So last night was Joe Biden's big State of the Union address and the stakes were high.
Because after all, this is a very closely fought election.
The President of the United States is ailing.
He has been trailing in the polls to Donald Trump, his arch nemesis.
And all he really had to do was be alive and be normal.
He did the first thing, he couldn't do the second thing, like, at all.
And one wonders what exactly his team thought they were doing when they wrote this State of the Union address, which was extraordinarily divisive, really polarizing, really quite nasty.
Did they think that the only way they were going to get him energetic enough for the speech was to ramp him up so high that they could not ramp him back down?
Whatever cocktail they used to awaken him.
Did they use too much?
Whatever it was, Joe Biden's State of the Union address last night was, I think for him, a disaster in the making.
Not for Democrats.
Democrats are pretending they love the thing.
And they were always going to pretend that they loved the thing, members.
The media were always going to use words like feisty, energetic, combative.
That was a foregone conclusion.
But if you were the median voter, the person who's deciding between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, And you watched Joe Biden last night.
Did that make you think our country is in the best of hands?
Or did it make you think angry old man screams at clouds and also thinks many, many Americans are terrible people and also has his priorities totally screwed up?
Because I think there are a lot of independents out there who are going to look at what Joe Biden did last night and how he acted and say to themselves, if they were trying to offer a contrast between crazy Trump over here and solid, stolid Joe over here, that missed.
Attitudinally, it missed.
Politically it missed.
I want to get to that in a moment but I think first we have to set the stage for the State of the Union Address.
Let me explain where we are in American politics at this point.
It's a damned clown show.
It is a complete and utter cluster.
It is a clown car filled with clowns and inside the clowns are more clowns.
That is where we are at this point in American politics.
It feels as though the WWE ate American politics and then vomited it back out and what is left on the floor is what we saw last night.
And it's true on all sides.
This is not even a partisan point.
I don't know how any rational person can look at the state of our Congress and think to themselves, we have elected the best.
Just across the board, we are electing the best people.
Or look at the situation in Washington, D.C.
and think to themselves, our country is on the right track.
This is a unified country filled with purpose.
This is a country that has real values at the root of it.
It's very hard to think about that when you see the visuals from last night.
So we begin before the State of the Union.
The State of the Union got started about 25 minutes late.
One of the reasons was because the Biden motorcade that was making its way from the White House to the Capitol building was blocked by a bunch of pro-Hamas crazies who were sitting out in the middle of the street in favor of Hamas.
And Joe Biden has been catering to these people.
He's been suggesting that the real problem is that they're just too passionate, folks.
It's not that they're wrong and that they're actively siding with the worst terror group in the region right now, which is saying a lot.
It is that they just believe too hard.
They just want too much.
And so last night, he allowed his motorcade to be blocked for legitimately dozens of minutes on the most watched night of the presidential year by a bunch of nutjobs Who are sitting in the middle of the street on behalf of terrorists who mass rape and murder people.
So, here was some of the footage last night in Washington, D.C.
As we say, this was in the lead-up to the State of the Union.
What you're seeing behind me are dozens of ceasefire protesters standing just a block or two away from the Capitol.
They have shut down Pennsylvania Avenue, this major road, what they believe could be the motorcade route for President Biden as he makes his way from the White House to the Capitol for the State of the Union speech.
Now, of course they know It is unlikely that they would actually stop the motorcade.
They considered this more of a symbolic protest.
They wanted to block this road to again keep up that pressure campaign against the president as those uncommitted votes are happening across the country.
They felt like this was the biggest platform where they could make a statement to the president and actually block his route to come and speak in front of Congress.
And again, CNN is very happy to cover all of this because the entire media narrative about Joe Biden's campaign is that he needs to push further to the left.
More.
More cowbell.
More to the left.
None of these people, by the way, were arrested.
As we'll see, that was not the story for the entirety of the night.
Someone was arrested for protesting last night, but it was not the people who are Pearl Hamas.
It was actually a gold star father.
We'll get to that a little bit later on.
Okay, then you actually enter the House of Congress.
And I got to tell you, When you see this cavalcade, this veritable cornucopia of stupidity and assaninity, all I can think to myself is...
There has never been a greater assemblage of IQ points since Bozo the Clown ate alone.
That is where we are.
From the moment that the cameras began to broadcast inside the Capitol building, and you could see who was there.
So first of all, just on an optic level, on an optic level, if you're a member of Congress, you should look like a member of Congress.
You should not look alternatively like a trucker or a terrorist.
You should look like, you know, you belong there.
That you're in the people's house.
That you're a representative of the American people.
And yet what we ended up with last night, because all the politics has become performative, WWE-style screaming at one another.
Because of all of that, that was represented, you know, quite well in Congress.
So we start with the left and then we'll get to the right momentarily.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, when we say something is free, it should mean, you know, free.
No strings attached, no hidden costs, no fine print to decipher.
When you switch to PeerTalk today, you'll get a free Samsung 5G smartphone.
There's no four-line requirement, no activation fee, just a free Samsung that's built to last with a rugged screen, quick charging battery, and top-tier data security.
Qualifying plans start at just $35 monthly for unlimited talk, text, 15 gigs of data, and a mobile hotspot.
PeerTalk gives you phenomenal coverage on America's most dependable 5G network.
It's the same coverage you know and love, but for half the price of the other guys.
Pure Talk saves the average family almost $1,000 a year.
Plus, with Pure Talk, you know you're spending your hard-earned money with a company that aligns with your values.
Let Pure Talk's expert U.S.
customer service team help you make the switch today.
Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.
Claim eligibility for your free, brand-new Samsung 5G smartphone.
Start saving on wireless today.
Again, go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro and switch to my cell phone company.
I've been using Pure Talk myself for years at this point.
They're excellent, they've got great coverage, and they don't hate your guts.
Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro and switch on over.
So, on the left, for example, you had Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, who are sitting there, clownishly sitting there, with little signs, as though they're at a terrorist auction, holding up signs.
One says, stop sending bombs.
That's the one being held by the pro-terrorist Ilhan Omar.
And Ayanna Pressley, who's the Ringo Starr of the Hamas squad, holding up a sign that says, lasting ceasefire now.
They're holding up their little signs.
So that was just truly terrific.
Then you had other members of the squad draping each other in the keffiyeh, which is the Palestinian dress scarf that has been historically associated with terrorism.
It was really made famous by Yasser Arafat, the arch terrorist who really led off the era of plane hijackings back in the 1970s.
It is folded in a particular way.
It is highly associated with terrorists right now living in the Gaza Strip.
And you have members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib presiding over other members of Congress like Cori Bush draping each other in the Palestinian keffiyeh.
Absolute clown show.
And this is the clown show on the left.
The clown show on the left is politically motivated clown show.
Again, the clownishness of the left is always refracted through the prism of something highly political.
Then there's the clown show of the right, which is just dumb.
I mean, I'm sorry, it's just dumb.
So let me present to you two Congress people and how they decided to dress for the State of the Union last night.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to go as a trucker.
She wore a red jacket above a t-shirt that said, say her name.
She was advocating in favor of something that was actually good and proper and right, which is Lakin Riley, who is the woman who was just murdered by an illegal immigrant at the University of Georgia.
All of that would have been fine.
It would have been better if she had been dressed like, you know, a congressperson sitting in Congress.
Instead, she wore a MAGA hat, a red jacket with multiple buttons on it, as though she's wearing a flare.
In terms of the image that you're projecting to the American public, because remember, most people don't watch politics the way that you do if you watch or listen to this show.
Not exactly the image that you want to promote.
So on the one hand, you have Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush and AOC and the squad dressing up like fans of Hamas, like clapping along and holding up their lighters in the air for Hamas.
And on the other hand, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Troy Nels, congressmen from Texas, who decided that he was going to wear a t-shirt that was a mug shot Of Donald Trump.
That was like an actual thing.
He wore a t-shirt that is a mugshot of Donald Trump that says, never surrender beneath his suit jacket.
Like, dude, who are you winning?
All you have to do is not be crazy and no one can do it.
No one can not be crazy.
No one.
So you look at the Congress people, then you look at the cabinet, and you see this gaggle of dolts walking in from the Biden administration.
And it's the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, who is currently simultaneously trying to fund the Israelis and fund the terrorists.
We'll get to that in a little bit.
You have Lloyd Austin, who when he's not in a hospital, is doing a terrible job trying to fill military recruitment spots.
You have the Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, Who has just done wonders for commerce and unblocking those supply lines and all the rest of it.
It's been great.
You have Pete Buttigieg, fresh off paternity leave.
He's been back from paternity leave for maybe a year at this point, but nobody noticed that he came back.
But he was there looking like Howdy Doody.
So that was great.
I mean, it's just a parade of idiocy walking in.
And that's your stage.
That's what sets the stage.
And then the speech begins.
And Joe Biden comes in hot.
He comes in really, really hot.
So Joe Biden gets in there and he opens with a joke that nobody understands.
Like, this is gonna be a long night.
It was.
It was a very, very long speech.
And it's a particularly long speech when you don't understand what's being yelled at you.
It was to me like being yelled at.
In Polish.
I have no idea what half the speech was because he was slurring his words so badly.
I understand that the baseline, the bar for Democrats was set at, will he die?
And I understand all he had to do to not go below that bar was actually not die.
That's just a really low baseline.
And we'll give him credit for that.
He was breathing both at the beginning of last night and at the end of last night.
And in between there was an extraordinary amount of yelling and haranguing and a lot of I would look away from the TV for just a moment and just listen.
And you could not tell what the hell he was saying.
He went from this, this was the trajectory of his speech, just to give you the quick preview.
The trajectory of Joe Biden's speech last night was angry, energetic coherence at the very beginning, very, very angry, very, very over the top, insulting, but coherent.
And then it went to angry incoherence Loud incoherence.
And then it went to whispering incoherence, because he lost energy.
The drugs started to wear off about 40 minutes into this thing, and by the end he was gonna... At the very end, he kind of surged a little bit of energy in to get in his last licks.
What was very weird about the State of the Union is, of course, it was not a State of the Union arrest at all.
At all.
Normally, the President of the United States opens with some sort of broad peroration, and within the first couple of minutes, He says, the state of our union is strong.
And I've never heard a president get up there and say, the state of our union just sucks right now.
I got to tell you, it just blows, man.
They all say the same thing.
They talk about the glories and wonders of America, and then they say the state of our union is strong.
That's the formula.
Joe Biden gets up there and he immediately launches into a harangue against Republicans about Ukraine.
Well, this does a couple of things.
First of all, this starts the comparison that he is seeking to make between himself and Republicans.
According to Joe Biden, he is the Halcyon apex predator of democracy.
This guy is democracy embodied.
And all of his opponents are fascists.
They're not just fascists, by the way.
They're fascists who side with Putin.
That was the first five to 10 minutes of the speech.
We'll get some more on this in just a second.
First, when you run a business, your employees can create Interesting situations.
For example, somebody not showing up when they're supposed to, or an employee filing a complaint for which you don't have a documented policy or procedure.
And this is why you need to talk to Bambi.
Bambi gives you access to your own dedicated HR manager starting at just $99 per month.
This person is available by phone, email, and real-time chat.
They'll help you run employee onboarding, terminations, and performance reviews.
With Bambi's HR Autopilot feature, you can automate important HR practices like employee training and feedback procedures.
All of Bambi's HR managers are based in the United States and can support the nuances across all 50 states.
HR managers can easily cost 80 grand annually, but Bambi starts at just 99 bucks monthly.
Schedule a free conversation today.
See how much Bambi can take off your plate.
Go to Bambi.com right now.
Type Ben Shapiro under podcast when you sign up.
Spelled B-A-M-B-E-E.com.
Bambi.com.
Type in Ben Shapiro to get started today.
Save time, save money.
Bambi.com.
Type in Ben Shapiro.
He opens up with a very weird joke that no one understands, which is his way.
You have to assume that's what he's going to do at the top now.
And then he starts comparing himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and suggesting that this is like 1941.
Here we go.
Mr. Speaker, Madam Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans.
In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.
And he said, I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.
Hitler was on the march.
War was raging in Europe.
President Roosevelt's purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.
Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.
Tonight, I come to this same chamber to address the nation.
Now it's we who face unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.
And yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.
Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today.
Okay, so his excuse for being a terrible president is that he is facing the two most historic crisis of the last two centuries in American life.
World War II?
And the Civil War.
Those are the two comparisons he makes off the bat.
Now, let's just be clear about where we are in American life right now.
You know what we're not doing?
Killing each other by the hundreds of thousands, which is what actually happened during the Civil War.
You know what we're not doing in America right now?
Holding hundreds of thousands of people in abject servitude and bondage, which is what was happening during and before the Civil War in the South.
You know what else is not happening right now?
We are not fighting a globalized world war against the Nazis and the Japanese and their allies.
That's a thing that's not happening right now.
I mean, these are things that I noticed.
When he compares the state of the country to the Civil War and World War II, that says something about him.
It says something about his governance.
Because if we are living in a time where zero American troops are currently overtly committed abroad in a war, Which is the case, right?
We do not have boots on the ground in Ukraine.
We do not have boots on ground in Gaza.
Well, we'll get to that in a moment because Joe Biden wants to put boots on the ground in favor of Hamas in Gaza, effectively speaking.
It's bizarre.
It makes no sense.
We'll get to that in a moment.
But we don't have major troop commitments around the world right now.
We don't have, according to him, any sort of serious economic turmoil.
The economy is going great guns.
And yet he's comparing us to 1941 and 1861.
Why?
Both of those situations, America had an enemy.
Who are the enemies, according to Joe Biden?
The enemies, as it turns out, are two.
Russia and you.
Those are the two enemies, according to Joe Biden.
And that's the linkage.
So he leads off with this long harangue about the war in Ukraine, about how this is a war on democracy.
Vladimir Putin has invaded a sovereign democratic nation, and the whole purpose of that is so he can get to what he says is an assault on democracy at home, which is about Donald Trump.
There are a few things that are weird about this particular tactic.
One, he starts off by saying there's a war on democracy around the world, and then he proceeds to cite the Russian war in Ukraine.
Totally fair, that's fine.
Ukraine is in fact a democratic state, however flawed and corrupt, and Russia is in fact an autocracy.
There is another democracy I noticed that is under grave assault right now from multiple directions.
From its north, by Hezbollah, and from its south, by Hamas.
It is, in fact, an American ally that just lost 1,200 of its citizens and 240 were taken, kidnapped.
And still 134 being held hostage.
Joe Biden said not one word in terms of attacks on democracy when he was talking about the Iranian multi-pronged attack on Israel.
Nothing here.
Why?
Because he is completely servile to his own base.
And when I say his base, I don't even mean most of his base.
I mean his radical fringe base.
He is servile to the Hamas squad.
They are running this place now.
They are the captain now.
That is why he didn't mention it there.
Okay, so he starts off with this long thing about Ukraine and Russia.
And I think most Americans are sitting home and they're like, um, you know, we got some problems at home.
Why don't we start with that one?
Right.
But why don't we start with like, you know, the border?
Why don't we start with inflation?
Why don't you make me feel better about my economic prospect?
By polling numbers, the Ukraine war is not in the top 10 top American priorities right now, and he led with it.
He led with it only because what he's attempting to do is label everyone who disagrees with him not only in league with Putin, but akin to Putin in terms of trying to overthrow democracy here at home.
So he starts off with all this Ukraine talk, and he compares himself to Ronald Reagan, which is amazing since he was an opponent of Ronald Reagan, obviously.
He was in the Senate at the time.
It wasn't long ago when a Republican president named Ronald Reagan thundered,
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want.
That's a quote.
The former president actually said that bowing down to a Russian leader, I think it's outrageous, it's dangerous, and it's unacceptable.
So first of all, he's lying.
That's not really what Donald Trump said.
What Donald Trump said was, everybody in NATO needs to pay a percentage of GDP toward their defense in order to fulfill their NATO commitment, or I'm going to say to the Russian leaders, whatever the hell you want, which of course he's not really going to do.
It's an empty threat.
It's a gesture meant to say to NATO, pay your, in any case, put aside that.
None of this was really about Russia, Ukraine.
It was really about you.
You, the people, and the people who oppose him are the baddies.
Here is Joe Biden making the overt connection between Russia invading Ukraine and January 6th.
My message to President Putin, who I've known for a long time, is simple.
We will not walk away.
We will not bow down.
I will not bow down.
In a literal sense, history is watching.
History is watching.
Just like history watched three years ago on January 6th, when insurrections stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.
We must be honest.
The threat to democracy must be defended.
My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6th.
I will not do that.
This is the moment to speak the truth and to bury the lies.
Here's the simple truth.
You can't love your country only when you win.
Okay, first of all, that last line from Joe Biden is hysterically ridiculous.
Democrats buy polling data like their country when they win.
That is just a fact.
The polling data demonstrate that a much larger percentage of Democrats than Republicans change their opinion on the very nature of America based on who wins the presidency.
Republicans have a pretty even-handed view of America being good.
Two-thirds, three-quarters of Republicans are always saying that America's the greatest country in the world.
And then, for Democrats, it bounces.
If Barack Obama's president, then it's like 55%.
And if Donald Trump is president, it's like 35%.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, the NBA season is already well underway.
If you're like us, you're all about getting in on the action.
Our favorite way to do that is with BetOnline.
BetOnline has the largest offering of betting odds in the world.
You can bet on virtually anything.
From which game will LeBron score his 40,000th point, to any player who scores 82-plus points in the regular season, to the classic bet of who you think will just win a game.
BetOnline is the best online sports betting platform.
They pride themselves on their higher-than-average betting limits of up to $25,000.
You can increase your wagering amounts by contacting their player services desk by phone or email.
Don't be the odd man out.
Join BetOnline today.
Go to BetOnline.ag to place your bets for the big game this Sunday.
Use promo code Ben for a 50% instant deposit bonus of up to a grand.
That's BetOnline.ag.
Use promo code Ben.
BetOnline.
The options are endless.
Again, go check them out.
Their system is really user-friendly, really easy, and it's a lot of fun.
Go check them out.
BetOnline.ag.
Use promo code Ben to get started.
In any case, what he is doing here is so disgusting.
Number one, comparing January 6th to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is pretty insulting to Ukrainians because, let's be real, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Ukraine.
January 6th, the only person who was killed on January 6th was Ashley Babbitt.
It was bad.
It was ugly.
It was terrible.
It was, in fact, a small riot.
That is what January 6th was.
But Joe Biden has to blow it up into something bigger than that.
He has to say that January 6th is emblematic of a threat to democracy akin to Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and overthrowing the republic.
Now, I know a lot of things about January 6th.
I hated January 6th.
I thought it was terrible.
I think that the feelings of people who walked into the Capitol building on January 6th were in fact fostered by fibs that Donald Trump was telling after the election about his belief that the election was stolen.
However, there's one thing I 100% know about January 6th.
It was not a dagger at the throat of democracy.
No one in their right mind thought that democracy in the United States was about to be overthrown on January 6th.
We all watched the TV, and we said, that's ugly and that's bad, and people who are committing criminal acts should be arrested.
That's what rational people did.
Only hysterics looked at that and thought, my God, Donald Trump is going to enshrine himself in the White House with his Praetorian Guard.
He's going to overthrow democracy, march himself down in purple robes into the Senate chamber and call for the execution of his political enemies.
No one thought that was happening.
And if you did, it's because you're a stupid person.
That's a stupid idea.
Within two hours, the entire place was cleared and the Republican vice president was certifying the election along with the Republican majority leader.
It was an absurdity to make this claim, but Joe Biden's re-elect depends on exactly that.
It depends on you, the moderate, the independent, some left-leaning Republican.
It depends on you believing that the threat is that if Donald Trump becomes president, democracy ends tomorrow in the same way that Vladimir Putin is an autocrat, Donald Trump's an autocrat.
That's the argument that Joe Biden was making last night.
And he kept saying stuff like, And history is watching.
History is watching this.
History is an old perv looking through your bathroom window with a pair of binoculars.
History, like me.
This routine is so tiresome.
Okay, so, right off the bat, you get Ukraine, January 6th, and then abortion.
So, again, the Orwellian nature of Democrats claiming that the essence of freedom is killing your baby is pretty despicable.
The distance the Democratic Party has moved even in my lifetime on abortion is truly amazing.
It was Bill Clinton who was saying safe, legal, and rare, which implies that there is, in fact, a moral problem with abortion.
Maybe there are other priorities that outweigh it, but, in fact, it's a tragedy and a bad thing.
Now, freedom, the ultimate guarantee of freedom is you being able to kill your baby in the womb.
So here was Joe Biden attacking the Supreme Court again.
This is the guy who one second ago was saying, literally in the same speech, that democracy was under attack.
And here he is attacking an independent branch of government that is supposed to be nonpartisan in its application of the law, and who by law are not allowed to fight back against Joe Biden.
They're sitting right there and he's ripping into them.
He's just gross.
It's not hyperbole to suggest history is watching.
We're watching.
Your children and grandchildren will read about this day and what we do.
History is watching another assault on freedom.
Like most Americans, I believe Roe v. Wade got it right.
Roe v. Wade?
What is Roe v. Wade?
I thank Vice President Harris for being an incredible leader defending reproductive freedom.
My predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned.
Thank you.
He's the reason it was overturned, and he brags about it.
Look at the chaos that has resulted.
Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.
My God, what freedom else would you take away?
What freedom else would you take away?
What else?
what and the freedom and oh my god god if you find this sort of thing attractive i recommend
that you watch the entire speech which was like 70 minutes of this
Just terrible all the way through.
Now again, he's attacking the Supreme Court.
They're sitting literally right there.
They did not, in fact, suggest that there must be a mandate on pro-life legislation around the country.
That's not what Roe vs. Wade does.
But he is a liar, and the Democrats pretend he's not a liar.
When I say Democrats, I mean the media, because they are the same thing.
By the way, Donald Trump's position on a federal abortion ban is no.
That should be pointed out also, Donald Trump's position on abortion is significantly more moderate than Joe Biden's.
Joe Biden's is, abort until you're 87.
Like, Joe Biden's mother still has a few years to decide whether to abort him or not, according to Joe Biden's policy.
But, Donald Trump wants, apparently, perhaps, a 16-week federal abortion ban.
Which, for those who can't do math, is four months.
Which is really, really late-term abortion.
That's late.
Most of Europe doesn't allow that.
But, again, the truth didn't matter.
What mattered was the attitude.
It also mattered who he was trying to pay off.
And again, this entire election cycle is predicated on a complete misconception about the nature of modern American politics.
Every Democrat is in love with 2012.
Every Democrat thinks they can replicate the Obama coalition, abandoning the middle and simply getting the base out to vote.
It's not going to work.
There are not enough of them.
There are not.
It's a point Nate Silver has made.
It's a point Nate Cohn has made.
It's a point that pretty much every elections analyst has made.
There is not enough juice in the Democratic base for that juice to be squeezed into the White House.
That is not a thing.
Joe Biden should be tacking to it, but he can't.
He's so afraid of his own base at this point.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, you know I've been talking about my Helix mattress for years.
I took their magical Helix sleep quiz.
Took like a couple of minutes, and then they shipped me a bed that works perfectly just for me.
Well, as you know, I'm really busy.
I have a lot going on.
Got the show.
Got the company.
I'm a dad.
Got a lot going on.
I can't keep up with my day if I don't get a decent night's sleep.
I'm very appreciative of my Helix Sleep Mattress.
If you haven't already checked out the Helix Elite Collection, now would be the time.
Helix harnesses years of extensive mattress expertise to offer a truly elevated sleep experience.
The Helix Elite Collection includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences.
If you're nervous about buying a mattress online, you don't really have to be.
Helix has a sleep quiz that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress.
Because why would you buy a mattress made for somebody else?
I took that Helix quiz.
I was matched with a firm but breathable mattress.
I love the mattress.
My wife loves the mattress.
We are big Helix fans at the Shapiro house.
Plus, Helix has a 10-year warranty.
You have to try it out for 100 nights risk-free.
They'll even pick it up for you if you don't love it, but you will.
Helix's financing options and flexible payment plans make it so a great night's sleep is never far away.
Helix is currently offering, my listeners, 20% off all mattress orders, plus two free pillows.
Go to helixsleep.com slash Ben.
That's helixsleep.com slash Ben.
It's their best offer yet.
It's not gonna last long.
With Helix, better sleep starts right now.
Go check them out right now.
Helixsleep.com slash Ben.
So, last night for example?
He decided to once again call out the head of the UAW.
So Joe Biden has overtly sided against American business over and over and over.
And one of the ways he has done that is he has sided with the UAW.
The UAW, which is dedicated to the proposition that, effectively speaking, American car companies should not be competitive on the world stage.
Here was Joe Biden calling out the UAW.
By the way, what's amazing about this?
This would be the equivalent of the President of the United States being a Republican and the President of the United States calling out the biggest single Republican donor in the country for plaudits.
When Joe Biden calls out the unions, he's not doing so because he loves what the unions do.
He is doing so because the unions have been paying his freight since he was in the Senate in Delaware when he was 29 years old.
Joe Biden has an incredibly cozy and corrupt relationship with American unions.
And so here he was basically just saying the quiet part out loud.
Here tonight is UAW President Sean Fain, a great friend and a great labor leader.
And Don Sampson, a third generation worker, UAW worker at Belvedere.
Sean, I was proud to be the first president to stand on the picket line.
And today, Don has a good job in her hometown, providing stability for her family and pride and dignity as well.
Showing once again, Wall Street didn't build America, they're not bad guys, they didn't build it though.
The middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class.
First of all, this line is such absolute horsepucky.
It's so stupid.
Which middle class?
You mean the middle class people who then became rich from building the country, and then who didn't build the country, I guess?
This notion that the middle class is like a group of people who are just in the middle class their entire life is complete economic ignorance.
No single class built the American experiment.
A group of people built America, and those people across the course of their lifetime very often moved from poor to middle class to rich, actually.
It's just this bizarre notion that there's a basket of people called the middle class is so stupid.
My parents have been not rich, and then they've been middle class, and then they've been upper middle class, and now my parents are probably considered fairly well off.
But that's over the course of their life.
They started off in like a one-bedroom apartment in Boston, sleeping on the floor.
And that's most people in America.
Most people in America have had an income trajectory.
So when he says things like, the rich people didn't build this country, first of all, the rich people in this country got rich by creating businesses that give you products and services you want to buy.
It's not like they just stole the money.
This zero-sum thinking from Democrats and economics is insanely ridiculous.
It's so Facially stupid.
But we all have to pretend, I guess, that it's something that makes sense.
What about the poor people?
They didn't?
I guess the poor people didn't, according to Joe Biden.
And then Joe Biden starts talking once more, jabbering about economics.
My favorite part of his economics talk, I had two kind of signal moments where I thought, this is pretty great.
One was when he started talking about the cost of housing.
I loved this.
He started talking about how inflation was really, really bad.
And so to solve inflation, he's going to give you money.
Which is the opposite of solving inflation.
Inflation is defined as too many dollars following too few goods.
That is what creates price inflation.
And he's like, I know inflation's bad, I'm gonna solve it by creating more dollars.
I know the cost of housing is so important to you.
If inflation keeps coming down, mortgage rates will come down as well.
And the Fed acknowledges that.
But I'm not waiting.
I want to provide an annual tax credit that will give Americans $400 a month for the next two years as mortgage rates come down to put toward their mortgages when they buy their first home or trade up for a little more space.
Oh, so free money.
That'll solve the inflation crisis.
Then all of a sudden he started jabbering about how he wanted to fly people to Moscow.
I like this part a lot.
This is pretty great.
I'm going to get in trouble for saying that, but if you want to get in Air Force One with me and fly to Toronto, Berlin, Moscow, I mean, excuse me.
Well, even Moscow, probably.
And bring your prescription with you, and I promise you I'll get it for you for 40% the cost you're paying now.
Same company, same drug, same place.
Again, he's going to fly you to Moscow.
So now he's doing Tucker Carlson's video about how cheap groceries are in Moscow.
That's where we are now with this president.
The synapse is really, it's fiery, guys.
It's combative.
He's more alive than he's ever been.
The underlying point that he is making, which is that you can buy medications more cheaply abroad than you can in the United States, that is because those other countries are cheating.
It's because they're cheating.
And no American president, right or left, has had the balls to say to any of these other countries that you should not be allowed to pay a lower price than we are paying here in the United States.
And we will sanction you if you do.
The reason they're doing that is because they are collectively bargaining on behalf of nationalized healthcare systems with drug companies in the United States, and those drug companies being underpaid by Canada, then overcharge American citizens to make up for it.
The American government should step in, not in order to skew the market at home, which kills all of the research and development, which actually creates the drugs in the first place, but by forcing foreign countries to pay their fair share, the same way that Donald Trump has forced foreign countries to pay their fair share with regard to NATO.
In just one second, we'll get to more from Joe Biden's absolutely asinine State of the Union address.
And it wasn't just stupid in terms of content.
It was aesthetically foolish.
His over-the-top demeanor, his yelling, his screaming, his slurring of words.
If you felt quieted by that speech, let me just recommend that you see a doctor on your own because clearly the president needs to see one.
We'll get to more in just one second.
First, Jeremy's Razors is doing the unthinkable.
This is a sale you cannot miss out on.
Jeremy's Razors is lowering all prices for every razor.
You want a trial set?
Well, lower price.
You want the starter set that comes with more cartridges?
Lower price.
Smooth 6, Precision 5?
You guessed it.
Lower price.
Take advantage of Jeremy's March of Man-ness now.
It's like March Madness, but it's the March of Man-ness.
You get it?
It's a pun!
Go to Jeremy's Razors dot com.
Get your razor at a discount right now.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, does it make sense that a single company controls 90% of all internet searches, runs your email service, and gets to track everything you do on your smartphone?
Big tech is more powerful than most countries, and they profit by exploiting your personal data.
It's time to put a layer of protection between you and your online activity, and the people who exploit that online activity.
That's why I use ExpressVPN.
Think about how much of your life is on the internet.
Sadly, every site you visit, video you watch, or message you send gets tracked and datamined.
But when you run ExpressVPN on your device, their software hides your IP address.
This is something Big Tech can use to personally identify you.
So, ExpressVPN makes your activity harder to trace and sell to advertisers.
ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your internet data to keep you safe from hackers and eavesdroppers on your network.
ExpressVPN does all of that without slowing your connection.
What I like most about ExpressVPN, it's really easy to use.
Download that app on your computer or phone, tap one button, you are now protected.
So, stop handing over your personal data to the big tech monopoly that mines your activity and sells your information.
Protect yourself with the VPN I trust to keep me safe online.
Visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S VPN.com slash Ben.
Get three extra months for free.
Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben right now to learn more.
So Joe Biden's speech was interminable.
We're only going to hit a few of the highlights in terms of policy because they're incredibly stupid and because he does that part every year.
I really kind of want to focus more on the overall impression that I think people are going to get from the speech, but it's difficult for me to just skip over the lies that he tells.
So, for example, clip 13, he starts talking about billionaires in the United States.
According to Joe Biden, billionaires don't pay taxes.
This is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
I have made in this country some money, more money, a lot of money, a super lot of money.
And let me tell you that each step along the way I have paid more taxes.
I pay more taxes now than I have ever paid in my life.
I pay millions of dollars in taxes every single year.
The idea that I am not paying my fair share is ridiculous because I've been the guy who paid a much lower share of my income to the federal government.
When Joe Biden says stuff like the billionaires aren't paying their fair share, let's be clear, the top quintile in terms of income in this country are paying all net taxes, not some, all.
When you include all the government benefits people are getting back, the people at the top of the income spectrum are not just paying most of the taxes, they're paying the vast bevy of taxes.
One of the great lies about the American tax system is that it is a non-progressive tax system.
It is, in fact, the most progressive tax system in the Western world.
If you go to Europe, it's not that they have lower taxes, it's that everybody at the bottom end of the spectrum has higher taxes.
The top tax brackets kick in at like 60 grand a year in many places in Europe.
In the United States, the more money you earn, you are paying way, way, way more money.
So here he is just lying.
You know, there are 1,000 billionaires in America.
You know what the average federal tax is for those billionaires?
No.
They're making great sacrifices, 8.2%.
That's far less than the vast majority of Americans pay.
No billionaire should pay a lower federal tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse.
They're not.
They are not.
He is a liar.
Minimum tax for billionaires of 25%, just 25%.
You know what that would raise?
That would raise $500 billion over the next 10 years.
He's not proposing a 25% income tax on billionaires because if they're making a billion in income, you're paying a lot more than that in federal income tax.
I can promise you that.
I know it for a fact.
When I was living in California, by the way, and I had the state tax on top of what I made, I was paying more than half of my income to the federal and state government.
Just another reason why I left the state of California.
When Joe Biden says things like, a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires, he is treating all money that is brought in as the same.
He's treating capital gains the same as income.
He's also treating wealth the same as income.
It makes no sense.
I mean, even PolitiFact was like, this makes no sense because it doesn't.
Okay, that wasn't the only lie he told.
He suggests Republicans want to cut Social Security, which of course is... Listen, I wish Republicans wanted to raise the retirement age or cut Social Security.
They don't actually want to do any of those things because they're too afraid of doing it.
And then, he started jabbering about potato chips and Snickers.
So, remember, this is all before he hits immigration.
We got to, you have too few potato chips in your Frito-Lays.
And also, remember Snickers?
They'll make you angry.
You won't want to see me without a Snickers.
We got to that before we got to Lake and Riley.
Don't worry, we'll get to that in a moment.
In fact, the snack companies think you won't notice if they change the size of the bag and put a hell of a lot fewer... Same size bag.
Put fewer chips in it.
No, I'm not joking.
It's called shrink-placing.
Pass Bobby Casey's bill and stop this.
I really mean it.
I really am.
You probably all saw that commercial on Snickers bars.
You get charged the same amount and you got about, I don't know, 10% fewer Snickers in it.
I love the canned laughter.
It's like watching an old episode of Three's Company with this guy.
Snickers bar... We need to make it illegal for inflation to be happening.
If we just say...
This is all before he got to the border.
All of it.
He finally got to the border.
And then he suggested he's doing everything that he can on the border.
And he yells at Republicans for not passing the quote-unquote bipartisan bill in the Senate for which a majority of Republicans did not vote.
A few Republicans voted in favor of it because it was lumped in with also a bunch of aid for Ukraine and Israel.
And then came what was probably the hottest moment of the night.
And that was Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She got up and she started yelling at the president.
Because the way that this works now, and it's worked this way really since Obama's era, is that there's always some member of Congress who yells at the president, and the president yells back at the member of Congress.
This is sort of the way that it goes.
And honestly, I'm kind of fine with it.
I kind of am.
I would rather that American government worked more like British Parliament, where people are just rude to each other and overtly nasty to each other.
And we get to see all of it out in the open, as opposed to the kind of false decorum But in any case, she starts yelling at Biden about Lincoln Riley.
And he then proceeds to screw this up about three ways from Sunday.
I'd be a winner.
Not really.
I...
Lincoln, Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.
By an illegal.
That's right.
But how many of thousands of people being killed by legal?
To her parents, I say my heart goes out to having lost children myself.
I understand.
Okay, he is disgusting.
Let me explain all the ways this is disgusting.
One, her name is Laken Riley.
Not Lincoln Riley.
Laken Riley.
Can you imagine if Donald Trump did that?
If somebody was calling out the name of the victim and he proceeded to just botch the name of the victim.
First thing, while by the way looking at a pin that has her name on it.
He can't read anymore.
This old bat.
So he screws that up.
Then, he says she was killed by an illegal.
And you can almost see Kamala Harris crawl under her seat.
Behind him, because that's the thing Democrats don't want you to say.
You're not allowed to call.
There are no illegal people.
They are undocumented.
And so this has now opened up a wound on the far left, which demonstrates, by the way, where the Democratic Party are at this point.
Democrats are more upset.
They have more internal agony over Joe Biden using the term illegal to describe the person who murdered Lake and Riley than screwing up Lake and Riley's name.
That shows you where their priorities are, truly.
Okay, so that was group number two.
So there was the Lincoln-Riley versus Lincoln-Riley.
That's like a football coach or something.
That's number one.
Number two was the illegal.
And then he says, how many thousands of people are co-violent?
So he starts downplaying illegal immigrant crime.
He's downplaying it.
He's pretending that it doesn't happen, like at all.
Or that if it does happen, it's totally fine.
And then he uses this and he swivels off of this to attack Donald Trump as being mean to the immigrants.
Again, by the way, him screwing up Lake and Riley's name will be in every Republican ad for the foreseeable future.
And it should be because it's gross.
It's really gross.
Either ignore it, Mr. President, or get her name right.
So here he was going after Donald Trump.
Again, so much of this, it was just a political attack speech.
That's all it was.
It had nothing to do with the state of the union.
Do you feel more informed about the state of the union today than you did yesterday before having watched this thing?
Here he was talking about demonizing immigrants and the nation of immigrants and all the usual shtick.
I will not demonize immigrants saying they are poison in the blood of our country.
I will not separate families.
I will not ban people because of their faith.
Unlike my predecessor on my first day in office, I introduced a comprehensive bill to fix our immigration system.
Take a look at it.
It has all these and more.
Securing every other word.
Provide a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.
And so much more.
But unlike my predecessor...
I know who we are as Americans.
We're the only nation in the world.
The entire media are pretending that this was coherent.
It's not coherent.
I don't like being gaslit.
I really don't.
Don't tell me that Marjorie Taylor Greene was dressed well last night.
Don't tell me that Troy Nell's shirt was fashion forward.
And don't tell me that this old bat is coherent, moderate, and somehow a calming presence on the American public scene.
The entire media have combined to piss on our leg and tell us that it is raining about this old man.
And it is not going to work.
I just don't think it is.
I don't think you can watch clips of him and think to yourself, he is with it, he seems in control, because he is not.
Joe Biden's litany of randomness went on, and that's every State of the Union's grab bag of silly ideas that are put forward.
So he talks about the climate crisis, that he's going to get rid of carbon emissions by 2030 or cut them in half or some such that's never going to happen.
And he talks about How he wants to stand with transgender Americans and how we have to stop banning books as though they're widespread book bans in the country.
That's not what's happening.
What's happening is people are saying in local communities, I don't want genderqueer being available to my third grader at the school library.
Not quite the same thing.
He suggests that crime is going down because of him rather than in spite of him.
I mean, if crime is going down so much, then why is Kathy Hochul deploying 750 National Guard troops to go and guard the subway system?
Then he finally gets to the Middle East.
And here, the moral relativism and pure cowardice of Joe Biden is on display in pure uncut form.
This is a very morally clear conflict.
Israel is a democratic state that was just attacked by a monstrous genocidal terrorist group.
1,200 of its citizens were murdered.
Another 253 were taken hostage.
There are still 134 that are being held hostage, including women and old people.
They refuse to surrender and they are hiding among civilians and they are killing their own civilians.
And Joe Biden's idea here is that there's some sort of moral equivalence.
So he first pays some sort of lip service to the Israelis and he talks about how everything was so terrible, what Hamas did.
Says here in the chamber tonight, our families whose loved ones are still being held by Hamas.
I pledge to all the families who will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.
Israel has a right to go after Hamas and Hamas could end the conflict by releasing the hostages and laying down arms and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.
That should be the end of it.
But is that the end of it?
No, because he has to please Dearborn.
That Hamas squad that's holding up the dumb signs in the audience and wearing the keffiyehs?
He has to please them.
And so what that means is then he then spends the next multiple minutes talking about the shortcomings in Israeli aid to the population that Hamas is putting directly in the line of fire.
Which is an obligation that I've never heard put on warring countries before.
It's weird.
Was there talk during World War II about the provision of American aid to civilians on the ground during World War II on the other side?
That's a weird thing.
Beyond that, Israel actually has been attempting to ship in hundreds of trucks of aid every single day.
There is no one to pick them up.
No independent drivers will go in there because they are afraid they will be murdered.
And they are right to be afraid of that.
Hamas hijacks the trucks, which is why the United States and other Arab nations around that region have been airdropping in Food supplies.
There's only one problem.
Sometimes that doesn't work.
Five Palestinians were killed yesterday when one of these big pallets, the parachute didn't work and it dropped right on the heads of Palestinian civilians.
The only way this ends is when Hamas surrenders.
All American diplomatic pressure should be brought to bear along those lines, not on getting Israel to stop the war, which only prolongs the suffering of Palestinians.
The sooner Israel goes in and finishes things off in Rafah and provides some sort of security infrastructure, The faster you're going to get people back into their homes, for example.
But that's not Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, he was caught on a hot mic literally last night.
Saying that he's going to tell Bibi he has to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Bibi.
And put aside the sort of insulting connotation of having a come-to-Jesus meeting with the leader of the world's only Jewish state, I really doubt that Joe Biden would use that language with regard to Hamas.
I told them come to Jesus.
Yeah, sure, I'm sure that was going to go like amazing.
He's too busy kissing their ass for Ramadan.
But when he decides to spend multiple paragraphs talking about what he's going to do about the Gaza Strip, and then he uses Hamas statistics.
Hamas is the source for the idea that there are 30,000 people who have died in the Gaza Strip.
And then he keeps upgrading the number of civilians who have died, even though, again, these are all Hamas Ministry of Health numbers, the propaganda ministry.
Here he was yesterday.
Israel has an added burden because Hamas hides and operates among a civilian population like cowards, under hospitals, daycare centers, and all the like.
Israel also has a fundamental responsibility, though, to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.
This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all
previous wars in Gaza combined.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Most of whom are not Hamas.
Thousands and thousands of innocents, women and children, girls and boys, also orphaned.
Nearly two million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement.
Homes destroyed, neighbors in rubble, cities in ruin.
Phantoms without food, water, medicine.
It's heartbreaking.
Okay, he spent legitimately 10 seconds on the 1,200 people murdered by Hamas, and he spent paragraphs on the humanitarian problem inside Gaza that could be solved tomorrow if Hamas would surrender.
But that's not where he's putting his pressure.
He's putting his pressure on America's ally in the region.
You wonder why America's allies are getting a little skittish these days?
That would be the reason.
How many more allies can Joe Biden stab in the back while he's president of the United States?
He already left our Afghan allies to get murdered by the Taliban.
And he sort of put his toe in the water on Ukraine, but slow-walked it, so people have gotten killed in Ukraine, after having basically incentivized Putin to do so by saying that if he just sort of slid in a little bit into Ukraine, it would be totally fine.
And now he's in the process of basically cudgeling Israel into stopping its war on an active, honest-to-God terror group.
Then he decided that he was going to drop the biggest insane idea of the day.
I don't know who came up with this moronic idea.
But here is the dumb idea of the day from Joe Biden.
This is truly one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
The United States is the leading international effort to get more humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Tonight, I'm directing the U.S.
military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.
No U.S.
boots will be on the ground.
A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.
Okay, so that's a crazy stupid idea.
That is dumb.
That's incredibly dumb.
As an American, I don't want American boots on the ground in Gaza or frankly anywhere near Gaza.
That's a pretty stupid idea.
Hamas is still quite active in that area.
Contrary to Joe Biden's lies, the Palestinian population is still quite supportive of Hamas and or terrorist activity against Americans and American allies.
So, with that said, his idea is that we are going to ship in, what, the Seabees to build some sort of pier on the coast of Gaza, right there on the beach, and then they're going to ship aid in.
Now, let's say that that happens.
Let's say that that pier is not attacked for some odd reason.
Let's say that Hamas decides to leave that alone as opposed to upping the ante by firing on Americans and killing a couple of Americans.
Let's say they decide to do that.
Let's say it all works out great.
And they build their pier, and they put a ferris wheel on it, and there's like a merry-go-round, and some clown walking around with cotton candy, and it's just a wonderful place.
It's like Santa Monica.
Then, they bring in the aid, and they take it to the pier, and then they have to offload it from the pier into Gaza, where it is promptly hijacked by Hamas.
What is his plan for getting the aid into the hands of the people who are not the Hamasniks?
Who does he think is going to be standing on the other end of that pier?
So he's now putting Americans nose-to-nose with Hamas, which is not something that Israel wants him to do.
Israel is telling him to stay away.
It's unbelievable.
Whose doltish, cloddish notion was this?
It's so stupid.
It's unbelievably dumb.
But what's even more stupid is that this guy thinks that he's going to buy himself votes in Dearborn for this.
He's not going to buy himself votes in Dearborn.
The people in Dearborn do not care about Palestinian civilians.
They don't.
If they did, they would have been protesting Hamas for the last 20 years.
They don't care about that.
They just hate Israel.
That's not the same thing.
Joe Biden could give every single person living in Gaza right now a Cadillac and the people in Dearborn, Michigan would not care if it also meant that Hamas surrendered and that Israel had to take security control of the area.
They don't want the peace and prosperity of the people living in Gaza.
They want Israel to disappear.
That's what this entire conflict is about.
But Joe Biden is too stupid to know that.
It's absolutely pathetic.
He finishes up with what he called the unity agenda.
So after all this polarization, all this nonsense, then he dropped his line for this.
He called it the unity agenda.
Now I want to point out one thing here.
When we play this clip, I want to point out one rather crucial thing here.
There's more to pass my unity agenda.
Strengthen penalties on fentanyl trafficking.
You don't want to do that, huh?
Okay, here's what I want to point out here.
That litany, the unity agenda, he says that he wants to strengthen penalties on fentanyl trafficking.
to protect us from peril.
Ban AI voice impersonations and more.
Okay, here's what I want to point out here.
That litany, the unity agenda, he says that he wants to strengthen penalties on fentanyl
trafficking.
And then one second later, like two sentences actually, he says, ban AI voice impersonation.
I'd just like to examine the relative seriousness of those two problems.
So, we do have a new episode of Divided States of Biden that's going to be coming out very, very shortly on the fentanyl crisis.
I've talked to multiple moms, multiple moms, of people who have died of fentanyl poisoning.
And it is poisoning because many of the people who are dying of fentanyl don't even know that they are ingesting fentanyl.
100,000 plus Americans die every year of fentanyl poisoning in this country.
100,000 plus.
The vast majority of the fentanyl that is crossing America's borders right now is coming via the southern border.
The number one thing that Joe Biden could do to stop fentanyl overdose in the United States is to close the southern border.
The second biggest thing that he could do is take some sort of harsh action on the government of China to stop shipping massive amounts of precursor material into Mexico.
Has he done either of those two things?
No.
He had a nice tea with Xi Jinping, and Xi Jinping said, oh, don't worry, it'll be fine.
We're taking care of it.
And Joe Biden's like... And Joe Biden has left the southern border wide open.
The other thing that Joe Biden has done, obviously, is he has suggested that people who are in jail for drug crimes have committed nonviolent crimes.
And he spent much of his administration downplaying the evils of drug crime.
And then he spends one sentence on fentanyl.
One.
So we got multiple sentences.
We got a couple paragraphs, in fact, about how many potato chips you have in your bag.
And you got one sentence on fentanyl.
One.
Because the implications of that sentence would destroy his presidency.
This guy's priorities are all screwed up.
And again, as I said at the beginning, Joe Biden, if he wanted to reach out to moderates, could do so in one of two ways.
He could appear to be a moderate human being, or he could appear to be politically moderate, and he has decided to jettison both of those.
He did not appear to be a moderate, well-calibrated human being last night.
He looked like he was off his meds, or alternatively, on some meds.
And then, in terms of policy, he was way far to the left.
Now, there's one additional kind of button on the State of the Union.
And that was, you remember at the top, we talked about how there were all these protesters blocking roads and none of them are arrested last night.
Because, of course, if you love Hamas, you don't get arrested.
That's typically the way that it works.
It's sort of like being a BLM rioter.
If you riot and burn down a store, it's in the name of racial justice.
Probably fine.
If you're a January 6th rioter, then we throw you in prison for the rest of your life if you trespass in the Capitol.
Well, there was one person arrested last night.
That person was a Gold Star father.
So, this Gold Star dad was yelling at Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was talking about crime.
At no point here, by the way, did he mention the aftermath of his disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, which ended with the murder of 13 Americans.
I mean, Joe Biden has forgotten about them.
He doesn't care about them.
He thinks he did a wonderful job in Afghanistan.
You know who hasn't forgotten?
The dad of one of them.
So here is the Gold Star father yelling at Joe Biden.
All Americans deserve the freedom to be safe.
And America is safer today than when I took office.
The year before I took office, murder rates went up 30%.
30% they went up.
The biggest increase in history.
It was then.
Through my American rescue plan, which every American... So, what he screamed there, for those who couldn't understand, was, remember Abbey Gate.
Abbey Gate is the location in Afghanistan that was located at the airport where 13 U.S.
Marines were blown up, including Steve Niqui's son.
He's 51.
He's the father of a U.S.
Marine who was killed during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He was then arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for crowding, obstructive, or incommoding In the house gallery.
So the way this math works is if you are pro Hamas and you protest and you obstruct traffic, no problem.
If your son was killed in service to the United States, then we remove you and we arrest you if you yell at the president for ignoring your son.
Those are the priorities.
Now, again, the media were going to play this how they were going to play this.
The media were, of course, going to treat this as though this was just a sterling oration and peroration from the likes of Demosthenes or Cicero.
And that's precisely what they did.
So, for example, last night you had Simone Sanders, who used to be the press secretary for Bernie Sanders, and then went to work for Kamala Harris, talking about how Joe Biden just did an extraordinary job.
I thought that, you know, he came and he got the job done.
I thought it was... I've seen a lot of State of the Union addresses.
It had everything.
It had inspiration.
It had hope.
It had a direct, you know, proverbial molly whopping, if you will, to the Supreme Court justices.
Molly whopping?
Yes, using the words of a former justice while they're sitting on the front row.
What you saw tonight was President Joe Biden at his best.
He likes being around people.
He's a good retail politician.
And he understood the stage he was on.
He was comfortable.
He wanted, he was inviting the heckle?
This is the take of the media.
Fiery.
Just combative.
That's the way they're gonna treat this.
And of course you had Dr. Melinda Jackson on NBC doing the same thing.
People said they really wanted to see him come out of the box strong.
Did he?
I say yes.
I watched the whole speech from beginning to end.
That was really the challenge tonight.
There have been so many questions raised about his age.
He is 81 years old.
He is already the oldest president.
And, you know, that has really been something that voters have been raising questions about.
We see that in the polls.
So tonight he really needed to meet those concerns head on, to appear energetic.
Thinking on his feet.
And I think he did that.
He definitely was, you know, forceful in his delivery.
He used the first person a lot.
I will fight for you.
I will do this.
And he engaged in quite a bit of back and forth with the Republicans, which he really seems to enjoy.
So he was ad-libbing in places, you know, and having some banter.
Oh man, what a fun night.
What a just a great night.
I don't know what show these people are watching.
Now, on the other side of the aisle, back to the Republicans.
All Republicans have to do is be not totally insane.
That's it.
Not that hard a job, right?
All you have to do is be not totally insane.
There were two big responses from the Republicans last night.
One came courtesy of Katie Britt.
Katie Britt is a senator from Alabama.
She's very young.
She has young kids.
She gave the weirdest response to a State of the Union address probably ever.
It was super weird.
Stop being weird, people.
I like Katie Brett.
I think she's a very good senator.
I don't know who told her to do this.
So, she did her State of the Union response from a kitchen.
You know what the joke's gonna be.
You know it.
Why doesn't anybody know how to play this game?
Why?
Which Republican consultant was like, you know what'll be a great idea?
We'll put the woman in the kitchen and then we'll have her speak from the kitchen in the middle of an election cycle where Joe Biden is saying that Republicans want to put women in the kitchen.
Genius move.
It starts that way.
Then, Katie Britt delivers the speech in the strangest fashion of anyone I have ever seen.
It's as though she's doing an audition tape for Gilmore Girls.
That's what this felt like.
It's super weird.
It's not like awful or evil like many other things Joe Biden was saying.
It's just weird.
How about you just stop being weird, everyone.
Can we just be normal for like half a second?
Do we have to be weird all the time?
Like a little bit of weird is icing on the cake.
But when the whole cake is the weird icing, it's just weird.
Stop it.
Too much weird.
So here was Katie Britt last night.
And again, it's the it's not even what she's saying.
It's how she's saying it.
Why?
Why?
Stop emoting.
You're emoting too much.
Stop.
I need you to stop.
I need it to stop.
I need it.
Like so many families across America, my husband Wesley and I just watched President Biden's State of the Union address from our living room.
And what we saw was the performance of a permanent politician who has actually been in office for longer than I've been alive.
One thing was quite clear, though.
President Biden just doesn't get it.
He's out of touch.
Under his administration, families are worse off, our communities are less safe, and our country is less secure.
Okay, she started off at like a 7 in the weirdness.
Like, a little more weird than your typical 5 politician weird.
And then it just kept getting weirder.
So, here she was on the Southern- Again, everything she's saying is right.
I just don't know why we needed the audition tape.
Why?
Why is it- By the way, this is like the black hole of politics.
If you give the State of the Union response address, you're headed for the garbage can.
Politically speaking, in the Republican Party.
I mean, whether you're Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal, like, whoever gives this speech is just doomed to failure.
In any case, here was Katie- And again, it wasn't even what she was saying.
What she was saying was totally fine.
Go.
Our families are hurting.
Our country can do better.
And you don't have to look any further than the crisis at our southern border to see it.
President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time.
But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, he halted construction of the border wall, and he announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.
We know that President Biden didn't just create this border crisis.
He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.
So all the commentary, of course, was not about what Katie Britt said.
It's about the fact that Katie Britt went to, like, the Lee Strasberg School of Acting or something.
So that's not good.
That was not as weird as what Donald Trump did.
So, President Trump could have just put out a statement.
He could have just done a video where he said, Joe Biden is a terrible president.
And he's doing a terrible job.
Terrible.
They say he's good.
He's not good.
Most people, many people, I'm leading in polls.
He's doing bad.
He could have just done that.
Would have been fine.
Would have been normal.
Instead, Grandpa found the Snapchat filter.
And it got real weird.
So he put, it was really funny.
I'll admit it's super funny.
But again, clown show.
It's a giant circus.
Everything is a giant circus and I don't know what to make of it.
I grew up in an era when people read books and took policies somewhat seriously.
And now we are down to old man screams at clouds and uncle Snapchat filter.
That's where we are.
That's what we've got.
America, amazing job.
Truly amazing.
Okay, so, just to, you know, add on to the weirdness of last night, which was a very weird night, Donald Trump puts out on his Truth Social platform a video using Snapchat filters of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
You can play it.
It's just, it starts off, I'm gonna just... Buy America.
So trade rules.
Buy America has been the law since 1933.
Also caps and won't even go into effect.
I know that people listen to the show if you can't see the snapchat filter what you're seeing is Joe Biden talking but he's they put on top of him like the weirdest creepy face like this weird pasted on grin and these giant googly eyes and turning your head up like you're evil and it's and then it zooms in on Kamala Harris and it kind of looks like normal Kamala Harris a little bit That's what it looks like.
The Snapchat filter's too close to reality here.
It's too good.
Frankly, I'll be honest.
I would watch more politics if it were... Then you had a Snapchat filter with them wearing hats and girly braids.
And then you had a Pinocchio nose with rings falling on it on Joe Biden.
And then a rat head.
Is that a rat head or a dog head?
I don't even know what that is.
It's like a bizarre alien animal head.
So Trump actually put that up on his Instagram page.
Those are our alternatives, gang.
We're the most powerful country in world history, and this is how far we have come.
Now, I am going to vote for Uncle Snapchat Filter.
I am.
I'm going to vote for him above the crazy old coot who pretends he's a moderate, but actually is extraordinarily radical and also hates half of America.
But I'm a little perturbed that we decided that we were effectively going to just Okay.
So, in just one second, we'll get to a couple of questions from the vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.
First, if you're not a member, become a member.
Use code SHAPIRO.
Check out for two months free on all annual plans.