All Episodes
Aug. 30, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
45:54
There’s No Such Thing As Free Medicine
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, it's an old saw in politics.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well, apparently there are a lot of people out there who believe there is such a thing as free medicine.
And the way that they are basically making the case is that Big Pharma in the United States makes a lot of money.
Now, there are a lot of problems with Big Pharma, for sure.
There are drugs that are really not great for people that are marketed as though they are amazing for people.
The most obvious example being Oxycontin.
But it is also true that every single drug you take was developed by Big Pharma.
Every single medicine you take was developed by Big Pharma.
So if Big Pharma is responsible for OxyContin, they're also responsible for Advil.
If Big Pharma is responsible for the mRNA vaccine that you didn't want to take, Big Pharma is also responsible for all of the chemotherapy medications that your mother is taking.
So Big Pharma is responsible for all of those things.
And the medical advances in the United States have led to a tremendous Expansion of life expectancy in the United States, the five-year cancer survival rate in the United States is much higher than anywhere else on earth.
The reason being, we have better medicines than anywhere else on earth.
It also happens to be that we develop a huge number of medical patents right here in the United States.
Well, the reason for that is because the United States, when it comes to drug pricing, is maybe the last country on earth that actively allows patients and doctors to buy drugs at the price that pharma is selling the drugs at, as opposed to using the government To cram down particular pricing.
Now, this has been a bugaboo for a lot of politicians, because they look at Canada, or they look at Germany, or they look at Europe, or any place else on earth, and they say, well, they're buying those American drugs for far less than we are paying for those American drugs.
This is what led, yesterday, the Biden administration to, through the Inflation Reduction Act, that had nothing to do with inflation reduction at all, it turns out that pretty much the entire thing was about giving away money for green boondoggles, and also apparently screwing up the drug markets, Yesterday, the U.S.
government named 10 drugs that will be subject to the first-ever price negotiations by Medicare, taking aim at some of the most widely used and costliest medicines in the country.
According to the Wall Street Journal, at stake is arguably the government's strongest effort to date to tackle high drug costs if drug makers can't persuade courts to scuttle the negotiating powers that Medicare was granted last year.
On the list of targeted medicines announced by the Biden administration Tuesday are treatments for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year or more, including the blood thinner Eliquis and diabetes treatment Jardians.
Medicare spent $50.5 billion on those drugs last year, according to JPMorgan Chase.
The 10 drugs include many drugs fighting diabetes.
There's an arthritis drug from Amgen called Enbrel, it's on the list.
There's a psoriasis drug from Johnson & Johnson.
Stacey Duzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
said this is a major step toward reducing drug spending.
And of course, Joe Biden is very excited about all of this. He says we pay way more for prescription
drugs than any other economy on the world, in the world. And here he was yesterday
explaining that if it's sold in Chicago, you are paying more money than if you are buying
it in Toronto or Paris.
A drug company that makes a drug here in America, if it's sold in Chicago, you can buy the same
drug in Toronto or Paris cheaper than you can buy it in Toronto.
I mean, excuse me, in Chicago.
Okay, well, that's true.
But the reason that that's true is because basically the United States has allowed a bunch of other countries to free ride off the prices that Americans are paying.
So, what exactly would the downstream effects of this be?
Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, the positive downstream effects would be lower prices.
Those would take effect in 2026.
Medicare would save an estimated $25 billion a year by 2031.
The savings would mostly go to Medicare because it pays the bulk of the cost of the drugs.
The reductions wouldn't directly affect the price patients pay at the pharmacy counter.
But the price cuts would have an indirect impact on people's spending.
Medicare plans to use the savings to put a $2,000 annual cap on how much members have to pay out of pocket for drugs starting in 2025.
So it sounds like an unalloyed good, right?
Everything is great.
It's awesome.
There's only one problem, which is that medical innovation in the United States is about to crater.
And when the government can cram down pricing in any particular area and remove the profit margin from the actual pricing mechanism, that means people are not going to invest the kinds of money that are necessary in order to create the drugs in the first place.
In the same way that rent control decreases people building and constructing, because why would you build a new apartment knowing there's no profit in it?
The investment in the biotech sphere is going to utterly dry up if the government via Medicare continues to cram down policies like this one.
By the way, the policy itself is absolutely wild.
I mean, the way that they are cramming this thing down is that they go to the companies, that Medicare goes to the companies that produce the drugs, and then they tell them that they are now going to be subjected to this sort of arbitrary choice where they pick your drug out of the lineup and they say, from now on, we are going to cram down a price on you.
The CMS can only select drugs that have been on the market for a certain period of time.
For instance, a small molecule drug, a product in pill form like aspirin, must have been on the market for 9 years or more to be negotiation eligible.
A biologic drug, a vaccine or a gene therapy, must have been marketed for 13 years or more for eligibility.
There are a couple of exemptions that drug makers can use.
They can say that they're small biotechs and they manufacture like one drug or biologic drugs that have a high likelihood of getting biosimilar competition within a couple of years on the list.
There's no reason to cram down the price.
There's going to be somebody who develops a generic, but this is the start of the negotiation process.
Basically, they are notified by Medicare that they are now subject to a price cram down and they have to decide then whether to enter into talks.
If they choose not to, they would then face an excise tax scaling up to 95%.
95% so they they would still be able to sell their drug to medicare but medicare would then claw back via the power of the federal government 95% 95% of any income from that drug or they would have to leave medicare or medicaid altogether which by the way doesn't help patients on medicare or medicaid a whole hell of a lot Assuming drug companies then enter into the talks, the final negotiated rate on the first set of drugs applies to the pharmacy counter starting January 1st, 2026.
So, what is the downstream effect of all of this?
Well, here is the thing that people are not seeing.
To develop a drug, yes, you're looking at the drug, you see it come across the counter, you're like, whoa, look at the sticker shock on that thing.
That is, and it doesn't cost nearly that much to produce the drug.
The amount of money that is put in R&D on drugs is insane.
I mean, totally crazy.
I know this because I personally invest in biotech companies.
The amount of money that is sunk into biotech to develop like a working drug is totally crazy.
And I promise you, if you remove the profit margin from these companies, there will just be less investment in this sphere.
Drugs that would have been produced just will not be produced.
I'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, I want to talk to you about DailyWire's most trusted privacy partner and premier sponsor of this show, ExpressVPN.
We are living in an era of tyranny.
The internet is at the frontier of a battle for control.
When powerful interests want to push their agenda, they get big government and big tech to silence any voice that doesn't fit the narrative.
Americans are being forced to give up the very thing that makes Americans great, our freedom of speech.
Well, I don't like my voice being censored.
I also don't like being monitored by big tech and big government.
That's why I use ExpressVPN.
You should do the same.
The problem with big tech, not only do they attempt to censor you, they also track what you do online.
What you're searching for, the videos you watch, everything you click.
They can match your activity to your true identity using your device's unique IP address.
When I use ExpressVPN, they can't see my IP address at all.
My identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server.
Plus, ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of my network traffic.
For protection from hackers and eavesdroppers, ExpressVPN is really easy to use.
I love no matter what device I'm on, the app literally has one button.
You tap it, you're protected.
It's that simple.
Stop letting big tech and big government control your information.
Defend your rights.
Protect yourself at expressvpn.com slash ben today.
Get an extra three-month free on a one-year package.
That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben.
Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more.
Okay, so in order to understand why the government can't just simply name prices for drugs and then magically the price comes down, you have to see the downstream effect.
The prices on those drugs will indeed come down.
It's the drugs that will never be developed that are the unintended consequences.
So, in 2019 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion in 2019.
$83 billion on R&D, research and development.
According to one 2020 study, which covered 632 new therapeutic drugs and biologic agents approved by the FDA, the estimated median capitalized research and development cost per product was $985 million, counting expenditures on failed trials.
But you should count because the vast majority of drugs that are originally developed never make it to market.
Somewhere between 85 and 90% of all drugs that enter phase one testing never make it through FDA approval process.
But they cost a lot of money.
So that means that for every drug that actually hits the market, and it's not that many drugs every year.
You're talking maybe like a dozen, couple dozen drugs hitting the market every year.
It's costing like almost a billion, by some estimates, somewhere between 1.3 and 2.4 billion dollars a year.
To develop each one of the, well, $1.3 and $2.4 billion to develop each one of those drugs.
That's how much money these companies have to spend up front to even develop a working drug.
So how do they make that money back?
What makes it profitable?
Why would they spend $1.3, $2.4 billion on creating a drug?
Or risk hundreds of millions of dollars on drugs that aren't ever going to make it out of phase three?
Well, the reason is because on the other end, there has to be some sort of way to earn back that money.
Now, Americans do bear the brunt of the cost because other countries are free-riding.
We also captured the industry upside.
It used to be, in the 1970s, that a huge percentage of drugs were actually developed in Europe.
Today, a huge percentage of drugs are developed in the United States.
According to one 2010 study, the United States accounted for 42% of prescription drug spending and 40% of total GDP among innovator countries, and was responsible for 43.7% of what are called NMEs, new molecular entities.
According to the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry is responsible for about 332,000 jobs in the United States.
In other words, it's a big business.
And it's a big business because there's actual freedom of pricing in the United States.
So what exactly would happen if Medicare gets away with cramming down this pricing structure?
According to National Review's Jeff Zimera, drug development would drop off.
And that's not according to him, it's according to the CBO.
The Congressional Budget Office has predicted the scheme provided for under the Inflation Reduction Act would lead to a manufactured revenue loss of 15%.
Such a cut in CBO's predicted 45 new drugs per year would suggest around 7 fewer drugs per year.
That means 121 drugs lost over an 18-year time horizon, as one report estimated.
So which drugs would be most likely to disappear?
The drugs most likely to disappear would actually be the ones that are for rare conditions, right?
The ones that have less of a profit margin to begin with.
Those drugs would just go away.
So you can forget about drugs being developed for the rare condition that your mother just got diagnosed with.
Those are just not going to be in the market anymore because who the hell is going to develop them if there's no money on the other end?
There's another solution to this, by the way.
That solution would be to aggressively make other countries pay their fair share when it comes to American medication.
We could use every lever at our disposal in order to do that.
This is where a trade war would actually be somewhat useful.
Saying to Canada, or saying to the National Health Service, you guys are going to pay American companies what we here in the United States pay.
And we're going to use the levers at our disposal in order to make that happen?
That would be well worthwhile.
Because right now, basically, America is subsidizing the rest of the world when it comes to drug creation.
But the solution to that isn't for American government to then cram down a pricing mechanism on the big pharma companies and the drug companies and the medicine companies.
When you do that, you just get rid of all the innovation.
Imagine, for a second, if the United States and any other industry decided that we were just going to ratchet down cost, supposedly government cost, on any other area of American life.
Take the tech sector, or take the financial sector.
We're just going to ratchet up taxation.
And we're going to do so in order to lower, supposedly, the cost to the American taxpayer.
We're just going to tax that particular sector.
What do you think happens?
People flee.
The innovation goes away.
This is simple supply and demand kind of stuff.
When you get rid of the profit margin in a particular product line, there is less innovation.
There's less investment in that area.
It's very simple.
But Joe Biden doesn't care about that.
He cares about the top-line look that he's bringing down cost.
The lost innovation is of no consequence to him whatsoever.
Because when it comes to Bidenomics, second-order thinking is completely irrelevant.
It's all first-order thinking.
I don't like the price of that drug.
Therefore, I will use government to cram down a new price on that drug.
Sure, it means that a bunch of drugs aren't going to participate in Medicare.
You're still gonna have to get them over the counter.
Sure, it means that you're going to lose the innovation by these companies or have them base themselves somewhere else.
But at least you'll feel good about having supposedly brought down the cost.
By the way, like Democrats care about the cost of Medicare.
Since when have Democrats cared about the cost of Medicare?
They won't even restructure Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which represent 66% of the American mandatory budget every year.
Anytime anybody mentions, maybe we should restructure those programs in order to lower the costs, they're like, no, no, no, we can't touch it.
Apparently the only way to touch it is to confiscate money and innovation from the private sector.
Genius ideas.
We'll get to another genius idea that's going under the radar and is being crammed down by the Biden administration via the National Labor Relations Board in just one second.
First, it can be very tough to maintain a healthy lifestyle with a busy schedule.
So I'm pretty busy and I have another problem.
I hate vegetables.
They're bad.
But I still need the nutrition to be gotten from vegetables.
Balance of Nature fruits and veggies are a great way to make sure you're getting essential nutritional ingredients every single day.
Through Balance of Nature's advanced cold vacuum process, the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients of the fruits and veggies are preserved, so you can get that vital nutrition in each capsule.
Balance of Nature is a whole food supplement with no additives, fillers, extracts, synthetics, pesticides, or added sugar.
The only thing in their capsules?
The pure fruits and veggies, the stuff that you need.
Balance of Nature sends a bunch of their product down to the studio.
It's kosher, so I've been taking it.
It's great, and it is very, very useful.
I'm joined by other members of the Daily Wire staff in taking Balance of Nature.
They may be keeping our company running at this point.
I was really excited to find out, as I say, that the product is certified kosher.
So, you know, if you are a kosher keeper, then it's good for you.
Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Shapiro for 40% off your first Order as a preferred customer.
That's balanceofnature.com.
Promo code Shapiro.
Get 40% off your first preferred order.
Again, balanceofnature.com.
Promo code Shapiro.
40% off your first preferred order.
Okay, so the other big move the Biden administration has made over the course of the last week is going completely unnoticed, and it's going to utterly wreck a huge number of industries.
What exactly is this big move?
Well, the National Labor Relations Board.
And I'm going to say it up front because they've actually come after me for making jokes about them.
I'm not kidding.
They literally sent us a letter because I once made a joke about my employees and unions.
We abide by all laws and regulations here at Daily Wire.
Also, the National Labor Relations Board is a joke and a garbage institution that shouldn't be a part of American government.
It is, effectively speaking, a tool of organized labor against the American taxpayer and the worker and businesses.
That is what it is.
The NLRB is a blot on American life.
We abide by all available laws and regulations here at Daily Wire.
Okay, so, with all of that said, I'm gonna keep saying it over and over because the fascistic NLRB, literally, if you make a joke, they literally will launch an investigation into you, requiring you to obtain a lawyer to explain what a joke is.
This is a thing that didn't just happen to me, it also happened to Ben Dominich over at The Federalist, it's happened to a bunch of people.
So, these dolts over at the NLRB, or union-based socialists, they have decided, they've now issued a decision in a case called CEMEX Construction Materials Pacific.
They announced a new framework for determining when employers are required to bargain with unions without a representation election.
So normally, you'd have to have a representation election, right?
You have your entire base of your employees vote on whether to form a union or not.
Now, I'm not even in favor of that.
I think the National Labor Relations Act is ridiculous on its face.
If employees wish to unionize, then by all means, go ahead and unionize.
But that means that you have to get all the employees to be part of the union, not by voting a majority, but by getting them to actually join the union.
If I don't wish to join the union, I wish to independently negotiate my salary with the employer, that should be my prerogative in a free country.
I shouldn't be forced to join a union just because a majority of my employees, of my fellow employees, wish to join a union.
What if I'm better at my job than they are?
What if I'm willing to work for less because I need the money?
There are a bunch of reasons why you might not want to join a union, which is presumably why union membership in the United States has dropped to a small fraction of what it once was.
Union membership in the private sector in the United States is now, what, 7%?
Something like that?
There's a reason for that.
It's because unions weren't doing their jobs.
They were just bankrupting the companies that they were siphoning money away from.
In any case, many of these unions They would have a representation election.
The National Labor Relations Act posited that if a majority of members of your employee base vote to form a union, you then, by law, must negotiate with the union.
Again, as I say, that's ridiculous.
You should be able to say, I don't wish to negotiate with the union, and I'm sorry if I lose those employees, but there are other employees out there.
But that's not what the National Labor Relations Act says.
We abide by all laws and regulations here at The Daily Wear.
Here's what they're doing now.
At least, they used to have to hold an election.
They used to have to actually have an election.
Now, the National Labor Relations Board is saying the opposite.
They say, the new framework will both effectuate employees' right to bargain through representatives of their own choosing and improve the fairness and integrity of board-conducted elections.
Under the new framework, When a union requests recognition on the basis that a majority of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit have designated the union as the representative, an employer must either recognize and bargain with the union or promptly file a petition seeking election.
So, let's be clear.
They're now saying there's no election.
There's no election to determine whether a union was formed at the local Amazon plant.
It was just some union organizer went through and had everybody sign a petition saying, I wish to join a union.
Now, one of the problems with that is you can bring an awful lot of pressure to bear.
Unions for years have brought enormous amounts of pressure to bear on individual employees.
You know what all your buddies will think if you don't sign this here petition?
You wanna screw Bob over there?
Bob knows where you live.
Which is why there used to be in this country, you know, when we go to vote, there's the secret ballot.
With unions, they're now moving against that.
They're now basically saying, no more secret ballot.
You're going to be able to go around to your other employees and you're going to have them sign a petition.
And now the company has two choices.
One, they can either accept the union as fully formed and negotiate with it, or they can petition seeking an election.
However, If an employer who seeks an election commits any unfair labor practice that would require setting aside the election, the petition will be dismissed, and rather than rerunning the election, the board will order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union.
So, what does this mean?
This means, let's say that you find out, for example, that somebody has actually been pressuring employees inside your company to sign a petition, and they didn't want to, and so you fired them for interference with your labor force.
The NLRB could come in the back door and they could say, ah, you weren't allowed to fire that person.
And now you are automatically forced to bargain with the union.
Automatically forced to bargain with the union.
It's a major change.
This is why the American prospect is extremely excited.
They say, So a lot of the employers would basically say, let's hold an election, but let's wait a month so we can actually, you know, poll people and give them some material as to the cost of implementing a union here.
Now the board's like, no, gotta hold the election right away.
So let's just be clear.
curtailing employees to ability to delay them often indefinitely.
So a lot of the employers would basically say let's hold an election but
let's wait a month so we can actually you know poll people and give them some
material as to the cost of implementing a union here. Now the board's like no,
gotta hold the election right away. So let's just be clear, no election necessary in the
first place because you can get people to sign a petition. Two, if they do request
an election, the election has to be held like now.
And three, you are not allowed to take any action the NLRB deems irresponsible or bad.
And if so, they'll just automatically declare the union.
As the American Prospect, a far-left magazine says, taken together, this one-two punch effectively makes union organizing possible again after decades in which unpunished employer illegality was the most decisive factor in reducing the nation's rate of private sector unionization from roughly 35% to a bare 6%.
All of this is rude, by the way, in a perverse and stupid version of economic history in which it was unionization in the American workforce that led to American prosperity.
That is unbased in American economic history.
It just isn't.
I'll get to that in just one second.
Labor Day signals that fall is fast approaching.
Apple picking, fall leaves, chilly nights.
They're on the horizon with Legacy Box.
You can cozy up and watch something special this fall.
Your family's home movies.
It's all that stuff that's out in the garage, moldering all those old pictures, all that old film, all those old reels.
Like, you're not doing anything with that stuff.
And the bugs are gonna get to it, and the rot's gonna get to it, and what you really should do is get it preserved forever.
Head on over to Legacybox.com.
You can enjoy 55% off when you get started with Legacybox today.
Do you know where your old box of home movies is right now?
Well, like I say, it's probably in the attic or in the garage and nothing good is happening to it.
Well, Legacybox is a service that I have used both for my family, for my wife's family as well.
We sent, like, boxes in to Legacy Box of treasured memories using their all-in-one kit.
My dad sent in old tapes and film.
Their team of experts digitized them by hand with the utmost care and caution.
In a few weeks, he received back his originals along with beautifully crafted digital copies he can easily share with family and friends.
And this stuff is now preserved forever.
Head on over to LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro.
Get an incredible 55% off with Legacy Box's exclusive tracking system and know exactly where your order is every step of the way.
Buy today.
Send in when you're ready.
That's LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro.
Okay, so all of this is rooted In a version of economic history in which it was American unions that built America.
That is not true.
That is not true.
There are certainly circumstances in which unions are necessary and good.
Coal miners unions would be an excellent example.
Or let's say you have a company town and the company town is effectively an oligarchy.
And you have to have the ability to unionize in order to change conditions of the company town.
However, unionization in America's car industry absolutely destroyed the American car industry.
In the 1950s, because America was the only place capable of actually making cars, we were the only industrialized nation on earth that hadn't been wiped out by World War II.
We had big profit margins, and the unions organized, and they signed themselves extraordinarily rich contracts.
And those extraordinarily rich contracts ended up basically bankrupting all those car companies by the 70s.
This is very often what happens when unions are giving outsized ability to organize.
This is particularly true in the public sector, by the way.
You want to talk about the bloated public sector in the United States?
Private sector unions in some cases are at least understandable.
Public sector unions are a blot.
Public sector unions are the most corrupt bargain in American politics.
Essentially what happens is that you have a bunch of union organizers And they negotiate with legislators for some sort of big giveaway deal, including very often the ability for the state to actually take out of people's paycheck union dues and hand it over to the union.
The union then uses that money to get a bunch of Democrats elected, and then it negotiates with those people to sign more giveaways for themselves.
It's super duper corrupt, and it's one of the reasons the cost of government has been skyrocketing year on year for literally my entire lifetime and beyond.
If you think that the combination of this sort of top-down economic control, centralization of control of the American economy by the Biden administration is going to have long-term effects, you're wrong.
It's going to have wild effects when it comes to the drug industry.
It's going to have wild effects when it comes to business overall with regards to these new unionization rules.
And the Biden administration doesn't care.
They don't understand economics and they don't care about it.
And they're like small children when it comes to economics.
I don't like high prices.
Therefore, I will use the power of government to yell about high prices to bring them down.
Okay, but there are second-order effects of this sort of stuff.
There are unintended consequences, always.
These are the kind of idiotic thinkers, truly, who believe that in what they call the broken windows fallacy with regard to economics, that if you throw a rock through a window, you just help the economy because now somebody has to go buy a new pane of glass.
Neglecting the fact that when you break the window, that shop owner was going to use that money to invest maybe in another employee.
Maybe that shop owner was going to buy new equipment and now they have to waste their money on another pane of glass.
This bizarre notion in economics that the only thing you have to focus on is the thing right in front of you as opposed to all of the outsized effects beyond that thing.
It's the death of actual efficiency.
It's the death of actual innovation.
The Biden administration doesn't care because they're just looking for giveaways to their political allies.
Anyway.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has to lock down those political allies because the entire American public knows that Joe Biden is unpleasant.
There's a growing impression that he is corrupt.
That growing impression should have been launched, you know, at the beginning of his political career because he's been corrupt for literally half a century at this point in American politics.
But the biggest thing that's sticking to him right now is that the man obviously is no longer with it.
Yesterday, Kareem Jean-Pierre tried to defend Joe Biden's virility, saying, well, he did go to Ukraine.
You mean he took a plane and then wandered around there?
Wow.
Shocking stuff there, Kareem.
But I'm talking about what Americans see when they turn on the TV, and they see, you know, Joe Biden's been in politics literally since before you were born, and like, he's aged.
Well, let's talk about that.
As we all do.
Let's talk about this.
And you all talked about this.
Back when we were marking the one-year anniversary, right, of the war in Ukraine, the unprovoked war by Russia, what did the President do?
He went to Kyiv, and he was there with the alarms blaring in the back, and people were so impressed that he was able to be there and look strong and represent the American people in Kyiv, in a war zone country.
I know that she has to do this for a living, but I gotta say, that is pretty weak sauce.
Even Morning Joe is like, yeah, we're all kind of concerned about his age.
89% of Republicans say Biden is too old.
69% of Democrats say he's too old.
And 74% of independents say the same.
This is something that the White House, the Biden campaign, cannot avoid.
It is a reality.
It might be uncomfortable for some people to talk about.
But when you have private dinner parties, when you go out at the ice cream place in the summer, people do.
Even Democrats who like Joe Biden and plan to support him, they do have concerns about his age.
Yes, they do.
And it's just it's just a fact that they have to deal with.
I mean, the fact also is that those Democrats, I think, are highly unlikely to say, OK, he's too old.
I'll vote for Donald Trump.
Yeah, that's a problem.
Even his own party knows the man is too old.
And by the way, he is.
I mean, yesterday, Joe Biden forgot the name of his secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Here he was doing that.
Secretary of Homeland Security.
The guy who took the job... Thank you for taking the job, pal.
Uh-oh.
The guy who took the job... Yeah, he's lost.
But it's not just that he's lost.
There's also a growing perception that he's a nasty person.
Which, of course, is true.
I've been talking about this for a while.
The facade of Joe Biden, captain of empathy, was always a lie.
Joe Biden is a pathological narcissist.
Which is the reason why anytime somebody else is suffering, he immediately starts talking about his own idiotic experiences.
Oh, you just lost a child in a fire in Hawaii?
I'm gonna tell you about that time that my kitchen got set on fire for like 20 minutes.
Oh, you lost a child blown up in Afghanistan?
I'm gonna tell you about the time that my son came home in a coffin draped with a flag, which is not even true.
That's who Joe Biden is.
Well, now there's a new book about the last couple of years of the Biden administration by Franklin Fuller, who's a Biden ally, right?
Somebody who's friendly toward Biden.
And the book is called The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future.
And Thor talks pretty openly about the fact that Joe Biden does not care about people.
Joe Biden is not a person who is truly empathetic.
That his famous empathy goes away the minute that essentially The minute that it crosses his political streams.
As long as, quote, for a man vaunted for his empathy, he could be detached, even icy,
when confronted with the prospect of human suffering.
That is what Fuller says about Biden.
It's becoming increasingly clear to people.
And it should be clear to people.
It's one of the reasons why his approval ratings tumbled in the aftermath of Afghanistan.
It's not just that, by the way.
We now have information that the National Archives has some 5,400 Joe Biden emails using fake names to dish government information to hunters and others as Vice President of the United States.
According to the New York Post, the National Archives and Records Administration has admitted
it is in possession of nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records and documents,
potentially showing President Biden using a pseudonym during his vice president,
vice presidency. NARA confirmed the existence of the trove in response to a June 2022 Freedom
of Information Act request by the Southeastern Legal Foundation. The request sought emails
pertaining to the accounts of Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters and J.R.B. Ware. Those are the, by the
By the way, very, very, I would say, I would say no.
Non-brilliant pseudonyms right there.
Robin Ware would be like Joseph Robinette Biden and Ware is Dello Ware.
Get it guys?
Genius level stuff right there from Joe Biden.
What amazing pseudonym.
The Southeastern Legal Foundation on Monday filed suit against NARA for the release of the records.
They say all too often public officials abuse their power by using it for personal or political benefit.
When they do, many seek to hide it.
The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden's nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public.
They're accusing NARA of having dragged its feet since the FOIA request since June 2022.
Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer demanded that NARA hands over any unredacted records in which Joe Biden used a pseudonym.
Again, I'm confused as to under what guise NARA is denying access to these emails.
It's the National Archives.
I mean, they should really be giving access to these emails.
All very suspicious.
None of this is going to benefit Joe Biden.
Okay, meanwhile, it's time for the stupid racial controversy of the day.
So, we actually have a couple.
The stupidest racial controversy of the day is non-racial at all.
According to foxnews.com, a video circulating on X this week depicted a young elementary school student in Colorado Springs, Colorado being removed from class for having a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack.
The clip appeared to be recorded by Jaden's mother as she, her son, and a school administrator discussed the boy being pulled from class at the Vanguard School that day because of the patch.
According to the staffer at the Colorado Charter School, the patch was disruptive to the classroom environment in that it had origins with slavery.
No, it doesn't.
No, it really, really doesn't.
The Gadsden flag, for those who know nothing about it, was formed in 1775, like before
the American Revolution.
It was formed as another version of the snake flag, the kind of the join or die flag that
was actually in play for the colonies since like the 1750s.
It has nothing to do with slavery whatsoever at all.
So this 12 year old kid who's campaigning for vice president.
I love that the school is basically running like a steel dossier oppo on a 12-year-old kid.
It's strong stuff happening right here.
Apparently, Jaden's mom disputed the school staff member throughout the meeting, arguing the flag originated during the American Revolution.
The video opens with Jaden, his mom, and an unnamed school administrator sitting down for a meeting in her office to discuss the child dismissal from class.
And the staff member explains the reason they don't want the flag is due to the origins of slavery and the slave trade.
Here's what it sounded like.
Do they know what the Gadsden flag is?
That it's a historical flag?
So they're, um, the reason that they do not want the flag, the reason we do not want the flag to slay is due to its origins with slavery and slave trade.
That is what was, um, that's the reasoning behind them not wanting the flag.
The Gadsden flag.
The don't tread on me.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with slavery.
That's, like, the revolutionary war patch that was displayed when they were fighting the British.
Like, that wasn't... that's the revolution.
Maybe you're thinking of, like, the Confederate... Confederate pad?
Yeah.
And, I mean, we teach them to always stick up for your beliefs.
And, I mean, you're going over the revolution lists for seventh grade.
I mean, the Founding Fathers stood up for what they believed in against unjust laws.
This is unjust.
I like this kid just sitting there being like, oh, the entire administration is filled with morons.
It's pretty amazing stuff.
So the family has turned over some of the emails on this.
Ms. Blank, as discussed, I'm providing you the rationale for determining
the Gadsden flag is considered an unacceptable symbol.
First case, when EEOC required the complaint to be reviewed.
Tied to Confederate flag and other white supremacy groups, including patriot groups, and also tied to hate groups.
So apparently the idea is that if some bad people use the Gadsden flag,
this means that the Gadsden flag is itself bad.
Which is kind of weird because I know a lot of bad people who use the BLM flag.
I don't see anybody on the left saying it's bad.
And the mom wrote back, Respectfully, everything can be considered racist and tied to white supremacy.
It's sad because when everything becomes racist, nothing is.
That's a problem for people of color like me.
When we actually need to cry racism and oppression and it's actually happening, no one will take it seriously.
I think making everything racist is racist, lol.
I'll type in random things I see from the school and type in racist.
Into the Google search bar and let's see what I can come up with.
Air?
Racist?
Math?
Racist?
Definitely racist.
As a person of color, I agree.
Totally racist.
Good stuff right there.
Again, it is amazing.
By the way, this is so petty that even the governor of Colorado, who's a Democrat, Jared Polis, he's like, no, this is not a thing.
Jared Polis was like, this is ridiculous.
He shared remarks, he said, I think it's great when kids express themselves in different ways as long as they're not creating a disruptive environment.
Certainly the Gadsden flag is a great iconic American flag.
Other kids have LGBT flags, other have flags of major political parties.
It's so ridiculously absurd.
By the way, even comparing the Gadsden flag to the LGBT flag is absurd.
The Gadsden flag is just a flag that symbolized the United States.
By the way, we're going to be talking with Jayden a little bit later on in the show during member block.
So apparently they're doubling down, but not on the Gadsden flag.
They're allowing him the Gadsden flag, but he has a gun rights patch and that has to go away.
So apparently, you know, patches that are associated with actual amendments to the United States Constitution, those probably need to go away.
I have serious questions as to whether the school is banning other similarly political statements.
Oh man, geniuses at all levels.
Probably we should delegate pretty much all educational power to these people without any veto power over them.
That's probably the best, I think.
That'll work out absolutely fabulously.
Okay, we'll get to, in just one second, updates on Hurricane Idalia first.
Let's talk about Chris.
Chris is a guy who works for the show.
And Chris's job is to pull the clips for the show from the schedule every night.
And he does a great job of it.
I mean, we send him like tons of clips every single night.
He pulls them for the morning.
He pulls them leading up to the show.
But sometimes, sometimes, On rare occasions, it is the wrong clip.
Or the clip is cut too short.
And on those occasions, I immediately head on over to ZipRecruiter.
And at ZipRecruiter, I say, we have an employee named Chris.
This employee named Chris, he must feel the pressure.
Thus, I am posting for his job.
ZipRecruiter is a place where you can find the best employees for your job.
ZipRecruiter is the best way to help use AI to help you find people with skills that you need.
ZipRecruiter's AI identifies candidates who are best suited for all kinds of roles.
Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.
If you want the most qualified candidates, ZipRecruiter uses its powerful AI to find
and send you people whose skills and experience match your job.
Then ZipRecruiter lets you easily invite them to apply and to encourage them to apply sooner.
In fact, over 3.8 million businesses have come to ZipRecruiter for their hiring needs.
Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com right now and get the leading edge on hiring with ZipRecruiter 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter to get a quality candidate within day one.
Go to this exclusive web address.
Try ZipRecruiter for free.
ZipRecruiter.com slash dailyware.
Again, at ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire.
And if you're like me, and you sometimes give insufficient instruction on which clips you want pulled, and you want somebody to blame, ZipRecruiter is a great way to avoid your own responsibility.
Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash dailyware.
Also!
Whether it's changing the definition of words or trying to convince you 2 plus 2 actually equals 5, it sometimes feels like current culture is making you unbelievably stupid.
I've got good news!
Our good friend Dennis Prager has answers in his Daily Wire Plus series, PragerU Master's Program.
In the Master's Program, Dennis Prager has gathered 40 years worth of wisdom.
He's sharing it on a number of wide-ranging subjects.
Dennis offers useful advice on marriage, happiness, and how to be a good person, plus a lot more.
In a world that wants to make you woke, Dennis wants to make you wise.
All episodes available right now, only for DailyWirePlus members.
Don't wait!
Head over to DailyWirePlus.com, become a member, watch PragerU master's program today.
Okay, meanwhile...
Hurricane Idelia has been slamming the panhandle of Florida.
It was upgraded briefly to a Category 4.
It was then downgraded to a Category 3 as it made landfall.
Obviously, we are keeping an eye on what is going on over there and praying for all the people in the path of this hurricane.
It's got a major storm surge.
It was up at 125 miles an hour in terms of the speed of the wind.
I mean, catastrophic kind of stuff, obviously.
The governor of Florida is on top of it, Governor DeSantis.
He says that they have 1.1 million gallons of fuel that are stored for people.
We're now up to 1.1 million gallons of fuel that is on standby to be able to mitigate any fuel interruptions, and sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't.
We'd rather be safe than sorry, so that fuel is there, and that can be deployed as needed if there is an interruption in fuel.
Also, there are 100,000 Florida households that have already had their power restored as of the morning.
So, the state of Florida is on top of this thing.
How you handle a crisis obviously can boost you, both politically, domestically, in terms of your home state, but also in terms of national politics.
That does make some difference.
Meanwhile, Speaking of national politics, President Trump has said the quiet part out loud.
He's now saying that he has opened the idea of Vivek Ramaswamy for Vice President, which is one of the most expected things I have ever heard in my entire life, since Vivek is basically running for Vice President at this point.
Here he was with Glenn back yesterday.
Have you thought of Vice President Ramaswamy?
Well, I think he's great.
Look, anybody that said, I'm the best president in a generation, I don't know, you'll have to define generation.
And he said it a couple of times, and he said it in a hundred years.
I have to like a guy like that.
You know, I can't get upset with him, but he's a smart guy.
He's a young guy.
He's got a lot of talent.
He's a very, very intelligent person.
He's got good energy, and he could be in some form of something.
I tell you, I think he'd be very good.
I think he's very good.
I think he's really distinguished himself.
Again, is there any doubt that Donald Trump, when he sees you as a threat, you're Ron DeSanctimus, you're Ron Meatball, you're Ronda.
Like the minute you're a threat to him, he tries to squash you like a bug.
If you're not a threat to him, he's your very best friend.
So, I mean, it's a little weird.
There was a viral clip of a Vivek yesterday, which I do love these old clips.
Vivek was on hardball with Chris Matthews back in like 2003.
So at the time, he was in college.
By the way, so was Pete Buttigieg on this show.
This is really funny.
So MSNBC, everybody's got the early 2003 haircut.
His haircut looks a lot like mine at the same time in my life.
And Vivek is asking Al Sharpton about why he should vote for the person with the least experience in the race.
So I assume Vivek at this time was a Democrat.
Hello, I'm Vivek, and I want to ask you, last week on the show we had Senator Kerry, and this week, and the week before we had Senator Edwards, and my question for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?
Well, you shouldn't, because I have the most political experience.
I got involved in the political movement when I was 12 years old, and I've been involved in social policy for the
last 30 years.
So don't confuse people that have a job with political experience.
Head of some local bureaucracy has a job in Cambridge.
That doesn't mean that they have political experience and it doesn't mean they have experience to run the United States government.
So I think that we confuse title holders with political experience as we have seen with the present occupant in the White House.
George Bush was a governor and clearly has shown he doesn't have political experience.
Okay, this is only funny because the question that Vivek was asking there is about lack of political experience.
Why should I vote for you?
Obviously, Vivek is now the person on stage with no political experience and he's running for president of the United States.
By the way, just a quick note, the same exact year, I also asked Al Sharpton a question.
I think I was, let's see, in 2003, I would have been 19 years old.
And the question that I asked Al Sharpton in 2003 was why he had helped incite not one but two riots.
So, slightly different questions there, depending on your political perspective.
Okay, meanwhile, Hollywood continues to sink into the mire.
The latest indicator is five late-night hosts who nobody even knew was missing.
Did you know that those late-night hosts weren't even on the air?
Did you notice it?
I didn't notice it, because no one noticed it.
But now, they have formed their own crappy podcast.
I say it's crappy because I actually tried to listen to some of it yesterday and it's pretty unlistenable.
It is Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver all created a podcast called Strike Force 5.
Because they're striking, guys.
Because you see, they're on strike.
But they still want to make some money, I assume, off the podcast.
And they're teaming up for a new podcast aimed at helping their staff as the strike continues.
It's a special 12-part podcast series.
It sounds like somewhere between cancer and death.
Here is a little bit of what it sounds like.
One more time, Jimmy.
Hi, I'm Jimmy Fallon.
I'm Stephen Colbert.
I'm Jimmy Kimmel.
I thought when you said Jimmy, you meant me, Jimmy, but you meant Jimmy, Jimmy.
I always mean you.
But when you say Seth Meyers, who do you mean?
I mean, John Oliver.
It's the five of us together for maybe an hour a day.
Strikeforce5 is the name of our podcast.
Subscribe to it now.
Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts.
But Spotify, you f***.
Welcome to the industry, gang.
And not everybody is built for podcasting.
Let's just put it that way.
That's still, I assume, a better sort of backup plan than the backup plan of Drea DiMatteo.
She is the really excellent actress from The Sopranos.
She played Adriana LaServa.
She has now joined OnlyFans, which is, I suppose, one way of making money.
How old is Drea DiMatteo at this point?
She's 51.
If you're relegated at 51 to doing OnlyFans, something has gone wrong in your life.
That seems like kind of a problem.
But indeed, this has been her backup plan.
Just showing you how well things are going in Hollywood.
According to USA Today, She announced this week on Instagram she's taking her talents to OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is live right now.
Her OnlyFans photo banner features a picture of her donning a star-printed blue bikini.
And her profile pictures features a not-safe-for-work snap of herself posing on a mattress wearing nothing but cowboy boots.
The Sipornos reads her bio on OnlyFans.
Yeah.
Hollywood.
Slow clap for our moral betterers over there.
They're doing an amazing job.
Okay, time for some things I like.
So, an actual piece of good news.
According to the Daily Wire, a Canadian father who was thrown in jail after quote-unquote misgendering his gender-confused teenage daughter has now scored a legal win in the British Columbia Court of Appeal.
A judgment issued earlier this month said Robert Hoogland did not have to spend any more time behind bars.
The court dropped an order for him to pay a $30,000 fine.
Hoogland said I expected I would finish, if not all of that six months, a big chunk of it.
This is a huge win.
What it does is, it was setting a precedent.
What they wanted was a real deterrent for parents, especially when they're standing up against trans agenda, with what's being pushed through the schools, by the school counselors, and for all of these different things.
Hoogland was featured anonymously in the Daily Wire's enormous hit documentary, What is a Woman?
And he took legal action after a Canadian children's hospital in 2018 told him his daughter, who was 13, was going to be injected with testosterone without his consent.
In British Columbia, the Infants Act permits minors to consent to their own trans treatments if doctors think it is in their best interest and parents' consent becomes irrelevant.
The court said the girl could move forward with the testosterone and said Hoogland was barred from publicly misgendering his daughter, so he couldn't even refer to her as his daughter.
Hoogland continues to speak out.
He was thrown in jail after he talked about the case.
And his daughter, who's found in contempt of court.
So, um, he served about two months behind bars.
Most of that time he was in solitary confinement.
Absolute insanity.
By the way, this is the sort of stuff that if the left had its way, would come to America.
In California, I'm sure they would pursue something like this.
The good news is that he won an appeal court and he is now out for the moment.
Alrighty, coming up, we're going to be speaking with Jaden, the 12-year-old who was kicked out of class in Colorado for wearing a Gadsden flag.
If you're not a member, become a member.
Use code SHAPIRO.
Check out for two months free on all annual plans.
Export Selection