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Aug. 14, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:52

Joe Biden’s Big Hunter Coverup

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	So, it was only a matter of time until the true cover-up of the cover-up began.
	So, in order to understand why the Joe Biden DOJ just appointed David Weiss Special Counsel in a case he was already investigating, you have to understand the timeline.
	So basically, Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, has been under investigation since 2019.
	He's been under investigation for a wide variety of tax offenses.
	He was also under investigation for gun crimes.
	Well, just a few weeks ago, it turned out that a plea deal had been cut between David Weiss, who is the And Hunter Biden's legal team.
	And that plea agreement was a sweetheart deal, without a doubt.
	The way the sweetheart deal worked was this.
	Essentially, he would get no time whatsoever for any of his tax crimes.
	And he would also get no time, he'd get a diversion for his gun crimes.
	But not only did the plea deal do that, it also basically immunized him from all further criminal charges with regard to anything tax or funding related, which of course is all the Hunter Biden, Joe Biden stuff.
	That's all of his Foreign Agents Registration Act violations.
	That's him going abroad, picking up sacks of cash and questioning whether those crimes involved Joe Biden.
	All of that would have just gone away.
	And the DOJ tried to bury this in the deal.
	The DOJ, instead of putting this in the plea agreement with regard to the tax charges when they went to court, instead they put it in the diversion agreement with regard to the gun charges so that it was not actually under the purview of the judge who was presiding over the tax charges, but it would be left to the judge to actually enforce that plea agreement nonetheless.
	The judge caught on to this.
	The judge said, hold up a second.
	I don't understand.
	Are you guys Basically wiping away all of his other crimes with this plea agreement, or are you not?
	And at that point, the DOJ, which was in fact attempting to wipe away and cover up all of Hunter Biden's other crimes with the plea agreement, at that point, they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	We weren't trying to wipe away all these future crimes.
	And when they said that, Hunter Biden's legal team was like, well, then we don't have a deal.
	What do you think this deal was?
	You think he was just going to plead out on the tax charges and the gun charges without wiping away all future prosecutions on similar charges like the corruption with Joe Biden or the Foreign Agents Registration Act issues?
	You think we were just going to sign our names on the dotted line for a kind of quasi-sweetheart deal?
	No, we want the whole thing, otherwise we're going to court.
	And the DOJ said, well, we were going to give you the whole thing, but then we kind of got caught giving you the whole thing and the entire arrangement blew up.
	The judge in that case said that she had never seen any deal remotely like that deal.
	And all of this, played simultaneously with IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testifying before Congress that David Weiss, the U.S.
	Attorney in this particular case, had not been granted special counsel status.
	Now, why would that have mattered?
	Well, if he'd been given special counsel status, he would have been allowed to prosecute Hunter Biden basically wherever Hunter Biden committed a crime.
	He would have been given enough independence to go after Hunter Biden however he believed he needed to go after Hunter Biden.
	But according to Gary Shapley, David Weiss said that he had actually been denied by Joe Biden's DOJ special counsel status in the investigation of Hunter Biden.
	In fact, here is the IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testifying in open congressional testimony that David Weiss said he was denied special counsel status.
	And that's when David Weiss, on October 7, 2022, said that the D.C.
	U.S.
	Attorney's Office will not allow us to charge there.
	And then he added that he requested special counsel authority and was denied in that meeting.
	I even had him repeat that because I knew how important that fact was, and I wanted to make sure I understood it.
	You were there, and you remember it crystal clear in your mind.
	Not only do I remember it crystal clear, but I documented it.
	The email that's an exhibit in the House Ways and Means Committee testimony was when I returned home that evening.
	I documented it in an email.
	And it's an exhibit.
	You can look right on there.
	Okay, so Shapley said he was actually prevented from pursuing any leads that involved Joe Biden, including an infamous 2017 email from James Gilliar, a business associate of Hunter Biden, which bore the subject line expectations and outlined a provisional agreement for equity in a deal with a Chinese energy company that included the famous phrase now ten held by H for the big guy.
	Shapley says he wanted to investigate that and he was prevented from doing so by David Weiss and by the people who are in charge of this investigation, who were not given special counsel status.
	Now, the DOJ then said, well, We didn't give special counsel status because he never asked for special counsel status.
	But of course, that's not how special counsel status works.
	You don't walk into the DOJ's office and say, I would like special counsel status.
	You don't walk into Merrick Garland's office and say, listen, I hereby request special counsel status.
	You are given special counsel status voluntarily by the DOJ because they want to establish some form of independence from the actual investigation that's going on.
	This, for example, is why they gave special counsel status to Jack Smith in the Donald Trump investigation so they could at least claim that it wasn't Merrick Garland and Joe Biden doing that.
	They didn't bother doing that with Hunter because they clearly wanted their finger still in the pie with regard to Hunter Biden.
	Okay, well, all of this controversy led up to Merrick Garland over the weekend on Friday announcing that David Weiss would now be appointed the special counsel.
	Now understand the timing here is everything. David Weiss should have been appointed
	special counsel if they want a special counsel like at the very beginning. Then he would have had
	the full powers to go after Hunter Biden but he was not given that special counsel status so he didn't
	have the power to go after Hunter Biden. Then David Weiss anytime during the subsequent
	period Could have been given that special counsel status and then he was not.
	And then the Hunter Biden plea deal came through and it blew up.
	And then Gary Shapley testified.
	And now it appeared that David Weiss was going to be dragged in front of Congress to explain why he was not given special counsel status.
	And he was going to have to actually testify in Congress under oath in danger of perjury.
	He was going to have to testify whether Merrick Garland and the DOJ had basically told him how to handle the case.
	So in order to force all that, Merrick Garland and the DOJ then gave him special counsel status.
	And in doing so, they accomplished a couple of things.
	One, they backfilled the special counsel status when it was basically too late.
	And two, they now essentially prevent Congress from calling him in for questioning, because anything he is questioned about now, he can say is part of an ongoing investigation until he can't answer it.
	So if he is asked about why he wasn't given special counsel status before, he can say, well, I have special counsel status now, and I can't really speak about what was happening before, because that is all part of a case that is now ongoing.
	So this is a cover-up of a cover-up, understand?
	The original crime was Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and doing whatever it was they were doing.
	We still don't know all the answers there, but it's pretty obvious what was going on.
	And then part two was the cover-up, which was appoint a person who is not a special counsel to investigate that thing and have that person cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden.
	And then when that blows up, you get the cover-up of the cover-up, which is now give that exact same person special counsel status.
	As we'll explain in just a second, it probably isn't even legal under the special counsel statute to actually give David Weiss special counsel status at this point.
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	Okay, so as it turns out, it may not even be legal for Merrick Garland to do what he's doing.
	Here is Merrick Garland appointing David Weiss Special Counsel.
	This appointment confirms my commitment to provide Mr. Weiss all the resources he requests.
	Attorney General Merrick Garland said David Weiss himself asked for special counsel status after leading the criminal probe into the president's son since 2018.
	The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department's commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.
	Okay, so just a few minutes after this happened, DOJ lawyers then asked the court in Delaware, where this entire plea agreement blew up, if they could withdraw the case against Hunter Biden so they could refile the charges in Washington, D.C.
	and California and quote-unquote, do it the right way.
	But as the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins points out, this whole thing is a sham.
	It's absurd.
	According to Holman Jenkins, he says, to get fully right-side up, even by its own dubious standards, the department needs not just to name a special counsel in the Hunter Biden case, it needs to return to the status of ordinary prosecutor Jack Smith, the special counsel in the Donald Trump case.
	How can it be a conflict of interest for the department to throw the book at criminals who also happen to be the president's political enemies?
	It's not.
	Smith was only named after a leak signaling Joe Biden's displeasure with the department for not being aggressive enough against Mr. Trump.
	The DOJ has every natural incentive to throw the book at Trump.
	If it couldn't convince itself it had sufficient grounds, this might be a problem, but it's a corruption of the special counsel concept to believe it's a problem the special counsel regulation should solve.
	A.G.
	Merrick Garland's Friday announcement in the Hunter Biden case is bizarre in a different way when examined against special counsel logic.
	Garland said the Hunter investigation, quote, reached the stage where such an appointment was appropriate, but what stage?
	They went through the entire investigation, literally the whole investigation, and then they tried to cut a sweetheart deal, and then it blew up.
	At which stage was it not appropriate to actually make him special counsel?
	The answer is this stage, because as it turns out, the special counsel is supposed to come from outside the government.
	You're not supposed to just give an ordinary attorney working for the government special counsel status this way.
	Saying that it has now reached a new stage is an absurdity, as Holman Jenkins points out.
	He says, this would be the stage where IRS collaborators publicly accuse Weiss and his DOJ overseers of violating normal procedures to go easier on Hunter than they would on any other alleged offender.
	Is Mr. Weiss, the special counsel, now going to investigate Mr. Weiss, the ordinary U.S.
	attorney's problematic handling of the case?
	Like, how's this going to work exactly?
	Is Mr. Weiss going to start noticing the accumulating evidence that Joe Biden actively abetted his son's access peddling scheme?
	Is he going to follow up on charges by his own IRS colleagues?
	His actions in the investigation were tainted by favoritism toward Hunter?
	The only reason they're doing this is so he can refuse to testify in front of the House committee.
	Recently, this would include unearthing the alleged receipt by multiple members of the Biden family of millions of bucks from Hunter's international dealings.
	So now this is basically just a way of shielding David Weiss from the investigation of the original cover-up by creating a new cover-up.
	This is what the head of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, was saying.
	He said, I was about to connect Joe Biden to criminal activity and then they dumped this on us.
	We've produced more evidence than anyone that's supposedly investigating this criminal activity by the Biden family.
	And right as we get to the point to where we've traced it to Joe Biden, and we're at a position where we can win in court to fight their attorneys and get their actual personal bank records, He comes out with this.
	This is another attempt to try to obstruct.
	They're going to try to use this in court when they say, no, we can't give the Oversight Committee our bank records because there's an ongoing investigation by David Wise.
	It is absolutely absurd on every level.
	Now, Democrats in the media are predictably spinning this as, now everyone's being super unfair to Hunter Biden.
	So here's Democratic Representative Jerry Connolly saying that, you know, normal people wouldn't be subjected to this level of scrutiny.
	Are you kidding?
	If a normal person bought a gun, claiming they were not a drug addict, while they were a drug addict, and then a girlfriend threw it in a trash can across the street from a school, and then it disappeared, do you think that person would not be in jail?
	If a person committed crimes to the tunes of millions of dollars in tax evasion, Do you think that would just go by the wayside and no one would care?
	Do you think there would be no Foreign Agents Registration Act investigation of $20 million entering a family's coffers because they're traveling around the world making promises on behalf, presumably, of the Vice President of the United States?
	Like, this is insanity.
	Here's Connolly.
	A lot of people make assumptions about people in public life getting a special deal, wink-blink.
	Often it's the opposite, that they're going to get no cornice cut at all.
	They're going to have the book thrown at them because nobody wants to be perceived as showing favoritism in the justice system or in the police unfolding acts.
	So I think you're right.
	I think Hunter Biden's being subjected here Most mere mortals would not?
	of not only scrutiny, but accountability that most mere mortals would not.
	Most mere mortals would not?
	Dude, most mere mortals who are crack addicts, who are addicted to hookers,
	those people don't end up with millions and millions of dollars in their bank account
	because their last name isn't Biden.
	It's pretty obvious what is happening here.
	My favorite defender here is Joy Reid.
	Joy Reid, who is constantly talking about the two-track system of justice in the United States, the systemic racism of the criminal justice system.
	Well, now she's out there saying, Hunter is... I mean, I just can't believe how unfairly Hunter is being treated.
	In other words, he's being treated differently because he's Joe Biden's son.
	I want to read this little piece here.
	The particular gun charge that the Feds brought against Joe Biden.
	This is from the Daily Beast.
	A drug user in possession of a firearm is rarely brought as a standalone crime, especially now that roughly a fifth of the country uses cannabis, with an inevitably significant overlap with the nation's estimated 80 million gun owners.
	There's more than that, I think.
	When the Feds do bring this type of case, they come down hard, but it's usually a tool they use to take down Tough to arrest criminals, like militant white nationalists, Islamist terrorists, or narco traffickers.
	I think all the evidence that I've seen so far in this case is that Hunter Biden, he could be a terrible guy, I don't know, never met him, is being treated worse than anyone else would be.
	I have a question.
	Would Joy Reid say this about any white Republican?
	Any white Republican?
	Any white non-Joe Biden's son?
	How about that?
	Would Joy Reid ever say anything remotely like that about a rich white man getting off on these types of crimes?
	Ever?
	Must protect the precious.
	And the precious, of course, is the Biden family.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Alrighty, so NBC legal analyst, Danny Savalas, he has a similar sort of take.
	He says, yeah, you know, what's amazing about this is the special counsel now has independence.
	You mean now he does?
	I don't understand.
	Why didn't he have it before?
	That would have been the question, would it not?
	What added authority does it give to Weiss?
	And what are the implications for Hunter Biden himself?
	The primary added authority is really independence.
	The Special Counsel no longer will have to be ruled over by the Attorney General, although technically, Special Counsel does have to report to the Attorney General.
	And in a way, the Attorney General had already indicated that David Weiss had broad investigatory power.
	So the real question is, what inference can we draw from David Weiss's request to become Special Counsel?
	I mean, the inference is that he wants to cover up what is going on clearly.
	Clearly.
	It's amazing.
	Even CNN's Jake Tapper.
	Now listen, I think Jake obviously is a left-leaning guy, but he at least attempts to be objective in his analysis sometimes.
	So Jake and some of the others on CNN actually questioned the special counsel appointment, rightly so.
	The U.S.
	attorney had made the decision to have it just be a diversion program and a misdemeanor, but now it merits a special counsel?
	So does he know of stuff that should be in a special counsel investigation that wasn't in that plea deal?
	I mean, maybe he does, but then why do that plea deal?
	It's all... Right.
	It's all very suspicious.
	It's fascinating.
	Remember, we've heard already from David Weiss about what the process was like.
	He has said, I have the authority to do so.
	All the talking points are contrary to what my experience was.
	But now this raises a lot of questions.
	And whatever happened on Tuesday, as Paul is alluding to, now does make me feel surprised about, well, why now?
	What is happening here?
	Remember, he is still the U.S.
	attorney in Delaware.
	But now this special counsel allows him to actually go beyond his own jurisdiction.
	You can look at other areas as well.
	It's the reason you have Jack Smith not having to confine to one particular jurisdiction.
	He can go beyond that.
	He can have things in Florida.
	He can have things in Washington, D.C.
	It does now go beyond that.
	But at its core, I wonder what the decision really came down to.
	The special counsel statute says you can have this if you first look to figure out, does a matter actually warrant an investigation?
	Is it warranted?
	He had to conclude that it did, if you're Garland.
	Was there a conflict of interest at play here?
	I mean, it is pretty amazing when even CNN is like, guys, this is pretty weird.
	Meanwhile, Hunter Biden's attorney, Abby Lowell, was asked point blank if Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings would in any way connect back to Joe Biden.
	Listen to the lawyerly language here from Abby Lowell.
	But can you answer the question about whether or not you're, from what you know, if you're confident that this won't in any way link back to the president?
	What I know is what the evidence has revealed.
	I mean, that is what people should focus on.
	It's not as if this started yesterday or a week.
	It started for five years with so many people in the United States, including with the power of subpoenas, as Mr. Weiss has had, to look at every transaction that Hunter was engaged in, in any place in the world in which he was engaged.
	And what did they come up with?
	They came up with the decision that the only two charges to file were two misdemeanors and a gun-diverted charge.
	Not any of the other things that the MAGA right wing have been yelling, from money laundering to foreign corruption to foreign agent, none of that.
	You notice what that wasn't?
	That wasn't a full-scale, full-frontal denial of a relationship between Joe and Hunter's business.
	You notice that wasn't what that was?
	So there won't be any evidence that's uncovered?
	I know the evidence is uncovered thus far, but where is the full-throated, Joe and Hunter were not in business together in any way, shape, or form.
	No money that Hunter ever took in from a foreign source was used to Joe's benefit, nor was Hunter Biden ever associating Joe with the business of his foreign businesses.
	None of that.
	Like, none of it.
	Seriously, none of it.
	In that particular statement.
	Instead, they're just gonna play victim.
	In fact, here's Abby Lowell saying, their big concern now is that Trump forces could influence the investigation.
	How could Trump forces influence the investigation?
	It's Joe Biden's DOJ.
	How could that happen?
	And the answer is, now they're afraid that they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, so maybe fairness might look like that a little bit.
	When you say force, who are you referencing?
	Well, what I'm referencing is, and this is not a surprise or a secret, right?
	From the moment this arrangement and agreement has been announced and filed, you have every MAGA, right-wing, fanatical person yelling and screaming and saying it's not right and it's not fair and it's not just.
	You have the former president trying to use Hunter Biden as a way to excuse his own conduct.
	And at some point, that could pierce, the noise could actually be so noisy that it'd get in the way of the facts and the law.
	Well, wouldn't that be a tragedy?
	Wouldn't that be a tragedy if it turns out that the giant bubble that you've created with the help of Joe Biden's DOJ actually started to cave in?
	If somebody actually popped that bubble, what a tragedy that would be.
	Okay, we'll get in just one second to President Trump, who's responding to all of this first.
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	He put out a very weird statement, actually.
	He said, David Weiss was picked by the two Democrat senators from Delaware under blue slip.
	He would not have been picked by me, but I have a great idea.
	you today. Okay so President Trump has now responded to the picking of David
	Weiss. He put out a very weird statement actually said David Weiss was picked by
	the two Democrat senators from Delaware under blue slip. He would not have been
	picked by me but I have a great idea why don't they use deranged Jack Smith. He
	then continued Weiss has been investigating Hunter for four years
	giving him the sweetheart deal of all sweetheart deals.
	But a brilliant judge in Delaware saw through it all.
	Now, I read the DOJ wants a new judge in jurisdiction, but so do I, with far stronger reasons than Hunter and Crooked Joe.
	MAGA!
	Well, actually, Trump formally nominated Weiss for U.S.
	Attorney for the District of Delaware, and Weiss was sworn in while Trump was President of the United States.
	So, um, that's not, like, the best statement from Trump, but suffice it to say that he is obviously correct that Weiss is a stooge on behalf of the DOJ at this point.
	All indicators point to that.
	And the fact that he's now basically escaped any sort of congressional scrutiny by being appointed special counsel is pretty obvious corruption.
	Well, meanwhile, President Trump's presidential run continues.
	He is facing down, presumably, some sort of indictment that is going to come down either this week or next week.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Georgia has become ground zero for exhaustion over the legal drama surrounding Donald Trump and the GOP debate over whether to stick with him in 2024.
	Georgia, there are still signs that voters have tired of the 2020 election replays and of Trump himself.
	That kind of Trump fatigue is pervasive in Georgia, according to Republican strategists, which is a serious problem for him in a general election.
	Right now, the possibility of another indictment looming is pretty obvious.
	President Trump put out a statement over the weekend going after the Fulton County DA, Fannie Willis.
	He went after her pretty hard, obviously.
	He suggested that she is corrupt.
	He suggested that she is driven by politics.
	Of course, she is.
	She's a partisan Democrat.
	But as these cases stack up, it is going to provide a serious challenge to his ability to actively run a campaign.
	According to Breitbart.com, Fannie Willis is planning to bring multiple witnesses before a grand jury next week as part of her investigation into President Trump.
	Trump wrote, I hear that racist Fulton County District Attorney, phony Fannie Willis, who weekly presides over one of the deadliest communities in the United States with thousands of murderers, violent criminals, and gang members roaming the streets while going on tried-free and are treated with kid gloves, is using a potential indictment of me and other innocent people as a campaign and fundraising con job, all based on a perfect phone call as President challenging election fraud, my duty, and right.
	This would be Trump's fourth indictment in the past five months, and of course, it would bleed into the presidential election.
	Trump was asked whether he'd be taking a plea deal in Georgia, and correctly, he said, uh, no way, man.
	Not a thing that's going to happen.
	Is there any chance you'd take a plea deal in Georgia?
	I don't take plea deals.
	We did nothing wrong.
	We don't ever take a plea deal.
	Yes, sir.
	Yes, sir.
	We don't take plea deals.
	It's a wise guy question.
	Are you going to change it?
	It's a wise guy.
	We don't take plea deals because I did nothing wrong.
	It's called election interference.
	You know what that is?
	These indictments were brought out by Biden, who can't even put two sentences together.
	This is Joe Biden, because he can't win the election by himself.
	He can't win the election based on votes.
	So what they did is they got the Attorney General to do it.
	And then you see how stupid they acted yesterday with the appointment of the special counsel.
	So, that of course is going to be Trump's line all the way through the election.
	The question is whether that is going to be a winning message in a general election.
	That's something that Republican voters are going to have to decide.
	I was talking with some friends over the weekend and we were all agreeing that the reason that Republicans, many of them, love, love, love Trump is because of course he was a hand grenade that was thrown into the sort of dead of vipers that is American politics.
	But the question is, what happens if that hand grenade becomes a dud?
	Or what happens if it starts to blow up in your hand?
	That's something Republicans are going to have to decide.
	Do they think that Trump is still more of a tool against the left, that he is capable of victory in a general election?
	Or is he a hand grenade that is going to blow up in their hand?
	Right now, the polls suggest that Republicans are very much on board with the idea that Trump is still the best guy to nominate.
	The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump riding very high at 54%, has Ron DeSantis at 15%, has Vivek Ramaswamy at 6, Pence at 5, Haley at 3, everyone below that.
	Now, the polling on Ramaswamy is very weird.
	As I say, full disclosure, I'm friendly with Vivek.
	Of course, I'm friendly with many of these candidates is the truth, but Vivek's polling is super weird because all of the online polls have him at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and all of the phone polls have him at 2.
	Which suggests that these may not be the most reliable polling statistics for Vivek because he's the only one who you're seeing picking up support right now other than Trump.
	Trump is actually on a bit of a high right now in terms of his polling numbers.
	DeSantis has declined in the RealClearPolitics polling average from about 25% in April all
	the way down to about 15% today.
	Vivek in the RealClearPolitics polling average has picked up about three points, but it's
	really Trump who soared during that same period.
	Trump went from about 45% in the beginning of April to 54% today.
	Well, that dynamic was clearly on display in Iowa over the weekend.
	It was the Iowa State Fair, which is this giant, huge fair that happens every four years
	in Iowa.
	I believe it happens every year in Iowa, but it really, you know, breaks into the open during primary season.
	Because everybody goes there hoping to win votes in the Iowa caucuses.
	Right now, the polling in Iowa is significantly narrower than the polling nationally.
	The polling in Iowa shows that Donald Trump is still, for sure, in the lead.
	But his lead over DeSantis is significantly smaller.
	The last New York Times-Siena poll had Trump at 44 and DeSantis at 20.
	Which, of course, is still a big gap.
	It's a 24-point gap.
	But that 24-point gap is not a 40-point gap.
	So that is a fairly significant difference.
	Well, DeSantis showed up and did an interview with Iowa's Governor Kim Reynolds, who also showed up at the Iowa State Fair.
	And here's what DeSantis had to say.
	I believe if you have an opportunity to do good things for your community or your country, that you have a responsibility to do that and to get that done.
	And so that's really, I think, influenced me all the way up to the present in terms of what I'm looking to do.
	Like with running for president, I'm not running to be somebody.
	I'm running to do things on behalf of the country and for the American people.
	Okay, so, obviously, that's a nice line, but the big problem for DeSantis is that in terms of who is a more exciting candidate, who's the one who's going to suck all the air out of the room, there's no question that Trump is a much more exciting candidate.
	According to the Washington Post, the crowd that had craved to watch Governor DeSantis flip pork chops with Iowa's governor suddenly looked toward the sky.
	Donald Trump's plane was arriving.
	They clapped and cheered.
	We love Trump!
	Some of them had chanted earlier.
	When Trump got to the pork tent midday, with DeSantis' camp far away resting in the shade, he didn't partake in the actual grilling.
	So, that kind of behavior could theoretically harm Trump in an Iowa caucus.
	Remember, he didn't win the Iowa caucuses the first time around.
	It was actually Ted Cruz who won the Iowa caucuses.
	Trump then did what he has become famous for doing.
	He denied that Ted Cruz had won the Iowa caucus.
	He suggested that Ted Cruz had stolen it from Ben Carson, that Ben Carson had dropped out, And that he had not formally dropped out, but Ted Cruz was telling people he had dropped out.
	And that meant that he picked up Ben Carson's votes and they should have gone to Trump and really Trump won Iowa and all of the rest.
	So Trump, you know, theoretically could lose Iowa again.
	But here's the footage of Trump's plane arriving.
	And again, there is the man does have a political magic to him in terms of retail politics.
	You stop making them do gender pronoun classes.
	Like that's gotta stop.
	There is a Trump plane.
	Be likeable, Ron.
	We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!
	Now, what did all of this mean?
	Well, it actually turned into a bit of a brawl.
	A bunch of Trump fans, who are being extraordinarily rude, which, again, not super shocking.
	We saw some of this behavior in the 2016 election as well.
	They started trying to drown out the interview between Kim Reynolds and Ron DeSantis.
	I gotta say, for a lot of Republican voters, if they look at this, They have to wonder, is this the sort of behavior that actually is going to win in November of 2024?
	I don't know that it's going to appeal to any people who are going to be swing voters or suburban moms in 2024.
	Anyway, here was Kim Reynolds versus Trump fans.
	So Ron's out there doing the 99 County Tour.
	I think you may be ahead of me.
	Hey, you know what?
	You know what?
	We're in Iowa.
	And in Iowa, we're Iowa nice.
	So let's give everybody the opportunity to hear our candidates.
	Okay, so, you know, the question as to whether that is going to be an appeal is an open one.
	For his part, DeSantis went after Trump because Trump had been going after Reynolds.
	So he's campaigning well in Iowa.
	I mean, actually, the DeSantis team seems fairly confident that they're going to win Iowa.
	The truth is that in the Republican primaries, DeSantis doesn't just need to win Iowa.
	He needs to win Iowa and New Hampshire.
	He needs to win both of those.
	If he loses New Hampshire after winning Iowa, then Trump is probably going to win in South Carolina. He
	really needs to start consolidating the field very, very early in this race, but he's doing the
	hard on the ground work, the slogging work that is necessary. Here's DeSantis going
	after Trump for attacking Reynolds.
	Governor, you were just with Governor Reynolds. All the Republicans here are
	joining Governor Reynolds except for the former president.
	Is that a missed opportunity for him?
	I think that Donald Trump's attacks on Kim Reynolds are totally out of bounds.
	I couldn't disagree with it anymore.
	And she's done really nothing but do a great job.
	She's never done anything to him.
	But that's just how he operates, to attack one of the best governors in the country.
	I mean, obviously DeSantis is right about all of this, but this is really one of the questions.
	Again, to go back to the hand grenade analogy, the question is, is the hand grenade effective or is the hand grenade not effective?
	If the idea was that Trump was going to come in and he was going to wreck the status quo, the question is, what does that mean?
	Wreck the status quo in terms of actual policy because the truth is that in terms of upending democratic policy, DeSantis has done a hell of a lot more in the state of Florida than Trump did as president of the United States.
	But if what we mean is that Trump ticks off all the people we like to watch ticked off, there's no one better in politics, probably in history, than Trump at that.
	The question is whether that actually adds up to a policy win.
	So Republican voters are going to have to decide kind of what they want here.
	Do they want the best shot at winning independence?
	Do they want the best shot at winning nationally?
	Do they want the best shot at winning in places like Georgia and Wisconsin and Arizona?
	Or do they want the guy who's going to piss off the left the most?
	Because if they want the guy who's going to piss off the left the most, You're never going to do better than Trump.
	Trump ticks off the left better than literally anyone in the history of humanity.
	Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the latest on the economy, because again, Joe Biden remains an incredibly weak candidate.
	And I focus on that because it is important to recognize that if Republicans lose in 2024, that is Republicans' own fault.
	I think it was Republicans' fault they lost in 2020.
	They're running against a doddering old fool who could not leave his basement, and whose entire party was endorsing mass rioting in the streets, as well as a giant national COVID lockdown, and somehow Republicans found a way to lose.
	You can blame whoever you want for that, but the fact is that Republicans should have run away with that election.
	They didn't.
	So if they blow 2024, I'm not sure who you blame then.
	They blew 2018, they blew 2020, they blew 2022.
	If they blow 2024, at some point can somebody be held responsible for blowing all of that, or is it just going to be pointing the finger again?
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
	First, if you're like most Americans, you might be struggling to make ends meet.
	By the time you pay the bill, fill up your car, and grocery shop, there's almost nothing left.
	Everything is now more expensive.
	Most of you are paying these bills with a credit card.
	While consumer debt rose over $1 trillion in the last year, it's the biggest increase in 20 years.
	If you're a homeowner, there is a way out.
	You should call my friends over at American Financing.
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	They're saving people up to $1,000 a month clothing as fast as 10 days.
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	866-721-3300.
	Also, If you're planning to send your kids off to college this year, you know that they are going to try to brainwash your kids.
	Well, you don't need your kids brainwashed.
	In fact, you will need them regular washed.
	And this is why you need Jeremy's Razors.
	Because Jeremy's Razors, well, not only do we now do the razors, but they will also give you the magnificent shampoo, the body wash, They'll give you the hand soap, give you everything you need.
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	And, get him a Precision 5 razor with welded steel blades and a flip-back trimmer that will groom his face, not his worldview.
	Help your son escape academia's leftist indoctrination by more than just a close shave.
	Go to jeremysrazors.com for major deals and give Jeremy's Back to College Bundles a full ride today.
	Meanwhile, the death toll continues to mount over in Maui and the President of the United States is back at Rehoboth Beach again.
	So he just went on a 14-day beach vacation and he came back for like four days and now he went back to the beach because he is no longer with us.
	He's no longer sentient.
	And he was asked apparently about the rising debt toll in Hawaii while he was on the beach.
	And he said no comment and then he headed home.
	So slow clap for a very, very caring, deeply compassionate president of the United States.
	Meanwhile, we now have more stats about how much families are paying than they did two years ago.
	According to CNN Business of all places, the typical American household spent $709 more in July than they did two years ago to buy the same exact goods and services according to Moody's.
	That's a massive increase.
	Massive increase!
	That is $700 a month for the same goods and services.
	You extend that over the course of the year, you're taking $8,400 that you're spending more this year than you were two years ago.
	Those are huge numbers.
	Because remember, whenever Joe Biden says, well, you know, the inflation rate is coming down every month.
	No, no, no, no.
	The increase in inflation is coming down every month, except for last month when it didn't.
	But it was coming down every month.
	But that just means that you're adding inflation on top of inflation.
	It's like saying that you spent $1,000 last month on your credit card and this month you spent $900.
	So you brought it down by $100.
	I mean, that's true, but you also added $900 to your debt, which is what Joe Biden has been doing with regard to inflation.
	Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, said high inflation over the past two-plus years has done a lot of economic damage.
	Most of that increase in household spending is driven by housing costs, which have surged.
	He added that families are also spending more at the grocery store on buying, maintaining, and insuring vehicles and on recreational services like cable.
	Paychecks have not grown by nearly as much as the cost of living.
	This is why I keep saying that gravity is going to drag the economy back down.
	The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece on America's credit rating.
	According to Spencer Jacob, writing for the Wall Street Journal, investors have historically paid a steep penalty to hunker down in super-safe short-term government securities.
	For example, $100 invested in three-month Treasury bills in 1928 grew to only $2,141 by the end of last year, while it became $46,000 invested in medium-grade corporate bonds and a whopping $624,000 if invested in stocks, according to data from NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran.
	Especially in the years following the financial crisis, anything short-term and safe paid next to nothing.
	But the Federal Reserve's fight against inflation has amplified the risk of an unthinkable fiscal crisis made possible by decades of Washington dysfunction.
	So that means that people are actually spending a bunch of money to get into short-term government securities, which pays you almost nothing.
	That's how freaked out people are.
	Cash might be king.
	Although they were called certificates of confiscation in the inflationary 1970s, longer-term treasuries have been the go-to asset in times of crisis.
	The 10 years no yield is literally the risk-free rate used to value all other securities.
	But the government's pile of debt has now swelled following the war on terror, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
	Low interest rates and Fed bond buying masked the strain.
	Interest costs were recently no higher than in the early 1990s.
	But the Treasury barely seized the opportunity to lock in those rock-bottom rates by issuing more long-term notes and bonds, and now it is too late.
	Long-term budget forecasts say the U.S.
	debt held by the public will surpass its GDP this fiscal year.
	Interest on the debt will equal three quarters of discretionary non-defense spending.
	By 2031, it will be as large.
	That's right.
	Interest on our national debt will be the same as all discretionary non-defense spending in the American budget by 2031.
	So, we are in serious trouble.
	Actually, that forecast is probably too optimistic.
	The swelling pile of debt means minor changes in assumptions that now have huge consequences.
	About three quarters of treasuries must be rolled over within five years.
	Compound interest has a way of quickly making a bad situation worse.
	So what you're watching basically is that America's debt problem is snowballing.
	And it's going to get worse and worse and worse.
	And Joe Biden has exacerbated that problem.
	So what exactly do Democrats have to rely upon here?
	Well, they can't rely on their good governance.
	So what they're gonna rely on is trying to scare the American people into believing that democracy itself is about to collapse.
	This is what Kamala Harris is saying.
	This is why January 6th is at the center of everything that Democrats do.
	Here's Kamala Harris over the weekend, world's most untalented politician, making her case that democracy is at stake, of course.
	What is it that you have on your mind when you wake up every morning?
	Our democracy.
	Oh, give me a break.
	Rev, I think everything is at stake right now.
	When a democracy is intact, it strengthens the people.
	It protects and fights for fundamental freedoms, individual rights.
	It's a fight for order against chaos.
	It strengthens.
	On the other hand, democracy?
	Incredibly fragile.
	It will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it.
	Man, when you pile on truisms that way, man, that is some bad politicking there from Kamala
	Harris.
	She is truly awful at this.
	Like, truly, truly awful at this.
	But she also does declare herself a role model, so that's exciting.
	A role model to dumb people everywhere.
	Here's Kamala Harris.
	But the thing about being a role model, people watch what you do to see if it lines up with
	what you say.
	What she does is nothing.
	It's nothing.
	She does nothing for a living.
	But, in the end, this is all they have.
	They're gonna try and scare Americans about the Republican Party.
	And the truth is, so far, it's worked.
	I mean, Republicans can say that it hasn't, but it absolutely has.
	Since 2016, when Donald Trump was elected, ever since then, the case Democrats have made is, the crazy has to stop.
	And then they point at a bunch of Republican candidates, ranging from Hershel Walker in Georgia, to Blake Masters in Arizona, To Doug Mastroianno in Pennsylvania.
	And voters go, hmm.
	And they listen to it.
	And it turns out that Republicans should stop banging their head against a brick wall.
	Perhaps the best way to run against somebody supremely unpalatable, like Joe Biden, supremely irritating, like Kamala Harris, is to run somebody who's actually somewhat palatable.
	Because the truth is, if Republicans can't get excited to vote against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I don't know what business Republicans have getting into a voting booth.
	I mean, just because Joe Biden is an incredibly boring elderly fellow does not mean you shouldn't be excited to vote against him and get him out of office.
	But I suppose that if all of politics just becomes a battle of personality, then we are in a race to the bottom from here until the end of time.
	Probably.
	So, you know, dark thoughts here on Monday, but the reality is that Democrats are incredibly beatable.
	And if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot be beat, I, honest to God, don't understand what Republicans are doing for a living.
	I remember a couple of years ago, I spoke at a House Republican summit.
	This is before 2022.
	And I said to them, if you guys don't take back the House, every one of you should be fired because it's a target-rich environment.
	This is a target-rich environment.
	If Republicans cannot actually achieve victory against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I don't know what they do for a living or why we should continue to support them in any way, shape, or form.
	And I'm sorry, but blaming everybody else for losing is not going to cut it.
	All right, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, last week, Which one of you is from the New York Times?
	bad candidate for Senate in Arizona.
	And I hold by that because she lost to a wet rag in Katie Hobbs.
	However, she did have herself a nice moment in Iowa over the weekend.
	She was asked about whether there are in fact two genders.
	She was milking a cow at the time and here was her response.
	Which one of you is from the New York Times?
	You know there's only two genders, right?
	There's only two genders and they know that in Iowa.
	I challenge the New York Times reporter and the Washington Post reporter to try to milk a cow and then try to milk a bull and see how that goes.
	Okay, I laughed.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So, there is a song that has gone completely viral by a Virginia country singer named Oliver Anthony, who's a former factory worker, who was apparently really, really down on his luck, and he was asked to play a song at sort of a local event.
	And the song that he played is one that he calls, Rich Men North of Richmond, which of course is a reference to the people who occupy Washington, D.C.
	And this thing has gone unbelievably viral.
	I mean, millions and millions of views.
	Here's what it sounds like.
	I've been sellin' my soul Workin' all day Overtime hours For bullshit pay So I can sit out here And waste my life away Drag back home And drown my troubles away It's a damn shame What the world's gotten to For people like me And people like you Wish I could just wake up And it not be true But it is Oh it is, living in the new world, with an old soul.
	Rich man knows the rich man Lord knows it all Just wanna have total control Wanna know what you think Wanna know what you do And they don't think you know But I know that you do Cause your dollar ain't sh** And it's taxed to no end Knows the rich man Knows the rich man Okay, so this song obviously has hit a nerve with people because it is, I think, the cry of a lot of people in the United States who are just trying to work a job and make their way in life and feel like there are too many people who have their hand in their pocket, particularly elites in the federal government who believe that their money should go to other people.
	Some of the lyrics in the song are, Lord, we got folks in the street ain't got nothing to eat and the obese milking welfare.
	Well, God, if you're five foot three and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not pay for your bag of fudge rounds.
	Fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	So he posted a video explaining.
	He said, things were not good for a lot of people.
	In some respects, I was one of those people.
	I'd wasted a lot of nights getting high and getting drunk.
	I'd sort of gotten to a point in my life where even things I did care about didn't mean anything
	to me anymore.
	This isn't a Dr. Phillips, but I found an outlet in this music and I started uploading
	a couple of songs.
	He said, the universal thing I see is no matter how much effort the working class puts into
	whatever it is they're doing, they can't quite get ahead because the dollar's not worth enough.
	They're being overtaxed.
	I want to be a voice for those people, and not just them, but humans in general.
	As long as you're above the dirt, you got a fighting chance.
	So, um, this thing has, again, gone incredibly viral.
	He says that he is not a right-winger.
	He says that this is pretty much dead center.
	He said because he's more isolationist in terms of foreign policy.
	But, uh, he talks about, in the last part of the song, suicide rates, mental health, depression.
	He says there's no reason why that sort of stuff should be happening in this country.
	So, um, John Rich, friend to The Daily Wire, of course, he's offered to produce Oliver's album.
	And, uh, the video's gaining all sorts of traction, obviously, and, uh, and it should.
	This is a talented guy.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Alright, so I don't know why Disney keeps deploying Rachel Zegler to say things about Snow White that are likely to alienate pretty much anybody who would ever want to watch this movie.
	So they're making a live version of Snow White, a live-action version of Snow White, which is really stupid since the original is, of course, a film classic.
	Rachel Zegler, who is playing Snow... diversity.
	Because we can't do Snow White anymore, because obviously that'd be racist.
	Right?
	Tiana must remain a black princess forever, but Snow White cannot be a white princess, even if her literal name is Snow White, because she has skin as white as snow.
	That is literally the line in the movie.
	I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't make it up.
	That's just what the fairy tale is.
	It's not called, you know, any other color.
	It's called Snow White.
	That's literally what it's called.
	In any case, Rachel Zegler also feels the necessity, apparently, to just crap on the myth and crap on the original movie.
	So, over the weekend, here she was, explaining that the prince in Snow White is actually the bad guy.
	I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so.
	There's a big focus on her love story, with a guy who literally stalks her.
	Weird!
	Weird.
	So we didn't do that this time.
	So no prince, or a different kind of prince?
	We have a different approach to what I'm sure a lot of people will assume is a love story, just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnham.
	Great dude.
	It's one of those things that I think everyone's going to have their assumptions about what it's actually going to be, but it's really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful.
	It is so wonderful.
	Love is super bad, guys.
	It's super bad.
	And the prince is a creepy stalker.
	Did you know that?
	You probably didn't, because if you watch the movie, you'll remember Snow White literally standing above a well and singing a song where she says that she wishes for the one I love to find me today.
	That's literally the lyric.
	You may remember it from the original movie.
	But apparently, the prince then responding to that by finishing her song, which is what happens, That means he's a creepy stalker now.
	You know what would've been better?
	Honestly, it would've been better if he just left her to be dead.
	That would've been better.
	I mean, she was there, she's on the buyer, right?
	I mean, she's lying there, they've got the glass over her.
	She's pretty well preserved.
	He should've just left her alone.
	And she would've been dead!
	And everyone would've been happy, right?
	I mean, not so happy because she would've been dead, but still, he's a creepy rape stalker.
	And so it would've been better if she had bitten into the apple and died, and then she never would've gotten kissed, and then she would be dead.
	You know who else would be dead?
	Also Sleeping Beauty.
	She'd still be dead.
	In fact, there's like a bunch of princesses who would still be dead if we just, you know, abided by Me Too.
	Because it turns out that even when a woman is in love with a man, and even when they want to be together, the worst thing that could possibly happen is for him to kiss her while she is dead.
	To wake her up from being dead.
	That's the worst thing you could do in a myth.
	I mean, obviously, the best thing, probably the prince should have come along, he should have buried her.
	I mean, that would've been the best thing, is to bury her alive, quasi.
	That would've been the best thing.
	But at least this isn't gonna be about love.
	I mean, honest to God, what is Disney doing?
	What are they doing?
	They are so high on their own supply.
	It is insane.
	What do they think the market for this is?
	A quarter of the parents were like, I'm desperate to bring my child to a movie that is not about Snow White, but is in fact about a self-empowered woman that's like atomic blonde, but for children.
	Let's do that.
	It's geniuses.
	Alrighty.
	Well, the rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be getting into the mailbag.
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