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Sept. 11, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:12
Is War With China Coming?
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It's very easy to get caught up in the horse race and because, again, we are in a presidential pre-year.
The presidential year used to start in like 2024, but now it stretches the full year beforehand.
It's only September of the prior year and we are already in full horse race mode, but it's It's easy to forget that the presidency actually matters.
It's not just about all of the lights and the whistles.
It's also about, can you be the president of the United States and do a good job?
And Joe Biden continues to prove that he is not capable of this.
So over the weekend, Joe Biden went to Hanoi, Vietnam.
His strategy in Vietnam was to apparently attempt to create some sort of division between Vietnam and China.
It was essentially a containment strategy.
And this is a strategy that has been pursued in bipartisan fashion by every president for the last 10 or 15 years.
The basic idea is you get Japan and South Korea and Vietnam and all of the countries that surround China to basically create a counterweight to China and box them in such that America has allies surrounding China in pretty much every direction.
That at least is the strategy.
And that requires some delicate diplomacy because the fact is that China is a very aggressive country and under Xi Jinping, an increasingly aggressive country.
It would also require that the Chinese, you know, have a little bit of fear that the American president is actually going to stand by his word, that the American president is actually somebody.
Who's going to stand up for a particular line.
And if a line is drawn and that line is crossed, that the Americans are actually going to do something about it.
Well, that is rather undercut when the president of the United States is feeble.
And there is no question about this.
Joe Biden is feeble.
So his entire team put out a schedule of his events yesterday, today.
He apparently was going to be in Vietnam yesterday and over the weekend, he flew there and he had a bevy of events and he got on a plane and he headed to Alaska for the September 11th memorial event.
I don't know why he's in Alaska.
For the September 11 Memorial event, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Last I checked, I mean, I was there for September 11th, and so were you, I assume.
And you recall that it had literally nothing to do with Alaska.
But for some reason, Joe Biden is going to be in Alaska for September 11th, because why the hell not?
And this was proof of his virality.
This is proof that he was somebody who was durable, and he was going to be somebody who can stand up to the rigors of the job.
There's only one problem.
By the time he hit Vietnam, dude was asleep, and he just stayed asleep the entire trip.
So, for example, Joe Biden's staff had to cut him off in the middle of a sentence because he doesn't know where he is.
He started wandering on the stage.
No one knows what he's doing here.
We talked about at the conference overall.
We talked about stability.
We talked about making sure that the Third World, excuse me, the Southern Hemisphere had access to change.
It wasn't confrontational at all.
Thank you everybody.
This ends the press conference.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you.
Oh, tinkly piano.
Play him off.
It's the Tonys now.
He's getting a war.
I'm sorry.
Your time is up, Mr. President.
Do do do.
Just get the tinkly.
Just get Kenny G in the corner with the saxophone.
Joe Biden also said in the middle of this press conference that he was going to bed,
which is always a great indicator of just the the absolute vitality of the presidency.
Here was Joe Biden explaining that he is going to sleep.
Thank you.
Anyway, I just think that there are other things on leaders' minds, and they respond to what's needed at the time.
And look, nobody likes having celebrated international meetings if you don't know what you want at the meeting, if you don't have a game plan.
He may have a game plan.
He just hasn't shared it with me.
But I tell you what, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed.
Uh, what?
Very encouraging stuff there from the President of the United States, who apparently is capable of allowing a sound to emerge from his mouth only once every five or six seconds before he has to tell people that he is ready for his beddy-bye, his warm cup of milk, and a big, big hug from his night nurse.
Presumably his press secretary.
That is insane stuff.
But here is the problem for Joe Biden.
He's bad at the job.
It's not just that he is physically feeble, which he is, or that he is mentally feeble, which he has kind of always been and he is just more so now.
The problem with Joe Biden is that his policies are garbage and we have aggressive enemies.
So today is in fact September 11th.
There are many lessons we should have learned on September 11th.
And that we've busily spent the last 20 years on learning.
One of those big lessons is foreign policy actually matters.
It actually has consequences.
And that if you don't have a little bit of foresight, the consequences can be disastrous.
Now, the foresight we did not have in the 1990s is that if we did not stop Al Qaeda in its tracks in 1998, when they bombed the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, that that would come back to haunt America as Al Qaeda grew and metastasized, and it would end with the death of 3,000 Americans on 9-11.
Okay, what we're talking about right now is orders of magnitude larger.
If you don't stop the Chinese government in its tracks when it comes to its aggressive
instincts, we're not talking about, you know, 3,000 Americans dead, which was the worst
tragedy on American soil since the Second World War.
You're talking about like a full scale conflagration with the largest physical army on planet Earth.
America has the best army on planet Earth, the most technologically advanced army on planet Earth.
But if you don't stop the Chinese, people bumble their way into war because of misinterpretation.
They think the other side is weaker than it is.
Most wars in the modern era get started exactly the way the war between Russia and Ukraine got started.
Russia misinterpreted signals from the West that they wouldn't do anything if Ukraine was invaded.
And they misinterpreted Ukraine's military strength, and then they invaded.
And now we are now in year two of a long war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Those sorts of misinterpretations are created by failures of communication.
And Joe Biden cannot communicate.
He is not capable of this.
And meanwhile, Xi Jinping is becoming more and more aggressive.
His entire strategy with regard to China is quite frightening.
Not because it's bound to be successful or make China stronger, but because it is bound to make China actually weaker and thus more aggressive.
I've talked about this before.
China has massive problems.
We did a YouTube video you should check out in our series, Fact, where I talk about the big problems that China has, but they include things like demographics.
China is completely demographically upside down.
They do not have enough young people to actually provide the labor force or the earning force to pay for all of the debt they've taken out.
Speaking of which, their debt is extraordinary.
If you actually take into account all of the public and private debt that they've incurred, and there's no such thing as a real private sector, everything is backed by the government over there, you are talking about a country that is up to its eyeballs in debt.
And you are talking about a country that has now cut off the only mechanism for economic success that was available to it in capitalism.
So at least prior regimes in China were moving more toward a sort of bizarre backdoor capitalism, where Hong Kong acted as basically a way to flush money into the system.
They would allow corrupt capitalism to corrupt their little, their wonderful regime of communism, just to support it.
But now Xi Jinping, he's actually an ideologue, and he's like, no, we're not doing any of that.
Autarchy inside our own borders.
Well, as China gets weaker, it's spending more on its military budget, and it's going to have to get aggressive on its foreign borders.
We'll get to this in just one second.
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Okay, so.
Xi Jinping is getting more and more aggressive.
Article today, from the Atlantic, the world's most powerful leaders gathered in New Delhi for this year's premier diplomatic event, the G20 summit.
But China's Xi Jinping deemed it not worth his time.
His absence sends a stark signal China is done with the established world order.
Ditching the summit marks a dramatic turn in China's foreign policy.
For the past several years, Xi has apparently sought to make China an alternative to the West.
Now she is positioning his country as a full-on opponent, ready to align its own bloc against the United States, its partners, and international institutions they support.
Xi's break with the establishment has been a long time coming.
His predecessors integrated China into the U.S.-led global order by joining its foundational institutions like the World Bank and the WTO.
For much of his tenure over the past decade, Xi has kept a foot in the door to the Western order, even as China's relations with the U.S.
have deteriorated.
China even participated, though grudgingly, in G20 efforts to help alleviate debt burdens on struggling low-income countries.
But over the course of his rule, Xi has now grown hostile to the existing order.
He's intent on altering it.
He's focused on developing alternative institutions Beijing could lead and control.
He formed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
He's rivaled the World Bank.
He's promoted competing international forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose membership includes Russia and Iran.
He's going to stick around at the UN because obviously he thinks he can militarize it, but the G20 is not one of the places where he is actually flexing his influence because he would like to undercut the G20.
The map controversy suggests Xi's nationalist pursuit of global power could undermine his push to lead a new bloc against the West because he is ticking off, by the way, the Indians, for example, but He sees the United States as his chief global opponent.
This is being high-lit over the weekend by the fact that China went on high alert after U.S.
and Canadian ships went through the Taiwan Strait, according to the Agence France-Presse.
China said on Saturday that its troops were on constant high alert after two ships belonging to the U.S.
and Canada transited through the Taiwan Strait, according to a military spokesperson.
This, by the way, is one reason why the United States cutting back its military budget, particularly on the Navy, is idiotic in the extreme.
It is true the United States has the world's most powerful navy by a long shot.
It is also true that the United States requires the world's most powerful navy because many of the shipping lanes that are easy choke points for our enemies are very, very far away from us.
China doesn't require a deep water navy in order to challenge the United States.
All they require is what they call a grey water navy in order to ensure that they can basically control the Taiwan Strait.
The Taiwan Strait is right in their backyard.
It is not in our backyard, obviously.
So this is a problem for us.
So you'd imagine that strong American leadership would be something worthwhile.
Well, meanwhile, Joe Biden, he's out there saying things like, I don't want to contain China.
I don't want to contain.
Well, why not?
Seriously, why not?
Why would you not want to contain China?
I understand that we're sort of pussyfooting around this whole issue with China, but the reality is the G is not.
And taking a more aggressive posture toward China saying, listen, The way that your regime is currently attacking the rest of the world with its soft power and sometimes with hard power is not acceptable to the United States.
We're going to build up our military and we are not going to allow you to use your expansionism to threaten American interests, which do include places like Taiwan.
What's weird about Biden is that he's taking this completely confused approach.
So from time to time, he will say things like, if Taiwan is attacked, America will defend.
Which, as I've said before, is actually not a terrible thing to say.
I think it's actually the right thing to say.
But it would require an actual dedication to a military budget capable of supporting that kind of brash talk.
Biden's talk on foreign policy is generally empty words, followed by very little else.
And this creates very sticky situations, as we'll see when it comes to Ukraine in a second.
Here is Joe Biden saying he doesn't want to contain China.
It's less about containing China.
I don't want to contain China.
I just want to make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away.
way. Everybody knows what's going on.
OK, so I mean, all of that, he doesn't want to contain China.
I don't know what he thinks he means by that.
I really don't. So he was in Vietnam specifically to contain China.
We should note here. He that's why he's there.
Biden said at a news conference, today we can trace a 50-year arc of progress in the relationship between our nations from conflict to normalization.
He was talking to the General Secretary of the Communist Party in Vietnam.
He says, this is a new elevated status that will be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most consequential regions in the world.
There's only one problem, of course, which is that Vietnam is also aligned with the Russians.
Literally over the weekend, Vietnam is chasing a secret Russian arms deal even as it deepens American ties.
In order for America to have a big umbrella, America has to have a very strong umbrella.
That strong umbrella has to include things like making sure that if we think that Vietnam is actually going to be weaponized against China, it doesn't buy its weapons from the Russians, who are allies of the Chinese.
All this would be a lot less complicated if the United States actually took a muscular approach to the world.
But Joe Biden doesn't have a muscular approach to the world.
He says he does, but then he doesn't fill in the gaps.
This is also true when it comes to Ukraine.
We'll get to that in one second.
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Okay, so when it comes to Joe Biden's foreign policy confusion and mixed signals, the same thing holds true with regards to Ukraine.
So just to spell out what the United States should be doing in Ukraine, it has been perfectly obvious since nearly the beginning of the war that this thing was going to end in a stalemate.
Because it was going to end in a stalemate, it made a lot of sense for the United States to basically go to the Russians and say, you're going to keep Crimea, you're going to keep parts of the Donbass, we're going to give security guarantees to Ukraine, and everybody's going to go back to status quo ante.
That was always what the deal should have been.
It was always what the deal was going to be.
The United States does have an interest in degrading the Russian military.
And the truth is, the money that we've spent in Ukraine, contra public opinion, that money has actually been money fairly well spent.
We've degraded the Russian military dramatically.
They no longer have the capacity to cross other countries' borders.
Their threat to NATO has been tremendously mitigated, which is good for our allies in the region.
And by the way, a lot of the money that we've spent is in fact coming back to us, because proof of the use of those weapons on the battlefield means, for example, that over the weekend, Poland announced that it was going to spend about $10 billion in terms of buying American military armament.
All of that can be true and still there needs to be an off-ramp here because hundreds of thousands of people are dying in a war and the borders aren't moving very much.
And everybody keeps talking about a Ukrainian breakthrough.
Okay, when it happens then I'll believe it.
But basically you have two choices.
One is you arm the Ukrainians to the point where they are capable of actually defeating the Russians throughout Ukraine.
Which would mean presumably giving them things like F-16s.
Or you're not going to do that, in which case you should be looking to cut some sort of deal.
But instead, the United States and its allies have cut sort of this halfway measure where they say, Zelensky is going to lead the negotiations, which means no peace because Zelensky is incentivized by his people, correctly so, not to give back an inch of land.
And meanwhile, the Russians have no incentive to leave because they're not being physically forced out of Donbass or Crimea.
And what are they going to do?
Just retreat for no reason?
And so this thing is just going to go on and on and on.
Meanwhile, the longer it goes on, the less support the United States is going to have for this thing going on for prolonged periods of time.
So, Russia, for example, which is part of the G20, they hailed the G20 as a success.
According to CNN, Russia on Sunday deemed the G20 summit in India's capital of New Delhi an unconditional success, a day after the meeting's final declaration stopped short of explicitly condemning its invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at a press conference at the end of the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the summit was a success not just for India, but for all of us.
The final group statement said, quote, all states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition, but it didn't single out Russia.
The statement acknowledged, quote, there were different views and assessments of the situation.
Ukraine then criticized the G20's final declaration.
Ukraine's foreign ministry spokesperson wrote on Facebook, Ukraine is grateful to its partners who tried to include strong wording in the text.
At the same time, the G20 has nothing to be proud of in the fact that Russia's aggression against Ukraine continues.
Obviously, the participation of the Ukrainian side would have allowed the participants to better understand the situation.
The principle of nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine remains as key as ever.
Meanwhile, Antony Blinken is trying to pretend that this watered-down statement is actually something positive and good.
Here's Antony Blinken trying to explain this to Jake Tapper.
That is significantly weaker language than last year's joint statement, which called for Russia's, quote, complete and unconditional withdrawal, unquote, from Ukraine.
Why did the U.S.
agree to a watered-down declaration that does not even condemn Russia by name or explicitly call for Russia to leave Ukraine?
Jake, the G20 countries in this statement all stood up for the importance of territorial integrity, sovereignty, and that's very clear.
I was in the room when all the leaders spoke today with President Biden, and it was very clear from everything that they said.
Uh, that, uh, not only do they want to see this war end, but they want to see it end on just and durable terms.
And it was also very clear that the consequences of Russia's aggression are being felt throughout, uh, the G20 countries and throughout the developing world.
Okay, this is all a mess.
It's all a mess.
And it's a mess because this administration is extremely messy.
When it comes to China, are they aggressive or are they conciliatory?
When it comes to Russia, are they aggressive or are they weak?
What exactly is it they're attempting to do?
Nobody can actually explain what they want the final product to look like.
When it came to Ronald Reagan's approach to the Soviet Union, his approach was very simple.
We win, they lose.
Now, there could be negotiation within that framework, but the framework was, you are our enemy.
And we are going to aggressively confront you in this sphere until you bend.
When it comes to China, we refuse to take that view because, again, we've integrated our economy with theirs, which is one of the world's worst measures.
By the way, you can actually understand why we were doing that from the 70s up through 89.
But after Tiananmen Square, there was no excuse whatsoever for the West trying to integrate its economy with China.
The economic liberalization of China, which was partial in the extreme, never amounted to political liberalization of China.
And meanwhile, with regard to Russia, we're sending mixed signals as well.
So on the one hand, we're not providing Ukraine the support necessary to actually win in Ukraine, but at the same time, we're telling them, you're leading the negotiations.
So, interminable war.
That is what all of this means.
And the longer this goes on, it doesn't favor democracies, by the way.
Autocracies are favored by long wars.
Why?
Well, because very often when it comes to long wars as we've seen in Afghanistan or Iraq, democracies lose faith in these wars.
They don't like them.
Democracies, you wake them up and we get really tough and we get really big and really strong very quickly.
And then we mash you.
But if we don't mash you pretty fast, And autocrat can outlive you because he's not changing administration.
All it takes for American foreign policy to swivel on a dime is a new election.
Everyone knows this.
And so it's just a matter of outlasting the other guy, whether you're talking about Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
The only wars America wins successfully are wars that are pursued in very short order with very clear objectives.
And where you use the amount of force necessary to achieve that objective.
Those are the only wars America wins.
And those are also the only wars America prevents.
It's where we make clear to everybody, if you cross X line, we will smack you so hard, you will be living in the Stone Age.
And then you can negotiate within that framework.
But we're not going to even come close to that line.
If you come close to that line, we're going to knock your head off.
Diplomacy is always the velvet glove, but if there's no iron fist inside the velvet glove, what does it matter?
And when you're vacillating, and when you're wavering, when you're being deliberately unclear, or maybe not deliberately unclear, what exactly is everyone supposed to take away from your behavior?
In just one second, we'll get to the area where Joe Biden believes he actually does have international unity and international leadership.
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Okay, so when it comes to the thing that Joe Biden believes he has unity on,
it of course is not Ukraine, it of course is not China, he thinks that he can create global leadership
on global warming.
Well, this is always nonsense.
Whenever somebody says that they're going to forge global leadership on global warming, it's absolute nonsense.
It is a toss-away line to the left.
China ain't participating.
Russia ain't participating.
India ain't participating.
And guess what?
So long as they are pumping carbon into the atmosphere, we've been lowering our carbon emissions.
And they're gonna keep increasing them because they're in competition with us.
This notion of global cooperation against a force like global warming, it's not going to happen.
And so who is Joe Biden speaking to when he says things like global warming is an existential risk?
Who's he talking to?
It's a convenient way of him bashing his domestic political opponents because he's not going to say this directly to the Chinese.
The Chinese will just lie and continue doing what they're doing.
Here was Joe Biden talking about global warming over in Vietnam.
The only existential threat humanity faces, even more frightening than a nuclear war, is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20, 10 years.
And we're in real trouble.
There's no way back.
Again, when you are in doubt and you have nothing else left to go to if you are on the left, the place that you go is global warming because it is an unbeatable enemy.
And the real enemy that you're attempting to beat is your political domestic opponent, which is why Joe Biden, again, he's so out of it.
He's so out of it.
So yesterday, he was, again, going off on what he called climate deniers.
And he again brings up this lying dog-faced pony soldier routine.
Dude, get a new frame of reference.
I mean, it's amazing, this is the same party where it's like, our foreign policy isn't stuck in the 1980s, your president is stuck in the 1880s.
Here we go.
The Union Soul is basically saying, the Indians, come with me, we'll take care of you, everything will be good.
And the Indian scout, the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union Soul and says, he's a lion dog-faced pony soldier.
Well, there's a lot of lion-dog-faced pony soldiers out there about global warming.
But not anymore.
All of a sudden, they all realize that it's a problem.
What is this creepy old man whispering about?
What is he even talking about?
By the way, this is not, in fact, from a John Wayne movie.
It's from apparently a Tyrone Power flick called Pony Soldier from 1952.
Which, if your frame of reference is 1952, you shouldn't be president anymore.
Just gonna point that out to you.
Like, 1952 was seven years after the end of World War II.
Okay, I was personally born 32 years after this movie came out that he's currently referencing.
And it's not because he liked to watch oldies.
It's because he watched this in the theaters.
I'm not kidding.
Joe Biden was born in the year 1942.
He was 10 when Pony Soldier came out.
He actually watched this with his family, I'm sure, in the theater in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1952.
Joe- This is how crazy this is.
I'm 39 years old, okay?
Joe Bi- Like, simple math would suggest.
Joe Biden- I was born in 1984.
Joe Biden was born 42 years before I was born.
42 years!
That is two generations before I was born, and he is still the president.
This entire generation needs to leave the political stage.
Go.
Go.
Enjoy the rest of your retirement.
Please.
But of course, the idea that all of his political opponents are the root of all evil because they're quote-unquote climate deniers.
You know what I noticed?
I noticed that the climate deniers in the United States are not, in fact, the problem.
What I noticed is that it's the regime in China that actually is the problem.
You don't have the balls to stand up to those people.
So instead, what are you doing?
You're trying to cram it down on Americans for no apparent reason.
Which, by the way, is going to end with more economic turmoil.
As Fox News reports, President Joe Biden's administration finalized plans for a program it argues will further reduce air pollution from heavy-duty engines and vehicles across the United States.
Truckers argue that the proposed standards will crush the supply chain and put the American food supply at risk.
The new emission standards put forth by the EPA are significantly more stringent.
They cover a wider range of heavy-duty engine operating conditions compared to previous standards.
The rule officially went into effect March 27th of this year.
It's going to be implemented for new trucks sold after 2027.
But truckers are saying that the new energy standards are going to make it way, way, way more expensive to ship all of your foods.
You like Biden inflation?
Wait for Biden environmental inflation.
Here's trucker Mike Kucharski talking about Biden's EPA regulations.
My concern is if this technology fails, the entire supply chain will be dead in the water.
And failure is not merely inconvenient.
It's catastrophic.
It's catastrophic.
This is not an option, especially for the food supply chain of America.
These changes were also made without checking the supply chain challenges that we have.
They just decided without, you know, consulting with the truckers or the supply chain.
The supply chain has a safety stock, but the rule's always been, especially with food, you know, the less stock, the less of No, the more profit they make.
So the food supply stock is super thin.
To give you an idea, if all the trucks stopped in America, we would run out of, you know, stores would start running out of food within 48 to 72 hours.
48 to 72 hours, it would be very quickly.
The American Truck Dealers Association says it's $42,000 per truck.
That's insane.
Kucharski said a new clean diesel long-haul tractor typically costs in the range of $180,000 to $200,000.
A comparable battery electric tractor costs upwards of $480,000.
That is a $300,000 upcharge.
So while Joe Biden is jabbering to the Vietnamese about how his political opponents at home are climate deniers, he's ready to cram down on you exponentially higher food prices, all to make himself feel better because, again, it's not going to mitigate global warming in any real way.
All that global warming is happening right now, if you believe in man-made global warming, thanks to China and India.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's economy continues to exist right on the threshold of a major, major problem.
At the very least, we are now in a period of economic stagnation.
You're seeing this in the size of the IPOs that are currently happening.
So, initial public offerings are very often a measure of the durability and sort of the explosiveness of the American economy.
Well, right now, all of the IPO valuations are dropping.
So, Instacart is currently targeting a valuation of roughly $8.6 billion to $9.3 billion in its IPO.
In 2021, it was raising money at a $39 billion valuation, Instacart.
Now, part of that is because 2020, 2021, a lot of people were buying via Instacart because of COVID and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
But part of this is because there's just a lot less loose money lying around.
I know a lot of companies have been thinking about IPO-ing and now they're looking at the market and they're saying, I'm not going to IPO.
I'm not going to go public because I just can't raise enough money in the public markets to make that worth my while.
The company's stock market debut, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a bellwether for the IPO market, muted for much of this year and last.
It will be closely watched by investors, bankers, lawyers, and traders.
It will follow the highly anticipated offering by British chip designer Arm Ltd, whose shares are expected to debut this week in the biggest U.S.
IPO of the year.
And again, Instacart is an excellent company, and my wife uses Instacart all the time.
The fact that excellent companies are now lowering their IPO expectations by a factor of four over the course of the last two years, that should tell you something about the state of the market.
And meanwhile, when it comes to Joe Biden, all the Hunter Biden stuff is still lingering over him.
Because the reality is that the Hunter-Joe relationship is extremely corrupt.
It's been corrupt for 30 years.
There's nothing new under the sun here.
The New York Times is already trying its latest cover-up.
And it's all about how much Joe Biden loves his son.
Just true, so much love.
Katie Rogers.
Earlier this summer, President Biden was feeling hopeful.
His son Hunter's lawyers had struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges.
It seemed to the president the long legal ordeal would finally be over.
But when the agreement collapsed in late July, Mr. Biden, whose public image often belies a more mercurial temperament, was stunned.
He plunged into sadness and frustration, according to several people close to him who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Since then, his tone in conversations about Hunter has been tinged with a resignation that was not there before, his confidants say.
Now, as the Justice Department plans to indict Hunter on gun charge in the coming weeks, White House advisors are preparing for many more months of Republican attacks and the prospect of a criminal trial in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Republicans have cast Hunter's troubles as a stew of nepotism and corruption, which the Biden administration denies.
But there's no doubt the Hunter case is a drain politically and emotionally on his father and those who wish to see him reelected.
Oh, the sad old man.
That's really the story here.
It's so sad.
He just wanted to be a delightful father.
He just wanted to be a loving father, which is why he was sending his son to foreign countries to pick up bags of cash and then getting on the phone with foreign oligarchs in order to help him achieve those bags of cash.
According to the New York Times, as his father and brother showed a talent for public service, Hunter envisioned himself as the financier supporting the family business of politics.
For a time, it was work that made him proud, because it made him feel needed.
Decades later, though, he was known to complain about the responsibility.
A person close to Hunter said those complaints were exaggerated, expressed at a time when Hunter was feeling bruised.
Of course they're going to say that, because if you point out that Hunter actually texted his own daughter that he pays half of Pop's bills, that sounds a little more corrupt.
The whole thing, of course, this whole article is about how terrible it is for Joe Biden that his son is really so screwed up.
President Biden tries to keep his son close.
When Hunter accompanied the president on a trip to Ireland in the spring,
he traveled on Air Force One and slept on a cot in his father's hotel room.
When Hunter flies to Washington from his home in Malibu, who stays at the White House,
sometimes for weeks at a time.
I'm like his security blanket, Hunter told The New Yorker.
Oh, that's what it is.
He just loved his son too much.
That's the real story.
respect for the bond, but have privately criticized Biden's apparently inability to say no when Hunter sought to pull
him into his business dealings. Some allies of the president
say his loyalty to his son has resulted in wholly avoidable
political distractions. Oh, that's what it is. He just loved his son
too much. That's the real story. Okay, by the way, that dog ain't
gonna hunt. The corruption of Hunter and Joe is perfectly obvious to everyone, which is why when Joe Biden keeps
shuffling away from questions about Hunter, everybody is That's another thing that happened the other day.
Here he was in Vietnam shuffling away from the questions once again.
Mr. President, are you worried about your son being indicted, Mr. President?
There's that guitar music.
There's that lounge music.
Coming up to shield the old man as he stumbles off the stage.
This administration is a disaster area.
In just one second, we're going to get to the situation in New Mexico where apparently the governor of New Mexico thinks the Constitution doesn't apply to her.
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Well, meanwhile, apparently the governor of New Mexico is under the weird misimpression that the constitution does not apply in New Mexico.
New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, Has now announced that she has issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.
This is according to the Associated Press.
She said she expects legal challenges, but she was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.
Lucian Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amounts to civil violations.
But the Albuquerque police chief is already saying, like, I'm not going to enforce that.
Like, this is unconstitutional.
Here's the New Mexico governor claiming that emergency powers give her the ability to simply suspend constitutional law.
You took an oath to the Constitution.
Isn't it unconstitutional to say you cannot exercise your carry license?
With one exception.
And that is, if there's an emergency, and I've declared an emergency for a temporary amount of time, I can invoke additional powers.
No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute.
There are restrictions on free speech.
There are restrictions on my freedoms.
In this emergency, this 11-year-old, and all these parents who have lost all these children, they deserve my attention to have the debate about whether or not, in an emergency, we can create a safer environment.
Because what about their constitutional rights?
So, um, this is, when people say political fascism, this would be it.
Okay, when a member of the government simply declares, via emergency order, that they can violate willy-nilly constitutional rights, like full-scale constitutional rights, based on no actual emergency.
Okay, we're not talking here about a tornado that's hitting the state.
We're not talking here about there's some sort of giant earthquake.
There's no emergency here.
This is just her saying, I don't like that people got shot.
Therefore, I'm banning you from exercising your constitutional rights.
You could do this for anything.
She could say, listen, we have a national epidemic of hate.
You've seen this, by the way, in places like Chicago, where the former mayor, Lori Lightfoot, tried to declare that racism was a public health emergency.
You could see somebody like this idiot governor saying, racism, hate, they're a public health emergency, and I'm declaring an emergency.
Therefore, you are not allowed to say the following words in my state, and then just list them off.
That'd be a pretty significant First Amendment violation.
Or she could go even further, presumably.
She could just say, you're not allowed to use the internet because the internet obviously has facilitated so much violence.
So you're just not allowed to use it anymore.
I've decided in my state that you're not allowed to use that.
Not on the basis of any sort of elected legislative session, but on the basis of her own judgment that an emergency has now been constituted because she doesn't like the thing that's happening.
Well, if all of your rights are simply dependent on one lady deciding that she really doesn't like the things that are happening in the world, That is tyranny.
That is the essence of tyranny.
And it's amazing that you would try this, but it was always going to happen.
I mean, the minute that we shut down everything in the world for COVID, and then we maintained that for two years, even as the data emerged that it actually wasn't the sort of national emergency that was being suggested, it was only a matter of time before Democratic officials tried to do something like this.
It really was.
By the way, I'm going to say something I almost never say, which is, points to Ted Lieu.
Ted Lieu, I mean, again, credit where credit is due, Ted Lieu said, I support gun safety laws.
However, this order from the governor of New Mexico violates the US Constitution.
No state in the union can suspend the federal constitution.
There is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the United States Constitution.
I mean, that's a welcome change.
And then even David Hogg, who is one of the world's larger idiots, and got into Harvard University on the basis of his movement about gun control.
Even David Hogg, who's been wrong about nearly everything, ever, he says, I support gun safety, but there is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S.
Constitution.
That, good.
Good.
I mean, I'm glad that they're starting to realize that.
Now we'll see how broadly they apply it.
Because again, if this is the new way that Democrats make law, then you could do it on the basis of anything.
Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrats have declared that climate change is the greatest emergency facing humanity, period.
It's greater than COVID, than nuclear war, than anything.
The greatest emergency facing humanity is, according to them, that the planet is getting warmer by a few degrees.
And thus, what couldn't they justify in the name of all of this?
Well, the New Mexican governor, Lujan Grisham, she is saying that violators could face civil penalties and a fine of up to $5,000.
Under the order, residents can still transport guns to some private locations, like a gun range or a gun store, but the firearm has to have a trigger lock or some other container or mechanism, making it impossible to discharge.
There is no way this remotely stands up in court.
There's just no way.
It remains amazing to me that the same people who declare that rule of law is deeply important to them, many of them are going to ignore this and look the other way and pretend that it doesn't matter.
That January 6th was an assault on the rule of law, that it overthrew constitutional norms.
Well, I mean, how about just ignoring the Constitution entirely as the New Mexican governor is doing pretty amazing stuff over there.
Okay, meanwhile, Donald Trump was in Iowa back to the horse race.
So Donald Trump was over in Iowa over the weekend, so was Ron DeSantis.
And it was sort of mixed reactions, I would say.
So Trump visited an Iowa frat.
The frat was naturally quite warm to him.
Here's some of the video.
Oh, baby!
Woo!
Got some excited college students over there for him.
Hey, how you doing, pal?
President Trump.
I'm doing good.
What do you think about this?
This is some turnout.
I guess the youth likes Trump, but we love Iowa.
We just left South Dakota last night.
It was an amazing evening.
We got a wonderful endorsement, as you know, from the governor, and we're here, and this reception's been incredible.
He's gonna go over to the barbecue pit, throw a couple burgers on it, it looks like.
I don't know if, Cory, have you got a good shot of that?
That's a nice one.
Wow, Trump's doing some retail politics, which, you know, good for him.
He also went to the Iowa football game, and there was a bit of an online controversy that broke out over whether he was being booed or whether he was being cheered.
So here is sort of the raw footage and as you will hear the answer is some of both.
This is when he went down into the stands.
He spent most of the game not in the stands.
He went, he was in sort of a luxury box.
People were flipping him off and all the rest of it.
But you can see there are a bunch of enthusiastic people there in Iowa as well, which of course is not a shock.
He did win Iowa in the last election cycle.
The latest polls from Iowa are showing Trump up big time.
The Iowa state civics poll that was released Just a few days ago, has Trump up 37 points over the rest of the field?
The NBC News Des Moines Register poll has Trump up 23 points over the rest of the field in Iowa.
Now, Iowa is notoriously fickle.
You'll recall that very rarely has the Iowa caucus winner actually been the person who went on to win the nomination.
In fact, the last time that an Iowa caucus winner in the Republican Party went on to win the nomination was 2000, when George W. Bush narrowly defeated Steve Forbes 41-31.
In 2012, it was Rick Santorum, who of course was not the nominee.
In 2016, it was Ted Cruz, who of course was not the nominee.
So, you know, what happens in Iowa?
Trump is more vulnerable in Iowa, but it's not going to be enough for anyone to defeat him in Iowa.
Maybe that creates the impression that the God bleeds a little bit, but that's really not where all of the heavy lifting is going to be done.
The same thing, by the way, is true in New Hampshire.
So New Hampshire also has a spotty history of actually nominating presidents.
So in 1996, Pat Buchanan, you'll remember, won the New Hampshire primary.
And he didn't end up winning the nomination.
Bob Dole ended up winning the nomination.
In 2000, John McCain won the New Hampshire primary, throwing a scare into George W. Bush.
In 2008, McCain, who's very popular in New Hampshire, won.
Mitt Romney did win in 2012, and Trump won in 2016.
But it's a bit of a spotty record in New Hampshire.
If somebody wins Iowa and New Hampshire, that's going to throw a scare into Donald Trump.
But really, Trump's last stand, if he were to show any vulnerability, and right now this is all speculative considering he's leading by leaps and bounds in both of those states, Would be South Carolina.
South Carolina has been entirely predictive of the Republican nominee every year but 2012.
So in 2008, it was McCain.
In 2000, it was George W. Bush.
In 1996, it was Dole.
In 1988, it was George H. W. Bush.
In 1980, it was Reagan.
So, again, right now, it's kind of a moot point because Trump is leading in all of those states.
With that said, if he is going to show vulnerability, obviously the place you're going to first see it, not only in terms of calendars, but in terms of polls, is going to be Iowa, where other candidates are spending an awful lot of time.
Speaking of the Republican hopes in 2024, according to Nate Cohn over at the New York Times, one of the problems for Republicans is that the supposed electoral college advantage that Republicans enjoy, which is the way that they've won a few presidential elections, 2016, 2000, those electoral college advantages, meaning that there are certain states where by winning a slight majority, they're able to pull off a narrow victory.
That seems to be disappearing.
According to Nate Cohn of the New York Times, He says it's a reasonable question.
It's one I see quite often.
In his first two presidential campaigns, Trump fared far better in the battleground states than he did nationwide.
electoral college. He says it's a reasonable question, it's one I see quite often. In his
first two presidential campaigns, Trump fared far better in the battleground states than
he did nationwide. But there's a case that the electoral college advantage has faded.
In the midterm elections last fall, Democrats fared about the same in the crucial battleground
states as they did nationwide.
Over the last year, state polls and a compilation of New York Times' Siena College surveys have shown Biden running as well or better in the battlegrounds as as nationwide, with the results by state broadly mirroring the midterms.
In other words, the purple states are getting more purple.
It's not that purple states are red and blue states are more blue, which is how you actually win these narrow elections.
It's that purple states are getting more purple to blue, and that red states are just getting more red.
So that is a bit of a problem.
Again, when you look at the battleground states, they voted more similarly to the United States in general in 2022 than they did back in 2020.
So for example, in Wisconsin in 2020, overall, they voted at a D plus five rate in the 2020 election.
And then in the House vote, they voted almost even, Republicans and Democrats.
So the popular vote did not reflect exactly the sort of electoral vote.
But that gap is basically shrinking now.
And you're starting to see that over and over and over.
The gap is shrinking.
That's a real problem for Republicans.
As he points out, Democrats held their ground in battleground states, allowing them to retain the Senate and nearly hold the House.
Nationally, Republican House candidates won the most votes by about two percentage points.
The margin was almost identical in the presidential battlegrounds, like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Republican House candidates also won by a couple of points.
So in other words, sort of the national numbers are more reflective, are more reflected now in the battleground states.
That's not something that's going to help Trump, obviously.
Now, it's possible that could be false, but you're banking against whatever numbers you have.
I'll say it again.
It is certainly possible that all the numbers are wrong and that they're off.
It's also possible that they're not.
And so it is worthwhile taking all of that into consideration.
I've been looking at a lot of the polls recently and some of the polls that are very positive toward Republican contenders are relying on a couple of things that I think are very likely to not materialize during the actual election.
One is minority voters coming in at 54-38, for example, for Biden.
Republicans are considering that means, hey, look, that means Biden is gonna win only 54% of the vote.
No, what it means is Republicans are only gonna win 38% of the vote.
The ceiling on Republican support is in that poll.
It is not that the rest of that support is going to go to Republicans.
Or even that's gonna split evenly.
Because, remember, once again, 54 plus 38 is 92.
That's 8% of the vote still outstanding.
That's not gonna split 4-4 Republican-Democrat.
Which means that the gap is gonna be much larger.
The other gap that I think is gonna be Much rectified is a lot of these polls right now are rooted in lack of Democratic enthusiasm.
That's true, because they're very unenthusiastic about Joe Biden.
It is also true that once Donald Trump is on the ballot, after we've had 12 months of coverage of his supposed criminal foibles, Democrats are going to crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump.
That's just a reality.
He gets out turnout for Democrats, he gets out turnout for Republicans.
Ideally, if you're a Republican, what you want is to lower turnout for Democrats and increase turnout for yourself.
Donald Trump increases turnout for both.
So, right now, for example, the recent CNN poll that showed Trump and Biden dead even had the Democratic enthusiasm at 61% and the Republican enthusiasm at 71%.
I do not think that maintains for the entirety of the election cycle.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things I like.
Over the weekend, I read Lionel Shriver's new novel, Should We Stay or Should We Go?
Lionel Shriver is one of the best living novelists.
She's really terrific.
A lot of her work is excellent.
She's most famous, probably, for her book that was made into a movie of the same name, starring Tilda Swinton.
We need to talk about Kevin.
This one, should we stay or should we go?
The premise is there is a couple at 51 and the woman's dad has died of Alzheimer's.
And it talks about how much they suffered during his last years because it's very difficult to care for a parent with Alzheimer's.
And so she and her husband make a pact that on their 80th birthday, they're going to commit suicide together.
And very, very dark sort of premise.
But then what the book does is in various chapters it sort of spells out iterations of what happens next.
They hit 80.
Do they decide to do it?
Do they decide not to do it?
Does one decide to do it and the other decides not to?
What happens if there is some sort of magical medicine that is created that reverses aging and how does that impact life?
It's a wildly creative and really interesting book and is all rooted in the secular modern notion that the only thing that matters on this planet is sort of the life you have on this planet.
In other words, higher purpose can only be divine by you.
It's only something that is internal to you.
And you can see how that doesn't work out to really any advantage throughout the course of the book.
Like the one chapter that Lionel Shriver didn't write, because Lionel Shriver isn't a religious person.
She's quasi-conservative on a bunch of issues, but she's not a religious person.
Lionel Shriver never writes the chapter where the couple actually finds religion.
How does that impact their decision-making process?
But it is a fascinating book, and it spells out a lot of these sort of qualms that secular modernism faces.
Okay, other things that I like.
Jokovic, Novak Jokovic, the tennis player, he is the greatest of all time, there's no question.
It is not just that he is an amazingly skilled player.
You can make a case that Roger Federer was a more skilled player in a lot of ways than Novak Jokovic.
But, Novak Jokovic is the most determined player I've ever seen maybe in any sport.
He has like Jordan-esque levels of determination.
There's an amazing thing that he does, if you watch his matches, where there comes a point where he almost just hones in and he's like, I'm just done here.
I'm not going to allow the other person to win.
So he won his 24th major at the US Open over the weekend.
It was an incredible thing.
Novak Djokovic, that guy would have at least another three majors were not for the fact that he was banned from participating in majors for about a year and a half for not taking the VACs.
And why should he have taken the VACs?
He's 36 years old and he's in the best shape of any living human being.
It's absurd to think that he was going to be killed or significantly injured by COVID.
It's a ridiculous thing.
So he didn't.
He remains in excellent shape.
And at the age of 36, he's beating guys who are almost literally half his age.
He won last night over Danil Medvedev, who he beat in a couple other majors in the recent
past.
6-3, 7-6, 6-3.
Here's a little bit of the footage.
Oh boy.
Well, we'll take you to the dirtiest shot of the day.
And it was...
saving the match point to get to number 20.
There were a lot of shots that were highly impactful.
Here's the final one.
I love that there's a Moderna shot of the day for the unvaxxed Novak Djokovic.
That is an amazing thing.
Moderna shot of the day.
Brassi by Moderna.
Ugh, so good.
So ridiculous.
Well done to Novak Djokovic and this is not going to be his last major.
That dude's going to win probably another 4 or 5.
He is just that good.
Unless his body breaks down.
Alrighty, one thing I hate today.
So, obviously, the situation in Morocco is terrible.
For those who haven't been following, there was a very, very large earthquake, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Morocco.
At least 2,000 people have died.
More than 2,400 have been injured.
Three days of mourning have been declared nationwide, according to the Washington Post.
The buildings basically all just collapsed.
In the small town of Amismiz, buildings were still collapsing on Sunday afternoon, nearly 40 hours removed from the Friday night quake.
And one home traces of its former inhabitants, according to the Washington Post, could be glimpsed in the ruins of a second floor ceiling, velveteen blankets, suitcases, rugs, a sagging mattress.
Survivors had moved to higher ground, pitching tents on stretches of flat, dry land.
Eight is trickling in, but it is a full-on disaster area, obviously.
It is a good reminder that we are extraordinarily privileged to live in a first world country.
Living in an extraordinarily wealthy country means that when a disaster hits, very few people die.
I remember being in California during the Northridge earthquake.
And the Northridge earthquake of 1994 was a large earthquake.
That was a 6.7, right?
So this one is 6.8, slightly larger than the Northridge earthquake.
It was frightening.
The total death toll was 57.
And that was way back in 1994.
That was almost three decades ago at this point.
And still, again, that is the privilege of living in a first world country where people
actually build for the possibility of disaster.
And it's a reminder that when disaster strikes countries that are much, much poorer, the consequences are much more significant to life and limb.
All right, you guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
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