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Sept. 1, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:55

A Nation Led By The Elderly

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	So we now live in a gerontocracy.
	Our entire leadership class is really, really old.
	And not only are they really old, they're not even good at their jobs.
	It's one thing to say that the old man on the mountain, well, you know, at least he's good at his job.
	But if he's bad at his job and he is borderline senile, or he is already erratic and he's just growing more erratic with age, the question becomes, why as a population do we keep nominating these people?
	Why do we keep doing this?
	I mean, there are a few reasons why it might be A reality that we keep putting up in positions of power, really old people.
	One could just be the power of inertia that the person is in power.
	We just keep electing them because it's more comfortable to go with the devil we know than the devil that we don't.
	And that would be true for somebody like Joe Biden, who, of course, is a devil that we know since he was 31 years old, where he burst onto the American public scene when he ran for Senate at the age of 30.
	And he has now 80.
	So he's been in the public eye for half a century.
	And so maybe the idea is, well, you know, we're comfortable with him, we know him, we know everything there is to know about him, and sure, he's a little senile, but that's better than that new guy down the block.
	What that really betrays is a lack of trust in the future of the United States.
	If the people that you keep nominating to high office are people who have been in the public eye for 50 years, and the idea is that these are the people who are best poised to lead the country forward, what you're really saying is, we don't know which direction the country is going, so we may as well just give it to this old guy who's basically dead.
	And this is true across our- I think that really is the rationale for why so many people seem comfortable with voting for people who are no longer with us.
	Joe Biden is clearly no longer with us.
	Mitch McConnell is apparently no longer with us.
	Dianne Feinstein is no longer with us.
	It's not just, by the way, elderly people.
	It's also people who are just stand-ins for general political parties.
	John Fetterman is clearly not with us, and he's sitting in the Senate of the United States right now.
	Okay, that makes three senators out of 100 who literally do not have full brain function.
	That's just a matter of course.
	And two of those people are in significant positions of leadership, right?
	Dianne Feinstein sits on some of the most important committees in the Senate.
	Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader, and that's leaving aside Chuck Schumer, who's well into his 70s at this point.
	Meanwhile, you have the current president of the United States who's wandering around wobbling into trees, and everybody's just like, well, I guess that's totally fine.
	And the leader of the opposition party is 78 years old, was erratic when he was young, and has grown more erratic the older that he gets.
	So again, I come back to the question.
	Why is it that we, the American people, keep putting these people in a position?
	It's a question for us, not a question for them.
	I understand why old people want power.
	Old people want power for the same reason everybody else wants power.
	Power is great.
	Power allows us to pursue the things that we wish to pursue or to maintain our importance throughout our lifespan.
	I even understand the idea that, you know, there are certain older people who are still fully functional.
	There are people who are well into their 80s who are doing just fine.
	Mick Jagger right now looks a lot better than the current president of the United States, which shows that a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll actually apparently is very good for you.
	It's sort of a formaldehyde that preserves you forever.
	But when you look at the gerontocracy that now rules the country, what that really speaks to is the beginning of the end of the republic.
	Because again, if you can't trust the people who are 45, 50 to lead the country, If there's no vitality to the leadership class, what exactly are we doing?
	It's just a holding pattern and everybody knows it.
	Joe Biden holding pattern is so much more attractive, apparently, to a majority of the American people than anybody who is 50, that he is going to run for re-election not being there.
	So yesterday, again, he was, you know, he exited the crypt in Delaware for just a moment, the door popped open.
	And then he walked into public view and said, where am I?
	Where am I going?
	I don't know.
	And then he is going back to Delaware is the answer for the weekend.
	He's going back to Delaware again so he can sit on the beach shirtless.
	Apparently, he has a weird habit of bathing in the nude, which, man, Secret Service, those people have a job.
	In any case, carrying around extra suits for the president in case he poops one and then making sure that the naked old man is protected from the various assassins in the trade.
	That's a job.
	Anyway, here was Joe Biden yesterday at FEMA headquarters.
	I am going to Florida.
	I am going to Florida on a Saturday morning.
	All right, thanks everybody.
	Thank you.
	Where am I going?
	Right this way.
	Secretary, right this way.
	Where am I going?
	This way?
	I don't know.
	How many different videos do we have of the President of the United States not knowing where he is going?
	So, you have to assume one of two things.
	Either the advance teamwork is unbelievably crappy around the President of the United States, or the President of the United States literally doesn't know where he's going at least 70% of the time.
	That seems to be the case.
	Unless you think that I'm just ripping on Biden.
	I'll get to Mitch McConnell in just one second.
	Now, the media have a stake in just covering for this guy.
	Because, again, in a fully reactionary era, which is what we live in, it is totally reactionary, the normal American is not reactionary.
	The normal American just wants to be left alone.
	The normal American wants a predictable set of laws that they know the rules of the road, and then they want to be able to, you know, raise their family, go to their job, go to church, pay their taxes, and be left alone.
	That's really what most Americans want.
	They just want a predictable And so this means that you must protect the precious.
	Meanwhile, you have the people at the highest echelons of politics who are either utopian
	or destructive and they're bouncing off of one another in a variety of combinations.
	And so this means that you must protect the precious.
	I mean, if Joe Biden is clearly not with us, you've got the entire left saying the precious
	must be protected.
	So, for example, Glenn Kessler, who's supposed to be a fact, he's literally called the fact
	checker over at the Washington Post, has an entire piece called Biden loves to retell
	Some aren't credible.
	Now, normally what Glenn Kessler does, he takes a simple, a simple claim, and then he rates it on a scale of one to four Pinocchios.
	Is it true or is it not true?
	He doesn't do that with Joe Biden.
	Instead, he just puts all of his Dumb false stories together in one story and then he's like, well, you know, he is really like a genial old man, but it turns out that a lot of his stories just aren't true.
	So I guess I guess we're done here.
	No Pinocchio ratings on any of these things.
	This is what the media do with Joe Biden.
	Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, he said a minority leader, Mitch McConnell, he's obviously suffering from something.
	He's had two massive freeze ups in front of the media inside the last month.
	And let's be clear, Mitch McConnell is the single most effective Republican leader in the country for the last 20 years.
	I mean, there's no, there's just no real competition for that.
	I mean, in terms of, if you like Donald Trump's Supreme Court picks, you can thank Mitch McConnell.
	It was Mitch McConnell who made that happen.
	That's the reality of the situation.
	There are a lot of problems with Mitch McConnell.
	You can say that he hasn't stood up for principle as much as he should have, or that he should have pushed harder when he had a Republican Congress.
	But in terms of just pure Machiavellian politics, Mitch McConnell was great at it.
	Also, he's too old now.
	I'm sorry he is.
	He is not mentally... He is not mentally capable of holding down the Senate Minority Leader position, and he should hand off the position to somebody else as soon as possible.
	Sanjay Gupta, the doctor over at CNN, he says, well, you know, he's kind of freezing up, and then he's not freezing up, his freezing is... We should not be analyzing the people who lead the republic as though they are Alzheimer patients.
	We should not be doing that.
	It is bad for America.
	There should be a bipartisan coalition saying this, by the way, but no one's going to say it.
	And the reason no one's going to say it is because for Republicans, must defend Trump, who's 78, and McConnell, who's 81.
	And for Democrats, must defend Joe Biden, who's 80.
	It used to be that there's broad spectrum agreement on things like, hey, maybe we ought to, you know, transition the leadership to a generation that is not independent.
	But no, we're all going to just go back to go back to our various corners.
	Here's Sanjay Gupta analyzing the health of the Senate minority leader.
	What did you see?
	What did you make of what happened?
	Well, first of all, let me just say that what Scott is describing is really important to know, because whatever this is, it comes and goes, and it seems to come and go quickly, and in the world of, you know, when you're looking at the brain, that's an important sort of clue.
	What I saw, and this is, I think, an appropriate term here, is the term freezing.
	That does that does sort of describe this freezing of his body freezing of his speech Freezing of his face his hands were very clenched to the side of the lectern Okay, I mean, well, no problem.
	I mean, after all, we have many non-functional members of our top level of government.
	In just one second, we'll get to, you know, the people who theoretically could take over for people like Mitch McConnell.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	And we'll get to more corruption in the Biden administration because Joe Biden is not... The argument against Joe Biden, by the way, is not that he's senile.
	The problem with Joe Biden is that he's been corrupt for 50 years.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
	Well, that is not a shock.
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	Okay, so, there are people who are waiting in the wings for Mitch McConnell to step down.
	And contrary to popular opinion, even if McConnell steps down, Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, can't actually just appoint a Democrat.
	Beshear's a Democrat, but they changed the law in the state of Kentucky so that Beshear has to choose from the same party as the person who stepped down, probably in anticipation of all of this, and he has to choose one of three people nominated by the state Republican Party.
	So, That means that even if McConnell were to step down completely from the Senate, he would be replaced by a Republican.
	The same thing, by the way, is true of Dianne Feinstein.
	And this is the part when I get to the irritation that I have for the allegiance that people are having to these old fuddy-duddies.
	What it really comes down to is no one wants to establish a precedent that you should get rid of an elderly person in a position of power just because they're senile because there are too many senile people in their own party they want to maintain.
	And that's particularly true at the top of the ticket.
	If you get rid of Dianne Feinstein for not being fully functional, what's the argument for keeping Biden?
	He's got a Democrat backing him up in Kamala Harris.
	I understand that you'd rather have the dead old white man running for president than you would have the very, very unpopular black woman running for president.
	But is that really an excuse given that Joe Biden is not functional and everyone can see it?
	If they get rid of Dianne Feinstein, who legitimately cannot write her own name at this point, What happens if they get rid of John Fetterman?
	Now, all those people get replaced by Democrats, by the way.
	But this is how perverse and venal our politics has become.
	We're going to keep those people in place.
	We're gonna keep those people in mind.
	So the very idea that the leadership class even matters has kind of exploded.
	All that matters right now is the binary, the party binary.
	You're the Republican or you're Democrat and it doesn't matter who you are, apparently.
	Because we can just plug somebody else in.
	Or we can just leave you there being a dead person.
	We can manipulate your hands like you're some sort of weird marionette.
	And apparently we'll achieve the same exact result.
	Some of the people, by the way, who theoretically could just replace McConnell today are John Thune of South Dakota.
	He is 62.
	He is also the number two Senate Republican.
	He's the whip.
	You got John Cornyn of Texas, who is 71.
	Again, at this point, that makes him a spring chicken among our leadership class.
	You got John Barrasso, also 71.
	So the younger generation is 70.
	And then you have people like Joni Ernst in Iowa, who is 53, who's the number four as chair of the Republican Policy Committee.
	The fact that our leadership class in general has become so old is totally insane to me.
	Like, totally insane.
	Ronald Reagan, when he ran for office in 1980, was considered by many people too old.
	Okay, and Ronald Reagan in 1980?
	He was 72 in 1980.
	So, it's pretty amazing.
	When he was inaugurated the second time, he was 77.
	Which makes him currently younger than both of our presidential candidates.
	So, things are going great.
	It's all good.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to be as venal and corrupt as he ever was, apparently.
	We now have news that Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm traded more than 1,000 emails with Joe Biden's office while he was vice president.
	Hundreds of those remain hidden because of executive privileges sorted by the White House, documents released by the National Archives show.
	That is according to the New York Post.
	The 861 emails that reference Rosamond Seneca were sent or received by the office of the vice president between January 2011 and December 2013, according to America First Legal, which obtained the messages from the National Archives and Record Administration and released them on Wednesday.
	The White House is refusing to allow the release of 200 emails referencing Hunter Biden's firm, citing executive privilege.
	Nara said, quote, release would disclose confidential advice between the president and his advisors or between such advisors.
	Uh, well, that seems super corrupt.
	So they're now asserting executive privilege to protect communications between Rose Monsonica, which is Hunter Biden's firm, and the Office of the Vice President.
	While Rose Monsonica was working with Hunter, who was working with Burisma, Andrew Biden was in charge of Ukraine policy.
	Hunter Biden and his business associates frequently use their direct line of communications with the Office of the VP to leverage access to the Obama White House.
	White House guest list, seating assignments, biographies of guests for various official events, including the 2012 UK State Dinner, the 2013 Turkey State Luncheon, and the 2014 France State Dinner were shared with Rosemont Seneca employees.
	Apparently, one email contains an invite forwarded to the White House for then-VP Joe Biden to attend an event at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.
	Another invites then-Second Lady Joe Biden to participate in a World Food Program campaign.
	In one frantic 2013 email, lobbyist Doug Davenport begs Hunter Biden's former business partner Eric Schwerin for tickets on short notice to the White House Christmas tour, indicating that Rose Montenegro's level of access to the executive mansion was well-known.
	But apparently, executive privilege is supposedly going to cover all of this.
	This should be litigated, by the way.
	This should end up in a court of law.
	Why would executive privilege cover supposedly benign emails regarding lobbying firms, including your son?
	It's totally wild.
	Meanwhile, apparently, GOP investigators are looking for a Boston connection in the Joe Biden pseudonym mystery.
	This is according to TheDailyWire.com.
	A pair of Senate Republicans want to know if nine boxes of materials retrieved from the Boston office of a personal attorney to Joe Biden contain any pseudonyms or personal email addresses.
	Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent a letter this week to NARA asking whether the agency had reviewed the contents of the boxes obtained earlier this year from Patrick Moore's law firm in Boston after allegedly being moved from Biden's former think tank in Washington, D.C.
	And then they asked if any of those boxes included pseudonyms and email addresses used by Vice President Joe Biden.
	So, again, there are a lot more shoes that are going to drop here.
	It is also true, as Kimberly Strassel writes today in the Wall Street Journal, That there will be more shoes to drop with regard to the Merrick Garland DOJ cutting its sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden.
	According to Kimberly Strassel, Merrick Garland is working hard to present David Weiss, who is the lawyer who cut the deal, he's the prosecutor who cut the deal with Hunter Biden's legal team, as operating independently, but the record is showing nearly every piece of justice, its political appointees, its tax division, senior officials, the FBI, had fingers in the Weiss probe.
	Should anyone have confidence this will change now that Garland has given Weiss the honorific of special counsel?
	The answer there, of course not.
	Joe Biden was asked about all of this yesterday, and he laughed, because why not?
	I mean, he is a carefree elderly gentleman.
	Do you have any concerns about his ability to do his job?
	Do you have any concerns about his ability?
	I don't.
	Do you want to talk to me about it?
	Do you want to?
	Let's talk about why I'm here.
	Let's talk about what I mean.
	Well, will you ever talk about this?
	The answer, of course, is no, because then he might say something that would implicate him or his son in corruption.
	In just one second, we'll get to the fallout from Joe Biden's border policy, his economy.
	It turns out the leadership class in the United States, in general, it's really bad.
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	Okay, so...
	Meanwhile, the effect of Joe Biden's economy are only now beginning to be felt.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, rates are up and we are just starting to feel the heat.
	I mean, you can see this in the mortgage markets, by the way.
	The mortgage rates right now are astounding.
	We're talking like 7%, 8%.
	It's going to be nearly impossible for anybody to buy a house in the near future.
	People right now are holding on to the houses and they're trying to keep the prices up.
	But eventually, that dam is going to break and the real estate prices are going to have to come down because there just is no liquidity in the market.
	Taxpayers are exposed, according to the Wall Street Journal, public debt held by the public rocketed from 35% of gross domestic product at the end of 2007 to 93% in the first quarter of this year, as Uncle Sam borrowed first to bail out banks, then to prop up growth, then to cut taxes, then to cushion the economy from the pandemic, and now to support manufacturing.
	So the burden of the debt was relatively low because the interest rates were low.
	But now, a lot of those interest rates are not low.
	67% of the debt matures within five years.
	TD estimates that the U.S.
	pays an average rate of 3.4% on that debt, well below current interest rates.
	But that's not going to last for long.
	When we take out more debt, it's not going to be taken out at 3%.
	It's going to be taken out at 6%.
	In the private sector, banks have been the first casualty.
	Three regional lenders collapsed earlier this year, squeezed between the falling market value of loans they made and bonds they bought when rates were lower, and depositors fleeing to higher-yielding investment alternatives in American corporations could be next, according to David Maracle, chief U.S.
	economist at Goldman Sachs, in 2020.
	We had very unique circumstances where companies didn't know if the economy would be shut down for another year or how long the Fed's intervention in the corporate debt market would last.
	They showed a huge amount of debt.
	This has insulated them from the need to refinance as rates have risen in the past year, but that's going to change.
	Because as the debt is refinanced, corporate interest expenses will rise, and that means they're not going to have as much liquidity available for hiring and research and all the rest of it.
	Meanwhile, your rates on your credit cards have been rising as well.
	So eventually, as I've been saying a lot, what goes up is going to come down.
	You're already starting to see annual sales of existing homes in the U.S.
	dropping fairly precipitously.
	It's going to get a lot worse.
	That market is going to go down.
	Meanwhile, corporate borrowers are going to be in serious trouble because it turns out that people are just not lending at the same rate that they were able to lend a couple of years ago because of the easy money policies of the Fed.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, with market conditions where they are in higher rates ahead, you basically have to refinance now because one month from now could be even worse.
	Meanwhile, retirees living on a fixed income are in serious trouble because of course they're on a fixed income and their dollars are worth less now than they were before.
	So thank you to Joe Biden for his bang-up economy.
	I'm so glad that we decided to bet on the elderly generation because they obviously have done us great.
	Part of the problem here, by the way, is that because America is an aging country and because nobody had any kids for like a generation and a half, The largest voting bloc in the United States is above the age of 45 by far.
	It's not even close.
	Above the ages of 65, by the way, is right now the second largest voting bloc.
	In 2022, 37 million people voted who are above the age of 65.
	37 million people voted who are above the age of 65.
	Between the ages of 45 and 64, about 43.6 million people voted.
	Which means that if you're above the age of 60 or 55, you are now in sort of the plurality of the voting bloc.
	Now, as people age out of the population, that may change.
	However, the upside-down pyramid of our demographics is going to have a continued impact on how exactly people vote in terms of our elderly gerontocracy.
	Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the effects of Joe Biden's Rule.
	With regard to immigration, it continues to be very bad.
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	Okay, meanwhile...
	Bad story of the week.
	According to the Washington Examiner, the driver of a Honda Odyssey, who forced a school bus carrying elementary school children off the road and down an embankment in Ohio, killing one child and injuring 26 others, was caught illegally crossing the southern border and then released into the country by President Joe Biden in 2022.
	Hermano Joseph of Haiti was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide yesterday in Clark County Municipal Court for the incident, which happened as the children were being bused to their first day of school.
	Joseph was arrested while illegally crossing the southern border on August 22, according to reports.
	He was not returned to Mexico, where he came from, or to Haiti.
	Instead, he was given a notice to appear, and then he was released into the general public.
	And then he showed up again.
	He gave everybody his Mexican driver's license, which is great.
	So he was living comfortably in Mexico, apparently, had an ID, and then decided to just pop over the border and apparently kill a child and injure 26 other children.
	Our border policies are a disaster, of course, but according to the Biden administration, all is well.
	Here is Karine Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary, pretending that Joe Biden has done a great job securing the border.
	The president has done more to secure the border and to deal with this issue of immigration than anybody else.
	He really has.
	June saw the single largest month-to-month drop in unlawful border crossing because of the policies this president put in place.
	Okay, so, as Bill Malugan, the Fox reporter, points out, there were more than 7,000 migrants apprehended by Border Patrol on Tuesday alone, after they crossed illegally.
	There was a brief lull in the weeks after the end of Title 42 in May, but illegal crossings are surging once again, so they're just lying about it, obviously.
	Meanwhile, Corinne Jean-Pierre says that Joe Biden won't even meet with Kathy Hochul, who is the governor of New York.
	She's been talking about the disaster of mass migration into New York, illegal immigrants descending on the state en masse.
	And she's like, no, Joe Biden doesn't have time for that.
	Dude's on vacation to Hoboth Beach.
	But when the governor of New York came by to discuss a very urgent matter in the state of New York and across the country, a lot of big cities, He did not meet with her.
	Why not?
	Well, look, as you just stated, there's a lot going on, and his Chief of Staff was part of that meeting.
	I believe Secretary Mario Arcas was part of that meeting.
	Some of his very high-level senior staff participated in the meeting with the Governor, which is, as you said, a very important meeting to have.
	He has a very good relationship with the Governor.
	We've been every time we're in New York.
	The president, practically every time, engages with the governors.
	They have a very good relationship.
	Look, the president has a lot on his plate.
	Yeah, he has so much on his plate, which is why he's been on vacation for nearly the past six weeks with minor breaks to visit Maui and tell stories about a kitchen fire that he once had.
	So everything is going great.
	Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, we're preparing for the Donald Trump trial in Georgia.
	Apparently, according to a Fulton County judge on Thursday, Judge Scott McAfee, he says that all court proceedings in the election interference case against Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants will be live streamed and televised.
	Which is going to be amazing for the country.
	Now listen, I'll be real about this.
	I'm not against this.
	I think the fact that we should have more transparency.
	If we don't trust our institutions, watching the institutions work would be the only way to restore trust in our institutions.
	So I'm all for more sunlight and more transparency.
	My guess, honestly, is that Team Trump I'm not sure how against the television they are, because the prospect of watching these people go after Trump in the dock may not be bad for Donald Trump in, say, the primaries.
	In an order issued on Thursday, McAfee said members of the media would be allowed to use computers and cell phones inside the courtroom for non-recording purposes during court proceedings.
	There will be pool coverage for television, radio, and still photography as well.
	So we're all going to get to watch the trial on TV.
	Is this something that they would contemplate if this were a Democrat in the dock?
	I have serious doubts about that.
	But for those who are hoping that Donald Trump is running a well-calibrated campaign that's taking advantage of all of this, some bad news.
	Apparently, his super PAC is almost broke.
	They've raised about $157 million and they've spent nearly all of it on legal costs.
	According to USA Today, Donald Trump is running out of other people's money to spend on his legal bills.
	His key fund has spent nearly all of the more than $150 million it raised and is sitting on less than $4 million.
	He's already dug into his fund for 2024 ads and borrowed money to post bail in Georgia.
	Some of his allies are begging for a donation, saying that he is not paying their legal bills.
	They're saying that his legal bills will total millions of dollars, if not tens of millions of dollars.
	But that's blowing through an awful lot of money.
	I mean, $150 million that he has blown through at this point.
	And what are you spending on?
	Have you seen any Donald Trump ads?
	Donald Trump has been running this campaign on the basis of he's the most famous person on earth and has been for half a century.
	But it is amazing.
	I mean, they've spent almost $155 million since the 2020 election.
	And they spent $60 million making transfers to Trump's 2024 campaign super PAC, Make America Great Again.
	But that super PAC refunded $12.3 million to Save America in May and June.
	Otherwise, Save America would have been in debt.
	Apparently, during the same time period, May and June, Save America spent $21.6 million on legal expenses.
	This is a lot of money.
	This is a lot of money.
	Which, by the way, is not an amazing way to run a campaign.
	Once again, Donald Trump is a billionaire.
	If you're giving money to Trump's campaign, you should really want him to spend that on, you know, targeting Joe Biden.
	But that's not where the money is being spent.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump is trying to go after Governor Brian Kemp in Georgia.
	He's suggesting that Brian Kemp should start impeachment proceedings against Fannie Willis, who's the DA in Georgia.
	There is no ground.
	There's no legal ground for impeaching Fannie Willis.
	Now, you can say, okay, well, there's no legal ground for her going after Donald Trump either, but it's not up to, it's not up to Brian Kemp.
	The state legislature is not going to do it, which means it's not going to get done.
	And it's just going to be a bunch of political posturing and theater.
	And so Brian Kemp, honestly, to his credit, is like, you know what?
	I'm busy running a state here.
	Somebody has to be an adult in the room.
	I mean, at some point.
	Here's Brian Kemp.
	The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia, as long as I'm governor, we're going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically.
	Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that.
	But I can assure you, I have not.
	And in Georgia, we will not be engaging in political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment.
	We will do what is right.
	We will uphold our oaths as public servants.
	And it's my belief that our state will be better off for it.
	He says we have a law in the state of Georgia that clearly outlines legal steps that can be taken if constituents believe their local prosecutors are violating their oath by engaging in unethical or illegal behavior.
	Up to this point, I've not seen evidence that DA Willis's actions or lack thereof warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission.
	Okay, like, again, a bad prosecution doesn't necessarily mean that Brian Kemp has the power or the ability, or should use that ability, to do this.
	Now, again, I totally get the reactionary sentiment, which is, Fannie Willis is doing something wrong, so violate whatever laws you have to in order to get rid of her, since she's violating whatever laws she has to in order to go after Donald Trump.
	The problem is that in the state of Georgia, the reason that Brian Kemp, the predictable result of this, like no one has any second order thinking ever, ever.
	Okay, so let's assume that Brian Kemp did what you want him to do.
	Let's assume that Brian Kemp and the state legislature in Georgia, which is a very purple state now, thanks to the administrations of people like Donald Trump, let's say that they went ahead and they moved for the impeachment of Fannie Willis.
	And let's say that they got it.
	Let's say they achieved the impeachment of Fannie Willis.
	How do you think Republicans are going to do in the election after that?
	Is he gonna go great for them?
	Or do you think that they might run into some issues?
	Brian Kemp stood up to the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
	And then he won an overwhelming victory against Stacey Abrams.
	Stacey Abrams, lest we forget, was such an amazing goddess, according to the left, that they made her the empress of all the universe on Star Trek.
	That's who Stacey Abrams was.
	And she was defeated solidly by Brian Kemp.
	Meanwhile, in that same exact race, Hershel Walker, Donald Trump's chosen pick for Senate, lost to Raphael Warnock.
	So, instead of fighting Pyrrhic victories that end up actually undermining the ability to win elections in the future, maybe we ought to use a little bit of political smarts here.
	But I guess that's the question.
	Are we in the business of Pyrrhic victories?
	Or Pyrrhic losses, is the case maybe?
	Because you may not even get what you want.
	Or are you in the business of, you know, long-term building in order to stop the left's agenda?
	And it seems like everybody is a short-term thinker.
	This is one of the other reasons why, as to get back to the first topic we discussed, one of the reasons why you have 80-year-olds at the head of government is because you can only, it's like buying a short-term bond.
	Right?
	The expiration date on the thing is very, very soon.
	And so, we are so uneasy about the long-term future.
	We don't build movements anymore.
	We make short-term plays in the hope that the other side will make a bad short-term play.
	Which means, effectively, you're just waiting for the other side to do something truly egregious, or you're waiting for some sort of ground shift to happen.
	Some deus ex machina.
	Now, the reality is, the deus ex machina in politics rarely arrives.
	What you should be doing is building long-term movements.
	That would be the thing that we should be doing.
	Is that something that either side is doing?
	Well, the left did it for 50 years.
	Now it seems like they're stuck in a rut.
	The right did it with regard to Roe vs. Wade, and they achieved victory in getting the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
	But it seems like movement building is a lot of hard work.
	It's a lot of incremental work.
	It's not rewarding.
	And, you know, it's a lot easier to shout at the moon.
	That's the thing that is a lot easier.
	Meanwhile, on the 2024 Republican side of the aisle, the polls continue to show Donald Trump with a massive and durable lead.
	He continues to be leading in the RealClearPolitics poll average by about 40 points.
	The latest Economist YouGov poll has him at 52% nationally and Ron DeSantis at 16%.
	Again, the lineup is the same.
	It's been the same for months at this point.
	It goes Trump, DeSantis, and then way behind the rest of the pack, you'll have a variety of Ramaswamy, Haley, Pence, and Christie.
	Those are the only candidates who are even on the stage, and all of them are running way the hell behind Donald Trump at this point in time.
	Now, in Iowa, it's possible that someone could score an upset victory.
	If you're looking at the polling in Iowa right now, Trump is up, but he's up by about 20 points, about half his national lead in Iowa.
	And as Henry Olson points out, Donald Trump has made a risky move in Iowa by pissing off a lot of the main leaders in Iowa.
	Henry Olson at the Washington Post says, It would be easy to conclude from the polls that Trump will cruise to victory in Iowa's caucuses in January, spend a week in the state, it becomes far less certain the former president will start off primary season with an early victory because Iowa's evangelical Christian community is not yet sold on him.
	He says, I talked to Iowa evangelical pastors and grassroots leaders who understand the nuances of their community better than any pollster.
	Their message was surprisingly uniform.
	Iowa's evangelicals have not made up their minds as of yet.
	Now, could Trump lose Iowa and still win the primary?
	Sure.
	I mean, he absolutely could.
	The real question is whether the field is going to consolidate and whether it's going to consolidate behind one alternative candidate.
	Even then, Trump still has the upper hand according to current polling, unless something dramatic changes.
	We'll get to more on that in just one second.
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	Also, remember a few months ago, a certain chocolate company sold themselves out to the wokes?
	Seriously, they tried out a dude who said he's a lady to be the spokeswoman on International Women's Day.
	Ridiculous and nonsensical.
	This is why Jeremy Boring decided to start producing Jeremy's Chocolate.
	The campaign was a huge success.
	We sold out in a matter of days.
	Then we got more in stock.
	Those also sold out.
	The best way to strike back at the leftist regime, strike back through the free market.
	Halloween is quickly approaching.
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	Also this week, I got the chance to sit down with Chris Rufo for an episode of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.
	In this episode, we discuss how to create a free society through duty and responsibility, and how leftist ideology has evolved and planted itself into our social institutions.
	Plus, we delve into how Chris transitioned from a young leftist to a force for good in the conservative movement.
	It's a great conversation.
	Everybody should hear it.
	Here's a little bit of the trailer.
	I just started looking at the people around me and these kind of left-wing, radical student groups and political movements.
	And what I found is that these were people who were the sons and daughters of the most elite people from around the globe.
	These are people who are using this vocabulary cynically to establish their own status, to establish their own power.
	And then after a couple of years of wearing the keffiyeh, are going to go on and take over their father's company.
	And that was really the question.
	If these people are utterly amoral frauds, maybe there's something wrong with these ideas.
	Make sure you check out the latest episode of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special this Sunday on Daily Wire Plus YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts.
	Meanwhile, you need to look at the other Republican candidates.
	Nobody seems to be gaining a ton of momentum.
	So Ron DeSantis handled the latest hurricane in Florida quite well.
	Everybody sort of understands that, except for, of course, President Trump, who's ripping on him consistently throughout the handling of the hurricane, because this is the way we do our politics now.
	DeSantis handled it pretty well, according to Politico.
	It showed why he's a darling of conservatives in the donor class.
	It also exposes his vulnerability.
	Why exactly?
	Well, because no reason.
	I mean, they can't really explain why he did a bad job, but they're saying that it exposes vulnerability mainly because in our stupid politics, if you're good at a job, that doesn't help you at all, apparently.
	The biggest thing is that other people can attack you with regard to your performance.
	Better not to be in office so you can attack everybody than to be in office trying to do the thing.
	So, there is that.
	Meanwhile, Never Back Down, which is Ron DeSantis' super PAC, they are shifting their resources to the early states, recognizing that they're going to need to win the early states early if they wish to carry on the campaign beyond that, right?
	Here's the simple math in the Republican primaries.
	It goes Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.
	DeSantis basically has to win all three.
	If he wins Iowa and he loses New Hampshire to Trump, Trump is going to walk away with it.
	If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire and Trump wins South Carolina handily because the field splits, Trump is probably going to sweep.
	This is the math for DeSantis.
	So he's shifting all of his resources into the early states.
	He should have done that earlier, is the truth.
	They've ended their door knocking in Nevada and the Super Tuesday.
	Some people are saying this is a sign of DeSantis campaign's weakness.
	Maybe.
	It may also be a sign of just Trump's strength in a lot of these states.
	You can't diversify your forces.
	You have to concentrate them where you think Trump is most vulnerable.
	You got to knock him out of the box right out of the gate.
	That basically is the only way to win these primaries.
	Nikki Haley is starting to gain some credibility.
	It looks right now as though the rest of the fight, the rest of the field may consolidate down to DeSantis versus Haley, which would not be particularly shocking.
	Ramaswamy is running a self-funded campaign.
	He also is, I would say, the darling of a sort of elite in the Twitterverse, but he
	doesn't have tremendous grassroots support.
	He's not really building a grassroots organization.
	He's getting a lot of earned media.
	And that earned media is not necessarily translating into heightened poll numbers, especially because
	he's catering to a particular subset of people who are on Twitter by saying sort of things
	that I think he knows are not true, and then he's sort of nuancing them afterward.
	So, do I think that Vivek is a sort of durable candidate going forward in the Republican Party?
	Maybe next time around.
	I don't think this time around he's going to be one of the top three candidates.
	It seems like right now the field seems to be consolidating around Trump-DeSantis-Haley.
	That's Trump by like a huge margin and then DeSantis and Haley after that.
	Mike Pence does not seem to be gaining any sort of momentum.
	He's still speaking to small crowds in Iowa.
	Again, the question as to why Pence is running remains at the tip of everybody's tongue.
	The truth is it probably is just a way to button up his legacy.
	Because the reality is that Trump is still very popular inside the Republican Party.
	Pence defending his own actions in January of 2021, I think is well worthwhile.
	Whether that has to happen in a presidential campaign, I am not certain.
	Meanwhile, in other political news, the White House is begging Congress to pass a short-term spending deal
	and boost food aid, according to the Washington Post.
	They're urging Congress to adopt a short-term measure to fund the federal government, a movement to buy time for lawmakers to craft a broader spending deal and avert another shutdown at the end of September.
	So here is the math.
	Okay, for everybody who, we do the shutdown routine like every six months in this country.
	Here's the math.
	If Republicans control the House, but not the Senate or the presidency, they're not going to get everything they want.
	End of story.
	That's, that's all.
	And if there is a massive government shutdown in which things just don't move forward, the people who are likely to bear the burden of that over time, it's just the way the political math works, are the people who are not signing the checks.
	So, Joe Biden wrong-footed himself last time in the showdown.
	He said, I'm not going to negotiate at all.
	He said, no negotiations.
	That was a huge mistake by him because it allowed McCarthy to come forward and say, okay, well, we are going to negotiate, right?
	Well, here's our opening position.
	Let's negotiate.
	And Biden was like, I'm not negotiating.
	It made Biden look like the bad guy.
	Well, This is the way our stupid political math— Now, the way— Listen, in an idealistically pure world, the way that it would work is Republicans would say, here are the various departments funded as departments, right?
	That'd be what we call regular order.
	It hasn't obtained in Washington, D.C.
	for at least a couple of decades.
	We'll fund the Defense Department, then we'll fund the Education Department, then we'll fund the Commerce Department.
	That hasn't happened.
	We've been doing omnibuses for the last several decades in the United States.
	Okay, so, the normal way that would work is that they would then negotiate over each one of those bills.
	And that hasn't happened, because there's too much backscratching, and there's too much pork barrel rolling, and there's too much negotiation with the other branches of government and the other party.
	Okay, with that said, if Republicans take the up-front position, we are not negotiating whatsoever, they're gonna bear the political brunt if something does not go forward.
	You gotta get the best that you can get.
	It's my job to point out where that strays from principle, but it's the job of people in Congress to get the best that they can get, right?
	It's all a negotiation.
	So, when Joe Biden demands a short-term spending bill, should he be given a short-term spending bill?
	No, he should not.
	But Republicans should lay out a couple of key concessions they wish to win in the next spending battle, and then they should fight for those concessions.
	And they should say, listen, we're willing to give up a lot of stuff that we don't want to give up, but you got to give something too.
	That is the way that you win a government shutdown fight.
	Contrary to kind of talk radio opinion, the way that you win a government shutdown fight is not typically to shut down the government for prolonged periods of time.
	It doesn't seem to redound to the benefit of the party perceived as being more intransigent.
	Now, as I say, the Democrats can fall into the trap, right?
	The Democrats can say, we won't negotiate at all.
	We're going to be intransigent.
	Then they will pay the political price for their intransigence.
	The GOP demands mark a sharp break with the deal.
	Party leaders, including House Speaker McCarthy, worked out with the president this spring to raise the nation's debt limit.
	It was supposed to prevent another stalemate over spending this fall.
	Now the Biden administration is explicitly asking Congress to adopt what is known as a CR that's continuing resolution at this point.
	So, you know, we're going to have that battle next week.
	Earlier this month, McCarthy and Chuck Schumer each signaled early support for a continuing resolution that might offer lawmakers more time to craft a full-year spending deal.
	But Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday, it's a pretty big mess.
	He predicted that lawmakers would adopt a short-term deal into December while they struggle to figure out exactly what the government spending level is going to be.
	The reason that I say that the split government works, that the split government between Republicans and Democrats means that Republicans are not going to get what they want out of the deal is because they won't.
	Joe Biden's just going to veto it.
	It's sort of like the quixotic quest, idealistically pure.
	But politically counterproductive attempt by Ted Cruz in like 2014 to defund the federal government to get Barack Obama to repeal Obamacare.
	It was not going to happen.
	Barack Obama was not going to repeal Obamacare.
	There are certain things that may help individual politicians because it makes them look purer to the base that don't actually achieve the thing.
	But there's a difference between that and actively stumping for things that you think you can achieve in a negotiation, right?
	Chip Roy did that last time around.
	He did that with regard to the budgeting process, and he also did that with regard to, for example, Kevin McCarthy's speakership itself, and he won some important concessions.
	So that should be something that is on the table.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden trying to lock up the youth vote by giving them weed, apparently.
	According to Politico, the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services is recommending that the DEA significantly loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, stop short of advising it should be entirely removed from the Controlled Substances Act.
	The health agency wants the drug moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 under the CSA.
	That is potentially the biggest change in federal drug policy in decades.
	So we already have a huge percentage of American youngsters who are toking and making nothing of their lives.
	So, first of all, we have now debunked in very thorough fashion The scientific community has debunked the idea that marijuana is non-addictive.
	That is not true.
	It is just not true.
	First of all, it's significantly more potent than when you work it.
	Second of all, it is actually quite addictive for a large percentage of people who take it.
	The idea that it is completely benign, particularly for young people, is a complete lie.
	I don't know how culturally we got to the point where tobacco products are considered the great root of all evil, because you might die of lung cancer when you're 60, but marijuana, which makes you useless if you use it on the regular, is somehow considered, what, some sort of societal good?
	I mean, I know people, personally, who have serious problems with marijuana addiction, and it is a massive issue.
	And meanwhile, the Biden administration, seeking apparently to make everybody fat, stupid, and useless, is going to move toward more decriminalization on marijuana.
	Now, you can make the case the federal government is bad at the war on drugs.
	That's a case that I'm actually somewhat warm to.
	But that's not a case that Joe Biden has ever made.
	He's doing this on ideological grounds.
	So the HHS letter is part of an official review process initiated by Biden last October.
	The FDA conducts the review.
	It's sent to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the HHS.
	The HHS transmits a letter of recommendation to the DEA.
	The White House is refusing to comment on the review process.
	So this will lead to a federal-state conflict because the federal law has failed to keep up with massive changes over the past decades in state cannabis laws.
	By the way, it's worked out beautifully for California and for states like Colorado, where Denver is now basically an open-air drug market.
	So things are just working out absolutely beautifully.
	Decriminalization of marijuana, it might have been an idea that was humorable for a time, but the effects of it have been pretty, pretty bad.
	Meanwhile, Democrats continue to use climate change as their excuse for pretty much everything.
	So the governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, he was asked about whether Hawaii's electric company had been responsible for the complete destruction of Lahaina, which is one of the great tragedies of modern American history.
	It really is quite horrifying.
	And it's pretty obvious that probably Hawaii Electric should have shut down the electric substations, and they didn't, and it probably led to this fire in the middle of this giant, giant windstorm.
	And he was like, Well, I'm not going to say anything about the power company, but the sun.
	Global warming.
	How much responsibility do you think the power company bears here for the fire?
	It's a very good question.
	Two days in, which was on the 10th, I asked my attorney general, instructed her to do a comprehensive investigation.
	So she's doing that right now.
	She's brought an outside investigator in from the mainland that has fire expertise.
	She's going to find out exactly how much.
	We do know that that early fire was sparked, as Hiko said.
	I don't want to jump to conclusions just because I don't think it's fair for me to do that, but we will hold everyone accountable 100% and we'll be very transparent about it.
	We'll release all the reports.
	I think that at the end of the day, we all have to acknowledge that this is a global problem.
	It was a very, very hot, dry, terrible storm.
	We are dealing with global warming here.
	We had six total fire emergencies from 1953 to 2003, and then we had six in the first two weeks of this month.
	Okay, so it's the get-out-of-jail-free card for bad governance.
	It turns out that human beings have been dealing with environmental disasters for literally all of human history.
	How you handle that is a good measure of are you good at your job or not.
	And he handled this about as badly as you can handle it, so global warming is the problem, of course.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden doing the same exact routine.
	It's such a get-out-of-jail-free card.
	Climate change is now basically the excuse for everything.
	We handled the disaster badly in Lahaina.
	Well, it was climate change.
	The economy is having problems.
	Well, that's probably because of climate change.
	The war is breaking out in the middle.
	It's climate change.
	Everything is climate change.
	It's the ultimate political get-out-of-jail-free card.
	There's still some deniers out there in terms of whether or not climate change has anything to do with any of this.
	And we're going to need a whole hell of a lot more money to deal with emergency appropriations, to deal with all you're taking care of.
	Oh, so the answer is a lot more money.
	I didn't see that coming.
	Joe Biden calling for more spending on things?
	No, no.
	By the way, the notion that hurricanes are dramatically created by the global warming issue, that data is not particularly clear.
	As Bjorn Wallenberg points out, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent.
	The frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental United States has declined slightly since 1900.
	Airplanes and satellites have dramatically increased the number of storms scientists can spot at sea, which is why the frequency of landfall hurricanes, reliably documented back to 1900, is better stat than the total number of Atlantic hurricanes.
	There aren't more powerful hurricanes either.
	The frequency of Cat 3 and above hurricanes making landfall since 1900 is trending slightly down.
	You hear a lot about hurricanes getting stronger.
	A study in the Journal of Nature found that the increases are not part of a century-scale increase, but a recovery from a deep minimum in the 60s through the 80s.
	So, yeah.
	Once again, it comes down to governance and ability to govern.
	Okay, time for some things I like and some things that I hate.
	So, today I begin with a thing that I hate because this is legitimately one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard in my entire life.
	Here it is.
	It comes courtesy of Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times.
	No, that's not what they did.
	Apparently, they just didn't take enough precautions to prevent people from stealing their vehicles.
	I'm not kidding.
	a crime wave. They should pay for it. Wait, you ask, are Kia and Hyundai hiring gangs of criminals
	to steal each other's vehicles? No, that's not what they did. Apparently, they just didn't take
	enough precautions to prevent people from stealing their vehicles. I'm not kidding. This is his case.
	In a recent analysis of data from 37 American cities, the Council on Criminal Justice,
	a nonpartisan think tank, suggested a hopeful trend.
	The pandemic-era spike in crime may have peaked.
	The homicide rate has dropped significantly over the last year based on data from 30 American cities.
	But there's a glaring exception.
	Auto thefts.
	According to the Council on Criminal Justice, the number of vehicle thefts during the first half of 2023
	was 33.5% higher on average than during the same period in 2022,
	representing 23,974 more vehicle thefts in the cities that reported data.
	That would be Philly, Washington DC, Chicago, New Orleans, Buffalo, and Durham, North Carolina.
	Motor vehicle thefts this year have more than doubled relative to last year, according to stats collected by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst.
	Why are so many cars getting stolen?
	Police departments and city officials point to this.
	Millions of Kias and Hyundais are ridiculously easy to steal.
	Oh, that, oh, so it's, oh, so it's the fault of the car, you see.
	The car basically wanted it.
	Its skirt was too short.
	It needed to be stolen.
	That's the way that this works.
	It's not the criminal, the car's just sitting there, and the criminal was not a criminal, it was just you.
	You were just walking down the street like a normal human, never having stolen a car in your life, and there you saw it, in the pure summer sunshine, a Kia Ultima.
	And you were like, ah, let's do this thing.
	The time has come.
	That is the easiest car to steal.
	And so you, drawn like a moth to the flame, walked over to the Kia.
	And you said, sure, that's not a very nice car.
	Sure, I don't really want a Kia.
	I wasn't like desperate.
	For any of Kia's brands, their EV6 wasn't my bag, their Telluride wasn't my thing, but now that I see it, now that I see it gleaming in the summer sunshine and I know it's super easy to steal, I, a lifelong law-abiding citizen, have decided to steal this Kia.
	That's exactly how it went.
	Probably.
	According to Farhad Manjoo, for years now, most automakers have equipped most of the cars they
	sell in the US with electronic immobilizers, devices that prevent cars from starting unless
	they detect a radio ID code associated with the car's rightful key. But Hyundai and Kia,
	which come under the same South Korean conglomerate, did not install this basic device in
	somewhere around 9 million cars sold between 2011 and 2022.
	A couple of years ago, videos showing how to hotwire the vulnerable cars began to pop up
	online. Without going into details, the hack involves jamming a small object into the car
	starter and turning it as if it were a key.
	One perfectly shaped tool for the job is readily available.
	A USB plug.
	I'm glad that Farhad Manjoo is now explaining to people how to steal a car.
	This is great.
	The resulting crime wave has clobbered American cities.
	We're hitting close to 6,000 cars that have been stolen this year alone, said Adrian Diaz, Seattle's police chief.
	More than a third of the cars stolen were Hyundais and Kias.
	And then there are the follow-on accidents.
	Stolen Kias and Hyundais have been involved in numerous deadly crashes, armed robbery sprees, and other crimes around the country.
	Whoa, I didn't expect that from the Kias and Hyundais.
	That's crazy.
	So basically the Kias on their own were stolen.
	No one's to blame for this.
	It was their own fault because they're easy to steal.
	And then the Kia robbed a bank and went on an armed robbery spree, or shall we say a wheeled robbery spree all by itself.
	Amazing stuff from the Kia.
	Wow, I can't believe they programmed these cars to perform armed robbery.
	Wild.
	Well, Seattle is one of several cities suing Kia and Hyundai.
	They make a compelling case, says Farhad Manjoo.
	The car makers should have known they were creating unsafe products.
	Guys, did you know that if you create a product and it is stolen, it is your fault it was stolen and you created an unsafe product?
	Because you knew it was probably going to be stolen?
	The costs of their decision have had far-reaching effects on public safety and city resources.
	There's no telling when thefts might abate.
	Um, that is amazing.
	Firehand Manager laments, he says, it's difficult for cities to prove that the rise in thefts
	is primarily Kia and Hyundai's fault.
	Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist who's one of the authors on the Council on Criminal Justice
	Analysis, told me motor vehicle theft is an under-researched phenomenon. But stats released
	by some of the worst affected cities strongly suggest thefts of Kias and Hyundais are a major
	part of the recent spike. There's a chance Kia and Hyundai will escape some of the blame for
	There's a juicier target for politicians to go after, social media platforms, where the how-to videos have been circulating.
	This strikes me as a bizarre blame shifting.
	It's Kia and Hyundai, not TikTok, that sold theft-prone cars.
	Wait, why are we blaming TikTok?
	How about you blame criminals?
	I don't understand.
	There's like a third party here doing all the criming.
	It isn't TikTok.
	It isn't Hyundai.
	It isn't Kia.
	It's the criminals.
	Like, these people are so stupid.
	This is like the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
	Well, there was the knife.
	It was sitting there in plain sight, and you were just drawn to it.
	You couldn't stop yourself, and so you stabbed your friend in the eyeball.
	Probably we should sue the knife manufacturer, or alternatively, the YouTube video where we learned that knives stab things.
	This is how dumb we have become.
	How about like some basic level of personal responsibility?
	Well, he can't say that because you know what this might require?
	More police!
	More active policing!
	More throwing criminals in the jail and leaving them in the jail!
	I know, this is like super basic stuff, but not apparently to these morons.
	So, uh, slow clap for that genius take there.
	That is some strong stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, let's get to a thing that I like.
	So, things that I like today.
	Joe Rogan, head on Oliver Anthony.
	He's the guy from Richmond, north of Richmond, who's become sort of a national phenomenon.
	His song led off the first Republican debate.
	He says he's not a political figure, which is perfectly fine.
	I think like most Americans, he really doesn't follow politics all that closely.
	But his generalized annoyance at an elite class that seeks to control the lives of Americans and use its power to redistribute, as he says, from sort of the productive to the unproductive, That is inherently political, even if he doesn't wish it to be a partisan issue.
	Well, it was fascinating to watch him on Rogan because as a sort of blue-collar dude, he was able to say some things to Joe that a lot of people need to hear.
	Now, you know, I've quoted the Bible to my friend Joe Rogan before.
	It has, I think, a different impact when it comes from Oliver Anthony.
	Here's Oliver Anthony on with Joe Rogan yesterday.
	You know, like, there's things it says, like, and I'll be very brief with this, I promise, but, like, one thing.
	Ironically, it's Proverbs 420, which I thought you would like, so if there's anything better.
	Perfect.
	Read it.
	Preach.
	My son, pay attention to what I say.
	Turn your ear to my words.
	Do not let them out of your sight.
	Keep them within your heart.
	for they are life to those who find them and health the one's whole body.
	Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.
	Keep your mouth free from perversity. Keep corrupt. Talk far from your lips.
	Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you.
	Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your
	ways. Do not turn to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil.
	But um, that's pretty profound.
	But the whole book of Proverbs is like that.
	It's not preachy.
	It's not what you think.
	It's good guidance.
	It's like good guidance that you would want a father to give to his son.
	Good for Oliver Anthony.
	Again, this is the part of American life, and he tells this story, by the way, and his story is really fascinating, because he basically says that he was involved in drug use, and he was involved in alcohol use, and he was basically falling apart in near suicide, and then he discovered religion, and just like a lot of other people who have discovered religion over the course of religious history, He then found inspiration there, and within six months, he was writing songs that people wanted to hear.
	And basically, his song is a plea for leave me alone and personal responsibility.
	That's really what it is.
	Like, let these people not bother me and let me live my life in consonance with walking in the ways of God.
	This is the way that America used to work.
	And the fact that it is kind of incredible how basic message is.
	Like, the book of Proverbs is kind of an old book.
	And it's familiar to many of us.
	I mean, it's Mishle in Hebrew.
	Like, it's been around for several thousand years.
	And the fact that it used to be, like, the sentences that Oliver Anthony is reading there, these used to be the kinds of sentences that pretty much everybody in America had at the tip of their tongue.
	You could basically quote the book of Deuteronomy, and it would be a common point of reference, in the same way that in Britain, you could quote Shakespeare, and it was a common point of reference.
	The Bible was the text that everybody used for literally centuries.
	The text that was, for many people, the only text they knew was the Bible.
	There is a reason why the most printed book in human history is the Bible.
	And now, if you speak to like a regular person on the street and you quote the Bible, they don't know a damn thing about it.
	And that's a real problem.
	Because the Bible does carry with it a set of values.
	It is not just a bunch of vague standards that are unimplementable in your daily life.
	As it says in the book of Deuteronomy, it is not far from you, it is close to you, in your mouth, right?
	I mean like this...
	The basic notion that the morality of the Bible is available to everyone and that it's actually fairly understandable and fairly clear and that provides a basic guide to life.
	Like this was the thing that fell away in favor of this notion that you can define your own value system and that just follow your stars, follow what you feel in your heart, follow that is not.
	What the Bible is saying.
	That's not what Proverbs is saying.
	And Oliver Anthony, when he moved from living in one way to a biblical way of living, improved his life fairly dramatically.
	The Bible is still the greatest self-help book ever written because it isn't about you.
	The whole point of self-help is that it really isn't about you.
	It's about you orienting outside yourself.
	You can't help yourself if you're oriented toward yourself.
	You're the problem.
	We live in a society where you're not allowed to say to people that they are the problem with their own life.
	But the truth is, 95% of the problems in your life are you problems.
	I mean, they're problems that you can solve or that you have to handle.
	And that in handling, your life gets better.
	That doesn't mean that horrible things don't happen to people financially, health-wise.
	Of course horrible things happen to people.
	But the only way that you can solve those kind of problems in your life, I don't mean fixing the external circumstance, is by how you approach that problem.
	This is a point that Viktor Frankl makes even with regard to the Holocaust.
	He says, even when you are put in literally the worst situation that a human being can put into, it is your measure of autonomy in dealing with that situation that makes you a human being.
	That's what biblical values used to teach, and it used to be ingrained from the time that you were very, very young.
	There are some people who lead that sort of life instinctively.
	Like, Joe is not a biblical liver, but Joe is the kind of person who approaches life that way.
	Like, if you actually know Joe, I'm friends with Joe, the way that Joe approaches his own life is in this way.
	He's like, how can I help myself?
	How do I solve the problem?
	Not, how do I blame somebody else who then comes and solves the problem for me?
	One of the big problems with our politics is just that.
	Everybody's waiting for the deus ex machina.
	Everybody's waiting for somebody to come along and solve all their problems for them.
	And the politicians who are the most popular are the Pied Pipers who say this kind of stuff.
	Well, I will solve your problems.
	I will come in with the power of government.
	I will fix everything.
	But that's not possible.
	They can't do that.
	Everybody's looking, as I said on Twitter today, everybody's looking for the deus ex machina, meaning the god outside the machine.
	There used to be something in Greek theater where basically the writer would run into a problem of his own making that he couldn't fix and suddenly a god would arrive from like the rafters, like Apollo would just show up and boom, fix the problem.
	That was deus ex machina, right?
	It was the god outside the machine that was going to fix everything.
	Well, instead of looking, but now we've basically attributed those kind of powers to our elite, and then we're surprised when they can't fulfill it.
	How about instead of looking for a deus ex machina to fix everything, or a miracle to fix everything, how about we actually look to, you know, the set of values that built the civilization that we have garnered all benefit from while giving very little back?
	How about that?
	That would be the thing that actually makes a big difference.
	It was a pretty fascinating appearance.
	Rogan also, during this appearance, went after Rainn Wilson.
	Rainn Wilson had gone after Oliver Anthony.
	And here was Joe going after Rainn Wilson in return.
	It's a subject of discussion.
	So, like, everybody is getting involved.
	And somehow or another it became cultural.
	And then there was Dwight from The Office.
	Oh yeah.
	He chimed in.
	If he was going to write a cultural anthem, what did he say?
	Something like he wouldn't write about overweight people on welfare, he would write about billionaires and their taxes.
	There is nothing funnier than millionaires talking s*** about billionaires.
	There is nothing funnier about millionaires pretending these billionaires are out of touch.
	Take Dwight from the office down to West Virginia.
	Take him through those coal mining countries.
	Take him through those places in Appalachia where people have extreme poverty and pills have ravished those areas.
	Take him through there.
	He's not wrong about any of that.
	But the key there is that if you don't want to talk down to people who, if you're Rainn Wilson, you don't want to talk down to people who are living in Appalachia in poverty, then don't talk down to them.
	Meaning, they are human beings with equal worth and equal merit in God's view.
	As just human beings, you know, they're gonna have to earn, they're gonna have to earn, you know, their good in front of God, but the idea that they are of equal godly worth, that of course is basically biblical value, which also means they have equal responsibility.
	It's responsibility that has fallen away here.
	The Oliver Anthony appearance on Rogan is definitely worth the watch.
	You should spend some time with it.
	It's really good.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be speaking with Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University.
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