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July 25, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:50
Biden Will Be Impeached
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So, Joe Biden is not just an innocent elderly gentleman, he's also an amazing father who cares deeply about his drug-addicted son, Hunter, and that is the only reason why he has been squiring Hunter around, or rather, Hunter has been squiring him around.
Their connection is purely on the up-and-up, and any accusations of Biden family corruption involving Joe Biden are absolutely out of bounds.
They are wrong, and you shouldn't talk about them.
This is the narrative you've heard over and over again.
And Joe Biden has repeated this narrative over and over and over.
So, for example, Joe Biden has been asked at this point about a thousand times about Hunter Biden's businesses because Hunter Biden, for a decade, made money by running around planet Earth, picking up giant bags of cash, and then doing God knows what.
With those giant bags of cash.
There have been serious questions about how Joe Biden accrued all of his wealth.
Where did all this money come from?
Serious questions.
In fact, a lot of those questions were at the center of Donald Trump's first impeachment inquiry when Donald Trump called up the president of Ukraine and asked him to look into allegations of corruption involving Burisma, which is paying Hunter Biden something like $83,000 a month while Joe Biden was vice president and presiding over the foreign policy of the United States with regard to Ukraine.
Remember, that resulted in Donald Trump being impeached for the first time.
Well, these serious questions have been swirling about Hunter and Joe Biden for a long time.
And every single time Joe Biden has said, I never knew a damn thing about my son's business.
Not once.
I am purely innocent.
Hunter is a wonderful guy and there's nothing to see here.
Here's Joe Biden saying it over and over and over again.
Have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?
I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.
What's your understanding of what your son was doing for an extraordinary amount of money?
I don't know what he was doing.
I know he was on the board.
I found out he was on the board after he was on the board.
And that was it.
Well, you've had a lot of time.
Isn't this something you want to get to the bottom of?
No, because I trust my son.
I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.
We learned that this president paid 50 times the tax in China, has a secret bank account with China, does business in China, and in fact is talking about me taking money?
I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.
My son has not made money.
In terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.
I have not had, the only guy who made money from China is this guy.
He's the only one.
Nobody else has made money from China.
Okay, here is the thing.
Joe Biden is a liar.
He is a liar.
We know for a fact that Joe Biden knew about his son's businesses.
The notion that he did not know about his son's businesses is absurd.
It is absurd on its face.
We can go through the entire timeline.
And now it increasingly appears that Joe was in on it.
And as more and more people around Hunter Biden are called to testify, and as more and more records emerge showing people openly talking about attempting to bribe Joe Biden via Hunter, Impeachment is going to be on the table.
I'm just predicting it right now.
Inside the next year, there will be impeachment inquiries into Joe Biden.
Forget inquiries.
There will probably be an impeachment vote inside the next year on Joe Biden because of the corruption that is pretty obviously engulfing the Biden family here.
Devon Archer is the latest person who is set to testify to the House Republican Oversight Committee.
He's supposed to do that within days.
Three times they've moved this testimony.
Devon Archer and Hunter formed Rosemont Seneca Partners back in 2009 along with Christopher Hines, the son-in-law of former Senator John Kerry.
He and Hunter served as managing partners of the firm.
Archer and Hines had been college roommates at Yale.
Archer and Hunter Biden, according to the UK Daily Mail, each landed lucrative seats on the board of Burisma, despite Hunter not having any expertise in the field, despite him being a drug addict so bad that he was kicked out of the United States Navy.
The firm brought in a reported $11 million through the arrangement based on information gleaned from Hunter's infamous laptop.
They're photographed golfing with then Vice President Biden back in 2014.
And now Devan Archer is expected to talk with the House Oversight Committee.
His interview is supposed to take place behind closed doors, according to an aide who noted such appearances are usually led by committee staff.
Panel Chair James Comer, who issued the subpoena, says he will testify about, quote, all the times he saw Biden meet with Hunter's business associates.
Following reports, Hunter made a habit of putting his dad on speakerphone in a possible bid to impress potential partners and clients.
And that comes after Comer and other top Republicans have repeatedly accused Joe Biden of taking part in crimes, but failing so far to produce the hard evidence.
But here is the evidence that is coming.
Hey, so let me just begin with this, and this is the statement that should hover over everybody's imagination when you're talking about Joe and Hunter Biden.
First of all, Joe knew full well that Hunter Biden was a drug addict.
First rule of drug addicted family members or friends, deprive them of money because they use the money to buy drugs.
Joe Biden did not do that.
Instead, he lent his name, and apparently Air Force Two, to his son so that they could run around while Hunter picked up bags of cash.
Here is the statement that should hover in everyone's mind as we examine the timeline here of the relationship between Hunter and foreign businesses and his dad, who is now the President of the United States and was Vice President for much of this.
Here is the statement.
This is a text from Hunter Biden to his daughter in 2019.
It's on the infamous Hunter Biden laptop, the non-Russian disinformation laptop that Hunter Biden, drug addicted derelict, left at a computer repair store.
Quote, I hope you can all do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.
It's really hard, but don't worry.
Unlike pop, I won't make you give me half your salary.
That is a text from Hunter Biden to his daughter, 2019.
Now, that's kind of the ballgame, is it not?
Do you think that Hunter Biden is lying to his daughter when he texts that?
That actually no money moved via Hunter Biden to Joe?
That he's just making all of this up?
Does that sound like the kind of thing that you would text to a family member being entirely false?
That no money had ever changed hands?
Ever?
Or does that sound like that has the ring of truth about it?
In just one second, we're going to go through the full timeline here because there is now mounting evidence that not only was Hunter obviously speaking with Joe about all this.
In fact, we know that he was speaking with Joe about all of this.
Dan Goldman, who is a Democratic congressperson, essentially spilled as much the other day in an open hearing.
It goes much further than this.
The chances that money was flowing from foreign sources to Hunter and then from Hunter to Joe are extremely high.
And when Joe Biden said in open debate that he'd never received a foreign dollar, technically that may be true.
He may have received the money directly from his son.
They're being very squirrely and very lawyerly over at the White House.
They're changing their tune, even.
They've abandoned now the line that Joe knew nothing about Hunter's business dealings because it's obviously not true.
Now we're going to go through the timeline in just one second.
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Okay, so.
Let's go through some of the timeline here.
Because the timeline is really, really damning.
And it is perfectly obvious that there's no chance at all.
I mean, there's a zero chance, zero, that Joe Biden didn't know about Hunter's business dealings.
And there's an extraordinarily low chance that Joe never benefited from Hunter Biden's business dealings.
Those chances are vanishingly small.
I'll explain why, because we're going to go through the entire timeline here, and we are also going to go through some of the documents that have now been provided by confidential human sources, talking about what the Ukrainians, for example, were saying about Joe and Hunter Biden.
And we'll talk about what exactly Devon Archer has already said, and what Tony Bobulinski, another business partner of Hunter Biden's, has said.
So, on November 1st, 2013, there's a timeline that's been put together by the House Oversight Committee.
On November 1st, 2013, Hunter Biden and some of his friends created ChinaBHR.
China BHR was a Chinese investment firm, Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund.
It was controlled by the Bank of China.
It was focusing on M&A and investment in and reforms of state-owned enterprise.
That was in November of 2013.
In December of 2013, Vice President Biden traveled with Hunter Biden on Air Force Two to China and met the CEO of the company, Jonathan Lee.
Shortly thereafter, BHR's business license was approved and Hunter Biden was magically a board member.
So understand that the way that it works when it comes to foreign corruption is foreign states believe that access to high-ranking American officials means that they are going to get sweetheart deals.
The reason they believe this is because in their own country, this is in fact how it works.
If you're in China and you want to get something done, you're going to have to go to the top levels of the Politburo.
You're going to have to talk with members of the CCP.
And if high-ranking political members of the CCP approve a thing, that means that you're going to get special benefits.
And so the Chinese assume that the same thing works in the United States.
That if you have access to Joe Biden, that means that magically you're going to get sweetheart treatment in the United States.
The same thing is true in Ukraine.
This is why they're constantly attempting to buy access to American politicians.
Even though connection with an American senator is worth like a cup of coffee, the reality is you can be connected to a thousand, a bunch of American senators.
And it may make no difference to your business's future.
You may be connected to a lot of politicians and it won't do anything.
If you live in a foreign corrupt country where you have to know a high-ranking member of the government to get anything done, knowing high-ranking members of the American government you think is going to get things done.
So, do you think it's a coincidence that November of 2013, Hunter Biden starts a fund with the Chinese government effectively, and one month later, Joe is squiring Hunter there and meeting with the CEO of this brand new fund.
And then it's getting greenlit by the Chinese.
You think that that's a coincidence?
February 5th, 2014.
Kenz Rakashev, a Kazakhstani businessman, meets with Hunter Biden at a hotel in Washington, D.C.
In April of 2014, Burisma appoints Hunter, business associate to their board of directors, being paid something like $83,000 a month for nothing.
For nothing.
April 22nd, 2014.
Rakesh Sheth's Singaporean company wired $142,000 through his Latvian company to a Rosemont entity.
Now, Rosemont Seneca is, again, the company that was originally founded by Hunter Biden and Devin Archer and John Kerry's son-in-law.
April 22nd of 2014, that same day, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine and gave an anti-corruption speech about Ukraine.
So it's clear that he was running foreign policy in Ukraine.
Right?
Literally at the same time this is happening.
So April 15th, 2014 is when Hunter is appointed to the board of BRISMA.
And now, April 22nd, 2014, you have Joe Biden talking about corruption in Ukraine.
And not only that, this becomes now a running theme.
Joe Biden is going to run foreign policy in Ukraine.
As we'll see, this has some pretty significant ramifications for how Burisma runs its business and how the money flows.
It's a delicate thing to say to a group of leaders in their House of Parliament, but you have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now.
I remember going over convincing our team, or others too, convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees, and I went over I guess the 12th, 13th time to Kiev, and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee.
And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't.
So they said they were walking out to the press conference and said, no, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.
They said, you have no authority.
You're not the president.
The president said.
I said, call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
Okay, so this is him openly saying the thing, as we will see, right?
The thing that he is saying is that he basically crammed down on Ukraine the kind of deal that
Donald Trump was accused of threatening the Ukrainians with and got impeached for the
You remember then in that phone call, the perfect phone call of Vladimir Zelensky, you remember that Donald Trump appeared to say that he was thinking of withholding aid to Ukraine if they didn't dig up corruption on the Biden family.
And everyone's like, whoa, that's quid pro quo.
Whoa, that's terrible.
Here's Joe Biden saying, We're going to withhold aid from Ukraine unless you get rid of this particular prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Viktor Shokin was targeting Burisma at the time.
Now, the international community didn't like Viktor Shokin anymore, but that doesn't matter.
Because there could be a conflict of interest when it comes to why Joe Biden wanted Viktor Shokin to go.
Two things could be true at once.
One, Viktor Shokin could have been corrupt, and a lot of people internationally could have wanted him to go.
And two, Joe Biden could have seen an opportunity to do a favor for Burisma while getting rid of the guy with the plausible cover that everybody wanted the guy to go.
We'll get to that in just one second.
We're going to continue going through the timeline.
Because again, the more you see of the timeline and the more you see of the contemporaneous statements by people involved in Hunter Biden's business, the more damning this becomes.
Joe Biden was being called into meetings.
He was being called on the phone.
He clearly knew what was going on at a vague level.
He didn't have to know the particulars.
In the same way that no crime boss knows the particulars.
If you ask the heads of the mafia back in the day, if they knew the particulars of specific murders, the answer was no.
They would say to their lower downs, they'd say to their capital regimes, they would say things like, go take care of business.
And then the capital regime would go to the hitman and the hitman would go do the thing.
And the person on top of the chain never knew.
That was the whole idea.
The whole idea is that if you're the most powerful person in an organization, you always have plausible deniability as to what your associates are doing.
The money just magically enters your bank account.
You have no idea how it got there.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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Okay, so.
Back to the timeline.
April 23rd, 2014.
Right, so we already found out that on April 22nd, a Singaporean company that was originally connected with a Kazakh standing businessman had wired $142,300 to a Rosemont Seneca entity.
The next day after that, the Rosemont entity wired $142,300, the same amount, to a car dealership to buy a new sports car for Hunter Biden.
Right, so there's money that's flowing directly to Hunter Biden.
Meanwhile, China BHR, right, which is that original Chinese firm that Hunter formed with the Chinese government, essentially, and then took Air Force Two to China to make sure that all of that got greenlit.
They invested $1.7 billion in a Chinese Communist government party linked petroleum and chemical company.
And then in December of 2014, Hunter Biden and business invested almost $500,000 into BHR.
And then in December of 2014, that Kazakhstani oil company and Burisma joined with the Chinese company to announce a transnational financial arrangement.
So this is Hunter Biden basically brokering all of his connections, and now he's got the Kazakhstani oil company and Burisma and the Chinese government all working together.
And then we move forward in 2015, and here's where things start to get really, really hot.
This is where Joe Biden's involvement becomes pretty apparent.
So, March 20th, 2015, Hunter Biden organizes a business dinner at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C., where he has his father stop by the dinner to meet a high-level Burisma official, Vadim Porzharsky.
Hunter is now connecting his daddy in with the folks over at Burisma.
This is about the same time.
that the head of Burisma during 2015 is apparently telling a confidential human source who reports in
2020 to the FBI that quote, it costs five million to pay one Biden and five million to pay another
Biden. Apparently Zalewski quote, made some comment that although Hunter Biden was stupid
and Zalewski's dog was smarter, Zalewski needed to keep Hunter Biden on the board
so everything will be okay.
The confidential human source who reported this to the FBI inquired whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should retain Hunter Biden.
And Zlochevsky replied, they both did.
They both did.
Okay, so according to Zlochevsky, a confidential human source now reporting this to the FBI, this is the document that Senator Chuck Grassley released this week.
Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, said that he paid money to the Bidens in order to obtain Joe Biden's support for Burisma.
And we know that Hunter Biden was organizing dinners in March 2015, where he had his dad stop by to meet a high-level Burisma official, a guy named Vadim Porzharsky.
September of 2015, BHR, that's the Chinese company, joined with another Chinese entity to acquire a U.S.-based automotive company in a deal reportedly worth $600 million.
In November of 2015, Porosharsky, the guy who met Joe Biden, suggests that high-level U.S.
officials come to Ukraine and talk with Viktor Shokin and President Petro Poroshenko about Mykola Zlochevsky's investigations.
Zlochevsky, again, is the head of Burisma.
Shokin was investigating Burisma and Burisma's owners, Zlochevsky, for fraud.
Shokin is the Ukrainian government official Vice President Biden demanded that Poroshenko then fire.
That is in November, early November of 2015.
And as I say, according to the confidential human source, Zelensky is openly suggesting at this point that he is paying Hunter and Joe in 2015-2016.
In November, a few days later, Amos Hochstein, a high-level U.S.
government official working in the Obama-Biden administration, met with Hunter Biden to discuss Burisma.
And then, Hochstein, a few days later, met with Vice President Biden in the West Wing.
A few days, one day after that, Hochstein called Hunter Biden.
So clearly, Hunter Biden is a player over here.
And clearly, Hochstein is talking with both Hunter and Joe.
November 13th, 2015, Joe Biden announces a trip to Ukraine to take place the first week of December of 2015, and things really heat up.
November 14th, 2015, Porosharsky emails Hunter Biden confirmation the VP will be traveling to Ukraine.
December 7th, 2015, Hunter and the CEFC chairman, Yixuan Ming, began communicating regarding a possible U.S.
partnership.
This will become relevant in a little bit.
December 7th, 2015.
This is when Biden arrives in Ukraine and he demands the show can be fired if Ukraine wants a billion dollars in IMF loans.
So just notice, November, we start having indications that Burisma is under investigation by Shokin.
By December, Joe Biden is arriving in Ukraine to talk about firing Shokin openly.
December 9, 2015, Biden departs Ukraine and gets a commitment from Poroshenko that Shokin will be fired.
A little bit later, a couple days later, Biden hosts a holiday party at the VP Residence.
Both Amos Hochstein and Hunter Biden are present during that time.
All of this should be getting your hackles up just a little bit.
It's a little bit shocking.
We'll get to Devon Archer's involvement in all of this in just a second, because we now have information from Devon Archer on Joe Biden's involvement in all of this.
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Okay, so, so much rest on Joe Biden claiming that throughout this period he had no idea what was going on.
But here is the problem.
According to Devon Archer, So apparently, Hunter would just get Joe on the phone.
Now again, Joe can claim that he has no knowledge of the specifics of these business dealings.
with his overseas business partners, according to testimony expected before Congress this week
from Archer. Okay, so apparently Hunter would just get Joe on the phone. Now again, Joe can claim
that he has no knowledge of the specifics of these business dealings. He doesn't have to know,
right? This is very easy for Joe.
The plausible deniability is where all of the doubt lives.
The plausible deniability goes something like this.
Joe is in charge of Ukraine policy.
Hunter is getting paid up the wazoo by Burisma to basically be a drunken, derelict prostitute using John, who snorts cocaine off the carpets, and happens to have the Biden last name.
And the Burisma owners are like, yeah, we're connected to Joe and we're connected to Hunter, and so we'll make sure that Chokin gets in the neck.
So, meanwhile, you have American officials talking with Hunter, and then going back to Joe, and they're like, you know who's really corrupt?
This Victor Shoken guy.
And Joe's looking into it, he's got his people looking, and all of them are saying, yeah, Shoken is corrupt.
We can get rid of him.
And Joe says, well, okay.
You know, no harm, no foul.
I'll push for the ouster of Viktor Shokin.
I'll push for him to get rid of that because, again, the entire international community wants the thing to happen.
And if it just so happens that it's kind of good for Hunter and it's good for the company he's connected with and, you know, the people who I've talked to on speakerphone who I don't even recognize them.
I mean, Hunter just puts me on the phone with people and I say hi.
That's all Joe Biden's role in this is.
He is just the shadowy figure who gets called on the phone every so often by his son.
And as we'll see, Hunter is very fond of using this particular tactic.
As we'll see when we fast forward to 2017 in China, he uses this particular tactic quite openly.
We have evidence that he uses this tactic quite openly.
Okay, so January 20th, 2016.
We've now entered 2016.
VP Biden meets with Petro Poroshenko, then the President of Ukraine, at the World Economic Forum, and Biden reinforces the linkage between the loan guarantee and the necessary reforms.
The next month, Mikolas Lovchevsky, again, the head of BRISMA, according to Confidential Human Source, thinks Hunter Biden is dumber than his dog, gives Hunter Biden unspecified extravagant birthday gifts.
A few days later, Biden and Poroshenko conduct another call.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko is asking Shokin to resign.
That's February 16th of 2016.
Two days later, Biden personally calls Poroshenko to thank him for calling on Shokin to resign.
A couple days later, Shokin actually does resign.
And again, the money just keeps on flowing.
By March 2016, Shokin is gone.
Ukrainian parliament approves Poroshenko's firing of Shokin.
And the money just keeps on flowing.
It keeps on flowing.
Okay, so now we're getting to the period where Joe Biden is out of office.
So what is Joe Biden going to do now that he's out of office?
And the answer is Hunter is going to go shake down the Chinese on the basis that China is going to be connected to Joe and Joe still has a lot of connections.
So 2017 now.
So Joe Biden is exiting office.
BHR invests $460 million, that's the Chinese company of which Hunter is a part, invests $460 million in a Chinese facial recognition company.
In February of 2017, Chairman Yi Zhenming of CEFC gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth 80 grand after having dinner together in Miami, Florida.
On March 1st, 2017, Chairman Yi Zhenming's company wires $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC.
That is an entity owned by a Biden associate, Rob Walker.
A couple of days later, Robinson Walker wires unspecified Biden accounts $5,000.
And then a few days after that, another $25,000.
And then a few days after that, another $25,000.
And then a little bit later, again, this is all in the month of March, another $50,000.
Okay, so just during March, Robinson Walker wires accounts associated with Joe Biden $200,000.
Let me correct that.
Because on March 31st, there are another two payments for $150,000.
So $350,000 gets paid from Robinson Walker, which is being paid by the Chinese, to Hunter Biden's various accounts.
And then the wires keep on coming.
April, $50,000 to a James Biden account.
Another $50,000 to a James Biden account.
$10,000 to a Hunter Biden account.
300 grand to a Hunter Biden account.
This is all in April.
These are large amounts of money that are being wired by associates of Hunter Biden to Hunter Biden via the Chinese.
We're talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In May of 2017, Joe Biden attends a CEFC meeting at the Four Seasons in LA, according to a Biden family member associate.
So, This is, I presume, what Tony Bobulinski is talking about.
Bobulinski says, So hundreds of thousands of dollars are now going from the Chinese to Rob Walker's company and from Rob Walker's company to Hunter Biden and James Biden.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Biden family, including Joe Biden.
So hundreds of thousands of dollars are now going from the Chinese to Rob
Walker's company and from Rob Walker's company to Hunter Biden and James
Biden, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Probably millions when you add it all up.
And Joe Biden, again, all you have to do is Joe Biden walks through the room,
they bring him by and he waves to the Chinese and he walks away.
I'm On May 13th, 2017, there's an email between Biden Business Associates about the ownership of this particular CEFC deal.
That's the Chinese deal.
This is the very famous email from Hunter's laptop mentioning 10 held by H for the big guy.
Now we know from a variety of other documents that the big guy generally refers to Joe Biden.
So again, the idea here is that Hunter is holding, in escrow essentially, a bunch of money or could be, if the deal goes through, a bunch of money for Joe Biden.
July 30th, 2017.
This is the one where it becomes absolutely clear how this operation works.
July 30th, 2017.
In a WhatsApp message to a Chinese company, Hunter Biden says, quote, Please have the director call me.
Not James or Tony or Jim.
Have him call me tonight.
I am sitting here with my father.
We would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.
I am very concerned that the chairman has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me, or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made that have not been kept.
Tell the director I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.
And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this, other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that the man sitting next to me, and every person he knows, and my ability to forever hold a grudge, that you will regret not following my direction.
All too often, people mistake kindness for weakness, and all too often, I am standing over the top of them saying, I warned you, from this moment until whenever he reaches me.
Hunter Biden then continued, quote, okay, my friend, I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
I sure hope whatever you are doing is very, very, very important.
So that is Hunter openly saying to Chinese business partners, make the money happen.
I'm sitting here with my daddy and my daddy is very well connected and my daddy can make things happen that are very, very bad for you.
A few days later, August 2nd, 2017, the arrangement between CEFC and the Biden family changes because the original Biden associates are now removed.
Hunter Biden writes, quote, The chairman changed that deal after we met in Miami to a much more lasting and lucrative arrangement to create a holding company, 50% owned by me, 50% owned by him.
Consulting fees is one piece of our income stream, but the reason this proposal by the chairman was so much more interesting to me and my family, and my family, is that we would also be partners in the equity and profits of the JV investments.
The joint entity, a few days later, is formed, 50% owned by CEFC agent Gongwen Dong, who is a Chinese communist agent, and 50% owned by Hunter Biden.
The next day in a WhatsApp exchange, Hunter Biden tells CFC associate Don quote,
the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the chairman wants from this partnership.
And now the money starts flowing $100,000.
$100,000 from CEFC to Hunter Biden's company, Owasco PC.
CEFC, one day later, or four days later, wires $5 million to Hudson West III, which is another fund in which Hunter is associated.
September 21st, 2017.
Hunter Biden requests keys made at his office, shared with his Chinese partners.
November 8th, 2017.
Patrick Koh, a CEFC agent in America, is arrested at JFK Airport on suspicion of bribery and money laundering on behalf of CEFC China.
In March of 2018, Yi Zhenmeng, who is the head of CEFC, was detained by Chinese authorities for suspected economic crimes his whereabouts remain unknown.
So presumably he's dead.
Presumably the Chinese government killed him.
All of this is insanely corrupt.
Okay, and remember, Hunter Biden says, quote, this is October of 2019, Hunter neither played a role in the formation or licensure of BHR nor owned any equity in it while his father was vice president.
He served only as a member of its board of directors, where he joined based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets.
It was an unpaid position.
To date, Hunter has not received any compensation for being on BHR's board of directors.
He has not received any return on his investment.
There have been no distributions to BHR shareholders since Hunter obtained his equity interest.
Moreover, Hunter played no role in directing or making BHR's investments.
Yeah, no.
I'm gonna go no on all of that.
So, all of this is deeply suspicious, obviously.
And here's the thing.
The IRS knows about all of this.
Okay?
The cover-up is what's truly astonishing.
According to IRS whistleblowers, The amount of money that was cleared by Hunter Biden during the period 2014 to 2019 was like $11 million.
Like tons and tons and tons of money, much of which Hunter never paid taxes on and the IRS didn't investigate.
And according to those IRS whistleblowers, they were sabotaged in their efforts to search storage units of Hunters.
They're not allowed to obtain search warrants.
They're not allowed to ask witnesses about the big guy.
They were told not to dig into this.
I mean, this is deeply suspicious stuff.
Again, one of the IRS whistleblowers testifies it wasn't $11 million.
He testified to $17.3 million from 2014 to 2019 in total foreign income streams through various shell companies to Hunter and his associates.
That includes $3.1 million from Amania, $3 million from State Energy HK, a firm affiliated with the CCP and CEFC, another $3.7 million from CEFC-affiliated Hudson West III, and $6.5 million from Burisma.
Of that $17.3 million, apparently Hunter received $8.3 million.
The rest went to immediate family members and associates.
Again, I read to you the text that Hunter Biden sent to his own daughter in 2019, quote, I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.
It's really hard.
But don't worry, oh my pop, I won't make you give me half your salary.
Do we really believe?
Do we really believe that Joe Biden knew about none of this and benefited from none of this?
That Joe Biden was pure as the driven snow.
His son was running around all over the world using his name.
He was calling his daddy on the phone during business meetings.
He was having his father stop by business meetings.
He was meeting with officials.
We're meeting with his father.
Are we really supposed to believe that Joe Biden was sitting there off in the corner and no benefit accrued to him?
And he knew nothing about any of this?
It's absurd.
It's absurd on its face, and everybody knows it's absurd on its face.
And when he's vice president and he's doing this sort of stuff, if he was actually affecting Ukraine policy based on this, which it appears he was, then that's actual bribery.
That's the kind of stuff that people get impeached for.
The stuff he was doing in 2017, which is influence peddling, isn't illegal.
It's ugly, but it's not illegal.
It also happens to be that Joe Biden was lying consistently to the American people.
When he says over and over and over, I know nothing about my son's business dealings, while squaring his son personally on Air Force Two to China so he can pick up foreign bags of cash, that is obviously a lie.
You know how it's really a lie?
Because yesterday the White House gave away the game.
So the White House press secretary, world's most untalented press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, she was specifically asked about Joe Biden saying he knew nothing about the businesses with his son.
And here was her answer.
Chairman James Comer today says that the oversight So I've been asked this question a million times.
The answer is not going to change.
The answer remains the same.
The president was never in business with his son.
of his son Hunter Biden many times.
Curious if the White House and the president still stand behind his comment
that he's never been involved and has never even spoken to his son about his business.
So I've been asked this question a million times.
The answer is not going to change.
The answer remains the same.
The president was never in business with his son.
I just don't have anything else to add.
That is not the same answer.
That's not the same answer!
She says the answer never changed, and then she changes the answer.
Notice the phraseology of the question there.
The phraseology of the question that the reporter asks is, Did Joe Biden know about the business with his son?
Did he know about the business with his son, or did he benefit from any of the business?
And her answer is, he was never, quote, in business with his son.
He was never in business with... That is a very lawyerly answer.
As a lawyer, let me tell you, that is a very lawyerly answer.
Because when he says in business, what is the definition of in business?
Seriously, what's the definition of in business?
So my wife and I share a bank account.
Are we in business together?
Not really.
She doesn't work for me.
I don't work for her.
We're married.
We share a bank account.
Now, are our financial activities deeply intertwined?
Like completely 100% intertwined?
Abso-frickin-lutely.
Does that mean I'm in business with my wife?
No, we're not technically in business.
I'm in business with my business partners, right?
I own joint stock in our company with them.
I have many business partners and we all own stock together in like Daily Wire and other businesses that I own.
I'm in business with them.
Am I in business with my wife or with my children?
I'm technically not.
But does the money flow to my wife from our bank account?
Of course!
Notice what they're doing there.
That is the most squirrely language available.
That is a big change from, I never knew a damn thing.
I never spoke with my son about this.
Joe Biden was lying when he said that.
And he's lying when he says that he never benefited from this.
It's very difficult to see how he's not lying, in fact.
And they're asking you to pull the wool over your own eyes.
They're asking you to be an idiot.
And so the question is, how stupid do you want to be?
Again, I think that the straight line from here to impeachment is pretty clear.
And it appears that there's going to be a lot more digging and a lot more data that is going to emerge.
I can't get over that text in which Hunter Biden... There are multiple instances of Hunter Biden acknowledging the scheme.
There's a literal WhatsApp message where he's saying, my daddy's sitting next to me.
Send me money.
My daddy's right next to me.
He's literally telling his own daughter that he picks up bags of cash for his dad.
And we're supposed to believe that this is all above board?
Absolute nonsense.
We'll get to one of the kickers here in just one second.
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OK, meanwhile, the gall of the Biden family in assuming that you are a moron is truly astonishing.
I mean, the most obvious example is Hunter Biden, a crack addict, deciding to become an artiste.
He's an artiste, guys.
He's just, you know, he's like some of the people from La Boheme.
He lives in an apartment and he paints in his free time and he paints masterpieces.
And those masterpieces go for like half a million dollars to unspecified buyers.
I mean, in fact, Hunter Biden's paintings are so amazing that he can deny them to his own biological child, his name.
But if he gives her the masterpieces, then that makes up for it.
These amazing works of art.
So one of the questions that's always been hanging over this is this pretty obvious money laundering routine where Hunter Biden is clearly selling these pieces to unspecified buyers who are allies of the Biden family.
It's who are the people who are buying this?
Well, now we know.
According to one report, Insider is reporting that L.A.
real estate investor Elizabeth Hirsch Naftali, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to the political left, purchased a piece of Joe Biden's artwork.
Several months after Hunter Biden's art went on sale, the President appointed Naftali to the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
Oh, how magical!
So, um, so Hunter Biden's art goes on sale.
Some lady buys the art for way too much money.
And then she also magically appears on the President's Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
Wow.
Wow.
The report said it was not clear if the art she purchased came before or after she was appointed to the commission.
Hunter Biden wrote in an email discovered on his abandoned laptop that he could have sway in who gets on the commission.
So Hunter Biden literally wrote an email where he's like, you know, I could probably figure out who gets on the commission for the preservation of America's heritage abroad.
Also, I paint finger paintings.
Who wants to buy a finger painting?
Everybody's like, yeah, I'd like to be on the commission for the preservation of America's heritage.
I will buy your finger painting.
Another owner of Hunter Biden's art is LA attorney Kevin Morris, who was recently spotted smoking a bong during a visit with the president's son.
How nice!
The New York Times said Morris might have received the art as a gift, while insiders said that Morris purchased the art.
One buyer, Identity Unknown, reportedly purchased 11 pieces of Hunter Biden's paintings for $875,000.
for $875,000.
$875,000 for 11 garbage paintings by Hunter Biden?
Jen Psaki said at the time, all interactions regarding the selling of art
and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional gallerist,
adhering to the highest professional standards.
Yes, I am sure.
I am sure that there is no corruption.
It is all above board.
See, the thing is, they do all this out in the open and they know the press is never going to ask about it.
And they also know the press is going to downplay it.
Now, if this were the Trump family, and let's say that Don Jr.
had gone around the world picking up bags of cash while his dad was president.
Like picking up the bags of cash and pretty obviously funneling it to his dad.
And also, pretty obviously calling his daddy on the phone while all of this was happening.
Do you think that maybe that would have earned some media coverage?
But instead, here is the narrative.
Again, the narrative, to go back to the beginning, the narrative here is Joe Biden is such a good, caring father.
How dare you ask him about Hunter?
He is a caring father, and he's had a tragic life filled with tragedy.
And because of his tragic life filled with tragedy, there's some truth to that.
That means that you should not ask about this.
In fact, it is appalling that anyone would ask about any of this.
Well, here's the thing.
I think a lot of Democrats are getting pretty nervous about Biden.
Not just because they think that he is actually falling apart as a human being, according to a new Harvard-Harris survey.
59% of registered voters have doubts about the president's mental fitness.
But it is, that by the way, includes 71% of independents who doubt Biden's mental fitness, and so do 24% of Democrats, according to this poll.
It's not just about that.
I think that deep in the back of their minds, Democrats are getting a little worried about the fact that Joe is not actually all that clean, and he's never been all that clean.
And so they're starting to, you can see it, they're starting to promote Kamala again.
They're gonna try and make Fetch happen.
And fetch ain't gonna happen.
Kamala Harris is super bad about this.
So Kamala Harris has been speaking a lot more often.
She's in the press a lot more often.
And here's the problem for them.
The more she's in the press, the more people despise her because she is just terrible at this.
She inhabits the actual uncanny valley.
She's built a summer home in the uncanny valley.
So here she is explaining the work that they've done together.
I don't know what she's even talking about.
No one knows what she's talking about.
We all just know that she's annoying and obnoxious.
And think about what our work together and our progress together has meant to so many people.
So many.
Think about the progress.
And also Bidenomics, as they call it.
They call it Bidenomics.
All of this is part of our blueprint together for what America can be.
This is Bidenomics, a plan to invest in America and build a future in which all people can truly thrive.
It's Bidenomics.
You know, it's Bidenomics.
Would it surprise you to learn that there's a person behind Kamala Harris who is actually the arms?
You know like the game that you used to play with like your little brother?
Where you'd stand behind him and you put your arms out from behind him and you actually move the arms?
Where the arms are disconnected from the actual body?
That is Kamala Harris.
So good luck with that, Democrats.
This is working out great.
You got your corrupt, elderly, dotted president backed up by Kamala Harris, the worst politician who has ever been put to paper.
So good luck with that.
And meanwhile, the Republican Party continues to spiral.
It is unclear who the nominee is going to be at this point, but it appears that Donald Trump, of course, has the upper hand.
As I've said a thousand times, you know what would be great is a campaign run against Joe Biden.
That would be the best thing, is if you ran a campaign against Joe Biden.
So the media have two missions here.
One is to make sure that Donald Trump is the candidate, and the other is to rip down any potential other candidate.
So, the latest attacks from the media are honestly some of the most scurrilous yet with regard to Ron DeSantis.
I gotta say, this is just absurd.
So, first of all, the Republican debates are coming up.
The first one is supposed to happen August 23rd, and that really is the kind of opportunity for somebody to start jumping in the polls is August 23rd.
The problem is that Donald Trump has said he's not going to participate in the debates because why should he, as he says, because he is the frontrunner.
There's no point to it.
And if he doesn't show up, does anyone care what all of the other sort of all the little people in the race are?
Does it doesn't matter them fighting with each other?
Like what difference does it make?
So the people who qualified so far are DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Chris Christie says he wants to do it as well.
Former Vice President Pence might not actually make the debate stage because you have to have at least 40,000 individual donors and 1% in three national polls of Republican voters.
He doesn't have that number of donors yet, I think is the idea.
But, if Trump's not on the stage, what difference does any of this make?
And that's really the question.
Is it Trump or is it somebody else, right?
That's the big question.
Everybody knows that's the big question.
And so the media are trying to take out the everybody else.
So the biggest potential rival right now is Ron DeSantis.
Everybody knows that, as much as I like Vivek Ramaswamy personally, Vivek is not taking the nomination away from Trump.
He's not even running against Trump.
Vivek's entire nominating strategy would basically be, if Donald Trump keels over, then maybe he gets the nomination.
And so he's basically running a very, very Trump-supportive campaign.
DeSantis obviously is the one being attacked by Trump at this point, and the media are helping him out.
They're doing so with lies.
Their latest lie is that Ron DeSantis is sponsoring some sort of curriculum here in the state of Florida that is anti-black, which is absurd.
The African-American curriculum in the state of Florida was written by a commission largely comprised of black academics.
We've talked about this.
There are two specific things that the left is claiming that this particular curriculum does.
One, they're claiming that the curriculum talks up the benefits of slavery.
Why?
Because there's a phrase in the curriculum saying that some slaves used skills that they learned while they were slaves to benefit themselves after they were slaves.
That is not about the wonders of slavery.
That's about the resiliency and amazing entrepreneurialism of the slaves.
Clearly, it is not about the wonders of slavery, you idiots and you liars, because that is one.
The other one is that apparently the curriculum talks about the white-on-black violence that occurred during particular race riots in the United States, as well as black-on-white violence that also occurred in some of these race riots.
Okay, well, yeah, that's a thing that happened.
I mean, you could pretend it didn't happen, but it absolutely did happen.
Now, does that mean that the race riots were not based on white supremacy?
No!
But was there violence that also occurred toward white people?
Sure!
I mean, like, it's all a lie.
But the media are gonna run with the lie to try and portray Ron DeSantis as a racist.
This is the dumbest thing.
It really is garbage.
And yet you're seeing the media pick up on this.
Of course, of course, it's pretty obvious they think that Trump is the one that they can beat most easily.
Here is Stephen A. Smith going after Ron DeSantis.
But the more I see stories like this, the more it alerts me to the fact that Ron DeSantis, you don't need to be governor.
I'm sorry, you don't need to be president either.
The battles that he's fighting is just unconscionable.
Why is the governor concerning himself with African-American studies?
By the way, in the state of Florida, it's been being taught since 1994.
Why are you concerning yourself with such things?
And when it says here, because I want to make sure that I'm quoting it correctly, bars and structures and schools that suggest anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color.
Are you trying to deny the fact That white folks have been privileged compared to other races of people in this country?
Are you kidding me?
That is a fact that even white folks haven't denied.
Okay, can we stop right there?
Stephen have been and have been and are not the same thing.
Of course, white people were privileged based on their race in 1960.
Are they privileged based on their race in 2023?
I don't know, Stephen A. Smith, since you have a $13 million a year salary from ESPN.
$13 million a year, this dude sitting here talking about how rough black people have it in the United States compared to white people overall in the United States.
I'm sorry, this is not 1960.
In fact, I'm very happy it's not 1960.
Like, this is truly amazing.
Meanwhile, Washington Post's Eugene Robinson doing the exact same thing.
The number of lies that people will tell in order to go after a candidate, and by the way, it shows you what the media's actual agenda, what their actual agenda is.
Because if their agenda were to stop Trump, they would presumably not be elevating Trump at the expense of his opponents.
But that's precisely what they're doing.
This is why I don't believe them.
When they say Trump is a fascist and the country's at stake and it's going to be the end of the country and all this, I don't believe you.
Because if somebody is actually a true threat to the republic, you know what you do?
You try to defeat them at every stage.
I will give you an example of this.
I think Bernie Sanders is a true threat to the United States.
I think Bernie Sanders' ideology is just wrong.
I thought in 2020 that Bernie Sanders would be a far more defeatable candidate by Donald Trump than Joe Biden.
I wanted Joe Biden to win the primaries because I did not want Bernie Sanders to be president of the United States.
Because I actually do think that Bernie Sanders is a threat to the country.
The Democrats don't think that, which is why they're perfectly willing to elevate Donald Trump.
So they're liars, on both scores.
They're liars about the census, and they're liars about Trump.
Here they are going after the census again, based on a lie.
My conclusion is that Vice President Harris and our editorial board are right here, because not only in that passage, but in other passages as well, these standards seem to me to be attempting to sort of contextualize American slavery in the wrong context.
To normalize it, really.
To kind of say, well, other people had, you know, other people at other times had slavery.
And they don't, in my estimation, adequately explain the unique horror that was American chattel slavery.
I'm sorry, this is all.
But again, it's about for the Democrats upholding Trump.
They think Trump is more.
Maybe they're wrong.
Maybe they're wrong.
Maybe Trump ends up getting the nomination and crushes Biden.
Maybe.
Or maybe Democrats are right and they're trying to elevate Trump for a reason.
Meanwhile, is Trump running against Joe Biden?
Is Trump really going after Joe Biden very hard?
Of course not.
He's going after Ron DeSantis and Jack Smith.
Those are his actual targets.
So here is Donald Trump going after DeSantis.
If they don't like Ron DeSanctimonious now, they won't like him any better six months from now with the start of primary season.
The more people get to know him, the lower his polls are going.
He's now in the mid-teens and falling fast.
He will soon not be number two.
Looks like it won't happen much longer.
But he deserves it because he's a very disloyal person.
Make America great again.
Thank you very much.
I mean, again, is everything a test of loyalty to Donald Trump personally?
This is what you want to run the campaign based on?
So not on Joe Biden's corruption.
Not on Joe Biden not being capable of doing his job.
Not on his crap policies that are placing the American economy in a position of permanent stagnance and our foreign policy in a position of permanent weakness.
Not on that.
You want to run on personal loyalty?
All right, I mean, I guess if Republicans want to do it, this is exactly what they're going to get.
And meanwhile, I just want to bring you the latest over in Israel.
Supposedly, Israeli democracy is on the brink of absolute destruction.
Why?
Well, because the Israeli Knesset, the parliament over there, with a 64-vote majority, voted in favor of a law, an amendment to what they call the Basic Law, which is kind of the quasi-constitution, but not really, over in Israel, that says that the Supreme Court of Israel cannot simply overturn any executive or administrative action on the basis of quote-unquote reasonableness.
So imagine that the President of the United States issued an executive order and the Supreme Court didn't determine whether it was inside the authority of the President, they just determined whether it was quote-unquote reasonable.
You see how this would be a problem?
Because this means that the Supreme Court is basically a dictatorship.
They now get to use their own judgment of what is reasonable to substitute for an elected person or an elected body's judgment for what is reasonable.
Which makes them not a court.
It makes them an actual legislature, just not elected.
So, the originally proposed judicial reform package by Likud and by the majority in Israel was a lot more far-reaching than that.
It allowed a change in how the Supreme Court justices were selected.
It got rid of attorneys that existed within every bureaucratic department in Israel that allowed them to preemptively strike down pieces of legislation and other measures taken by those departments.
The judiciary is extraordinarily powerful in Israel because it has irrigated to itself.
It has simply usurped an extraordinary amount of power since the 1990s because basically the judiciary, which has been a preserve of the left in Israel for a very long time, saw the rise of the political right in Israel and said, we better grab a bunch of power right now to prevent the elected branches from taking that power later.
And that's really what the battle in Israel is about.
The real story in Israel is that the breakdown of the Israeli population is effective among the Jewish population is about 80% of the entire population of Israel is Jewish.
About 20% is Arab, Muslim, Christian.
The 80% breaks down.
About 40% is what you call Chiloni, which are people who are secular.
And then the other 40%, it's really split right down the half, is people who would be considered Masorti, which means traditional.
People who are Datil Umi, which would be like religious Zionist.
And then people who are Haredi, which is like the ultra-Orthodox.
And so the Chilonim, they serve disproportionately in the army, they pay a disproportionate share of the taxes, largely because the Haredim do not serve in the army and pay almost no tax because their income is too low.
So the Chilonim have for a long time had sort of a tacit deal where it's like, we will pay the welfare and we will shoulder the burden, but we also get the political power.
And now the demographics are turning against them and so they're freaking out about all of that.
They're afraid, essentially, of a shift in Israel from their power to the power of the opposition.
This election was a perfect example of that, because the opposition right now is secular parties, as well as Arab parties, and the coalition is essentially ultra-Orthodox parties, religious Zionist parties, and Likud.
That is the current coalition.
And what the fundamental debate is, is how Jewish is the state going to be, right?
In terms of sort of religious precepts.
So the idea of the left is that this is a state where a lot of Jews live, but it's basically run just like the United States or like any other liberal democracy.
And the idea of the political right in Israel is that it's still going to be a liberal democracy, but it's going to have more Jewish elements of it.
So for example, buses not running in particular areas on Sabbath.
Or the ability of Haredim to have sex-segregated workspaces.
Stuff like that.
Right?
Or whether there should be Hameds, like Levin, in the hospitals on Passover.
These are the questions that in Israel actually have significant impact.
Okay, but here is the thing.
The rift that is over judicial reform isn't over that, because the actual reform is pretty mild.
And there are these mass protests, and they've been going on for months and months and months and months.
And the idea was that the protesters were simply going to shut down the economy, shut down the roads, shut down everything until they got their way.
This means the Israeli government can't abide this, especially because the reservists were saying they were not going to serve if the government did what it wanted to do.
No country can survive a bunch of people who are not elected dictating to the elected government what the elected government should do.
It means that elections have no meaning.
So, of course, this thing had to pass.
Now, I'll tell you one thing that didn't.
So, not only did it have to pass, it's actually a good piece of legislation.
The White House, the Biden White House, pathetically, actually sounded off on this piece of legislation.
I'm not aware that the Biden White House does this routinely anywhere else except for Israel.
Truly, there's no other Western Democratic ally of the United States where the United States sounds off on their internal politics.
Joe Biden doesn't make statements about the economic policies of France.
He doesn't make statements about the immigration policies of the UK.
Only when it comes to Israel does he feel the necessity to actually speak out about all of this.
But here's the thing.
The reason that so much of this divide is being exaggerated Is because of media coverage of the divide and politicians in Israel who, like politicians in America, have a stake in playing up the idea that we have reached crisis point and everything's on fire, that's why you have to support me.
It's not true.
Everybody who's Hiloni in Israel has a cousin who's Dati Lumi, and everybody who's Dati Lumi has a cousin who's Hiloni.
And at the end of the day, everybody's gonna end up going over to each other's house for Shabbat, right?
That's the basic idea.
But if the media exacerbate it, if the political leadership exacerbates it, it gets worse.
So take a perfect example.
In the aftermath of this very mild judicial reform being passed.
There's a Haredi party, an ultra-Orthodox party, called the United Torah Judaism Party, UTJ.
And they proposed a basic law aimed at saying, quote, So instead of actually having to serve in the army, because the Haredim generally get religious exemptions, that was originally based on David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the state of Israel, who is a secular, he made a deal with the ultra-Orthodox that in return for their support of the government, He would exempt, at the time, I think, I believe it was 600 yeshiva students from having to serve in the army.
Today, that exemption is like 60,000 people a year being exempted.
Just demonstrating, once again, all government programs get very, very large.
In any case, there's been this basic conflict between the seculars and, by the way, the Dati Lumi and the Masorti against the Haredi, where the Haredi are saying that us studying in yeshiva all day, Talmud, is the equivalent of you serving in the army.
Which, to my mind, is an incorrect and wrong position morally.
From a Torah perspective, I think it's wrong.
As an Orthodox Jew, I think it's wrong.
Again, just go back to the Bible, and the fact is that pretty much everybody in the Bible is a warrior scholar.
In any case, put aside the actual halakha, the Jewish law, of all of this, which, you know, I'm invested in, but I know a lot of my listeners don't care.
But here is sort of the basic thing.
The media played up this proposal by UTJ to exempt al-Kharedim from army service basically forever, enshrined in basic law.
There is only one problem.
The coalition is not backing this.
This is the headline right now at the Jerusalem Post.
Oh my God!
The theocracy has begun.
There is only one problem.
Likud, which is the leading party in the majority, in a coalition with UTJ, says, quote, This is not on the table and will not be advanced.
It will not be advanced.
Another Haredi party, Shas, which is a Sephardic Haredi party, actually said that their party was in shock the proposal was even put forward without its knowledge or consent.
So in other words, what the media are attempting to do is, of course, play up the exaggerated differences in order to jar more discontent.
That's the basic idea here, and it's really gross.
Everybody needs to take a breath.
By the way, I say the same thing in the United States.
Here's language I don't like in the United States.
The next election is the last election.
And guess what?
When Joe Biden won the last election, guess what?
It wasn't the last election.
And in fact, the person who was defeated by Joe Biden is likely to be the Republican nominee next time around.
In Western democracies, language that people should never use is, this is the end of the country.
Like the end of the country.
Because guess what?
It almost certainly is not.
And you're gonna have to deal with that tomorrow.
And you're gonna have to live in a country with those people tomorrow.
And the same thing is true over in Israel.
By the way, it's quite possible that over in Israel, after this law was passed by the sitting majority, It is quite possible at this point that that is going to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
This is how crazy the system is in Israel.
The Supreme Court could theoretically, on the basis of reasonableness, overturn a law saying they can't do that.
That's how crazy the system is.
You know, thank God for the American Constitution.
Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
So, if you look at Rotten Tomatoes, I have a basic rule about Rotten Tomatoes.
The basic rule about Rotten Tomatoes is that if a movie clocks in at somewhere between 60% and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, 60% and 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's very likely to be a good movie.
If it clocks in at above 85%, particularly if it's a cotton candy movie, it's probably crap.
And if it clocks in below 50%, it's probably crap.
Okay, well, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny fall squarely in that category, right?
It's 69% on Rotten Tomatoes right now.
So the rule applies.
And I don't know why this movie underperformed at the box office other than the IP is a little bit old.
And so a lot of the people who have sort of loyalty to the Indiana Jones IP are people older than I am.
And I'm 39.
However, this movie is delightful.
So I went, I took my wife to see it yesterday.
And the movie is quite wonderful.
The last five minutes of this movie are like the best thing in the Indiana Jones series, maybe since Raiders.
I think, I think like better than some of the stuff in The Last Crusade.
First of all, the movie is predicated on the notion that Indiana Jones is actually 80 years old.
I will say that the de-aging technology used in this movie is so much better than it is in, say, The Irishman or Rogue One.
It's really advanced a long way.
Like, the first 20 minutes of the movie is young Harrison Ford, and at least the facial technology is very, very good.
I mean, like, much, much better.
I saw it on a big screen.
Much better.
They've really advanced.
So it won't be long before you have Fred Astaire starring in things again, in all likelihood.
The movie is predicated on the idea that Harrison Ford is 80 years old, and he's now living in 1969 America, and he has to go track down an artifact.
But what the movie's really about is, is Harrison Ford a man out of time, right?
Is Indiana Jones a man out of time, or can he find a place in this kind of new world that he's not used to inhabiting?
Is there a reason for him to continue living?
Because the premise of the movie is that they basically tried to undo the Shia LaBeouf.
Of all of it, you remember that Shia LaBeouf was in, I believe, Crystal Skull.
And Shia LaBeouf is now, he's been killed in the war, presumably the Vietnam War.
And, uh, and so Indy has lost his son and he's broken up with his wife, Marion Jones.
And, um, and so he, you know, has nothing to live for, basically, and he goes on this kind of one final adventure.
There's a callback near the end of this movie.
I'm not gonna give it away.
There's a callback near the end of this movie to Raiders.
That is one of the best writing reversals I've seen in movies for a very, very long time.
Like a reversal in a movie is where you say a line in a particular way and later there's a callback to the line but in a completely different way.
There's a reversal at the end of this movie that is really one of the most beautiful reversals I've seen in a movie in years.
Highly enjoyable.
Like all movies today, it's probably 15 minutes too long.
Some of the chases go on a little bit too long.
But, why this movie didn't do better at the box office is beyond me.
Because, honestly, it's pretty good.
It's pretty good, and again, the end makes up for all of it.
The end is really, really strong.
The last 10 minutes of this, really great.
So, highly recommended.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
When my dad said that, I was kind of surprised.
And then we heard from producer Zach the same thing.
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