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Oct. 3, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
53:59
The Worst #MeToo Fraud Of All Time?
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So, the Me Too movement was predicated on one truth and a lot of lies.
The one truth is that men sometimes really mistreat women and women don't report that mistreatment out of fear of retaliation.
And that men's crimes against women have spanned the generations and been really terrible and that men have not been sufficiently punished for this.
Not as a class, but like individually.
There are a lot of cases in which men abuse women and that doesn't go reported because women don't like coming forward with those allegations because then they go through the limelight and men get away with it.
All of that is true, and it was particularly true in Hollywood, which is where the Me Too movement originally started, because the casting couch is indeed a thing in Hollywood, and that leads to sexual exploitation.
This has been a thing all the way since the beginnings of Hollywood.
In fact, you don't even have to talk about Hollywood.
You can go all the way back throughout human history, and what you see is that men with power very often abuse women.
That was then surrounded with a bigger lie, and the bigger lie was believe all women.
Me Too, which was the idea that virtually all women had been abused at some point or another, which is not true, was then surrounded with an even bigger lie, which is that any accusation was tantamount to a conviction.
Anytime a woman said that she was abused by a man, we had to take this not only seriously, which we should, but we had to pretend that no further evidence was necessary or needed.
No woman would, under any circumstances, Lie about something like this for any level of gain.
In fact, there would be no level of gain that would be concomitant to actually explain why a woman would make a false accusation.
Now, there is no other area of human life where we make such a claim.
It just doesn't exist where an accusation is tantamount to proof.
We tried to do it a little bit in the United States over the past 10, 20 years with regard to racial allegations, and it turns out that that just incentivizes people to make false racial allegations.
This is how you end up with the Jussie Smollett story.
Well, the same thing is true with regard to a movement that is predicated on the idea that no matter what a woman says, it must be true regardless of what the evidence shows.
Now, there have been a lot of cases of MeToo stories blowing up in people's faces.
MeToo stories that aren't really MeToo stories being blown out of proportion.
For example, Aziz Ansari.
Or MeToo allegations that are about a man acting rudely or badly, but don't really amount to sexual assault, sexual violence.
And again, that sort of conflation, that flattening out of all human behavior is stupid and wrong.
But the worst case that I have ever seen just broke today.
This is the case of Trevor Bauer.
So Trevor Bauer is a baseball pitcher.
He's earned hundreds of millions of dollars playing baseball.
He was signed by the L.A.
Dodgers back in 2021 to a three-year contract worth like $100 million.
And he had been the mainstay of the rotation.
And in August of 2021, suddenly, there was an accusation that came out that he had sexually abused a woman.
And this turned into a few more accusations of sexual abuse.
The accusations broke on June 30th, 2021.
The Pasadena Police Department confirmed to news outlets, according to Wikipedia, that Bauer was under investigation for the alleged assault of a San Diego woman in May.
The woman was granted a temporary domestic restraining order on June 28th, alleging she had met Bauer on April 21st, and that she had been physically and sexually assaulted by him on two separate occasions.
She alleged that he had sodomized her without consent, punched her in the face, choked her to the point of unconsciousness.
On May 16th, she went to the emergency room at Alvarado Hospital, where after her injuries were examined, she met with several detectives from the San Diego Police Department.
MLB in response placed Bauer on administrative leave on July 2nd, and the Dodgers removed merchandise from the team's store that had Bauer's name on it.
Bauer said he had sexual consent with the accuser and that his accuser sent him a text message requesting he inflict pain on her.
He denied certain specific aspects of the allegations.
On August 20th, a temporary restraining order against Bauer was removed after Bauer was determined not to actually pose a threat to the woman's safety.
The judge found the woman was, quote, was not ambiguous about wanting rough sex in the party's first encounter and wanting rougher sex in the second encounter and that Bauer had honored the woman's boundaries when she set them.
MLB then extended his leave for the rest of the season while they finished their investigation into Bauer.
And then, February 8th, 2022, the L.A.
County District Attorney's Office announced they wouldn't bring any criminal charges against Bauer.
Now, that should have already been, I mean, there should have been like a thousand red flags at this point in terms of this case because a restraining order is really easy to get.
If a woman accuses a man of a level of abuse, The notion that she wouldn't get a restraining order in the LA justice system is absurd.
I mean, those orders are not hard to come by when it comes to Los Angeles jurisprudence.
She didn't get it.
It was actually rejected.
You know what kind of burden of proof you have to provide in order to get a restraining order?
It's really, really small.
So the judge in that case is like, nah, no restraining order.
I don't buy this.
Then the LA prosecutor's office, which is looking to put famous people behind bars.
This is how you make your name as a DA in Los Angeles.
I mean, I once summered as an intern over at the Los Angeles District Attorney Major Crimes Division, so I know a lot of the people over there.
Like, the idea that people in that office are like, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, if they could get a celeb dead to rights, they would do it.
Instead, they dropped all charges.
In March 2022, Bauer then filed a defamation lawsuit against Deadspin and The Athletic, and a former reporter for The Athletic named Molly Knight.
In that lawsuit, he dropped the detail that The Athletic had suggested, not just suggested, reported openly that this lady's skull had been fractured when in fact they had medical evidence that her skull had not been fractured.
They suggested that it might have been fractured and they already knew that by technical data it had not been fractured and all the rest.
None of this stopped the MLB, which is deathly afraid of controversy, from them suspending him.
They didn't just extend his leave for the remainder of the entire season.
They then went forward and ended up suspending him, like the longest suspension in MLB history.
They ended up hitting him with a two-season suspension.
This would be in April of 2022.
Two seasons.
Like over 342 games.
It ended up being downgraded later to like 194 games or something.
In a statement, League Commissioner Rob Manfred said that an investigation conducted by the MLB came to the conclusion that Bauer's conduct violated the policy and warranted suspension, the domestic violence policy.
The MLB did not reveal the specific conduct triggering the suspension.
Okay, so, if you were just a casual watcher of this particular case, and you hadn't paid attention to the fact no restraining order was granted, and you hadn't paid attention to the fact that the prosecutors dropped the case, what you would get, because of the MLB's suspension, is this guy probably is a repeat sexual assaulter and possible rapist.
That is what you would have gotten from this.
And now, Bauer plays in Japan, because he can't play in the MLB because of the suspension.
In fact, As it turns out, he now has the receipts.
So, Bauer sued the lady.
She countersued because this is what you do.
When you get sued, you very often countersue in order to offset the damages and to get reverse discovery and all the rest.
And it turns out that he now has the receipts and the receipts are unbelievably damning of this woman's claims.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Okay, so, according to ESPN, former LA Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer and the San Diego woman who first accused him of sexual assault, triggering the investigation that led to an unprecedented suspension from MLB, have settled their civil lawsuits outside of court with no money exchanged between the parties.
The woman accused Bauer of sexually assaulting her during two encounters in the spring of 2021, prompting the former Cy Young Award winner to be placed on administrative leave that July.
The woman was later denied a permanent restraining order in LA Superior Court.
The DA's office declined to file criminal charges, we say.
But MLB, which has the authority to apply punishment outside the criminal justice system, and spoke to other women who made similar accusations, then handed Bauer a 324-game suspension in April 2022.
An independent arbitrator shortened it to 194 games.
Bauer sued the woman for defamation in April 2022.
The woman countersued for sexual battery four months later.
The woman apparently will receive $300,000 in insurance policy proceeds that will be sent in a trust account to her lawyer's office, according to an email from Hill's lawyers provided by a representative with Bauer.
So all the litigation ended up being settled and the money actually ended up changing hands.
Now, Trevor Bauer has now come forward with the actual receipts, and this stuff is unbelievable.
To understand how unbelievable this stuff is, you first have to understand the nature of the allegations.
So these are pictures that the woman revealed, the original accuser revealed, the one who just settled, that she revealed to the press.
These are unredacted photographs showing the alleged injuries.
And her lawyer said the damage could not possibly be part of a consensual encounter.
And he said, look at this picture.
No one, absolutely no one can consent to this, logically or legally.
Trevor Bauer's team continues to try to abuse an assault victim.
They need to stop now.
And it shows her with black eyes, and it shows her with a bruised face, and others.
And this is why so many people immediately jumped to the conclusion that Trevor Bauer was guilty.
Because, I mean, on a logical level, sure.
Who consents to being punched in the face during a sexual encounter?
Who wants that?
Well, now Trevor Bauer has come forward with text messages that were found during Discovery, and video that was found during Discovery, and my goodness, my goodness.
Here's some of what Trevor Bauer had to say.
Next victim, star pitcher for the Dodgers.
A text Lindsay Hill sent to a friend before she ever even met me.
What should I steal?
She asked another, in reference to visiting my house for the first time.
The answer?
Take his money.
So how might that work?
I'm going to his house Wednesday, she said.
I already have my hooks in.
You know how I roll.
Then, after the first time we met, net worth is 51 mil, she said.
You better secure the bag, was the response.
But how is she going to do that?
Need daddy to choke me out, she said.
Being an absolute whore to try to get in on his 51 million, read another text.
Then, after the second time we met, former Padres pitcher Jacob Nix told her, you gotta get this bag.
I'll give you $50,000, Lindsay replied.
Her AA sponsor asked her at one point, do you feel a tiny bit guilty?
Not really, she replied.
Since then, her legal team has approached me multiple times about coming to a financial settlement.
But, as I have done since day one, I refuse to pay her even a single cent.
In August of 2021, Lindsay Hill's claims were heard in court, and during those legal proceedings, critical information was deliberately and unlawfully concealed from me and my legal team.
Information like this video, which was taken by Lindsay Hill herself the morning after she claimed she was brutally attacked, emotionally traumatized, and desperate to get away from me.
And now we have the metadata, so there can be no dispute.
It was taken mere minutes before she left my house on the morning of May 16th, 2021.
So folks, pause it right there.
So this, for those who can't see the actual tape, this is her in bed the next morning with Trevor Bauer.
Bauer's sleeping on the other side of the bed.
And there's nothing wrong with her face.
Nothing.
She claims she was viciously assaulted, brutally assaulted.
She's taking a video of herself smiling, grinning in bed.
Not a mark on her.
Which would suggest that sometime between when she left his house and then went to the hospital, someone else did the damage to her that she then, I mean, there's like nurses who are saying that they'd never seen anybody who'd been pulverized in the general area the way that she was, like somebody had like punched her there.
The video, I mean, and he's got the metadata.
Now he can finally speak about all of this.
She could theoretically still sue him for defamation if this were false.
There's no evidence that this is false.
I mean, this is like, This is wild.
I mean, this is wild.
He continues.
May 16th, 2021.
Without my knowledge or consent, of course.
In it, you can see her lying in bed next to me while I'm sleeping, smirking at the camera without a care in the world or any marks on her face.
I think it paints a pretty clear picture of what actually happened the evening of May 15th and why the video was originally concealed from us.
After hearing the evidence available to her, Judge Diana Gold Saltman found that Lindsay Hill had misled the court.
She found her claims to be materially misleading.
she denied her request for a domestic violence restraining order and
She found that no sexual assault or non-consensual conduct took place
Now some of you might not know about restraining order hearings
I know I didn't but I've since Learned that it's extremely rare for a request for a restraining
order to be denied because the standard of proof that you need
To obtain one is extremely low right about that. Obviously you can make of that what you will
The fact is I was never arrested I was never charged with a crime and I won the only legal proceeding that took place
without My side of the story even being heard
And most importantly, as I've said from day one, I never sexually assaulted Lindsay Hill, or anyone else for that matter.
So I sued her, which prompted her to countersue me.
Quite frankly, regardless of the outcome in court, I've paid significantly more in legal fees than Lindsay Hill could ever- Okay, so he continues along these lines, but the evidence there is, like, astonishing.
Actual text before she went over to his house, before she knew him, saying that he was worth a lot of money and she was gonna go after him.
Now, there are other accusations that have now been made against Trevor Bowers, one in June of this year, in which an Arizona woman, according to the Associated Press, accused Bauer of sexual assault, alleging in a lawsuit updated this week, he held a knife in her throat and choked her out until she passed out during a rape that left her pregnant.
But, Bauer was never arrested or charged.
He's now countersued, denying the allegations, accusing the woman of faking the pregnancy and trying to extort money from him in the first place.
The player's co-agents said in a statement, this woman is unhinged.
They said she'd made several million dollar demands against Bauer over two years, prompting him to file a criminal complaint against her.
And apparently, Bauer did file a criminal complaint in January, alleging that the woman was trying to extort him.
So, again, this, herein lies the problem with the entire Me Too movement.
There is no such thing as Believe All Women.
When women make accusations like this, it actually completely degrades the actual reality of sexual assault and rape.
And if a woman goes after a man this way, she should pay whatever penalty she was attempting to get for him criminally is what she should receive.
If she was attempting to get a 10-year jail sentence for him for rape, she should go to jail for 10 years.
Because this sort of stuff has to stop on behalf of rape victims and on behalf of people who are being falsely accused.
It's disgusting and it's vile and it's gross.
And the fact that you still have headlines now that are treating Trevor Bauer as a disgraced person, despite the fact that now this evidence has been revealed.
It's pretty damn telling.
It really, really is.
Now, I'll get to the interpersonal lessons here in just one moment.
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Okay, so there are a few societal lessons to be learned here.
Obviously, the first is believe a woman is nonsense.
It's garbage.
Okay, you can believe some women, like credible women who have actual evidence.
We should all believe those people.
However, this notion that an accusation is just a conviction is ridiculous, immoral, and bad.
That's number one.
Number two, this is a lesson for you gentlemen.
Stop having sex with random women.
Don't do it.
It's stupid.
This is particularly true if you happen to be a prominent person with a lot of money.
I know we shouldn't have to say this sort of stuff, but this is the morality that our society has now created.
Because here's the thing.
Any society in which consent is the highest value is going to lead to the degradation of the sex act.
It just is.
I don't mean that consent is important.
It is necessary, but not sufficient.
Because sufficient would be commitment.
Sufficient would be love.
Sufficient would be long-term relationship.
That would be the stuff that is sufficient.
Necessary is one component of sufficient, but it is not the entirety.
Of course you need consent.
That's like a baseline for anything.
But the problem is you can have consent, as Trevor Bauer apparently did, for all of this, according to a judge.
And it doesn't matter, because it didn't take place in the context of a committed relationship in any way, and so there is no way for Trevor Bauer to protect himself against these sorts of accusations.
When you throw away traditional morality and you substitute a culture of consent, and consent is incredibly malleable.
People can remove it post-facto.
This is one of the things that we have now learned in American society.
If a woman regrets a thing happening to her, if she consents to sex and she just doesn't like it the next morning, that turns into a Me Too story now.
If that's the way that we're going to roll, that means that the only real solution is go back to something that remotely resembles traditional morality.
We have a peculiar society.
In which it is considered absolutely behavior beyond reproach to go to a man's house at three o'clock in the morning, consent to sex with him, and the next morning decide you didn't like it.
That is considered absolutely morally meritorious.
Whereas if you're Mike Pence and you say, listen, here's the deal.
I'm not going to meet with a woman alone who is not my wife in a room with a closed door.
That is considered very bad.
Very, very terrible.
Very sexist, in fact.
Because how dare he?
You can't have it both ways.
That's not the way any of this works.
This is the society that we've created because when you get beyond traditional morality in the sexual realm, there is no rule system that actually can be followed, that is capable of hemming in people's behavior.
Again, committed relationships and sex within them is the best insurance against this sort of stuff for both men and women.
But it's something that we as a society have completely discarded in the name of sexual hedonism.
And again, consent, it turns out, is not the whole ball of wax.
It is part of the ball of wax.
It is an important part of the ball of wax, but there needs to be more.
If you wish to guarantee that this doesn't happen to you, again, reminder, don't pick up people on Tinder and screw them.
This is not... Again, you don't have to be a Bible believer to believe this.
All you have to believe is in incentive structures.
And that's particularly true if you are very rich and very famous.
I remember a few years back, Henry Cavill suggested that dating was really, really difficult because, again, he's very, very rich and he's very, very famous.
And he suggested that he couldn't just go out with, like, random women or go home with random women because what could happen next?
And he's right about that.
In the name of caution, famous men should definitely be very careful about this sort of behavior because the notion, again, that there are not women who are out there targeting them is ridiculous.
This is a particular case in point.
As far as MLB, as far as other institutions, there needs to be a standard that is set with regard to these institutions, which is that unless there is a criminal conviction in these cases, an accusation cannot be tantamount to ending somebody's career.
It cannot be.
We have criminal procedures for these sorts of things.
Allegations cannot remove hundreds of millions of dollars from a person's bottom line.
I hope Trevor Bowers who's the living hell out of the MLB over this.
I really hope he does because Truthfully, this cannot be the standard.
You're seeing social media do this right now to Russell Brand.
Maybe the allegations are true.
If they are true, the police are on it in Britain.
They're looking for women to testify.
They're looking for women to come forward with actual evidence.
If it turns out to be true, Russell should go to jail.
But if it's not, the fact that YouTube is demonetizing him over allegations alone?
How exactly, what sort of standard is that set?
How are you supposed to rebut any of that?
The answer is you can't.
And that's exactly the standard that the far left would like on these issues.
Is that an accusation can destroy anybody's career.
Now listen, I'm lucky.
I'm an Orthodox Jew.
I've been married since the time I was 23 and a half years old and I was a virgin until my marriage.
So, I'm not vulnerable to these sorts of charges.
But that's the whole problem.
Anyone can be vulnerable to these sorts of charges.
Because all it takes is an accusation.
It doesn't have to be real.
It doesn't have to be substantiated.
Nothing.
And that is scary as all living hell.
And it should be.
To men and women.
And it should also, by the way, be deeply insulting to women who have actually been sexually assaulted and sexually harmed by men.
Okay.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is showing up in court.
He showed up in court yesterday in Manhattan.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Donald Trump yesterday went to court in Manhattan.
According to the New York Times, he detoured from the campaign trail on Monday to attend the opening of the civil trial in the New York Attorney General's fraud case against him, as his political team seeks to turn the spectacle into a rallying cry for supporters.
Now, Trump hasn't been in the headlines for at least a couple of weeks about his legal travails.
Every time he is, it boosts him in the ratings, which presumably is why he showed up in Manhattan.
He didn't have to show up in Manhattan.
Again, this is the bizarre politics of the moment.
Trump right now is trying to head off at the pass any possible consolidation of the rest of the 2024 field.
So his team has already come out and said that they want to nix any possible future debates inside the Republican Party, even though he's not taking place because he doesn't want any attention on any other candidate.
Also, he's now showing up in court as like a campaign ploy.
Now, two things, as always, can be true at once.
Donald Trump is being absolutely railroaded in this New York case.
He really is.
No one was damaged.
No one was damaged in New York.
The lenders are not suing him.
The people who did business with him are not suing him.
The state of New York is not even alleging that they had losses because of him.
Instead, the state of New York is alleging that he engaged in a pattern of fraudulent behavior that damaged no one, and they are grabbing his businesses in New York and taking control of them to the tune of $250 million in liability based on no damages, which is crazy.
Again, let's say that you and I go into a mortgage arrangement, and I say to you, listen, I say my house is worth twice what it's worth, and you kind of know that's true, but you also know that I'm good for my debt, and you also know that it's good to be in business with me, so you give me the loan.
Now, you're not damaged.
I'm not damaged.
Is that bad behavior?
Sure, it's bad.
Is that fraudulent behavior?
I mean, according to the law in New York, that'd be fraudulent behavior.
Is that something the state can punish?
Who's the victim?
How many crimes does the state punish that are truly victimless in the sense that everybody involved knows exactly what's going on and it's a regular part of the business?
And if it is that they go after people, it can't be that they only go after Trump for this.
Like, show me some precedent of how often this law is used in the absence of any damages even alleged.
But so that is all true.
The other thing that is true is that Donald Trump is using this for political purposes.
So every time he goes to court, he knows that the American public, at least on the right side of the aisle, rallies to his defense because we all see that it's BS.
And the way that the right rallies to his defense is not by contributing to his legal fund.
Instead, the way that the right rallies to his defense is by saying he should be the nominee, which again is a very weird form of rallying to his defense.
Because I can believe two things.
One, that he's being railroaded.
And two, this does not make him stronger as a candidate against Joe Biden because my chief priority is not Using my vote as some sort of loyalty pledge to Donald Trump, my chief priority is using my vote to defeat Joe Biden.
So what I'm looking at is who is most likely to beat Biden, like a drum.
And that involves making Biden the issue, because Biden is the issue.
Biden is not even alive.
He has terrible policies, and we'll talk about the fallout from some of those policies in a moment.
If we're talking about Donald Trump's legal issues, you know what we're not talking about, as I've said a thousand times, Joe Biden.
In any case, Trump showed up.
His son Eric also showed up.
He was joined by several of his political aides, including Walt Nauda, his co-defendant in the federal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.
So, here was Donald Trump talking about... I mean, he says the quiet part out loud.
The thing you have to love about Trump is that he's absolutely transparent in every way.
Here he was saying the quiet part out loud, that he's basically there for the polls.
And I don't think the people of this country are going to stand for it.
If I weren't leading in all the polls, or if I weren't running, I wouldn't have any of these cases, I wouldn't be seeing you this morning.
But I'll be seeing a lot of you.
Because this is a horrible thing that's happening to our country and we've got to get it straightened away.
So we'll go in and see our rogue judge and we'll listen to this man.
And I think most people get it.
People are getting it.
I can tell you the voters getting it because every time they give me a fake indictment, I go up in the polls and that's never happened before.
But this is a disgrace.
And you ought to go after this attorney general because she's turning off everybody from coming in.
You know, I don't know if you should take a look at the outflow of business.
Businesses are fleeing New York.
He's right about all of this, by the way.
And it's also true that he is correct about the fact that if he were not a Republican candidate again, they would have left him alone.
I mean, all these real estate deals that they're accusing him of falsifying.
He's been a real estate magnate in New York since Like he was doing movies with Macaulay Culkin.
So, I mean, it's an absurdity.
And then Trump continues, he says, this is just a continuation of the greatest witch hunt.
Again, not wrong.
This is a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.
We have a rogue judge who rules that properties are worth a tiny fraction, one one hundred.
A tiny fraction of what they actually are.
We have a racist attorney general who's a horror show who ran on the basis that she was going to get Trump before she even knew anything about me.
She used this to run for governor.
She failed in her attempt to run for governor.
She had virtually no polling.
She came back and she said, well, now I'll go back to get Trump again.
And this is what we have.
It's a scam.
It's a sham.
Okay, again, all very true.
All of that is true.
It is also true that Democrats are itching to talk about this stuff literally all the time.
It is what they wish to talk about all the time.
And so Donald Trump talking about it is not particularly beneficial to Republicans in general.
I mean, this is the big problem here.
It also happens to be that in other legal cases, things are probably going to get worse for Trump, not better.
According to CNN, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office has now issued a subpoena to former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerrick to testify in the first trial later this month in the case stemming from election subversion plots in Georgia.
According to his lawyer, Kerrick's lawyer is demanding that his client be granted immunity in exchange for testifying, pointing out that prosecutors indicated in the indictment that Kerrick was a co-conspirator in the case.
He's not named in the indictment, but he is considered co-conspirator number five.
So basically the idea here is that Carrick would be granted immunity in return for testifying against Donald Trump.
This is one of the big problems that Trump has, and this is why the RICO case in Georgia is dangerous for Trump, is when you wrap in a bunch of other people surrounding Trump, and they don't have anybody paying their legal bills, then the temptation is going to be to cut a deal with the Fulton County prosecutors, get immunity, and then testify against Trump.
This is leaving aside the documents case in Florida.
All these legal issues are going to stack up against Trump, and Trump championing them in the primary is to elevate him To the nomination.
If he thinks he's going to be able to turn off that spigot and not talk about this stuff in the general, that's wrong.
I mean, this is going to be a chief issue in the general election.
And it may be the only thing I can say Biden, because Biden is struggling out there.
Between this and Trump continuing to do what he can to alienate suburban women, does he have a path against Biden?
Sure, he has a path against Biden because Biden is deeply unpopular.
There are a lot of people who might not show up for Biden because they just don't like Joe Biden very much.
And because a lot of people know, we all know in our bones, he is not going to serve out a second term and Kamala Harris will be president if Joe Biden is reelected.
All that may be true, but it seems to me that if you can bet on a horse that is not weak, That would be better.
It seems to me that if you're going to bet on a candidate, you don't want to bet that the other guy is just going to fall down on the job.
You want to bet on somebody who can beat him when he's at his strongest.
And right now, I'm not sure that that's what Republicans are doing.
Over the weekend, for example, Donald Trump spent the weekend dropping lines mocking Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband, at the California GOP meeting.
Now, this is the kind of stuff that gets laughs inside a room because he's joking.
But also, is it the kind of stuff that is going to drive independents and suburban women back into his camp?
I don't see how.
Together, we will take on the ultra left-wing liars, losers, creeps, perverts, and freaks who are devouring the future of this state like a swarm of locusts.
And we'll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.
How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know?
And she's against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house,
which obviously didn't do a very good job.
I mean, I don't know what Paul Pelosi has to do with anything.
That sort of stuff gets played in ads.
The entire Biden case is going to be that Donald Trump is a nefarious character.
That's going to be the entire case for his reelect.
Nothing about Joe Biden.
Nothing about how he's a good president.
Nothing.
That's all it's going to be.
And the fact that Trump can't make an affirmative case that actually draws people back to him personally.
Again, the people who love him, love him.
We're not worried about those people.
We're worried about the people who don't love him.
Are they going to turn out and vote for him?
Or at the very least, stay home and not vote for Biden?
That is a risky play.
Now, is it possible that that could work out for him?
Sure, because again, Joe Biden is a terrible president.
We'll get to that in just one second.
The medical establishment has been disregarding the lives of innocent kids for decades now.
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Also, Faith Moore, Andrew Klaven's talented daughter, has written a new rendition
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It's a modern twist on the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, except of the female protagonist.
In a world where boss babes are championed and the expensive family, Faith is making the case that having what matters is far better than having it all.
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Order yours on Amazon or wherever you get your books today.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's policies continue to fail across the board.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans are still spending like there's no tomorrow.
Consumers should be spending less by now.
Interest rates are up.
Inflation remains high.
Pandemic savings have shrunk.
The labor market is cooling.
But household spending, the primary driver of the nation's economic growth, remains robust.
Americans spent 5.8% more in August than one year earlier, well outstripping less than 4% inflation.
The experience economy boomed this summer with Delta Airlines reporting record revenue in the second quarter and Ticketmaster selling over 295 million event tickets in the first six months of 2023.
That's up nearly 18% year over year.
Why is this happening?
Well, one of the reasons is because, again, when inflation is happening, what people tend to do is spend.
Because if the money is in the bank, then it's just losing value.
So people are just spending right now.
Now, is this a smart idea?
I mean, they should theoretically be investing, but nobody knows where to invest.
And they can't afford, like, the big things.
They're spending a lot on the small things.
Ibi Hussein, who works in marketing for a financial communications firm, says the Brooklyn, New York apartment he and his fiancée rent for $3,000 a month would cost $1,000,000 to buy at current rates.
That means $5,000 a month after a $200,000 down payment, not including property taxes.
And it's not even that nice an apartment, he said.
So instead of saving, He's splurging.
He bought a $1,600 Taylor Swift Eros tour ticket and then he spent $3,500 on a bachelor party trip to Ibiza, Spain.
I might as well just enjoy what I have now.
This is what happens in inflationary cycles.
And it's going to continue along these lines, even as the interest rates continue to go up.
Meanwhile, the student loans are about to come due.
So, Joe Biden has been attempting illegally to delay student loan payments.
Which is stupid.
When you take out a loan, you should pay back your loans.
I know these are very difficult conversations to have with people.
When you incur a debt, you should pay off your debts.
I speak as someone who has paid off my own debts, my wife's debts, and many other debts.
This is something you should do.
I know that we now consider this not a matter of moral But actually, when you take out a loan, you owe somebody the money.
I'm just absolutely confused by this idea that when I take out a student loan, I don't owe the money, that somebody else owns the money.
In any case, now the student loans are going to come due.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently ticked off the resumption of student loan payments along the potential threats he sees in the economy, alongside forces like the auto worker strike, higher long-term interest rates, a potential government shutdown, and surging oil prices.
Most of those things, by the way, are Joe Biden related.
Now, the Biden administration is trying to pretend that all of this could be avoided if you simply just cancel the student loan payments.
The only problem is that's deeply inflationary.
It turns out that one of the biggest own goals in recent memory politically is Joe Biden dubbing the economy Bidenomics, because most people hate the economy.
Jared Bernstein, the chief of the Council of Economic Advisers, he still continues to try to make fetch happen.
Just saying that tying the president to the economy maybe wasn't the best idea when so many Americans don't feel like they have gotten ahead, and so many of them are now saying they feel better with Republicans in terms of the economy than Democrats at this point.
A lot of that's inflation, people having to try and keep up, even though wages may be going up at this point, trying to keep up with some pretty high inflation numbers over the last several years.
What do you say to that, Jared?
Well, we think Bidenomics is clearly working, and it's not just about the here and now, although it's about that, too.
So let's start with where we are right now.
Again, we have real wage gains over the past few months, and that consistently supports strong consumer spending, which is leading to a GDP... Yeah, we don't need more from him.
They're just dumb.
They're just dumb.
I mean, the fact that they keep saying over and over that Bidenomics is a good idea and good branding, they're not good at this.
This is what Donald Trump is relying on, is them being really bad at this.
Again, the great agreement between the two parties of this election cycle is there's no way we can lose to that guy.
Democrats are like, there's no way we can lose to Trump.
And Republicans are like, there's no way we can lose to Joe Biden.
Well, somebody's going to be wrong.
But Joe Biden's policies continue to fail.
When it comes to Ukraine, they keep wondering why it is that American support is bleeding away from Ukraine.
There are a bunch of reasons.
The number one reason is there's no off-ramp here.
You guys have presented no off-ramp.
You've suggested you will not present an off-ramp.
What you guys have suggested in the Biden administration is as long as it takes with as much as it takes and you won't demand Any sort of endpoint.
You have no clue what winning even looks like.
And it turns out the American people are not up for that.
You know what else they're not up for?
They're not up for pouring tons of money into the corruption rat hole of the Ukrainian government.
It's one thing to pay for weaponry to repel a Russian invasion.
It's one thing to give them old weaponry to take out Russian troops, degrade Russian military capacity, and prevent China's strongest ally from becoming stronger.
It's worth it to dissuade China from invading Taiwan by pointing out that there will be repercussions for doing so.
However, what Americans are not up for is spending billions of dollars rebuilding the Ukrainian economy when that is a really corrupt place.
Let's just point this out.
In the United States, there's a law.
It's called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
If I go down to Panama, and I decide I want to build a hotel, and somebody demands a bribe for me to build that hotel, and I pay that bribe, I will be prosecuted in the United States of America for having done that, even if I'm bringing jobs and economic growth to Panama.
If, however, I'm the federal government of the United States, and I decide to pour billions of dollars into a corruption rat hole in Ukraine, then apparently that's totally fine.
If you do it on a personal level, Then you'll go to jail.
If you do it as the federal government, then not only is it fine, it's praiseworthy.
Well, now there's elite communication from the Biden administration talking about corruption in Ukraine, which has been a longstanding problem over there.
Quote, Biden administration officials Politico.
Are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S.
strategy document obtained by Politico suggests.
The sensitive but unclassified version of the long-term U.S.
plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors.
It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort.
Perceptions of high-level corruption, the confidential version of the document says, could undermine the Ukrainian public's and foreign leaders' confidence in the wartime government.
The confidential version is about three times as long as the non-confidential version.
The administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft, not least because U.S.
dollars are at stake.
They say there are some honest conversations happening behind the scenes.
But again, there are a lot of complaints over here about why is Ukraine not being more forthcoming about firing people for graft.
So apparently he has fired several top defense officials in a recent crackdown on supposed graft.
We'll see if that's true or not.
Again, what this does speak to is the fact that there is no long-term strategy in Ukraine.
The public part of the strategy says de-oligarchization, particularly of the energy and mining sectors,
is a core tenet to building back a better Ukraine. One indicator of success, the confidential version
states, is the Ukrainian government embraces meaningful reforms decentralizing control of
the energy sector. Wait, can I think of a Ukrainian energy sector business that was
being investigated for corruption and that was being presided over by a vice president who's
currently the president.
Burisma.
Burisma.
Oh yeah, it came to mind.
So it turns out corruption in Ukraine is really bad.
You know who was deeply involved in corruption in Ukraine?
Hunter Biden.
You know who his dad was?
Joe.
You know what Joe was doing?
He was VP at the time and he was presiding over Ukraine policy.
Hmm.
All of this is a little awkward.
Pointing out corruption in Ukraine doesn't just mean that support for the Ukraine war goes down.
It also means pointing out that Joe Biden's son was involved deeply in it.
So failure on that front.
Failure on the economic front.
Failure on the Ukraine war front.
And also, failure on the border front.
Kathy Hochul, governor of New York, even she is out there now admitting pretty publicly that the border is wide open.
Well, we want them to have a limit on who can come across the border.
It is too open right now.
People coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum.
And the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York.
And that is a real problem for New York City.
125,000 newly arrived individuals.
I mean, when even the governor of New York is calling you out, that's a serious problem for the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Crime continues to spiral out of control in America's major cities.
In Washington, D.C., Henry Cuellar, who is a Democratic congressperson from Texas, was carjacked today in Philadelphia, which is dominated by left-wing D.A.
Larry Kramer.
A journalist named Josh Kruger was shot seven times in his home in South Philadelphia.
No arrests had been made.
No weapon was found.
He had recently written articles for a wide variety of sources, And apparently, in writing about that, he talked about how the city of Philadelphia was not being too easy on criminality.
It's terrible and it's awful, and this is what happens when a city is too easy on criminality.
Meanwhile, on the federal front, Obamacare has been a giant fail.
Joe Biden's chief achievement as Vice President of the United States, the big effing deal that Joe Biden talked about, has been a complete failure.
Good piece today by Megan McArdle over at the Washington Post.
Titled, Obamacare has been unable to save money on U.S.
healthcare.
Quote, given the high cost of the U.S.
healthcare system, it's natural to assume there must be some easy way to make sizable cuts.
After all, in 2022, the U.S.
spent 16.6% of GDP on healthcare.
The next highest spender, Germany, spent 12.7%.
As the Affordable Care Act took shape almost 15 years ago, its architects started looking for savings in earnest.
All these years later, we still haven't found the magic money pot.
This isn't because people aren't trying.
Obamacare contained a lot of elements that were expected to realize significant cost savings.
Preventive care, it was hoped, could catch conditions early and forestall expensive emergency room visits.
Doctors and hospitals could be paid to keep patients healthy.
Rather than form expensive procedures, there would be a government board that could rigorously assess treatments for cost effectiveness.
But instead, the savings just have not materialized at all.
In fact, the so-called CMMI, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which was supposed to run pilot projects to reduce costs, instead ended up costing the government $5.4 billion, expected to cost another $1.3 billion by 2030.
Preventive costs turned out to cost more than it saved because doctors may need to treat a lot of minor conditions to prevent one major serious health crisis.
Expanding the number of insured turns out to make emergency room visits rise, not fall, Because newly insured people don't worry about the cost.
It increases demand, just like you would imagine if you look at any supply-demand curve.
There are ways to save money, but this would make people wait longer for tests and treatment.
Again, as I've said for years and years, for a decade, there are three elements of healthcare.
There's affordability, there's universality, and there is quality.
And you can only have two of the three.
You cannot have all three.
And right now, the lie that Obamacare was going to provide all three, it was indeed a lie.
So basically, everything Democrats have touched Our policy has turned to crap.
So the Democrats are really vulnerable.
Meanwhile, Republicans, again, finding ways to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
It really is kind of an amazing thing.
I mean, the 2022 election cycle was all about Republicans having all the momentum and somehow blowing all of it by nominating head cases.
That was a genius move.
Well, now Democrats are blowing themselves up in Congress.
So Jamal Bowman is making a fool of himself on every possible angle.
This is the guy who decided to pull a fire alarm the other day in order to forestall a vote on the continuing resolution, then pretend that he thought the fire alarm was going to open the door.
As the Babylon V jokes.
Next, he's going to pull a firearm, thinking that he's flushing his urinal.
I don't even understand how that works.
Here's Kevin McCarthy going after Jamal Bowman.
What's really interesting, this is a former principal.
He knows what a fire alarm is.
Of course.
This is a man that has gone on and yelled at members, and his behavior has been unbecoming.
But what's interesting, if it really was just an accident, when the Capitol Police came to interview you, why would you lawyer up right away?
Yeah.
Why wouldn't you say, oh my gosh, I made a mistake here.
Why would you let it go on?
Okay, so, Jamal Bowman has now made another boo-boo.
Again, Congress is just filled with clowns.
It's a clown show over there.
It's basically a clown car.
The only question is how we can fit so many clowns in this small space.
But, Jamal Bowman, his people are now suggesting that Republicans are Nazis for asking about it.
Quote, I believe Congressman Bowman, when he says this was an accident, is the suggested response from Bowman's office to questions about the incident.
Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.
That is what Jamal Bowman's press secretary sent to all House Democratic offices.
Geniuses happening here.
I mean, these people are absolute geniuses.
Jamal Bowman then had to issue a tweet decrying his own office.
Quote, I just became aware that in our messaging guidance there was inappropriate use of the term Nazi without my consent.
I condemn the use of the term Nazi out of its precise definition.
It is important to specify the term Nazi refers to members of the Nazi party and neo-Nazis.
Man, that guy, he is so good at this.
These left-wingers, they are such geniuses.
They are amazing at this.
So probably Republicans should have a fight over the speakership.
I think that would be beneficial at this point.
When I say that, I'm being as cynical as it is possible to be.
So yesterday, Matt Gaetz, who has been ripping on McCarthy for quite a while, So, let me get this straight.
to formally move ahead with a vote to oust McCarthy as Speaker, known as a motion to vacate.
Here he was yesterday explaining that he was going to issue a motion to vacate.
So let me get this straight. To extend Joe Biden's spending and Joe Biden's policy priorities,
the Speaker of the House gave away to Joe Biden the money for Ukraine that Joe Biden wanted.
It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble
while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy's lunch money in every negotiation.
It's just, and because of this, because of McCarthy's supposed failings in not prying more savings spendings out of Joe Biden, he should have his speakership challenged, is according to Matt Gaetz.
There's only one problem.
Matt Gaetz acted to scuttle a better CR like two weeks ago.
This better CR would have involved an 8% discretionary cut in spending and would have involved border security provisions.
And instead he scuttled that, and so last minute McCarthy cut a deal in which there was a clean CR absent Ukraine funding.
So what is the point of this?
I don't even understand.
What are you seeking to achieve?
Who's going to replace him?
So you have the usual cast of characters like Andy Biggs from Arizona saying that he can't remain speaker and all the rest, but they have no one else in the wings waiting to do anything.
There are over 200 Republicans in the House who already don't support getting rid of McCarthy.
So there's just gonna be another humiliating vote take over and over and over if it actually gets past the motion to table, which is going to be issued, I assume, to stop Gates's motion to suspend.
What are your thoughts?
Are you going to support Matt Gaetz's effort to remove McCarthy as Speaker?
the representative from Virginia who is allied with with Gates very often and he just kept dodging the question.
What are your thoughts? Are you going to support Matt Gates's effort to remove McCarthy as speaker and could that play
out this week?
Well, I will just say that what we saw happen yesterday was a repeat of past failures by Republican leadership.
And frankly, that's what January was about.
What I most spoke about back in January during the speaker contest is that we couldn't do what we've done the last 10, 15 years when Republicans had the majority, which was to pass major spending bills with a predominant majority of Democrat votes.
And that's what happened yesterday.
So do you want him out?
Well, I was concerned about him as Speaker, as you know.
I was well on record on that during January because of the failures of the past.
This is a repeat of those failures.
So I guess you just haven't made up your mind yet?
Or what?
You've been a critic of Kevin McCarthy for some time now.
Why not say you're linking arms with Matt Gaetz and you're ready to oust him as Speaker?
Well, this isn't about personalities or individuals.
This is about doing what's right by the country.
Okay, so, no answer there.
Because there is no plan.
There's no plan.
Running headlong into walls is not a plan.
So, again, whichever party stops being moronic and insane first is going to win the next election.
Or maybe no one's going to win, ever, because they're all going to be insane and moronic.
That's just going to continue to be awesome.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today, again, I am over here in Israel.
People very often ask me for, you know, while you're in Israel, what's a good Israel book?
So, excellent book by a guy named Rick Richman, called A Nun Shall Make Them Afraid.
It's slip biographies.
of eight people who have been involved in the modern state of Israel.
They range from Theodor Herzl to Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the state of Israel, to Menachem Begin.
It's really good.
These are really interesting biographies.
You'll learn things you didn't know about all of these people, even if you happen to be familiar with some of the history.
If you don't know the history, it's a really good sort of way to examine Israeli history and what's been happening over here.
Again, worth the read, and none shall make them afraid.
Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
Uh, why do people care about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce?
I mean, I just don't understand.
So this is eating up my Twitter feed.
Every Instagram post is about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, and I don't understand why I'm supposed to care.
I don't.
I mean, Taylor Swift is famous for literally writing a song about how she has a giant list of men that she has dated.
So this is another person on the list of men that she is dating, and they're not going to end up married.
I mean, I hate to break it to you, they're not going to.
And if I'm wrong?
Okay!
Then I will send them a bouquet of flowers at their wedding.
But so far, she's dated like a thousand men and she's married none of them.
And the reason for that is because the prospect of single, free and clear tailor dating men is very lucrative.
You know what happens when she gets married?
She loses money.
Our incentive-laden society has basically decided that women who settle down and have a happy marriage are less valuable, at least when it comes to pop culture, than women who date a lot.
And maybe that's because there is the allure of, well, she's, maybe she'll date you next.
She's not going to date you, bro.
Not going to happen.
So what do you care?
And as far as this sort of, well, she is with a football player and it's the all American couple.
It's a, it's a singer and a football player.
And wow.
I mean, first of all, the fact that the NFL is falling for this, it's going to be super fun when she dumps him.
And then she turns out to be like a basketball fan or something.
That's going to, that's going to be amazing.
But also the fact that we're all supposed to pin our hopes for the romantic future on, on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.
seems perverse to me. I don't know why in the world anyone would like form their idea of romance
around Taylor Swift, who again is dated everyone from like Jake Gyllenhaal to John Mayer to the
every member of Backstreet Boys.
Some members of the Backstreet Boys?
I don't know what the story is.
In any case, entire piece in the Washington Post today.
Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and a monoculture yearning for romance.
Travis isn't quite right.
Kelswift isn't much better.
Trav-lore is a pharmaceutical jingle waiting to happen.
Tasty is nonsense.
Celsy sounds like an off-brand antacid.
So what should we call them?
That paragraph was a test.
Surely you understand and provided you are part of the human population.
But for those of you who for whatever reason aren't, Taylor Swift showed up at a football game to cheer on Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce.
After a week of national tittering and wishing and hoping that these two might be right for each other, Swift showed up again Sunday night at MetLife Stadium for Sunday Night Football.
The sight of the planet's most famous pop star jumping and yelling, let's effing go, as one of the NFL's most talented and charismatic players scores a touchdown would cause a commotion if we were living in normal times.
But it's 2023, so this budding romance story has consumed every corner of the internet, sports media, non-sports media, sports betting apps, cable news segments, memes, and text messages.
From dads to daughters announcing, have you seen this?
During the September 24th game, Fox announcers gleefully dubbed the Swift-Kelsey pairing as the romance we all need.
It feels like it's right for America.
Okay, so first of all, I'm just going to point out that Taylor Swift faking enthusiasm for things is part of her brand.
If you watch the MTV Video Music Awards, like any of it, they were playing some of the crappiest music imaginable and she was smiling and dancing along like she actually cared.
So, do I actually think that this is a thing?
I hope that the NFL is paying her royally for this.
On Sunday, NBC just as eagerly panned a Swift watching the game in a suite with her slew of celebrity friends, including Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Sophie Turner, Sabrina Carter, Carpenter, Antoni Porowski, and Hugh Jackman.
Swift spent time during the first half talking with Brittany Mahomes, the wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and shared a hug with Kelsey's mom, Donna.
At one point, commentator Chris Collins would dreamily recall how Swift and Kelsey left Arrowhead Stadium together September 24th in Kelsey's convertible, saying it had to be the most freeing thing Taylor Swift has done in 20 years.
Um, that's just... Okay, call me when they get married.
Call me when they get married.
Because again, Taylor Swift faking enthusiasm... I find her completely inauthentic, by the way.
But Taylor Swift faking enthusiasm for football?
While she cheers for Travis Kelsey?
And elevating the NFL?
It feels like a sales ploy.
Sales of Kelsey's jersey have risen about 400%.
This is gasoline thrown on a fire.
His fan with her fanbase?
Said Sunday Night Football coordinating producer Rob Highland.
Okay, so let's just be real about this.
His fanbase is not even remotely her fanbase, and we all know that.
But the fact that this is getting wall-to-wall coverage shows how starved we are for anything remotely like a communal sense in the United States.
What exactly do we share?
Apparently what we share is an obsession with an overrated pop star and a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.
That is what truly brings America together.
Well, if that's what brings us Americans together, I have some bad news for you, gang.
It ain't gonna be sufficient.
All right, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be getting into religious matters.
The Pope has now held a synod and said some stuff that is disquieting, to say the least.
Plus, Andy Stanley, who is a pastor, he has come out with some words on gay marriage that are very controversial.
We'll get to that first.
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