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Sept. 19, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:42
Bidenomics Is A Disaster Area
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The polls are really bad for Joe Biden on the economy.
In fact, the polls are really bad for Joe Biden pretty much across the board.
A CBS News poll that came out over the weekend shows that the qualities that most Americans are looking for are just not present in Joe Biden.
According to the latest CBS News YouGov poll, it shows that 67% of Americans want a president
who is tough, 66% want a president who is caring, 62% want a president who is no-nonsense,
only 61% want calm, and 58% want energetic.
Among people asked about Joe Biden's leadership style, 63% say that he is calm, but only 50%
say that he is caring, and only 35% say that he is no-nonsense.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump's leadership style is seen as provocative by 71%, by tough, it was seen as tough by 67%, energetic by 65%, no-nonsense by 55%, and entertaining by 55%.
Even more importantly, despite the fact that Americans are really dissatisfied with this matchup, this Trump versus Biden perspective matchup, with 64% of Americans saying that that rematch would make them feel that the political system is totally broken, on the economy, the numbers are awful for Joe Biden, as well they should be.
According to this poll, it shows that only 20% of Americans say they're better off today than they were before the pandemic, 45% say they are worse off today, and 35% say they're at about the same level, which is to say only 20% are pleased as punch.
As far as the choice for president, if finances are worse now than before the pandemic, 71% say they would vote for Trump.
So if you said that your finances are worse than they were before the pandemic, which is like 45% of Americans, 7 in 10 of those voters say they are going to vote for President Trump.
One of the administration's efforts, according to CBS News, has been to tout what it sees as Biden's accomplishments.
A lot of voters do know about some key efforts, and it apparently matters.
For example, independents who have heard about the Biden administration investing in infrastructure are backing him.
But those independents represent a small minority of people.
And here's the reality.
The vast majority of people who are thinking about the economy either think that they are no better off or significantly worse off than before the pandemic.
And that has to do with Joe Biden's policy.
The fact of the matter is that Joe Biden's easy money policy, which has been combined with a Extraordinarily restrictive regulatory environment, massive subsidies to his union buddies, green boondoggles, and all the rest is making people feel pretty insecure.
Their wages are not stacking up the same way they were before the pandemic.
Prices have risen dramatically, and it doesn't look as though an end is in sight.
Even people in the business sector who are supposedly doing amazing, thanks to the stock market boom, even those people are holding their money on the sidelines, not sure exactly where to put it.
And you can hear the inability To handle the economy in the voice of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who's supposed to be the big expert on this sort of stuff.
So Janet Yellen did an interview on CNBC yesterday in which she basically explained that she has no clue what to do next because they don't.
They have no clue what to do next.
The problem with Keynesian stimulus is that when the stimulus doesn't work, you have no more bullets to fire.
See, the thing about innovation is that innovation is done by individual entrepreneurs who have ideas and then look for the funding in order to go and build those ideas.
But stimulus doesn't make the ideas magically happen.
This is the equivalent of suggesting that some kid who gets straight C's, if you just give him an extra juice box, suddenly he's going to get A's.
That's not the way any of that works.
The reality is that the only way to truly stimulate an economy is with innovation and growth.
It is not simply by helicoptering money everywhere, but that is the entire premise of all left-wing economic policies, that if you simply hoover up money from the private sector and then you blow it out, or you don't even do that, you hoover it up from the future and you blow it out in the present, somehow this is going to lead to long-term economic growth and innovation.
The proof just ain't in the pudding.
So Janet Yellen was asked on CNBC's Squawk Box, The Saudis are extending the production cuts through the end of the year.
extraordinarily high, significantly higher than when Joe Biden took office.
And Jenny Ellis is like, look, we don't we don't know.
There's nothing we can do about it.
The Saudis are extending the production cuts through the end of the year.
Are you looking at taking any action on this front?
Well, the president wants to make sure that gas prices remain affordable for Americans.
Americans care a great deal about the price of gas.
They're still down $1.20 off their highs last summer, although they have gone up recently.
We're monitoring this situation very closely.
The president has taken action over the last year.
Certainly the releases of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve have been important in holding
down oil prices and we'll continue to monitor that closely.
The two things that Joe Biden has done that have tremendously affected gas prices, really, three, inflation affects the gas price, two, massive regulations placed on oil and gas companies, and the notion that Joe Biden spins out at every turn that he's going to kill off gas.
He's going to just destroy oil production in this country.
And then he's like, why don't you invest in the oil refineries today?
Well, because you've said that you want to destroy the industry over the course of the next five to 10 years.
That's factor number two, regulation and incentivization.
And factor number three, Joe Biden has decided to make enemies of many of the biggest oil producers on planet Earth, including the Saudi royal government.
Before he came into office, he basically said that he was going to cut off the Saudis at the knees, and they returned the favor by saying, we'll cut you off at the knees, which presumably is why the gas prices in 2021, January 2021, when this tool took over, were $2.42.
January 2021, when this tool took over, were $2.42.
And today, they're $3.70 or thereabouts.
And they've really never sunk below that in any serious way.
Meanwhile, Janet Yellen is claiming that we really shouldn't worry about this UAW strike.
So we currently have a massive strike, the biggest strike against the Detroit carmakers in modern American history.
It's against all three Detroit carmakers.
And she's pretending that this is going to have no economic impact to slow down at these plants.
Because you have to be worried about inflation, I would think.
Just as it's starting to come down, supply chain disruptions are a risk here, aren't they?
Well, you know, I think it's premature to be making forecasts about what it means for the economy.
It would depend very much on how long the strike lasts and exactly who's affected by it.
But the important point, I think, is that the two sides need to narrow their disagreements and to work for a win-win,
a contract that's good, good for the workers.
for the workers and for the people.
Okay, but the entire reason this strike is happening, like all the other strikes that have happened on Joe Biden's watch, is because everyone in union world thinks that Joe Biden is on their sides.
They are now all taking advantage of the easy money policies and the inflation of the Biden administration in order to strike against their employers, hoping that the Biden administration is going to come in and ram down some sort of beneficial deal to them that will, in the end, bankrupt these car companies again.
Remember, the car companies went bankrupt the first time because of rich union contracts, including defined benefits pension plans.
That's exactly what the UAW is seeking right now.
All of this can be laid at the footstep of this White House.
All of this stuff.
We'll get to more on this in a second.
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Okay, so...
These strikes, these UAW strikes again, are just part of a broader whole picture here, which is that the unions have paid off Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for literally decades on end, and finally they got their man in the White House, the most pro-union president since Barack Obama, and probably more pro-union even than Barack Obama, who's too elitist.
Joe Biden has been in the pocket of the union since day one in Wilmington, Delaware.
Well now, all of these unions are seeing their moment to shine.
According to Politico, the UAW's walkout Friday at 3-4 General Motors and Stellantis plans Stellantis, by the way, is Chrysler.
They got sold to a European conglomerate.
Could become the most politically and economically disruptive strike since President Joe Biden took office.
But it's hardly the only significant labor management clash during his administration.
Maybe part of that is because you actually appointed a union man head of your labor department and your National Labor Relations Board, an absolute Frankensteinian monster in terms of its pathetic effect on the American government, the NLRB.
It's a disgrace to American government.
Goodbye, bye.
All rules and regulations of the NLRB.
I have to say that every time because literally one time I made a joke and they sent us a threat letter.
This is what they do for a living.
They just threaten businesses that are not in violation of the law.
Workers, according to Politico, armed with the power of a tight labor market and at times angered by how employers treated them during the pandemic, have organized with new energy from Hollywood to UPS to Starbucks.
There's only one problem.
The money ain't there to go around.
You can pretend it is, but it ain't.
If all of the left-wingers over in Hollywood are not signing the rich union contracts, you know why that is.
Because if they do, they'll go bankrupt.
You're seeing this, by the way, in the stock prices of a lot of the major entertainment conglomerates, ranging from Netflix to Disney.
They're taking it directly on the chain.
And meanwhile, I got their writers striking.
When it comes to the auto manufacturers, they're all getting their lunch eaten by Tesla, which is a non-union shop.
It is amazing how we can keep relearning the same lessons over and over and over again.
All the adults who suggest that it's unions that made American life so wonderful during the 1950s, 1960s, it was the union job, the union job, where you sat there for 10 hours a day doing riveting, or whatever, and neglect the fact that a lot of those jobs, you know, now is you sitting in an air-conditioned office doing another kind of job, and that your grandfather, who had to sit out there in the factory doing the riveting, would kill for your job right now, Put that aside.
The fact is that the real reason America boomed during the 1950s is because every other place on earth was on fire during the 1940s.
It's not because the unions did such stellar work.
They effectively bankrupted the car industry, which was the single greatest industry in the United States in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
By the beginning of the 1970s, everybody was moving over to the cheap Toyotas.
There's a reason for that.
Crap union contracts.
The first auto bailouts were happening by the 80s.
But, says Politico, Biden has worked hard to brand himself as the most pro-labor president in American history and relied on Union's political muscle to help him win the presidency.
So when there's even the threat of a major strike, he's in the spotlight more than other presidents have been.
Again, they know they've got him over the barrel.
In the showdown between the UAW and automakers, Biden has publicly stepped carefully as the administration engages primarily behind the scenes, but that hasn't always been the case.
Biden was able to intervene directly in talks between railroads and rail workers, because federal law gives the government a big say in that industry's relations because of its economic importance.
His top Labor Department official was involved in a deal this year between West Coast ports and dock workers.
When it came to rail negotiations, Biden said a rail strike, without a doubt, would have been an economic catastrophe at a very bad time in the year.
The contract did not include paid sick leave for more than 100,000 workers who had threatened to strike.
The administration, weeks before, had brokered a deal to avert an earlier strike, but four of the 12 labor unions involved, representing more than half the union workforce, rejected the proposals, sending both Congress and the administration into a frenzy to get involved before the holiday shipping rush.
The same thing happened with regard to the UPS and Teamsters, as well as Westport, Because this administration is basically owned by the unions Lock, Stock and Barrel.
Unions know that and they are pressing while the iron is hot.
Meanwhile, you can hear Bernie Sanders out there mimicking UAW's demands, including, I kid you not, UAW wants for its workers, get ready for this, a 32-hour workweek.
A 32-hour workweek.
Now, your math is not deceiving you.
That is a 4-day workweek.
That is 8 hours a day, 4 days a week.
A 32-hour workweek.
This is what they're seeking.
The UAW.
Of course, Bernie is big in favor of it.
This push from the UAW for a four-day work week, is that a negotiating tactic, or do you see that as the future of labor in the U.S., a four-day work week?
Well, I'll tell you what I think, and thanks for raising that question, Jake.
We are looking at an explosion in this country of artificial intelligence and robotics.
And that means that the average worker is going to be much more productive.
Worker productivity is going to increase significantly.
The question as a nation that we have got to ask ourselves is who's going to benefit from that increased productivity?
Is all of that new income and wealth being created by worker productivity going to go to the people on top or are workers going to benefit?
So right now, in my view, I happen to believe that as a nation, we should begin a serious discussion, and the UAW is doing that, about substantially lowering the work week.
Okay, so first of all, we should point out here that worker productivity in the United States has largely been a result of investing in better machinery.
It's not because workers suddenly got massively better at their jobs.
It's because their jobs themselves are more productive, thanks to the use of, for example, capital equipment.
This has brought down prices, which has benefited workers, or would have, if there had not been massive inflation.
You know one way to reverse all the productivity gains?
One way to do that is to artificially increase wages and lower the hours.
That is one way to do that.
And by the way, it's always short-term gain versus long-term pain when it comes to these union negotiations.
The UAW right now is negotiating for all of this stuff because they see that all the car companies did real well because of the boosting inflation prices of cars, right?
Car prices went up dramatically over the course of the last couple of years because of supply chain woes.
Well, now those supply chain woes are going away, and now the easy money policies of the United States are going to have to be curbed.
What happens when the car sales drop off?
What happens when Joe Biden's push to force car companies to spend extraordinary amounts of cash shifting from gas-powered vehicles, which represent 97% of all Detroit sales, to EVs, electric vehicles?
Who's going to absorb those costs?
It's not going to be the workers if they get their contract from Joe Biden, but Joe Biden won't care.
Because again, it's all a corrupt bargain.
The unions spend billions of dollars every election cycle to back Democrats.
This is why I always scoff when they say that Democrats want to get money out of politics.
My ass Democrats want to get money out of politics.
Who do you think is paying for Joe Biden's bills?
It's the unions.
When they say big business runs Republican politics, first of all, that ain't true.
But second of all, Unions run democratic politics like in direct bribery fashion.
They hire, effectively, Democrats to then negotiate with them at the table.
It's an amazing scam that's been going on for decades on end.
Another part of the scam is that the only employers in the United States who right now are benefiting are, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, the government.
So we are getting rid of job creation in the private sector through rich union contracts, but we are definitely boosting more employment in the government sector, which of course is what Joe Biden would like.
If you'd like to work for the government, now's an excellent time.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Well, there is one sector of the employment market that is growing by leaps and bounds and that is government employment.
Aren't you glad that you get to pay the taxes so the government can hire lots of people?
According to the Wall Street Journal, while many companies have been cutting staff and freezing new hires this year, the government is laying out the welcome mat.
Public sector jobs at the federal, state, and local level have risen by 327,000 positions so far in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That is approaching one-fifth of all new American jobs created in the first eight months of the year.
In contrast, public sector jobs accounted for 5% of employment growth during the equivalent period last year.
If you look at public sector jobs as a percentage of payroll gains, this is the biggest number that we have seen in any given year Since 2007?
2006?
I mean, it doesn't even go back that far.
The chart the Wall Street Journal is showing.
So, what we are watching here is the government basically subsidizing a bunch of people to come work for the government.
Some of this is worthwhile because you actually need people working for U.S.
Customs and Border Protection.
As we'll see, the administration isn't allowing them to do their job, but they are hiring there.
But, there's also a ton of people who are just working in kind of make-work programs for the government.
Private sector employment is now 3.29% over its pre-pandemic level, but the public sector is struggling to shore up staffing, and so they are just ratcheting up.
They are ratcheting up the amount of money that they are paying people.
So Joe Biden's future economy here is one in which you have a government job working a 32-hour work week with a public sector union pension paid for by the American taxpayer.
A growing public sector at the expense of a shrinking private sector is the future of this economy.
And then you wonder why many Americans seem dissatisfied with this arrangement.
Because it's basically the arrangement that lengthened the Great Depression by eight years during FDR's tenure.
It's the same arrangement that led to economic turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s under LBJ and then under Richard Nixon.
That would be the reason.
So bad economic policy is part and parcel of what Joe Biden is doing right here.
Combine that with Joe Biden's crappy immigration policy and you have a real You have a real tempest on your hands.
At the same time that Joe Biden is making it unaffordable for people to live in this country, particularly at the lower end of the income scale, he continues to ship in millions of illegal immigrants and then release them into the interior.
Over the weekend, Fox's Griff Jenkins posted video of the so-called Faro-Mex train.
It's an amazing video.
These are all people who are headed up to the American border.
They're coming from Zacatecas, Mexico, and they are cheering en route to the United States.
Earlier this summer, the Biden administration, according to Mediaite, ended the Donald Trump-era immigration policy remain in Mexico, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.
And the administration has successfully incentivized literally thousands of people to hop on trains just head right for that border.
Here's the video.
Why not?
Why not?
Joe Biden is going to process them and release them into the interior of the United States.
That's what's going to happen here.
We all know that.
These are not all people who are attempting to escape from tyranny-ridden countries.
These are a lot of people who are looking for jobs and welfare benefits, and they're going to come into the United States, and that is what they're going to take advantage of.
And meanwhile, by the way, images of immigrants in cages are emerging from Tucson, Arizona, thanks to Bill Malugan.
I don't see AOC crying anywhere near these cages.
Anywhere.
You see these giant cages filled with people?
All these people will be processed and let into the interior of the United States.
That's Joe Biden's immigration policy.
So if you are a low-wage American, just understand that Joe Biden is importing an entire labor pool to take your job away from you in the private sector, simultaneously paying a bunch of middle-class people in Northern Virginia to work for the federal government.
Blowing out the spending so as to increase inflation and paying off his union cronies.
And then you wonder why Americans aren't super fond of his economic policies.
I can't imagine why.
In just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden's absolutely discombobulated and immoral foreign policy first.
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Okay, meanwhile, the Biden administration has now gone forward with its exchange $6 billion in funding released to the Iranian mullahs, to the tyranny of Iran, in exchange for five Americans.
According to the UK Daily Mail, the five U.S.
prisoners released by Iran today as part of a controversial prisoner swap have arrived in Doha, Qatar to begin their journey back to America, where one says he's eager to visit an Apple store to find out what the latest phones are after eight years behind bars.
The prisoners were flown first from Tehran to Doha on a Qatar Airways jet today.
They were greeted on the tarmac at Doha by the U.S.
ambassador to Qatar, Timmy Davis.
The price of their freedom?
Six billion dollars in frozen funds the U.S.
seized from Iran in 2018.
Now we claim that it'll be used for humanitarian purposes only, which is a complete lie.
The president of Iran said as much recently.
He was recently on with Lester Holt, and he was asked specifically about whether there are any restrictions on the use of the funds.
He's like, nope!
We're going to use it for whatever we damn well please.
Meanwhile, the administration continues to deny that there's anything to this at all.
John Kirby, who's the national security spokesperson, he says, don't worry, we're not ignoring Iran's terrorist activities.
We're just ignoring Iran's terrorist activities.
How is U.S.
national security better today because of this deal and not worse off, as I've heard many Republicans say?
First of all, what's really better off are five families.
And I think that's really important to remember.
Number two, as I said earlier, we just executed more sanctions on entities in Iran today, specifically for the offense of wrongfully detaining Americans.
And just in the last couple of weeks, we've upped our military presence in the Gulf region.
We added some additional sanctions on Iran just a few days ago.
I mean, we are holding Iran to account.
And we are mindful of our national security interests in the region, and we're doing everything we can, not just on the economic space, but even in the military space, to protect our troops, to protect our interests, to protect our allies and partners in that part of the world.
No one should take away from today's events Any idea that we are somehow turning a blind eye to what Iran is doing in the region or around the world?
Not at all.
Quite the contrary.
Well, I mean, quite the contrary?
You'd be the second straight Democratic president to ship pallets of cash over to the Iranians, effectively speaking.
By the way, we also released a bunch of Iranian prisoners in the United States who are actual criminals, including one Iranian who was sentenced to 63 months in prison in 2021 for obtaining equipment that could be used in missiles, electronic warfare, nuclear weapons, and other military gear.
Another Iranian, a permanent resident of the United States, who was charged in 2019 with allegedly stealing engineering plans from his employer to send to Iran, as well as another one who was arrested in February and sentenced to 30 months in prison for purchasing sophisticated top-tier U.S.
electronic equipment and software through front companies in the UAE.
Meanwhile, John Kirby continues to maintain, don't worry, the regime is never going to get their hands on this money, which is weird because they totally are.
That's what happens when you release money to criminals.
What can the United States do if it is seen that they're using this money not for food, not for medicine, for bad reasons?
Lock it back down.
We can stop a transaction.
It's important to remember, Kate, that the regime doesn't get the money.
They can request a withdrawal for humanitarian goods, agricultural products, medical supplies, food.
And then we will run a process through which those goods are contracted for.
The Iranians don't even get to let the contracts.
We'll make sure that the contracts are let with vendors that we know we can trust, and then that material will be delivered to the Iranian people.
The Iranian regime does not get hands on this money.
There's nothing that America does better than foreign aid going directly to the sources that we're seeking to get it to.
I'm being incredibly sarcastic right now.
The amount of money that we waste every year on fraud and graft that goes directly to dictators all over the world is insane.
It's hundreds of millions of dollars.
There's a reason that Yasser Arafat ended up the richest guy in the Palestinian Authority.
He wouldn't give that money to all of his subjects.
And the same thing is happening over in Iran.
By the way, money is fungible.
Let's assume for a second that he's right.
Let's assume the $6 billion goes for humanitarian aid.
That $6 billion, Iran now doesn't have to spend on that stuff.
And they now spend on giving missiles to Hezbollah.
It's just an absurdity.
But this administration on foreign policy is an absurdity.
In terms of other absurdities in this administration, by the way, Joe Biden continues to mock Republicans on the impeachment stuff.
Are Republicans going to be able to achieve the impeachment of Joe Biden?
Now, I don't know whether they're going to be able to even achieve it in the House.
I don't know whether they have a majority in the House.
I would assume that at the end of the day, McCarthy is somehow going to wrangle a bare majority to impeach Biden.
And, you know, that'll have an impact on Biden.
Is he going to actually be removed from office by a Democratic Senate?
Of course not.
Of course not.
But that's not the point.
The point is, there's gonna be a lot of damaging material about Joe's corruption from now up till Election Day.
And Joe Biden is absolutely blithe about the whole thing, which is pretty shocking.
Moments ago, the president reacting with defiance when asked about the new House impeachment inquiry as he arrived back at the White House.
God, he can't even walk.
Lots of luck. That's what he does.
By the way, now that I watch Joe Biden walking around, I cannot get Donald Trump's description of Joe Biden out of
my head.
It is an excellent description.
He says he always looks like he's walking on a bed of toothpicks.
Yup, he definitely, definitely does.
By the way, Hunter has somehow come up with the money to sue the IRS, which is exciting stuff.
Remember, he doesn't have enough money to pay his baby mama, but he does have enough money to sue the IRS, alleging his privacy rights were violated when agents aired concern to Congress and the media about the handling of the investigation into his taxes and business dealings.
Well, that's actually whistleblowers coming forward to allege bad behavior.
That is a thing that is happening.
You know whose actual tax returns were leaked to the media?
Donald Trump's, you recall.
It turns out there wasn't anything particularly untoward in them.
But it is totally crazy to me how the IRS routinely leaks tax records of various people on the right to ProPublica or wherever.
But Hunter is mad, apparently.
That Hunter is angry that whistleblowers pointed out that he was getting a sweetheart deal from the IRS.
Pretty amazing stuff.
In a second, we'll get to Republicans beclowning themselves.
Speaking of people beclowning themselves, the medical establishment has been beclowning itself on the issue of abortion for literally decades.
Many doctors were on callous because it seems surreal to think that over 64 million babies have been killed.
Preborn will not stand silent, nor should we.
We can't stand by and let babies die at the hands of abortion.
This is why preborn exists, to stand up for those who cannot defend themselves.
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Okay, meanwhile, the GOP, I'm not sure if they are running out of rakes to step on.
You would imagine at some point they might.
I have some bad news from the world of love.
Apparently Lauren Boebert, the congresswoman from Colorado, who was last seen barely winning a reelection to her Colorado seat, well, now she has broken up with her beloved Not her husband of 18 years with whom she has multiple children.
No, no, no.
We're talking about the Democrat bar owner who runs, like, Gay Pride events and Drag Queen Story Hour over there.
And you'll recall that she went to the musical Beetlejuice, where she proceeded to vape.
And then proceeded to get herself groped and then groped her date in return.
Pleasuring him over, you know, I'm not going to get more detail.
But that is a thing that happened in public.
She was then kicked out, to which she apparently said, you know who I am, and denied that anything like this had happened, to which they then released all of the camera footage.
Well now, sadly, romance is dead, folks.
I regret to inform you that if this romance can't last, I'm not sure what romance can.
Lauren Boebert has now parted ways with the man seen groping her during a frisky date at a Colorado theater while enjoying a family-friendly performance of the musical Beetlejuice.
The self-described eccentric politician is eccentricity now to grope your date in the middle of a performance of Beetlejuice.
Guys, that's now eccentric.
That's good to know.
All future date nights have been canceled between her and bar owner Quinn Gallagher.
She said, I learned to check party affiliations before you go on a date.
Although she alluded to her date's affiliation as a Democrat, the GOP stalwart said the breakup had nothing to do with the various reports on Gallagher in recent days.
She said, he's a wonderful man.
It was a great time to go out and have dinner and enjoy part of a show.
Nothing to do with anything that anyone reported.
Honestly, he's a private citizen.
We peacefully partied.
Great man, great friend.
I wish him all the best.
Now, I have a question.
There were some reports that they had not been dating very long.
And when I say not very long, there was one report suggesting that this was like their first date.
Which, oh boy.
Like, wow.
Wow.
Family value is taking it right on the chin right there.
Not good stuff there.
That is bad.
Meanwhile, in other not good for the GOP news, apparently, President Trump wrote to-do lists for his assistant on White House documents marked classified.
I don't know, man.
I don't know what to tell you.
Yes, Hillary Clinton mistreated classified documents.
Yes, she should have been prosecuted.
And yes, Donald Trump should not be writing to-do lists on the back of like, here's our Iran attack plan.
Also, I would like more Diet Coke.
Please, three Diet Cokes on the back of the Iran attack plan.
According to ABC News, one of former President Trump's longtime assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified.
Maybe he just wanted to recycle.
He's just too much of an environmentalist, you know?
Got a bunch of paper.
Gotta do something with it.
As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that more than once, she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of note cards, She later recognized those note cards as sensitive White House materials with visible classification markings used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international related matters.
So, that, that's just, that's spectacular.
That's spectacular.
In 2018, Michael became Trump's executive assistant in the White House.
She continued to work for him when Trump left office.
She resigned last year in the wake of Trump's alleged refusal to comply with the federal request and the FBI's subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago.
Michael recounted by late 2021, as many of 90 boxes of materials from Trump's time as president were moved into a basement storage room at Mar-a-Lago.
And apparently, they say this is very easily disprovable.
Um, but, uh, yeah, this is, uh, my, no one's disproved it yet.
That's, that, uh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's how important the classified documents were.
Had to write some shopping lists on it.
Okay, but don't worry!
The clowning doesn't end there.
Republicans are hell-bent on running directly into a wall at full speed, which is presumably many of the Republicans' plan on this government shutdown.
Again, if you are asking for, like, a moderate cut, and you might get part of that moderate cut in a government shutdown negotiation, alright.
But if your plan is, let's just run directly into a government shutdown, get blamed for everybody for that, and then lose the House on the basis of that, which is very likely what could happen, I'm wondering about your strategic choices.
Again, I'm going to point out again, I am more fiscally conservative than pretty much anyone in Congress.
I'm certainly more conservative than many of the people who consider themselves MAGA Republicans, right?
I want to restructure Social Security, I want to restructure Medicare, and I make no bones about it.
That stuff's going to bankrupt the United States.
But there's also such a thing as tactical as tactical competence.
And it turns out that the tactics that are currently being used are not particularly smart.
According to the New York Times, Speaker Kevin McCarthy's bid to gain the upper hand in a battle over federal spending hit stiff opposition from within his own ranks on Monday, leaving him with dwindling options and little time to find his way out of a funding impasse that could lead to a government shutdown in less than two weeks.
Roughly a dozen Republicans made it clear they were staunchly opposed to the proposal unveiled on Sunday, which combines a stopgap spending measure with steep funding cuts and new border controls, indicating they could not be induced to change their votes through leadership pressure.
The measure wasn't going to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway, but McCarthy was then going to use that as the basis for some sort of compromise with Democrats.
It doesn't matter.
We're just gonna run directly into a wall, and the only loser here, presumably, will be the Republican Party, because Democrats are not gonna be punished for Republicans not even being able to come to an agreement on what they want the basis for negotiations to be.
So all of this is going just amazingly, amazingly well.
Okay, in just one second, we'll get to what is pretty obviously the worst story of the day, a breaking report on Tim Ballard, the inspiration for Sound of Freedom First.
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Alrighty, so meanwhile, worst story of the day, Tim Ballard is of course a person we've interviewed on the show.
Tim Ballard, was the man who was the inspiration for the fantastic film Sound of Freedom.
Well now, according to Vice.com, Tim Ballard's exit from Operation Underground Railroad earlier this year followed an investigation into claims of sexual misconduct, including seven women, according to sources with direct knowledge of the organization.
Again, we're gonna have to see if all these charges are confirmed.
I always create that caveat because you just don't know until the facts are all out there.
Sources familiar with the situation said, the self-styled anti-slavery activist who appears to be preparing for a Senate run invited women to act as his wife on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking.
He would then allegedly coerce those women to sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers.
Ballard, who is played by Jim Caviezel in the hit film Sound of Freedom, is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear festooned with fake tattoos.
And to ask another how far she was willing to go to save children, those sources request an anonymity because they fear retaliation.
The total number of women involved is believed to be higher than seven.
One source close to the organization has detailed knowledge of Ballard making sexual advances to a volunteer using methods similar to those he allegedly used with employees.
Those methods are also consistent with his conduct toward another former employee who spoke to Vice News.
A spokesperson for Operation Underground Railroad told Vice, Tim Ballard resigned from the organization on June 22, 2023.
He is permanently separated from OUR.
OUR is not going to make any further public comments at this time to preserve the integrity of its investigation.
This obviously is a horrifying report, and we'll see the details as they come out.
According to an anonymous letter that's been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community,
they say, quote, it was ultimately revealed through disturbingly specific and parallel
accounts that Tim has been deceitfully and extensively grooming and manipulating multiple
women for the past few years with the ultimate intent of coercing them to participate in sexual
acts with him under a premise of going where it takes and doing whatever it takes to save a child.
Women believed to be at the center of the investigation have not responded to requests
for comment at this point.
So, we have anonymous allegations at this point that are made to Vice.
We're going to have to wait to see what comes out about this, and so I'm going to reserve further comments until more confirmation is presented at this time.
For what it's worth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, they've removed all articles promoting Ballard and the nonprofit that he founded when all this came out.
This came out the same day the church released a statement citing betrayal and condemning Ballard for morally unacceptable behavior, which makes it sound a little more real than merely an anonymous report.
That is, um...
Truly bad stuff, Glenn Beck, who's one of Ballard's partners, indicated on social media that Ballard had been, quote, So again, I'm gonna wait to see more come out before I comment more extensively on this particular subject, but obviously it's in the news and worthy of coverage.
or the ability to respond.
So again, I'm gonna wait to see more coming out before I comment more extensively
on this particular subject, but obviously it's in the news and worthy of coverage.
Meanwhile, in entertainment news that is essentially being ignored
by pretty much everybody except for the right, Hassan Minhaj, who is a pretty famous comedian,
he apparently has basically just been making up stories about himself, about how horrifying American racism is.
As Al-Kek points out.
A profile in the New Yorker of Minhaj says, in Minhaj's approach to comedy, he leans heavily on his own experience as an Asian-American and Muslim-American, telling harrowing stories of law enforcement, entrapment, and personal threats.
For many of his fans, he's become an avatar of the power of representation in entertainment.
But after many weeks of trying, I had been unable to confirm some of the stories he had told on stage.
And then when the author confronted him, Minhaj admitted that the stories that he tells on stage are often exaggerated or made up.
Well, I mean, some of these stories are just purely intended to paint America in the worst possible light, and they're completely made up.
It's not resulting in tremendous blowback for Minhaj.
One of his anecdotes apparently claims a white woman from high school stood him up for a prom because her family didn't want her to take pictures with a brown boy.
Minhaj then disclosed identifiable details about the woman during his telling of the story, prompting his fans to harass her.
The woman apparently addressed the threats with Minhaj, who then told her to scrub her social media presence to deter more threats.
It's one thing to exaggerate family stories for comedic effect.
It's something a lot of people do.
It's another thing to make up out of whole cloth stories about the evils of American racism.
This effectively borders on emotional fraud.
And the fact that there are so many people out there in Hollywood who are making excuses for him, people like Whoopi Goldberg out there suggesting that this is totally fine.
Again, would Whoopi Goldberg say that about anyone else?
I have a difficult time believing that she would.
Whoopi Goldberg's defense of him is that this is what we do.
Quote, that's what we do.
We tell stories and we embellish them.
Goldberg said that she recalled a time when a reporter called to fact-check one of her stand-ups in which she said she had agreed from NYU.
She told the reporter she did not have agreed from the university and never said she did, before realizing he was referring to one of her stand-up characters.
But that's not exactly what's happening here.
Minhaj tells stories that are ostensibly about himself.
And those stories are false.
And they are inherently tied to the idea that America is a deeply evil and racist place.
If you're going to make those sorts of claims, presumably you should have some sort of backing for them.
And the fact that he had to make up the stories in the first place is pretty good evidence that America is not remotely as racist and horrifying as Minhaj suggests for laughs and profit.
And leftism is a very, very lucrative point of view for comedians.
That's how you get a Comedy Central special.
That's how you end up being extremely rich and extremely famous.
He says, every story in my style is built around a seed of truth.
My comedy, Arnold Palmer, is 70% emotional truth, this happened, and then 30% hyperbole, exaggeration, and fiction.
He says, the punchline is worth the fictionalized premise.
But, um, you know, how is there a punchline to, my daughter was exposed to a substance that could have been anthrax, which is one of the things that he actually said at one point.
Now, that's not something that you are supposed to fabricate.
Especially as a person who has received powder in the mail at least twice, as far as I'm aware.
The FBI is still investigating a case like this.
That's not a story that you make up or embellish.
That's just it.
That's either a reality or it's not.
This is also part of the problem with our new comedic world, which plays clown nose on, clown nose off.
I'm a comedian, but I'm telling deep and meaningful truths about the world to you.
How about you're a comedian and you tell jokes?
How about you're a comedian and you tell funny stories?
But that's not what comedy is anymore.
Our comedians are supposed to be newscasters, and our newscasters are supposed to be comedians.
One of the great ironies of Jon Stewart attacking Crossfire back in the early 2000s, which at that point was Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, is that this has led to the temptation for comedians to basically become newscasters and newscasters to play Jon Stewart.
Everyone has become, they've converged on Jon Stewart, basically.
Hasan Minhaj is now Jon Stewart, telling meaningful stories about his life that are completely made up to expose the evils of the United States of America and how racist it is.
And then when he's caught on that, we're all supposed to pretend that it's no big deal at all.
Okay, speaking of things that are unbelievably stupid, The Senate Majority Leader has now declared that there will be no informal dress code for the Senate chamber.
Why?
Because John Fetterman likes to wear the clothes of the homeless.
Apparently we have to be nice to Mongo over here.
And that requires that there be no dress code in the Senate anymore.
According to the New York Times, in the tradition-bound halls of the Senate, customs die hard.
Rules can be next to impossible to change.
On Monday, with a potential government shutdown days away, a newly begun impeachment inquiry and lawmakers preparing for a visit from the President of Ukraine, a major change had the Capitol abuzz.
For the first time in centuries, lawmakers are no longer expected to suit up to conduct a business on the Senate floor.
From now on, members are allowed to take a more business-casual approach to their workwear.
Not the staff, by the way, and not guests.
Only if you're a senator do you get this special dispensation.
The modification is in many ways about a reality.
In recent years, there have been plenty of senators who have departed from the suit-and-tie uniform that for decades was considered the only acceptable attire.
It most clearly reflects the influence of John Fetterman, the six-foot-eight, tattooed, brain-damaged, first-term Democrat from Pennsylvania.
He's on a suit-and-tie for his first months in Congress, but now he's just wearing around Jim shorts and Carhartt sweatshirts.
Now we're changing the entire rule of the Senate in order to make nice with a dude who does not want to actually, you know, just wear a suit.
Pretty ridiculous.
But that is where we are in American public life.
Because pretty much everything is a mockery at this point.
Time for some things I like and some things that I hate.
So things that I like today.
A lot of states are now starting to cut ties with the American Library Association, which is utterly appropriate considering that the ALA is now a left-wing interest group like so many of our public institutions.
Senator Mike Lee, according to the Washington Post, has now targeted the ALA when it was his turn to question witnesses.
He called up a video of Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
In a Zoom call, Caldwell-Stone had been recorded arguing book advocates should reframe the book challenges.
This debate should not center on whether titles are sexually inappropriate for minors, said Caldwell-Stone.
It should be about diverse materials that are about everyone's right to see themselves and their families reflected on bookshelves.
Lee then said, the goal is to sexualize children, provide minors with sexually explicit material, and then hide this content from parents.
The ALA is now facing a partisan firefight unlike anything in its almost 150 year history, says the Washington Post.
I wonder who brought that up.
Who made that firefight happen?
I love that we now, like, it is a full-time sport now.
The, we will do something unbelievably terrible and provocative, and if you notice, you're the one starting a firefight.
The once uncontroversial organization, which says it is the world's largest and oldest library association, and which provides funding, training, and tools to most of the country's 123,000 libraries, has become entangled in the education culture wars, the raging debates over what and how to teach about race, sex, and gender, culminating in Tuesday's senatorial name check.
Like Lee, politicians and parents on the right increasingly paint the association, known as the ALA, as a defender of pornographic literature for children, tying their allegations into a broader conservative movement that asserts school libraries are filled with sexually explicit inappropriate texts.
A 2022 tweet in which the organization's president calls herself a Marxist lesbian added to the concerns.
Well, ya think?
Ya think?
I love that.
So, it's that- The problem is not that the ALA's president calls herself a Marxist lesbian.
The problem is that anyone noticed that she tweeted that out publicly.
Over the summer, state libraries in Montana, Missouri, and Texas announced they were severing ties with the ALA.
Which is good.
They should.
Meanwhile, librarians and those on the political left are defending the ALA as a key provider of money and skills for librarians.
In particular, they are citing an ALA report tracking 1,269 attempts to remove library books in 2022, the highest number of challenges to books since the ALA began compiling stats on the issue.
What are the issues?
They're all related to LGBTQ-plus-minus-divided-by-sign books directed at kids.
Well, good!
Good for parents for finally waking up and taking notice.
The fact that this is somehow considered an instance of right-wing radicalism is truly an astonishing and silly thing.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
The Rolling Stone co-founder, Jan Wenner, has been removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame board.
Why?
Well, he wrote a book.
And this book is about a bunch of great rock and roll artists.
The problem is, they picked seven white dudes to profile.
Which is bad, apparently.
You're not allowed to do that.
Because he was asked about it.
And, um, he was asked to, quote, acknowledge that performers of color and women performers are just not in your zeitgeist.
And Wenner said, insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate on this intellectual level, and that none of the female or black musicians met his criteria as philosophers of rock rather than just creative geniuses, this provoked a major reaction.
He said at one point, you know, just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one black and one woman artist to include here that didn't measure up to that same historical standard just to avert this kind of criticism.
Mr. Wenner's comments, according to the New York Times, drew an immediate reaction, with his quotes mocked on social media and past criticisms unearthed of Rolling Stone's coverage of female artists under Wenner.
And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has now effectively kicked him off.
So that is what they do now.
So, in other words, it turns out that the seven men that he picked, he thinks are the best.
They ended up being seven white men.
He's not saying that women are not capable of being great artists.
He's not saying that black people are not capable of being philosophers of rock.
He's saying that the seven philosophers of rock who are the best are not black and are not women.
I'm not sure why that is, like, super-duper crazy.
Maybe that's the way he sees it.
Others can obviously disagree.
But that's, like, if you were asked to name today, who are the greatest classical composers of all time, and you were like, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, all white men, does this make you some sort of anti-feminist radical?
Or anti-black radical?
You're not even saying that, if given the same opportunities, there wouldn't have been a black Beethoven.
You're just saying that Beethoven was the best.
I don't even understand the critique.
But that's the way that it works.
He's right, by the way.
If he had just placed one black woman in the compendium, everybody would have left him alone.
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