	And that was to break NATO.
	He was confident, in my view, and many in the intelligence community, he was confident he could break NATO.
	So holding NATO together is really critical.
	I don't think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.
	Okay, so that's an amazing statement.
	The reason that's an amazing statement is because shouldn't that be the off-ramp?
	Shouldn't the off-ramp be?
	We are going to negotiate an end to that war and then Ukraine can join NATO.
	But right now he's providing no actual off-ramp.
	So he says until the war is over they can't join NATO.
	So we are de facto treating them as a NATO ally by pouring resources in there.
	But we're not going to get directly involved in the war because then we'd be directly involved in a war with Russia.
	And they feel unsafe because they're not a member of NATO.
	But they can't join NATO until they've won the war.
	But they can't win the war because they have no actual end goal that's achievable.
	So Joe Biden and the rest of NATO have now set up this bizarre standard where only a continuation of the status quo is possible.
	So if you're a normal American citizen and you're watching the war in Ukraine play out, you've seen all the Ukrainian flags, you have sympathy even for the position that Ukraine originally had, which was repel Russian invasion.
	If that's you.
	And then you're seeing the United States spend literally $100 billion in Ukraine.
	$100 billion with a B. In Ukraine.
	And more.
	And this war will continue.
	And there will be asks for more funding.
	And we'll end up at $150 or $200 billion.
	And meanwhile, you actually are looking at the potholes on your street.
	And you're saying Joe Biden has no plan to end it.
	Not only no plan to end it, he's now boxed in Zelensky to the point where he cannot end the war.
	Because Zelensky is being told that he's the one who has to negotiate an off-ramp,
	but he can't negotiate an off-ramp.
	And the United States is saying, we'll do this until the very end,
	but also we won't let them join NATO, which would allow us to involve ourselves
	and then end the war.
	So you've created this absolutely intransigent situation.
	There's an unchanging situation that has been created by the fecklessness of Joe Biden,
	refusing to take an actual solution-based position, and instead just pouring money into this war
	with no end in sight.
	A war, by the way, that I think has achieved We've crippled the Russian military.
	Putin is in seriously weak position.
	Their economy does not exist at this point.
	What is the continuing end goal of the West and the United States in the continuation of this war?
	The answer is there really is none.
	It's just pure cowardice because they won't take the position they need to take with Zelensky, which is, we all know how this is going to end.
	We'll provide you security guarantees.
	We'll help negotiate an off-road with regard to Crimea and the Donbass that allows Putin to save face.
	This has been the case for almost a year at this point.
	And we're still doing this routine.
	Does any of that redound to Joe Biden's benefit politically?
	The answer is absolutely not.
	Which, again, is why there are now new calls for Joe Biden to get out of the way.
	His numbers are just too low, and Democrats are starting to feel quite nervous about that, as they should.
	We'll get to more on this in a second.
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	OK, meanwhile, while Joe Biden is so weak, there are now open calls for him to step down.
	There's a piece by Doug McKinnon over at The Hill called When is the optimal time for Biden to drop out of this race?
	It has now gotten to the point, he says, where I've had a number of Democrats, including staunch supporters of the President, tell me it makes them nervous, uncomfortable, sad, or gives them a feeling of foreboding.
	Anytime they watch Biden speak in public, interact with guests, walk up or down the stairs to Air Force One.
	Many I speak with honestly care about the President and want the best for Joe Biden, the human being.
	They all understand that every person on Earth ages out.
	It's a reality and finality of life which unites us all.
	McKinnon says, I don't believe Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2024, which raises a critically important question.
	When would be the optimal time for Biden to announce he's dropping out of the race?
	A strong case could be made for immediately, like as soon as humanly possible, to give time for somebody else to run.
	But he's not going to do that because, again, there is no one waiting in the wings who is ready to take up that baton.
	I know that Gavin Newsom has been pretty openly campaigning for that.
	He's running ads against Ron DeSantis and all of the rest.
	But I'm not convinced that Gavin Newsom is ready for prime time in any real way.
	I mean, he's totally untested.
	Nobody's asked serious questions.
	I mean, he's a French laundry, upper-class elitist from San Francisco who's helped govern one of the worst governed states in America.
	He may be able to do a decent job on Sean Hannity's show, but when pressed, I don't think that Gavin Newsom has a lot to recommend him, which means the media really have no choice and Democrats have no choice but to continue to prop up Biden in the face of all of these onrushing tsunamis of political opinion.
	Here's Fareed Zakaria trying to do exactly that the other night, praising Biden to the skies and then, you know, just asking about his age.
	You've often said when people ask you about your age, just watch me.
	And I think a lot of people do watch you and are impressed, and they think you've been a great president.
	You've brought the economy back.
	You've restored relations with the world.
	But many of these people do say, and these are ardent supporters of yours, the next thing he should do is step aside and let another generation of Democrats take the baton.
	Why are they wrong?
	Not right or wrong.
	Look, to use the phrase again, I think we're at an inflection point.
	I think the world is changing and I think there is one thing that comes with age, if you've been honest about it your whole life, and that is some wisdom.
	No, there's another thing that comes of age as well, other than wisdom.
	Senility.
	That's another thing that comes of age.
	But you can see the media trying to prop him up.
	Meanwhile, they're dragging out AOC to endorse Joe Biden.
	So that's great.
	The crazy young socialist, she will endorse Joe Biden.
	They're stuck here, man.
	The president's only primary opponents are Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	Haven't been any rumors about anyone else even thinking about jumping in.
	Will you be supporting Joe Biden for re-election?
	I believe given that feel, yes.
	I think he's done quite well given the limitations that we have.
	I do think that there are ebbs and flows as there There are areas that I think were quite strong when he came right out of the gate with the American Rescue Plan, and of course the Inflation Reduction Act was a massive step in terms of our climate agenda.
	But, you know, there are also areas that I think could have gone better.
	By the way, the hard left is actually shellacking AOC over all of this, which means the media now have to uphold AOC.
	So you had Jen Psaki walking around a dock or something with AOC and discussing her plans.
	MSNBC.
	If you were not in Congress, because you're passionate about a lot of things, what would you be doing?
	I think... A bartender.
	That's the answer.
	Before I ever even thought about being in Congress, I've always been passionate about teaching and writing.
	And so maybe I would have been a teacher.
	Maybe she would have been a teacher.
	We know what she would have been.
	She was like 28 when she got elected to Congress and she was bartending.
	It turns out, you know, it's not hard to get a teaching qualification in the United States.
	In any case, put aside the ridiculous AOC.
	The Democrats, again, they have a lot that they have to defend if they defend Joe Biden, including, you know, the whole Hunter Biden situation, which looks pretty ugly for the president.
	The Biden White House was scolding reporters at the end of the week for asking questions about, you know, the cocaine that got found in the White House.
	We still have no idea who found the cocaine.
	Somebody else made the point and it is quite correct that if we're anthrax, I think we'd know real fast, but it's coke.
	So we kind of know, like, we have some ideas what it might have been and we're not supposed to talk about it.
	We're not supposed to say, sir, we're not supposed to, we're... Stop that.
	Here's the White House getting very mad.
	Why are you asking about the coke in the White House?
	I'm just asking again, can you just say once and for all whether or not the cocaine belonged to the Biden family?
	So, you know, there has been some irresponsible reporting about the family, and so I gotta call that out here.
	And I have been very clear, I was clear two days ago when talking about this over and over again as I was being asked a question.
	As you know, and media outlets reported this, the Biden family was not here.
	They were not here.
	They were at Camp David.
	They were not here Friday.
	They were not here Saturday.
	They were not here Sunday.
	They were not even here Monday.
	They came back on Tuesday.
	So to ask that question is actually incredibly irresponsible.
	It's so irresponsible.
	Why would you possibly ask whether an open crack cocaine addict might have left crack cocaine or cocaine lying around the White House?
	How dare you!
	Also, as we know, when people lose things, it's immediately found, like, right away.
	It couldn't be that, like, maybe Hunter left it there on Thursday and then it got found on Friday.
	It couldn't have been like that in any way.
	In any case, the White House has a lot to defend, and it's a real problem for them, which is why, according to Politico, Democrats are very worried about a third-party run.
	Although it would be required to really dump Biden for sure, is a middle-of-the-road candidate who draws votes away, not from Donald Trump, but away from Joe Biden.
	According to Politico, Democrats are mounting a coordinated mission to kill a third-party presidential bid, and it's coming soon to Capitol Hill.
	Officials from the progressive group MoveOn.org and centrist group Third Way are planning to brief Senate Democratic chiefs On July 27th, according to an invitation obtained by Politico, it's part of an effort to educate Democrats about the risk a third-party bid funded by a well-heeled group no labels could pose to Joe Biden, particularly if that person is Senator Joe Manchin.
	Matt Barnett, Executive VP for Public Affairs at Third Way, and Rana Epting, the Executive Director of MoveOn, will speak to Democratic Senators' top aides according to the invitation.
	The invite tells chiefs of staff dryly the two want to share some information they have on no labels.
	Third Way has put together research showing that a third-party campaign would hurt Biden, an argument no labels has dismissed, but it's pretty obvious from the polling that that is, in fact, It's also why you're starting to see increasing desperation on the part of many Democrats to get rid of RFK Jr.
	as soon as humanly possible.
	Because the fact is that RFK is not losing steam.
	He seems to be gaining a little bit of steam.
	So, according to The Hill, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.' 's presidential campaign announced Thursday the candidate had hauled in $3 million in a three-day stretch alone before the second quarter filing deadline.
	It brought in an average of $1 million per day from June 28th through 30th.
	That's an impressive figure for a Democratic candidate seen as a long shot against Biden, but he doesn't need to be a long shot against Biden.
	All he needs to do is draw 5% of the vote, and it means that Trump wins, probably.
	Because there will be a few Trump voters who go over to RFK Jr., but there are a lot of Biden voters who could shift over to RFK as well, because yeah.
	Joe Biden is riding lower than any Democratic presidential candidate in modern American history.
	Hillary Clinton, even in the election that she lost, was riding somewhere between 44 and 47 percent.
	Joe Biden is typically riding at like 42 to 44 percent, and he's an incumbent president.
	Hillary was just a candidate at that point.
	Compare that again to Barack Obama circa 2012, when Barack Obama was riding the entire election cycle between 46 and 50 percent.
	He is in extraordinarily dangerous territory.
	All it takes is a few percentage points peeled off from Biden to Kennedy, and Democrats lose.
	Which is why they're going in full-out assault on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	Now, I think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	says a lot of uncalibrated things.
	I think that he's messy in how he addresses vaccines generally.
	I think that when he says things like, if vaccines don't cause autism, then what does?
	Which is really just bad logic.
	That's like me saying, if the thief didn't cause the unwashed dishes in the sink, then who did?
	I mean, there are lots of other plausible explanations, but in any case, that doesn't really matter.
	For political purposes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	provides a threat to the left, and so Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	must be stopped.
	Same thing with the No Labels crew.
	Meanwhile, all of this is propping up Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump is, by every metric, by every available metric, Donald Trump is a very, very unpopular candidate.
	According to the latest polls, Donald Trump's spread, in terms of approval rating, is around 17%.
	Only 39%, the same polls from the RealPolitics polling average, that shows Trump beating Biden, has him at like 38.9% favorable, 55.8% unfavorable.
	The most positive job approval rating numbers for Donald Trump come from mid-June from Harvard-Harris, they had him at 45%.
	Every other poll has him below 43% and some have him in the low 30s.
	So, typically speaking, you would say Republicans would be better off running somebody else.
	But the thing is this, whatever people think about Donald Trump is baked into the cake.
	And so what's happening right now is that it's not that this is a referendum.
	Maybe it's not a referendum on Trump.
	Again, my assumption has been it will be a referendum on Trump because people really, really don't like Donald Trump.
	Look at those numbers again.
	And that in the end, there will be some people who come home to Biden.
	But perhaps that's not right.
	Maybe all of the net negatives of Donald Trump are already so baked into the cake and people are so bored of it that it won't make any serious difference.
	It'll just jog the Republican base to get out and Democrats will just shrug because it's just more of the same.
	That is certainly a possibility.
	And that's more of a possibility if Trump just avoids stepping on himself.
	Again, if all the focus is on Joe Biden, Trump is going to win.
	All Trump has to do is get out of the way.
	And when he does, it's actually quite good.
	So, for example, over the weekend, Donald Trump visited a Dairy Queen.
	And people in the media make fun of this sort of stuff, Donald Trump visiting a Dairy Queen.
	Especially because he didn't know what a blizzard was.
	And they say, well, you know, he's an elite, that's why he doesn't know what a blizzard was.
	But nobody believes that.
	They think that Donald Trump just says whatever comes into his head, which makes him authentic.
	And they don't believe that Donald Trump is not a quote-unquote man of the people when it comes to his diet.
	All he has is Diet Coke and McDonald's like every single day.
	Donald Trump is a fast food junkie.
	So here he was at the Dairy Queen.
	So everybody wants a blizzard.
	What the hell is a blizzard?
	And take care of the people, okay?
	Can you take care of them for me?
	I will do the blizzard thing, alright?
	Hey, so there he is handing out blizzards, right?
	I mean, this is like the Trump man of the people, right?
	That sort of thing plays.
	If he does this for the rest of the campaign, he could win, easily.
	Like, really, really, he could win.
	Do I think he's the best candidate?
	Do I think he'd be the best president?
	No, but do I think that he could win?
	Absolutely, he can win.
	He went to the UFC fight in Las Vegas the other night, and he was a big hit with the crowd.
	crowd here was walking in.
	So he's walking in, he's shaking hands with Joe Rogan and hanging out with Dana White
	Dana, of course, is a friend of Donald Trump's.
	One of the fighters actually came out of the ring to shake hands with Trump.
	Again, Trump does have energy and Trump does have the sort of glitter that other Republican candidates do not.
	Now, at the same time, Trump is also perceived as wildly aggressive.
	And this is, I think, the key to winning the Republican base.
	So people have been asking, one of the big questions over the last couple of weeks has been, why is Ron DeSantis not rising the polls?
	Why is he kind of stagnant in the polls?
	What the polls show is that inside the Republican Party, Donald Trump is pulling somewhere in the high 40s.
	Those are not actually huge numbers for the incumbent candidate on the Republican side, a person who was president of the United States until five minutes ago.
	He should be pulling, you know, in the 70s or 80s.
	So why is he only down in the 40s?
	And the answer is he's not wildly popular.
	But he is perceived by a wide base in the Republican Party as the most aggressive candidate because he is wildly aggressive about everything.
	He also has the advantage of being able to say that if anyone else attacks him, they are doing the work of the mainstream media.
	The truth is that the mainstream media made Trump and they continue to make Trump.
	In the sense that mainstream media opposition to Trump made him the president in 2016.
	Mainstream media opposition to Trump in 2020 made everybody in the Republican Party loyal to Trump.
	And it also made him almost unattackable in certain ways.
	Because if you mirror the attacks of the left on Donald Trump, Republican members of the base hate it.
	This is what every internal poll shows, by the way.
	I've seen internals from Iowa, and what they show is that even Republicans who are not warm toward Trump, when people attack Trump, they get defensive on him.
	Because he's been attacked so often by the left.
	Well, this gives Trump the license to be as aggressive as he could possibly want to be against everybody else.
	And people don't necessarily like it, but they do perceive it as, well, if he's going to be aggressive against this guy, maybe he will also be aggressive against my enemies.
	And that's what Republican base voters are looking for.
	This is why turnout for Trump was so high in 2020, and presumably would also be so high in 2024.
	So, for example, here he was going after Ron DeSantis in some very colorful terms.
	Let's give it a shot.
	We did, I think, two or three rallies.
	I think three big, big rallies.
	Thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
	And they came out.
	I said, you know, you're going to win.
	And he ended up winning.
	And then about three years later, they said to him, will you run against the president?
	And he said, I have no comment on that.
	I said, he has no comment.
	That means he's running.
	I said, that son of a is running.
	I got him elected.
	So I'm not a big fan of his and he's highly overrated.
	Okay, so again, Trump can get away with that kind of stuff.
	But if you go after Trump and the Republican Party that way, it just doesn't work the same way.
	Because the Republican Party and its base have correctly sort of been trained to, in knee-jerk fashion,
	defend Trump no matter the attack, even if the attack is legitimate.
	So what about Ron DeSantis?
	What about DeSantis?
	Because he's the only viable candidate right now on the Republican side with a shot at Trump.
	Maybe that changes, but right now that happens to be the case.
	So what about that?
	Well, the problem for DeSantis is that the aggressiveness that he is displaying right now is either directed toward the Trump campaign, which makes sense.
	I mean, they're running against each other.
	Or it's directed at sort of policy generally.
	Now, thing to notice about Donald Trump.
	Does he ever talk in serious terms about policy?
	Every so often he releases a little video.
	And the policy wonks.
	Either love it or hate it.
	But does it break through to the general public?
	People love Trump.
	Are they watching for his next policy announcement?
	Of course not.
	It's all attitudinal, right?
	It's the fact that Trump is by nature incredibly aggressive, incredibly reactive.
	And so for DeSantis, you know, when he goes on TV and he says things I love, I mean, he's saying things that I really like.
	Does it make a dent?
	So, for example, here's Ron DeSantis over the weekend talking about cleaning house of the administrative state.
	Is this going to generate any sort of heat or light?
	You also have to bring this administrative state to heel.
	The bureaucracy in Washington is totally out of control.
	It's exerting power that is not there for it under the Constitution.
	And we need a president to come in and really, really clean house.
	And I will do that on day one.
	Okay, I mean, Governor DeSantis is right about all of that, but is that sort of aggressiveness with regard to policy going to have any impact on the Republican race?
	I think the answer is no.
	The only thing that DeSantis can do, I think, to restore his somewhat flagging campaign at the moment, is he needs to go hard, directly, at the media.
	And I don't mean that he has to say things about the media.
	I mean, he needs to go into unfriendly spaces and he needs to clock people.
	And the reason he needs to do that is because that is what made him popular in the first place.
	Dance with the gal that brung you.
	Ron DeSantis became a popular governor of Florida because the media were attacking him constantly and he was going up directly against them.
	You remember when 60 Minutes ran a bizarre story suggesting that he was being corrupt in his rollout of the vaccines?
	He went back hard at 60 Minutes.
	That's what he needs to do.
	He needs to go on Meet the Press.
	And he needs to shellack a moderator.
	He needs to go on The View.
	And he needs to shellack the ladies of The View.
	He needs to do those things.
	Because the only way to beat Trump in a Republican primary is to out-aggressive Trump.
	Because the common-based assumption of the Republican Party right now is that anyone can beat Joe Biden.
	Anyone can beat Joe Biden.
	And if anyone can beat Joe Biden, why not the guy who the media really hate?
	Why not the guy who's going to be the most aggressive?
	And in fact, the polls are showing right now, again, the electability argument that DeSantis was making like a month ago, two months ago, they don't apply when Donald Trump is winning in the polls, thanks to Joe Biden's weakness.
	Ironically, Biden's weakness is actually propping up Trump as a candidate.
	And so the only way that DeSantis is going to overcome that is by showing that he actually is a more aggressive candidate than Donald Trump.
	And he can't do that just by saying things.
	You actually have to go and you have to show, in the face of opposition, that you're going to do a thing.
	And the widespread perception of Trump is that he is always facing opposition because, in fact, he is.
	Some of it's of his own making.
	And some of it's because...
	He makes foolish decisions with regard to classified documents.
	Even if the indictment itself is unjustified because of the Hillary Clinton situation and all the rest, he didn't have to steer right into it.
	But the thing is, opposition always helps Trump.
	It's the thing he knows instinctively.
	DeSantis right now doesn't have the opposition targeting him, and he isn't targeting the actual opposition that I think most Republicans feel passion for, and that is the coverage.
	That is the press.
	By the way, this is true before Trump.
	I mean, go back to the 2012 presidential race and you'll remember that Newt Gingrich briefly was leading that presidential race when he started attacking the press.
	There's a reason for that.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, I do love when justice comes for the foolish.
	So, you'll remember that Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream put out a statement on Independence Day talking about how the United States needed to give back stolen land.
	They put out an entire tweet on it.
	Well, I suggested at the time they should give their headquarters over to a local Native American tribe.
	Well, it turns out that someone listens to this program.
	According to Outkick.com, Nohiggin Band of the Cusack Abenaki Nation Chief Don Stevens informed Newsweek he's very interested in getting the land Ben and Jerry's headquarters is on because it originally belonged to his tribe.
	He told the publication the tribe was always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our land.
	However, Ben and Jerry's does not seem interested in playing ball.
	Oh, there's a shock.
	They talk a big game about giving land back to the indigenous owners of the land and then it's their headquarters and they're like, not so much.
	Not so much.
	They suggested Mount Rushmore should be given away because it was indigenous land, but when it comes to the much more important to the American people, Ben and Jerry's headquarters in Vermont, then the answer is no.
	So, uh, good for the Native American tribe for calling Ben and Jerry's bluff.
	That, that is hilarious.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So, Jonah Hill.
	I'm not a huge fan.
	I don't think he's an amazing actor or anything.
	But, there's now an attempt to cancel Jonah Hill that I just don't really fully understand.
	I just gotta say, I don't really get it.
	According to the Washington Post, on Friday, Surfa Sarah Brady posted screenshots on her Instagram and accused her ex-partner, Jonah Hill, of misogyny and emotional abuse.
	In the texts Brady shared, a person whose number she saved under the name Jonah asked her to take down social media posts, stop modeling, and cut off friendships with some men and, quote, women who are in unstable places.
	She said Friday she hopes Hill's friends will hold him accountable and that her posts were a warning to all girls.
	Apparently, according to the Washington Post, in one text, Brady posted from Jonah.
	She says he wrote that if she, quote, needed, surfing with men, boundaryless inappropriate relationships with men, to model, to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit, to post sexual pictures, friendships with women who are in unstable places, and from your wild recent past beyond getting a lunch or coffee or something respectful, I'm not the right partner for you.
	I have a question.
	Why is it?
	Am I supposed to be, like, deeply offended by this?
	If you don't like it, he literally says, I might not be the right partner for you.
	And they weren't, so they broke up.
	Now you can say that's demanding.
	First of all, I don't think that much of that is wildly demanding.
	Boundaryless surfing with men, I mean, she's a professional surfer, so that one seems wild, but what he means is really the next one, right?
	Boundaryless inappropriate relationships with men.
	I mean, I think it would be very hard to date a woman who had boundaryless inappropriate relationships with men.
	When he says posting pictures of yourself in a bathing suit, You know, again, she's a surfer, so I imagine that a lot of the pictures on her Instagram are of her in a bathing suit, but there is, you know, kind of an inherent difference between you surfing in a bathing suit or you modeling on the beach in a bathing suit, not quite the same thing.
	That seems fair.
	How many dudes want their girlfriends to post sexual pictures of themselves online for the pleasure of men?
	Again, that doesn't seem like horrible advice.
	It seems like nobody should have, you know, friendships with people who are in truly unstable places.
	It helps bring them down.
	Brady also shared a text she sent, including a list of all the posts I removed from my page, to which she allegedly responded, good start.
	She uploaded a picture Friday she said previously took down by the request of a narcissistic misogynist.
	Presumably that was supposed to be directed at Jonah Hill.
	But I don't know, like, we've now expanded the boundaries of victimization beyond the normal.
	I don't actually understand what the boundaries of victimization are if this stuff qualifies.
	Your partner says, I wish you wouldn't do X. You wish to do X. Does this mean that your partner is necessarily abusive?
	Especially when he's like, well, maybe it's not gonna work out.
	I'm just confused by that.
	It doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me.
	Was he possessive?
	Okay, maybe.
	Is that something that women would want in a boyfriend?
	Presumably not, she broke up with him.
	But I... Like, why are internal negotiations between partners, when it comes to your love life, now subject to public negotiation?
	If you don't like it, you can leave.
	He was in a position of superior power over her.
	And then she did leave.
	So I'm super confused.
	Yeah, I don't understand even what the argument is for her posting this stuff in the first place.
	Presumably, she thinks that this is going to make her a girlboss.
	It is amazing how being a girlboss shifted from what it was, say, 30 years ago to what it is now.
	Like 30 years ago, being a girlboss meant being a girl who is the boss.
	So by this definition, my mom was a girlboss, right?
	She rose from being a secretary at a corporation to being the executive vice president of that corporation.
	She was a girlboss.
	And you know what that girlboss did?
	She then came home at night and she helped take care of her kids.
	That was girlbossing.
	Girlbossing was being a girl who is the boss.
	Now apparently girlbossing is whining and moaning about how your boyfriend sent you texts you didn't like four years ago.
	And this makes you a hero to young women everywhere.
	The more you can claim victimization, he would- he vict- Him sending a text you didn't like isn't victimization.
	Honest to God, if every spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend in the United States were just to post the text they don't like from their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, The myriad texts that they didn't like would be endless.
	I have yet to find a relationship between two people where no one has ever said anything to the other person that they found offensive or annoying.
	Welcome to human relationships.
	So I'm just, it's kind of ugly that this has become the new way that you gain credibility is by years later coming back at your ex-boyfriend and saying that he was super controlling and super terrible.
	I just, I don't get it at all.
	It makes no sense to me.
	And even if you agree with her, I don't see the actual case for her posting this sort of stuff as quote-unquote a warning to others.
	Who's watching this and going, oh man, you know, that's really true.
	I really, I'm too controlled.
	It's just, again, an aspect of a solipsistic, narcissistic culture in which we are all supposed to pretend that everybody is a victim for the claps and the cheers and the clicks.
	All right, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
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