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Jan. 4, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

49:58

2024 ADVANTAGE: TRUMP

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	Let me just begin today's show by pointing out that last night, the first of the Jeffrey Epstein papers dropped.
	That would be the core paper surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, notorious underage sex trafficker, who is connected with just about every famous person in the West.
	And everybody's been very curious as to who exactly went to Epstein Rape Island.
	Well, so far, the paper is kind of a dud.
	Most of what we saw yesterday has already been seen.
	Bill Clinton being mentioned in the context of quote-unquote, liking young girls, Prince Andrew grabbing an underage breast, allegations about Alan Dershowitz, all the rest of this kind of stuff.
	More is going to drop over the coming days and we'll cover it when it does because not much has dropped so far.
	Okay, so now on to the actual news.
	The 2024 election is coming and right now it is advantage Donald Trump.
	Trump is leading by 2.2% in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
	That doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that Trump trailed Joe Biden in that same average on Election Day 2020 by 7.2%.
	He only lost the popular vote by 4.5%, a difference of 2.7%.
	Or that Hillary Clinton was leading in that same average by 3.2% on Election Day 2016 and only won the popular vote by 2.1%, a miss of about 1.1%.
	or that Hillary Clinton was leading in that same average by 3.2% on election day 2016
	and only won the popular vote by 2.1%, a miss about 1.1%.
	In other words, Donald Trump almost always outdraws his real clear politics polling average numbers.
	So if he's up 2.2, that means he's actually up more.
	What's more, Joe Biden is totally stuck.
	As political scientist Roy Tashara, who is not a right-winger, writes today in the Washington Post, quote, in his 2020 campaign for the nomination, the longtime former senator had a better sense than other Democratic candidates of the normalcy that voters were looking for after more than six months of a pandemic accompanied by lockdowns and an economic crash.
	But there was a catch.
	After Joe Biden clinched the nomination, says Teixeira, he felt it was necessary to incorporate the views of the party's left into his campaign's policy stances and outlook.
	Now, with the next campaign about to begin, Biden and his party are struggling.
	In other words, Joe Biden lied to his voters.
	He campaigned as a moderate in the primaries, he capitalized on that moderate image in the general, and then he pushed steadily to the left, and then he governed from the left.
	Now, says Teixeira, Biden is polling behind Trump nationally and in every swing state with the possible exception of Wisconsin.
	Trump is preferred to Biden by wide margins on voters' most important issue, the economy and inflation, as well as their second most important issue, immigration and border security, and on crime and public safety.
	Biden's approval rating at this point in his presidency says Teixeira is the lowest of any president going back to the 1940s, when the era of modern polling began.
	So what could Joe Biden do to turn that around?
	Well, Biden thinks that bashing Trump is going to save him.
	That's presumably why he's going to go on a Trump bashing tour beginning this week, labeling Donald Trump a racist and a fascist.
	According to the Associated Press, quote, President Joe Biden is starting the campaign year by evoking the Revolutionary War to mark the third anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S.
	Capitol and visiting the South Carolina church where a white gunman massacred black parishioners.
	Seeking to present in the starkest possible terms an election he argues could determine the fate of American democracy.
	He's basically going to turn January 6th into a national holiday so that everybody has to remember how horrible January 6th day after day after day because that's what America must fight and Trump can't be president because of January 6th.
	So on Saturday, Joe Biden is going to travel near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago, presumably to talk about spending a bleak winter this year.
	But it will swing into a wondrous summer under a second Joe Biden term.
	There, he's apparently going to decry Donald Trump for the riot by a mob of his supporters who overran the Capitol, says the Associated Press, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
	So Valley Forge speech to talk about January 6th.
	I hear George Washington.
	Donald Trump insurrection.
	All right.
	Two days later, the president is going to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine people were shot and killed in a June 2015 white supremacist attack.
	Now, you may note the date on that.
	June 2015.
	Barack Obama was still president of the United States.
	And the idea he is going to suggest here is that Donald Trump's followers are the kinds of people who murder black people going to church.
	That is what he is going to do.
	It's going to be disgusting.
	And it's not going to be anything quite shocking from Joe Biden, given the fact that this is the same guy who once suggested that Mitt Romney was a vicious racist who wanted to re-enslave black people.
	Joe Biden's kicking off 2024, says the Associated Press, by delving into some of the country's darkest moments, rather than an upbeat affirmation of his record, is meant to clarify for voters what his team sees as the stakes of November's election during both events.
	He will characterize his predecessor as a serious threat to the nation's founding principles, arguing that Trump, who has built a commanding early lead in the Republican presidential primary, will seek to undermine U.S.
	democracy should he win a second term.
	This is not going to work.
	At all.
	It's not going to work because here's the thing.
	Everybody knows Trump.
	Everything is baked into that cake.
	Everything.
	The eggshells.
	Howitzers.
	Everything is in the cake already.
	Everyone knows what they think of the cake.
	Some people love the cake.
	Some people hate the cake.
	Nobody has no opinion on the cake.
	Everyone knows that Trump's 2020 post-election activities, even if they despise them and think they're really bad, didn't actually change the outcome of the election.
	Joe Biden, after all, is the president and has been the president since January of 2021.
	What's more, the pitch that Trump is more racist than Biden, that he's some sort of Crypto white supremacist.
	That pitch does not work.
	It just doesn't.
	Joe Biden is the DEI president.
	He talks about equity, infusing all of his policies.
	He talks about it all the time.
	So this idea that Trump is more racially polarizing than Biden?
	That's not what the polls are showing.
	The pitch that Trump is a fascist isn't gonna work either, because as even George Will, a Trump opponent of high ardor, points out, quote, Joe Biden is, like Trump, an authoritarian recidivist, mostly stymied by courts.
	That is from a person who really, really, really dislikes Donald Trump.
	George Will says, quote, instances of Trump's anti-constitutional behavior have been amply reported and applauded, Biden's less so, although they, for example, the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt, and judicial reprimands of them, have been frequent.
	And then George will point out that Joe Biden has been attempting to overrun the Federal Vacancies Reform Act by basically attempting to appoint somebody, that person being rejected by the Senate, and then him waiting for some sort of break in the action to reappoint that same exact person.
	Most of all, Joe Biden's hope that hatred for Trump will somehow save him, that's predicated on another false idea.
	And that idea is that Donald Trump will jog Republican turnout, but he will really, really, really jog Democratic turnout.
	And that's, you know, an arguable proposition.
	The truth is that in every election since 2016, Democratic turnout has been up because of Trump.
	But here is the problem.
	Trump wasn't on the ballot in any of those except for 2020.
	What if the normal presidential election politics Look more like 2016 than 2020.
	What if the actual norm is that Trump doesn't actually drive turnout in a presidential year in the way that Joe Biden hopes?
	In 2016, after all, turnout was well within historical norms.
	That's when Trump ran against Hillary.
	When it comes to turnout as a percentage of eligible voters, here are the numbers by elections.
	This is the percentage turnout of eligible voters.
	So in 2000, it was 54.3%.
	Very, very low.
	was 54.3% very very low 2004 60.1% 2008 62.5% 2012, 58%.
	2004, 60.1%.
	2012 58% 2016 59.2% and so since 2004 somewhere in the ballpark of between 58 and 62 percent 2020 66.9%
	2016, 59.2%.
	2020, 66.9 percent.
	That is a massive increase and also a massive outlier.
	And Joe Biden went incredibly narrowly based on that massive outlying increase in voter turnout.
	2020 saw a voter turnout increase of 23 million voters to 160 million total voters.
	to 160 million total voters. That is opposed to 137 million in 2016 and 129 million in 2012.
	So do we really think that that number is going to replicate?
	Do we think we're going to get 160 million total voters again in 2024?
	Is it going to look more like 140 million voters?
	And if there is a 20 million vote gap between, say, 2020 and 2024, in the negative direction, 20 million fewer people vote in 2024 than 2020, who do we think that's going to hurt?
	If those voters disappear, those marginal voters, do we think those marginal voters were Trump voters or Biden voters?
	The answer in 2020 was almost certainly Biden voters because the Democratic turnout machine was extremely heavy because Joe Biden relied heavily on an on-the-ground operation months in advance of the election to get people to vote absentee ballot.
	The changing rules because of COVID meant that Joe Biden's entire turnout operation was predicated on not voting on election day.
	That is why you saw that blue shift happen over the course of election night, because all of the in-person votes got counted.
	And Donald Trump did really well with the in-person votes.
	And then all of the mail-in ballots started to be counted.
	And then Joe Biden overtook Trump in all of these various states.
	But what happens when the number of mail-in ballots is way, way, way lower because people aren't staying home because of COVID or voting from home because of COVID?
	What happens if the Republican Party doesn't shoot itself directly in the leg by suggesting that people should not vote from home?
	What happens when the math changes?
	In other words, none of these trends are good for Joe Biden.
	Which means that Biden, if he wants to win re-election, is going to actually have to, you know, do a good job.
	The only thing that could save him would be You know, good things happening in America.
	But here's the problem.
	The biggest problem for Joe Biden.
	His policies prevent exactly that.
	He has not made the country a better place.
	Very few people feel that the country is better run now than it was in 2019.
	And that's an easy pitch for Trump to make if he can stand pitch.
	If Trump just says over and over and over, is your life better now or was it better in 2019?
	Virtually everyone thinks that life was better, less chaotic, less insane in 2019.
	Yes, even including the tweets.
	In just one second, we'll talk about Joe Biden's being held hostage by his own left and why this is absolutely Crushing his re-elect chances.
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	Okay, so speaking of Joe Biden's policy failures, the most obvious policy failure of this administration.
	Aside from inflation, which we'll get to in just one second, is immigration.
	The immigration issue is front page.
	It is hot button news, and it should be hot button news because illegal immigration is at all-time highs.
	I mean, like, all-time highs.
	300,000 border encounters in December alone.
	That is the highest monthly total ever.
	That is a huge total.
	And by the way, that does not include getaways.
	Meanwhile, the DOJ, as we mentioned yesterday, is suing Texas to stop Texas from enforcing immigration law.
	And meanwhile, the United States is about to reopen four legal U.S.-Mexico border crossings today, according to Reuters, as high levels of illegal immigration have receded and freed up personnel.
	How have they receded exactly?
	Apparently the U.S.
	is going to resume operations at an international bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, two crossings in Arizona, another near San Diego, California.
	That's according to Customs and Border Protection.
	U.S.
	border authorities struggled in December to process migrants as apprehensions reached nearly 11,000 in a single day, which several current and former officials said was near or at a record high.
	Now remember, when they say that these border apprehensions are happening, That does not necessarily mean that these are people who are crossing between crossings and then CBP is picking them up.
	Very often an apprehension is somebody who actually shows up at a border crossing and then is quote-unquote apprehended awaiting further review for asylum or refugee status.
	But we know that the vast majority of people who are claiming that status are not actually eligible for that status.
	And then the administration basically catches and releases those people.
	They say, okay, here's a date.
	Fill out this form, come back in six months, and we'll get you in court.
	And then some people show up and some people don't, and that's basically the end of the story.
	And that's how you end up with 20 million illegal immigrants in the middle of the country.
	Well, the White House knows this is a political loser.
	Democrats on the border are fighting mad.
	This is not just a Republican issue.
	Democrats in Texas, fighting mad.
	In Arizona, fighting mad.
	And now, hilariously, in Chicago and New York, fighting mad because it turns out that when the chickens come home to roost, when you back really bad border policy and call yourself a sanctuary city, and then all of a sudden, oh no, it's the consequences of my own actions, people start arriving en masse in New York and Chicago, straining your social services and sleeping on the streets, you get ticked too.
	So this is a boiling issue for the White House.
	So what is the White House doing about it?
	Are they trying to fix it?
	Of course not.
	Of course not.
	So according to Politico, the Biden administration is attempting to flip the blame for the migrant crisis at the southern border onto Republicans.
	Good luck with that one.
	Seriously, good luck with that.
	So the Republicans are like, let's build a wall.
	Let's deport everyone.
	Let's be as harsh on illegal immigration as humanly possible.
	And the Democrats are like, let's leave an open border.
	And then when the border is open and people arrive, like this is this is Republicans fault.
	This is the who killed Hannibal name.
	For those who are not familiar with this meme from the internets, it's a meme in which one character shoots another character in the chest and then turns to camera and says, who could have done this?
	That is the Democratic Party when it comes to illegal immigration.
	According to Politico, in anticipation of Speaker Mike Johnson heading to the U.S.
	southern border on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement accusing House GOPers of ducking the chance to address the issue they've been attacking.
	Actions speak louder than words, said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
	House Republicans, anti-border security record.
	Anti-border security record?
	The F is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel.
	No, what Republicans didn't want to do was increase the amount of processing power.
	They wanted to increase the amount of enforcement power, meaning turn people away at the border.
	They didn't simply want to increase the size and scope of the processing Apparatus in order to allow in more people illegally, which is what Joe Biden wants to do.
	But Joe Biden wants to basically what you have here is you have a hose with a spigot.
	The spigot right now is very narrow.
	And so what's happening is that there's a huge backlog of illegal immigrants who have not yet been processed.
	There are two ways to solve this problem.
	One is to turn off the hose so that you actually don't have a giant pipeline of people trying to get across the border illegally.
	The other way is to open up the spigot, which is to say, allow illegal immigrants to pour into the country.
	This is why it's hilarious.
	Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security head, which is such an Orwellian notion that he is the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
	What homeland security has Alejandro Mayorkas been providing?
	Like, at all?
	Here he was yesterday explaining they have a backlog of three million cases.
	That backlog is a powerful example of how broken our immigration system is and for how long it has been broken.
	Because that backlog existed when I was in the Department of Homeland Security in 2009.
	It preceded me then and it precedes me now in my tenure as a Secretary of Homeland Security.
	That three million case backlog has been building for years and years and years.
	It got much much worse When U.S.
	citizenship and immigration system services, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that administers our legal immigration system was financially gutted during the prior administration.
	Again, what he wants to do is increase the processing power.
	He does not actually want to cut off the flow.
	If you want illegal immigration to stop, you need to cut off the flow, but that's exactly what the Biden administration is unwilling to do.
	According to Politico, Senate negotiators are trying to land a bipartisan agreement on policy to help stem the flow of migration, and House Republicans are now considering impeaching Mayorkas, as they should, because he's not doing his job.
	I mean, you don't have to be guilty of any sort of crime to be quote-unquote impeached.
	We found that out when Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice while alleging no actual criminal activity.
	Dereliction of duty would be a big one for Alejandro Mayorkas, who has not secured the border in any way, shape, or form.
	It is hilarious that... So Mayorkas was asked, why exactly do you think that there's been this massive outbreak of illegal immigration?
	Like, way higher than it was during Trump, way higher than it was during Obama.
	Why is that happening?
	So he blames climate change and poverty, which are systemic problems in the Northern Triangle and Latin America generally.
	He blames that, which is weird since climate change, according to the left, has been taking place for decades and poverty has been endemic to this region for, again, decades.
	So why now?
	The answer, by the way, is that illegal immigrants will tell you themselves Joe Biden is president.
	There's lots of video of people chanting Joe Biden's name as they head for the border.
	Here's Alejandro Mayorkas trying to blame this on systemic factors.
	By the way, when politicians tend to blame quote-unquote systemic factors like this, usually that's a way of them avoiding accountability and responsibility.
	Because how exactly is anyone supposed to solve climate change or poverty?
	It's like blaming the moon.
	Oh man, the moon keeps making this happen.
	How do we stop it?
	We can't.
	Because we can't blow up the moon.
	When politicians do that routine, what they're really saying is we're not going to do the thing we know we should do.
	Instead, we're just going to blame these endemic factors.
	Here we go.
	So we are seeing the greatest number of displaced people, not only at our southern border, not only in the Western Hemisphere, but across the globe.
	You know, I am involved in bilateral and multilateral meetings with my counterparts from foreign countries in Europe, in Asia, in the Indo-Pacific, all over the world.
	In migration, the challenge of displaced people is a subject that comes up in every single conversation.
	We have the effects of climate change, poverty, increasing level of authoritarianism, the very many challenges that are at the root cause of the displacement of people around the world.
	So question, why does the chart for illegal immigration look like this?
	Okay, why does it spike when Joe Biden becomes president?
	No one in the Biden administration is willing to answer that question and the answer is perfectly obvious.
	It's because Joe Biden is soft on illegal immigration and his party is soft on illegal immigration.
	And again, they are in hock to the left wing because there's no reason for this.
	Democrats on the border understand that leaving the border wide open is totally insane.
	This has to be an ideological thing, truly.
	Because the reality is that even labor-first Democrats, people who are for unions, for example, it used to be they were very much opposed to illegal immigration and migrant labor generally because they believed it was undercutting the wage base in the United States.
	But now, the Democratic Party has been so captured by college-educated white liberals that they seem to believe that leaving the border open is some sort of moral requirement.
	They're going to follow that all the way into Joe Biden losing the presidency is what's going to happen here.
	In just one second, we'll get to the continuing Democratic attempt to blame Republicans for what is, in fact, a Democratic problem.
	First, as we know, 2024, it's going to be a wild ride.
	You're already seeing the impacts of inflation at the gas pump, at the grocery store.
	Economic stagnation, as we'll discuss momentarily, is going to come next.
	It is the next shoe to drop.
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	Okay, so back to the border crisis.
	It is amazing to watch Democrats try to project this onto Republicans.
	This is not going to work.
	If this is their strategy, good, good luck.
	Seriously, good luck.
	So, here is Alejandro Mayorkas again.
	He's the head of the Department of Homeland Security, refusing to enforce border law.
	And here he is blaming Texas' governor, Greg Abbott, for actually attempting to enforce border law.
	We have taken action on the border and we've taken action with respect to the challenges that cities across the country are facing.
	Let me identify one fundamental problem here and that is the fact that we have one governor In the state of Texas, who is refusing to cooperate with other governors and other local officials and coordinate efforts to address a challenge that our country, which this country should stand united to address, that our country is facing.
	And it's a remarkable failure of governance to refuse to cooperate with one's fellow local and state officials.
	What in the world?
	Again, it is the federal government currently suing Greg Abbott to stop him from enforcing federal immigration law.
	Meanwhile, Corinne Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary over at the White House, she says that Joe Biden still has confidence in his DHS secretary.
	They're going to run this playbook right into the ground.
	It is political malpractice.
	I mean, what's happening here, just from any objective point of view, if you're an alien from outer space and you arrived in the United States and you saw a crisis at the southern border, a president in the low 40s, high 30s approval rating, in a reelect fight, where the border is going to be a major issue, shouting that his opponents are responsible and we're going to basically leave things in place, you'd be like, what in the world is even happening here?
	But that's what the Biden administration is doing.
	The House committee is moving ahead with impeachment proceedings against Secretary Mayorkas.
	There's a hearing scheduled for next week, so I'd just like to get the White House response and also just to clarify, does the President still have confidence in the Secretary?
	Absolutely, the President has confidence in the Secretary.
	I think, and I've said this moments ago, I said it at the top as well, we believe that what they're doing, the House Republicans are doing, Well, why aren't you doing any of them, then?
	So Joe Biden, for his part, he says this is all about Republicans refusing him money to do immigration.
	Now, we all know what's actually happening here, is that the money he wants for immigration is not to actually reject illegal immigrants at the border.
	He does not want a remain in Mexico policy.
	He tried to walk that back.
	He does not want to simply change immigration law to make it harder for people to falsely claim asylum.
	He doesn't want to do any of that.
	The money he wants is to open the spigot.
	That's why Republicans oppose it.
	Here's Joe Biden claiming this is about a lack of money.
	I mean, dude, my dude, you spend $7 trillion a year.
	I have a feeling you can find some money somewhere if what you actually want to do is stop the flow of illegal immigration.
	I mean, like, how much money do these people want?
	This is totally crazy!
	The federal government has only a couple of actual original purposes.
	Then it has a bunch of crap that it does that literally has nothing to do with its constitutional duties.
	The size and scope of the federal government is so insanely beyond anything the Founding Fathers ever would have comprehended that it's absolutely maddening.
	The Founding Fathers legitimately fought a revolution based on the size and scope of government and lack of representation within that government.
	If they could see the federal government as it currently stands, what do you think they would think of this?
	I mean, I got Joe Biden walking around spending $7 trillion a year, and he's like, I don't know.
	We need more money.
	Where's the money?
	I don't know.
	Here we go.
	Are you going to do anything about the southern border?
	What?
	The southern border, are you going to do anything about it?
	We gotta do something.
	They gotta give me the money I need to protect the border.
	They gotta give me the money I need to protect the border?
	You're right.
	We're not spending enough money.
	Our national debt is $34 trillion with AT.
	Trillion dollars.
	He is spending more money than any president has ever spent.
	Ever.
	But the problem is shortfalls of cash, apparently, according to Joe Biden.
	Nailed it.
	Except that we know that that's not true.
	Because right now, Joe Biden is requesting another giant supplemental bill.
	That giant supplemental bill includes, like, $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $14 billion in aid to Israel, some billions of dollars in aid to Taiwan.
	And Republicans said, OK, well, we're going to add some border security here.
	Because you know what?
	As long as we're helping to secure foreign allies, perhaps we should secure our southern border a little bit.
	And Joe Biden's like, nope.
	And Chuck Schumer is like, nope.
	So here is Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority, the Senate Majority Leader yesterday talking about this and saying, well, if Republicans want H.R.
	2, and we'll discuss what H.R.
	2 is in a second, attached to this bill, the answer is no.
	When the House clings to H.R.
	2 as the only solution, which every Democrat has voted against, I believe both House and Senate, certainly every Senator voted, every Democratic Senator voted against it.
	I think every Democratic House member voted against it as well.
	If not, it was almost everyone.
	We're not going to get a deal.
	Okay, so he says, by the way, that there is agreement among Democrats and Republicans about need to fix the border, but they won't actually propose anything that systemically changes the problem on the border.
	They refuse to do it.
	Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is the lead Democrat in the border talks.
	He says, I think if the Senate gets something done in a bipartisan way, it'll put enormous pressure on the House to get something done as well.
	Well, so far, they haven't done a very good job of it.
	We'll get to H.R.
	2, what the Republicans have proposed in the House in just one second.
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	So what exactly is it that Chuck Schumer is rejecting here?
	What exactly is it that is so terrible?
	So there's something called the Secure the Border Act of 2023.
	So the Secure the Border Act, which is H.R.
	and spice. Okay, so what exactly is it that Chuck Schumer is rejecting here?
	What exactly is it that is so terrible? So there's something called the Secure
	the Border Act of 2023. So the Secure the Border Act, which is H.R. 2, is a fairly
	conservative bill. It proposes the following things.
	This is according to immigrationforum.org, which is actually a rather pro-immigration outlet.
	And here's what they say.
	It would re-establish Trump-era border policy, including restarting construction on the border wall.
	It would reinforce the definition of operational control as the profession of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.
	So, all unlawful entries, that would be now the goal of operational control.
	It would require the DHS Secretary to incorporate physical barriers, infrastructures, and technologies to achieve situational awareness and operational control of the U.S.-Mexico border.
	It would increase the number of full-time Border Patrol agents to at least 22,000.
	By the way, that gives the lie to the idea that the Republicans don't want to increase Border Patrol agents.
	They do.
	They just don't want to increase the number of people who are going to be involved in processing illegal immigration forms as opposed to the number of people who are on the border catching the gotaways.
	It would prohibit the use of U.S.
	Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations resources to transport non-citizens who will not be detained into the country's interior.
	In other words, we shouldn't be spending federal dollars to bust people all around the country via CBP.
	It would require the U.S.
	Border Patrol to put together a strategic plan based on information provided by border community stakeholders like hospitals, farmers, ranchers, property owners, victims of crimes, and others negatively impacted by illegal immigration.
	All of this sounds absolutely reasonable.
	It would also restrict access for asylum.
	You'd raise the initial screening standard, so a non-citizen would have to prove they were more likely than not to ultimately qualify for asylum, to continue pursuing their protection claim, and not be just kicked out.
	Which again, why is that wild?
	Should you be able to come to the border and you just say, listen, I need asylum.
	And they're like, why?
	You say, I don't know, I just do.
	They're like, well, maybe there's like a 1% chance this person needs asylum, probably should release them into the interior of the United States.
	Or should, by what we call a preponderance of the evidence, 51% shot, you're actually gonna get asylum.
	Now we say, okay, fine.
	You want to come in, make your asylum claim.
	We'll let you in because the chances are pretty good you're going to receive asylum.
	That is a smart policy the Democrats oppose.
	It would ban the vast majority of asylum seekers from requesting protection at U.S.
	border if they traveled through a third country en route to the United States and had not already been denied asylum there.
	By the way, this is the same policy that Mexico holds.
	So the basic idea here would be that if you come up to the U.S.
	border and you did not request asylum in Mexico first, you need to go back to Mexico and request asylum there.
	And then if they deny that, then you can come to the United States and request asylum.
	But you shouldn't be able to, like, pick and choose the best country just because it is the best country.
	If you are truly requesting asylum, meaning you're trying to avoid the worst possible scenario, that does not give you automatic access to the United States.
	It would restrict asylum claims generally to migrants who arrive in the U.S.
	at an official port of entry.
	So you can't, like, go between the border crossings, cross the Rio Grande, run into the United States, and then claim asylum.
	You have to actually go to a border crossing in order for us to process you normally.
	Like, none of this seems wildly crazy.
	It would also explicitly end the existing presumption against detaining a non-citizen child accompanied by family, making it easier for families with minor children to be held in detention, because right now...
	One of the big problems is that you're not allowed to hold a child in detention facilities with family, which leads to separations at the border between children and parents, which has then been used as a lever to release the parents.
	So now it's saying, OK, well, you know, how about we just keep the families together?
	Which, again, makes some sense.
	It would require DHS to actually reestablish family detention, requiring parents and kids who enter together without authorization to be held together in immigration detention.
	And then say that this satisfies the Flores Settlement Agreement.
	The Flores Settlement was an agreement come to by the Clinton administration and the federal judiciary with regard to non-separation of children from families.
	Again, all of this is perfectly normal and natural.
	This is the stuff that Joe Biden is opposing.
	This is the stuff Chuck Schumer is opposing.
	So much opposing, by the way, that they would rather kill Ukraine than pass it.
	The bill would criminalize overstaying a legal visa, so if you overstay your visa, that makes it a criminal penalty.
	They don't want to do that.
	They want you to be able to just, I don't know, pay a fine or something.
	They want to redefine what it means for parole to be granted on a case-by-case basis, so you can't categorically just declare that people are paroled, like DACA.
	And all of this, and it would add e-verify, so employers would actually have to check the immigration status of the people they employ.
	Why is any of this remotely controversial?
	If you pulled each one of those propositions, I guarantee you those are 70% propositions.
	70% of Americans probably agree with every single thing that I just said.
	Who disagrees?
	But Democrats are ideologically committed to this.
	For example, Representative Ro Khanna.
	By the way, I like Ro Khanna.
	He's been on the show.
	I think he's an honest person, even if we disagree on a lot of policy issues.
	Democrat from California.
	He says, I'm not rid of I'm not in favor of changing parole and asylum in favor of Ukraine aid.
	I mean, first of all, you should be in favor of it just without Ukraine aid.
	But the fact that Democrats are willing to take what they say is the top national security priority, not allowing Ukraine to be eaten by Russia.
	and subject it and subjugate that, subsume that, get rid of that, sublimate that to
	the open border policy is totally crazy. Here's Ro Khanna.
	How crucial is that aid for Ukraine right now?
	It's absolutely crucial and we should have a standalone up or down vote on the aid to Ukraine.
	And I strongly support the aid to Ukraine.
	But what I don't support is getting rid of America's commitment to asylum or parole just to give aid to Ukraine.
	I mean, we're not going to compromise our entire values as a nation over that.
	I mean, values as a nation?
	I didn't realize that values as a nation was allowing people to make spurious claims of refugee status.
	You know, all of this plays directly into Donald Trump's hands.
	I say, the radical left capturing Biden has been the downfall of his administration.
	Donald Trump has a has a piece in the Des Moines Register ahead of the Iowa caucuses talking about Joe Biden's border disaster.
	And he says, of course, he didn't write this, but this will be the policy he implements.
	See, this is this is the thing about Trump.
	This is the thing that conservatives like me understand.
	Donald Trump says a lot of crap when he's tweeting.
	His actual policy gets made by the people around him.
	That people who can convince Donald Trump of their policy end up getting their policy actually passed, made law, implemented.
	This is why you have three conservative Supreme Court justices and not randos that Donald Trump picked out of a lineup.
	It's not because Donald Trump has deep engagement with the issue of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
	It's because Leonard Leo was telling him, here is a list of justices who will probably be good.
	This is just how Trump works.
	And everybody who's going to vote for Trump basically understands this.
	Trump has some very good political instincts and he has some very bad habits on Twitter.
	And then, if he surrounds himself with the right people, he tends to implement some pretty good policy, which is why, again, he's leading in the polls.
	We'll get to Donald Trump's proposed border policy.
	Again, he's skunking Biden on this issue.
	It's amazing to me that Biden won't compromise with the Republicans and attempt to at least neutralize the issue.
	It's totally wild.
	We'll get to that in a second.
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	Okay, meanwhile, as you say, when it comes to immigration policy, Joe Biden is blowing it and it's playing right into Donald Trump's hands.
	He has a good piece over the Des Moines Register, obviously not written by Donald Trump, doesn't matter.
	It's the policy Trump will implement.
	He says, under the Trump administration, he had the most secure border in U.S.
	history.
	We ended catch and release and removed over 1 million illegal aliens in my first term.
	I negotiated unprecedented agreements with Central American nations and brokered remain in Mexico to stop the flow of migrants to our border.
	I got the Mexican government to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the border free of charge.
	Every step of the way, we fought obstructionists, left-wing judges, and radical Democrats who tried to stop us, and we won.
	And he says, now you're witnessing the disastrous results of Joe Biden.
	Biden came in, canceled the border wall, ended Remain in Mexico, ripped up my asylum bans, ended Title 42, and began resettling millions of migrants into American communities at taxpayer expense.
	And now you are witnessing the disastrous results.
	We have the highest number of illegal border crossings in history by far.
	On my first day back in office, I will terminate every open borders policy of the Biden administration and immediately restore the full set of strong Trump border policies.
	Then, we will begin a record-setting deportation operation.
	Joe Biden has given us no choice.
	The millions of illegal aliens who have invaded under Biden require a record number of removals.
	This is just common sense.
	To achieve this goal, I will make clear to every department and to state and local governments, we must use all resources and authorities available.
	We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement, including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS.
	I will use the Alien Enemies Act to remove known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States, and we'll use Title 42 to end the child trafficking crisis at last.
	Again, this is...
	Trump's going to win on this issue.
	This issue matters to Americans.
	And Joe Biden is walking, sleepwalking, directly into his own defeat.
	It's not just with regard to immigration.
	Remember, Joe Biden needs good news before the election.
	He's not going to win this race on the basis of people like him better than Trump as a person.
	It's not going to work this time.
	It is simply not.
	The perception of Joe Biden is too bad.
	It has been stagnant and terrible since the Afghanistan withdrawal.
	People do not perceive him as the kindly elderly gentleman anymore.
	That's what he ran as in 2020, and no one thinks of him that way.
	They think of him as somewhat venal, somewhat corrupt, crotchety, somewhat senile, and fairly radical on policy.
	That's the actual perception of Joe Biden.
	So he's going to need a significant economic recovery.
	Is that going to happen this year?
	Well, the Fed's going to do its best.
	The Federal Reserve obviously has historically been in the business of trying to jog the economy just before presidential elections.
	This goes all the way back to the Nixon administration.
	Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials thought they were done raising interest rates when they decided last month to hold them steady, but minutes of the meeting didn't reveal a meaningful debate about when to start lowering rates.
	While nearly all officials anticipated policy rates would eventually be lowered before the end of this year, the written account of their December 12th and 13th meeting, released on Wednesday, underscored heightened uncertainty over how to navigate the next interval of monetary policy after the most rapid increase in interest rates in four decades.
	So they're really not sure how much they're going to reduce the rates.
	I guarantee you they're going to try to reduce the rates this year, because if they don't, the economy is going to start to stagnate.
	In fact, we are already seeing that.
	According to Axios, steady job postings, cooler hiring, and less quitting.
	After a record-shattering stretch, America's once remarkable labor market has settled into a more normal groove.
	The result is sufficiently cool demand.
	It won't stoke inflation, but it's still robust enough for workers who want a job to find one.
	Other signs point to a continued cool down.
	As the year came to a close, hiring eased slightly to 5.5 million.
	That's 363,000 fewer hires than in October.
	The number of quits, which is how many people are quitting their job to find another job, fell down to 3.5 million.
	It's down 157,000.
	This is back down to below December 2019.
	million, it's down 157,000.
	This is back down to below December, 2019.
	This, this is just the beginning.
	Because again, what goes up must come down.
	At the very best, you're going to get a slow recovery from here on in.
	It's going to look like Obama numbers.
	This is why the New York Times reports that auto sales are expected to slow after 2023.
	Edmunds expects the industry to sell 15.7 million vehicles this year.
	That would amount to only a modest increase from the 15.5 million sold last year.
	That is when sales jumped 12%.
	The credit situation is not great for people because all of the interest rates are up.
	And that means that people are going to be buying less.
	For years, people took advantage of 0% loans to buy vehicles, even as the prices climbed.
	But such deals offered by automakers to move inventory have nearly disappeared in the wake of the Fed's rate hikes.
	In the fourth quarter of 2023, new vehicle sales with 0% financing accounted for just 2.3% of all sales.
	According to Edmunds, monthly payments are now at near record highs.
	And again, you have a national debt that is completely out of control.
	So are we likely to get a booming economy this year?
	You might avoid a technical recession.
	What you're going to have is an embedded inflation.
	That continues to be way higher than when Joe Biden took office.
	Again, even if inflation stopped today, pretty much everything you buy is about 20% more expensive than it was when Joe Biden took office.
	A dollar in January of 2021, now what you would buy for a dollar now costs you $1.18 according to government statistics.
	So that's a bad number for Joe Biden.
	And as the economy cools, Joe Biden is going to feel the brunt of that.
	Again, he's been defying economic gravity, but not really.
	Inflation was the economic gravity.
	When the interest rates go up, the economy cools down.
	Everyone's expecting it.
	It's normal.
	What you would expect is that Jerome Powell, before the election, probably drops the interest rates to try to jog the economy a little bit.
	Is that going to be too little, too late?
	Probably, given the fact that, again, all this stuff is embedded.
	It's not as though when we say inflation goes down, the actual amount of money that you are paying goes down.
	Deflation has not yet set in.
	Deflation would be things are less expensive today than they were yesterday.
	Even best case scenario, talking about a continued inflation rate of 2%, which is what the Federal Reserve aims for, that's on top of the already embedded 17 to 20% increase that you've seen over the course of the Biden administration.
	Meanwhile, the possibility of more shocks to the global economic system are very, very real.
	Shipping in the Red Sea continues to be a complete disaster area.
	I don't know what the point is of having a multi, multi, tens of billions of dollar military if you are not going to be able to stop Houthi pirates from stopping shipping through the Red Sea.
	Joe Biden's international policy is going to have some dramatic impacts on the American economy.
	One of the big factors in price inflation over the course of the last several years has been supply chain bottlenecks left over from COVID.
	That has been a very real phenomenon in the economic world.
	Well, that was driven by a global pandemic and shutdowns in particular countries, labor shortages, and all the rest.
	What happens when you have, again, a bunch of ragtag pirates who are shutting down an entire shipping methodology that lowers cost for the entire globe on products ranging from oil to clothing.
	An enormous amount of shipping goes through the Red Sea and yet here we are today with the US and its allies having to give the Houthis warnings.
	Now you know that could have been prevented by the United States taking a very anti-Iran position from the get-go under Joe Biden.
	Donald Trump had basically ostracized Iran from the international community.
	The Houthis were listed as a US A US-labeled terrorist group.
	Joe Biden delisted them.
	Joe Biden decided to go hard on the Saudis, hard on the Israelis, easy on the Iranians.
	And the result is this.
	The result is chaos in the Middle East.
	Because it turns out the chaos actor in the Middle East is Iran.
	It has always been Iran.
	It is not Saudi Arabia.
	It is not Israel.
	So it's very bizarre that the Biden administration is now having to backfill all of that.
	And the problem is that when you make those sorts of mistakes, it is very hard to contain the problem on the other end.
	When you open that can, the can is now open.
	There's only one way to close that can.
	And that is you're gonna have to blow up some crap among the Houthis.
	At the very least.
	I mean, now that the can has been opened against Israel by Iran, with regard to Hamas and Hezbollah, There's the possibility that the only way to close that can is to go after Hezbollah, which is another major issue for the Biden administration.
	Joe Biden's re-elect effort requires there to be some level of calm in the Middle East re-established.
	What they're hoping is to contain the Israel-Hamas issue to Israel and Hamas, that Hezbollah does not come in.
	The only way that's going to happen is if the United States makes very, very clear to Hezbollah that if Hezbollah gets involved, the United States finishes Hezbollah.
	That is actually what would be in Joe Biden's political interest.
	Because if that war opens up, that's very bad for Joe Biden, politically speaking.
	It's bad for the world, by the way.
	You don't want this broadening into a larger war.
	Israel does not want that.
	Probably Iran does not want that, because if it starts to broaden into a larger war, then the Iranian mullahs are probably not in leadership at the end of that day.
	But With that said, a little bit of strength right now would go a long way.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S., Britain, and key allies issued what officials described as a final warning to the Houthi Yemeni rebel group Wednesday to cease its attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea or bear the consequences.
	The statement was issued by more than a dozen nations.
	Quote, ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing.
	The Houthis were better the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and the free flow of commerce in the region's critical waterways.
	One of the challenges is that a lot of the weapon systems are mobile.
	the Houthis, according to U.S. officials.
	Should the U.S., Britain and other nations use force, potential targets could include launchers
	for anti-ship missiles and drones, targeting infrastructure such as coastal radar
	installations and storage facilities for munitions.
	One of the challenges is that a lot of the weapon systems are mobile, they're also very cheap.
	The Biden administration has been cautious about using force,
	seeking to protect the prospects for diplomatic resolution Yeah, good luck with that one.
	Houthi fighters overthrew the Yemeni government in 2014.
	There's been an ongoing, very bloody war between the Houthis and the Saudi government and other Arab nations attempting to oust the Houthis, who, again, are an Iranian-backed terror group with a slogan talking about death to America, death to Israel, glory to Allah, and all the rest.
	John Kirby says the President has made clear the United States does not seek conflict with any nation or actor in the Middle East, but neither will we shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners, or the free flow of international commerce.
	As of Tuesday, the Houthis have already carried out 24 attacks on commercial ships since mid-November.
	And of course, it's not just the Houthis.
	You have Iranian-backed terror proxies in Iraq that are striking at American forces.
	You have Hezbollah, which again is warming up on Israel's northern front.
	What is going to push Iran off the ball is going to be the West actually doing something.
	Warnings are not going to do it.
	You're going to have to kill some Houthis.
	I mean, it's just that simple.
	You're going to have to kill some Houthi terrorists if you want to free the shipping in this area.
	Meanwhile, in Iran, it seems like things are heating up.
	Two bombs exploded and killed at least 84 people at a commemoration for Qasem Soleimani.
	Soleimani, of course, was the terror general who was killed in Iraq at the behest of the Trump administration.
	No one immediately claimed responsibility for this blast that killed 84 people at the funeral.
	Iran's leaders vowed to punish those responsible for the blast, which wounded at least 284 people.
	They've revised the death toll at this point.
	It had been over 100, now it's down in the 80s.
	The gathering marked the fourth anniversary of the killing of Soleimani.
	The explosions occurred near his gravesite as long lines of people gathered for the event.
	Now, of course, the Iranians are blaming the United States and Israel.
	This does not meet with any of these sort of predicates that would suggest that it was an Israeli or American action.
	It doesn't make any sense.
	It doesn't achieve any geopolitical goal.
	It didn't actually kill anyone important.
	There's nothing there that suggests that this was some sort of American-Israeli operation, either together or alone.
	It's actually much more likely, in fact, that it was some form of Iranian rebel group attempting to generate ire at the Iranian administration.
	Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the attackers will face a harsh response.
	He didn't name any possible suspect, probably because the Iranians know that if they try to turn this into an American-Israeli thing, that it actually increases the chance of war.
	Again, Iran wants wars using its proxies.
	It does not want war directly.
	Iran does not want war directly.
	By the way, the United States doesn't either.
	Israel doesn't either.
	No one wants that.
	That doesn't mean it won't happen.
	In the theory of world war, okay, here's a quick theory of world wars.
	World wars begin when you have a series of popping popcorn kernels and no one actually turns down the heat.
	When the series of popping popcorn kernels start to increase, when the heat increases, it's like a pop here and a pop here and a pop here and then all of a sudden everything's popping all at once.
	That's what you're starting to see in the Middle East.
	It started off with this Hamas attack.
	That was one popcorn kernel.
	Then you started to see Hezbollah attacks, and that was another popcorn kernel.
	You saw the Houthi attacks, and that is another popcorn kernel.
	You saw attacks in Syria, attacks in Iraq.
	These are more popcorn kernels.
	And eventually, eventually, if this continues, someone in the Iranian government is going to authorize a strike against an American target.
	They're going to sink an American ship or something, and then America is going to pummel them.
	There's one way to stop that, which is stop the popcorn kernels from popping.
	And you can't stop them from popping simply by appealing to them to stop.
	You're going to have to actually quash them where they are.
	You have to let Israel finish off Hamas.
	You have to threaten Hezbollah that if it gets involved, that America will finish off Hezbollah directly.
	That's the reason we have aircraft carriers stationed in the Mediterranean.
	It's not because I or anyone else wants America at war with Iran.
	It's because I want America not at war with Iran.
	The threats are useful.
	Credible threat of force is a very significant deterrent.
	It always has been.
	It's why the United States is gonna have to blow away the Houthis.
	Because if they continue to achieve quote-unquote victories against international shipping in the Red Sea, do you think that incentivizes more attacks or does it disincentivize more attacks?
	Again, Sunnis are probably responsible for what just happened in Iran.
	According to the AP, Sunni extremist groups, including the ISIS group, have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran.
	That's probably what is happening here.
	Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the latest on Harvard, where Clouding Gay now has a piece out talking about how hard it is to be Clouding Gay, how she's really a victim.
	We'll get to that in a moment.
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