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March 13, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:16
Uh-Oh, I Said Something Unsayable
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So yesterday, I apparently blew up the internet.
I blew up the internet because of something that I said on this show.
What exactly did I say that blew up the internet?
Well, I touched the political third rail.
I talked about social security.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
What's so spicy about social security?
And I will admit, I was thinking the same thing because there are a few simple facts of the matter with regard to social security.
One, we don't have the money for it, and it's a Ponzi scheme.
And two, with regard to sort of the personal decision to retire, very often when people retire, they're making a bad decision.
This is what I said.
I want to play you the clip of what I said yesterday, and then I want to discuss why exactly this was so controversial.
And I think it goes deep to the root of something that's happened on both the right and the left, which is this weird idea that work is somehow demeaning and bad and terrible.
And that somehow purpose and fulfillment don't come from work and don't come from church and don't come from family.
So where do they come from?
That's a broader argument.
We'll get to that in a moment.
I want to play you this clip because this apparently set a thousand hearts aflutter.
And let's be real about this.
It's insane that we haven't raised the retirement age in the United States.
It's totally crazy.
If that were the case, Joe Biden should not be running for president.
Joe Biden is 81 years old.
The retirement age in the United States at which you start to receive Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare is 65.
Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and Medicare for 16 years, and he wants to continue in office until he is 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible for retirement.
No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old.
Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem.
Everybody that I know who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years.
And if you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, Things go to hell in a handbasket real quick, but put all of that aside.
Okay, so those are two arguments.
Right, so those are two arguments.
One is we have to raise the retirement age.
And two is that as a general rule, it is not a good personal decision for people to retire early.
And I say even right there, unless we are talking about people who suffer a physical or mental malady, As a result of continued work.
So, for example, you're a bricklayer and now you're 65 years old and your back is gone.
Obviously, you're going to want to retire from being a bricklayer because you have a physical malady, which I literally said on the show yesterday and everybody is ignoring.
But let's go through these arguments one by one, because the first argument about raising the retirement age or privatizing Social Security or changing the Social Security system, this is considered the third rail of politics.
And as I said in the show yesterday, Donald Trump hasn't touched it.
He's the first Republican in a long time to have basically said the entitlements are off the table.
We're not going to do anything about them.
And I've said before, that's a smart political move, but smart political moves aren't necessarily good for the country.
Both parties now argue that we can't touch Social Security.
We can't touch Medicare.
We can't touch Medicaid.
The entitlement programs basically have to stay.
The problem with that is that, of course, they're all going to go bankrupt.
So politicians obviously have an incentive to keep kicking the can down the road and pretending that we have unlimited borrowing power and limited money to pay for a ballooning public debt.
That, of course, is their incentive structure.
But I'm not running for office, so I can tell you the truth, which is that if we don't raise the retirement age or privatize Social Security over time and make any changes to Social Security, we will go insolvent.
Social Security is not, in fact, a lockbox.
I saw a lot of tweets yesterday from people saying, I paid into Social Security.
I'm just taking out what I got in.
No, you're not.
You absolutely are not.
The government stole your money and paid it to somebody else.
And now they're stealing somebody else's money and paying it to you.
And I promise you that whatever you paid in is certainly not what you're getting out.
You're either getting out way less, in my case, you're getting way less in Social Security, if ever you receive it, than you paid in.
And in many cases, you're receiving far more.
So my grandmother, for example, receiving Social Security, got way more than she paid in.
Because Social Security is not a defined, it is not a defined contributions plan, it's a defined benefits plan.
Social Security tells you how much you receive, but it has nothing to do with how much you put in.
Social Security is a pyramid scheme.
It is a Ponzi scheme.
We are taking out trillions of dollars in debt to fund people retiring from work who are not somehow unable to work.
That was the point that I'm making, is that many of the people that we are paying not to work right now who are 65 years old, yes, they paid into the system, but that is because the system should not have taken their money in the first place.
You should not have your money taken away from you by the federal government and then spent somewhere else.
And then later, somebody else has to fill you in.
You should be able to keep your own money.
That's how you plan for retirement.
And in fact, even the name Social Security is a euphemism.
Because originally, what Social Security was, was an old age pension.
That's what it was.
And in fact, if you look at the history of Social Security, what you see, the history of retirement and Social Security, one of the things that you see, is that it was an attempt to get older workers off the payrolls to make room for younger workers.
The first kind of full social security scheme was put in place by Otto von Bismarck in Germany and was a way of clearing the older payrolls of older workers because they weren't as effective.
And in fact, older workers fought it.
But in any case, when you look in America at the history of old age pensions, what you see is that in 1862, when the life expectancy was 39, There were some pensions that you could apply for if you were a Civil War veteran or if you were disabled.
Which again, makes some sense, talking about people who are physically disabled.
In 1890, when the life expectancy was 44, the law was amended to include disabled Civil War veterans who were disabled for any reason.
In 1906, Life expectancy 50.
The law was amended to include old age.
Now, why am I using life expectancy statistics?
I'll get into that in a moment because I've seen some community notes talking about the fact that if you make it to 50 or 60 and you're living in 1906, you're likely to live till 75 or 79 or whatever.
That's the wrong statistic and I'll explain why in a second.
The Social Security Act was signed into law by FDR in 1935.
Again, life expectancy at that time was 60.
And it kicked in Social Security at 65.
It created a federal safety net for the elderly, unemployed, disadvantaged Americans because of the Great Depression.
And again, the main stipulation was to pay financial benefits to retirees over the age of 65 based on lifetime payroll tax contributions.
But of course, the original...
We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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Now, let's get to where we are with Social Security now.
The Social Security Trust Fund.
Which doesn't really exist.
Again, all that money was paid out before.
It's based on new taxes.
That Social Security Trust Fund is set to empty in 2037, at which point taxes will be enough to pay for only 76% of scheduled benefits, at which time all the benefits are going to get slashed.
Why is that happening?
The answer is demographics.
In 1960, approximately five workers covered the benefits of one retiree.
So five workers paying into the system, that covered the benefits of one retiree.
Today, two workers cover the benefits of one retiree.
That is unsustainable.
Our demographic pyramid is up-tied down in the United States.
We have too many old people, and we don't have enough young workers, which means that the Ponzi scheme is collapsing.
According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, In 1960, the Social Security program had revenues of $12 billion and outlays just shy of $12 billion.
financial difficulties for Social Security.
In 1960, the Social Security program had revenues of $12 billion and outlays just shy of $12
billion.
By 2021, the smaller ratio led to outlays of $1.1 trillion exceeding revenues of a little
under $1.1 trillion.
And that gap is going to continue to grow.
By 2034, the last year before the funds are expected to become depleted, the Social Security's trustees expect the cost will exceed income by $437 billion.
And when those trust funds are depleted, benefits will then be limited.
By the income assigned to the program, in absent changes to the law, benefits will be reduced by 20%.
So again, why is this happening?
Two demographic factors.
One, people did not have enough kids.
You can support this pyramid scheme so long as there are enough young people who are there to work to support the elderly, as filtered through government programs.
But there aren't.
People are having fewer babies.
Two, people are in fact living longer.
Around 1960, that was the end of the baby boom, The average number of children born to a woman was 3.6.
Today, that number is 1.6, which is not replacement level.
In 1960, if you reached 65, if you reached retirement age, you were expected to live to about 80.
Today, you're expected to live to about 85.
Again, according to Cato Institute, the cost of Social Security to the American taxpayer, excluding disability in 2022, was over a trillion dollars.
By 2033, that's going to be $2 trillion a year, well over $2.1 trillion a year.
In that year, borrowing authority for Social Security is exhausted under law, so unless Congress acts, benefits get slashed 23%.
As far as the generalized debt problems with Social Security, Medicare and Social Security are now responsible for 95% of all long-term American unfunded obligations.
When you hear people say that it's the Defense Department that's bankrupting the country, that is wrong.
It is Medicare and Social Security.
Social Security is already responsible for about 11% of the entire 2023 deficit.
And according to the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, this is them, the people.
These are the people who run the thing.
According to them, Medicare and Social Security, their unfunded obligations, which is about the 75-year unfunded obligation, meaning it's not funded by any of the law today, exceeds $78 trillion.
$78 trillion, which is three times all the goods and services produced in the United States last year.
So in other words, this ballooning Social Security program is bankrupt.
It is.
It's just a question of when the bankruptcy becomes evident to everyone.
So that is where we are.
Okay, so argument number one, which is that we have to change social security because it's ridiculous that people are retiring at the age of 65 and then receiving benefits for legitimately 20 years.
And that's going to bankrupt the country.
And it's already bankrupting the taxpayer.
That's obviously true.
Everyone knows it.
Democrats know it.
Republicans know it.
They just lie to you.
So people are like, well, why don't politicians say this?
Because they'll lose.
Because they know that you don't want to hear it.
Because there was somebody who tweeted at me yesterday About all of this.
And he suggested, well, you know, I paid for my parents and now it's my children's friends turn to pay.
Like, that's not the way that society is supposed to work.
I don't want my children to pay for me.
My goal is to be able to invest enough so that I can cover my children, not the other way around.
And by the way, It is worth noting at this point that it will not be our children paying for us.
It will be debt paying for us or immigrants paying for us as we retire.
Okay, so then we get to the second argument and this is the one that apparently set people off really a lot.
And the second argument that I make is that I think that retirement generally for a lot of people is stupid.
Okay, here's what I mean by that.
So, I don't mean that you retiring from a job that's backbreaking labor is stupid.
That's your personal decision.
The argument that I'm making is sort of twofold.
One, that the government has no actual obligation to fund your retirement if it allows you to keep your money in the first place.
If it stole your money, then I understand.
People who have their money stolen by the government, they want their money back.
I get it, totally.
Then there's the question of what retirement actually constitutes.
There seems to be this idea about that retirement is natural.
That you hit 65 and you go like sit on a beach somewhere for the next 20 years of your life.
And whether that is publicly funded or privately funded, the point that I was making yesterday is that I do not think that as a general rule, it is good for people to consider themselves retired from the world.
I don't think that it's good.
Retirement, particularly in the post-familial, post-church age, harms mental health.
It robs people of purpose.
Again, I'm not saying that you can't retire if you want to.
If you have the money to do so, go for it if you want to.
And I'm also not saying you should be forced not to retire if you can afford to retire.
I'm making the case that actually early retirement by the data tends to harm your health.
That working longer tends to be good for you.
That is the argument that I'm making.
Again, not that you should be forced to work if you don't want to, and you can afford to do it, or your family will take care of you.
The argument that I was making is that when you are 65 years old, if you retire, if you make that decision to retire, that's a decision that you should take really seriously.
And this bizarre idea that the best thing you can do, so much that the government should sponsor it, is retire.
And when I say retire, I don't mean get an alternative job.
You're not retired.
If you quit your job at 65 or you are forcibly retired by your company at 65 and then you take Social Security and then you have another job, which is what a lot of people do, you're not retired.
You're retired from that job.
You're not a retired person.
The retirement I'm talking about is you retire from your job and all jobs and you live on your pension or your Social Security.
That tends not to be good for people in terms of health.
According to the BBC, quote, research from the Institute of Economic Affairs suggests that while retirement may initially benefit health by reducing stress and creating time for other activities, adverse effects increase the longer retirement goes on.
In fact, this study found that retirement increases the chances of suffering from clinical depression by around 40 percent, of having at least one diagnosed physical illness by about 60 percent.
And of course, that's not particularly surprising, because for a lot of people, they find purpose in the thing that they've been doing for the past 40 years.
We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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It used to be, by the way, that you could fill that gap with a few things.
You retired from your job or you were forced into retirement by your company, and you'd fill that gap in a few ways.
One would be friendships.
There's only one problem.
In the United States, friendship has been declining for decades.
As Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone, nobody even has social clubs anymore.
Church, which is another place that people tended to put their time in retirement, has been declining for decades.
So people don't know what to do with themselves.
Family has been declining for decades.
In fact, actually as an ironic byproduct of social security, family has been declining.
Because it used to be, before social security, what happened to grandma when it was time for grandma to retire, or grandpa?
They lived with you.
Grandma and grandpa lived in the house with you, and you helped your parents out.
That's what it was about.
And that created intergenerational contact and point of contact, and that was fulfilling for grandma and grandpa, and it was fulfilling for kids and grandkids, because then you got the wisdom of grandma and grandpa.
That's been completely destroyed by Social Security.
Now the American vision is, you hit 65 or you hit 70, whatever it is, You retire, and then we shuffle you off to the villages or some old age home or something.
And listen, if you want to be there, that's fine.
I mean, it's a free country.
But the idea that this is like the ideal form of what 80-year-old life looks like is you don't see your kids, you don't see your grandkids, and you live in a home by yourself?
The data do not support the idea that this is wonderful for people.
And it is worth noting that when this sort of idea was proposed, elderly people actually revolted against it.
They didn't like it.
Peace from 1999 by Mary Lou Weissman in the New York Times called The History of Retirement from Early Man to AARP and this columnist points out That many, many people who were elderly did not, in fact, like doing this.
Quote, what used to mean going to bed suddenly meant banishment to an empty stage of life called retirement.
If people were not going to work, what were they going to do?
Sit in a rocking chair?
Eleanor Roosevelt thought so.
Quote, old people love their own things even more than young people do.
It means so much to sit in the same chair you sat in for a great many years, she said in 1934.
But she was wrong.
Most retired people wished they could work.
The problem was still acute in 1951 when the Corning Company convened a round table to figure out how to make retirement more popular.
At that conference, Santa Rama Rowan, author and student of Eastern and Western cultures, complained Americans did not have the capacity to enjoy doing nothing.
Say you had retirement communities that sprang up.
And those retirement communities were essentially fill your time with playing golf or whatever.
But again, has that cured the problem?
The answer by the data is really no.
Study from the Journal of Healthcare.
September 2020.
Prevalence of depression in retirees.
Meta-analysis.
Depression is more frequent in retirees, with mandatory retirement, retirement due to illness, and anticipated retirement presenting higher levels of this disease.
The health role in the psychoeducational approach is highlighted in 41.6%.
With almost one-third of retirees suffering from depression, it is necessary to implement prevention and early detection measures to approach a public health problem."
This study, by the way, Suggests that retirement is a transition which occurs in the last stage of life.
It is characterized by the ceasing of work and with that a loss of routine social relations, role, status, accomplishments, and aspirations.
This implies changing the lifestyle adopted during many years in the working stage and supposes a phenomenon that can alter the psychosocial realm of the retiree.
Additionally, the aging process supposes diverse changes in health and it would lead to the decline of individuals who suffer it, altering their self-image, self-esteem, autonomy, and functionality.
The majority of individuals understand the transition from being active in working life to retirement as the process by which they start to become old, which generates feelings of uselessness, thus predisposing them to depression.
Another journal article from the Journal of Population Aging, Work, Retirement, and Depression, found a considerable depression, by the way, difference in the depression rates in men who retired.
24% said that they were depressed, compared to currently employed, about 6%.
They found that women, significantly less of a difference.
Why?
Well, because a lot of women work part-time, and so they were already engaged in stuff that they were doing outside of work.
2012, a paper, Transition to Retirement and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease from Social Science and Medicine, they found those who had retired were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than those who were still working.
Another paper, the Association of Retirement Age with Mortality, a population-based longitudinal study among older adults in the United States.
This is from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Quote, early retirement may be a risk factor for mortality and prolonged working life may provide survival benefits among American adults.
That same study found among healthy retirees, a one-year older age at retirement was associated with an 11% lower risk of all-cause mortality.
Again, that same study, by the way, One of the researchers explained that delayed retirement is the secret to a longer life.
He defined retirement as, quote, the first year people responded to the survey saying they were completely retired.
Okay, so, there's some counter arguments to this argument that I'm making, which is that if you have a personal choice as to whether to retire or not retire, you should seriously consider not retiring.
And by retiring, again, I mean like retiring from all work, not getting an alternative job.
That doesn't count as retirement.
If you retired as a bricklayer and you became a tutor, that doesn't mean that you're retired.
You're still working.
Okay, so, Here are the counter arguments.
The counter arguments are that you should be able to retire from your job so you can do fulfilling things.
Now again, if your argument is that you should retire from a job you don't like to take a job you do like, that's not retirement.
That's just changing jobs.
If you are retiring on somebody else's dime, by the way, your choice has externalities.
Somebody else is paying for your retirement.
Also, you should find something that actually is fulfilling to do.
But the problem is, as I've mentioned before, society has now removed many of those fulfilling things to do.
Okay, then there's another bizarre argument that I'm hearing a lot.
And that argument is that it is elitist to say that people should, as a general matter, continue to work.
Because as long as you are healthy, and as long as you're healthy mentally and physically, there is something good about working.
I'm not sure why that's elitist.
It seems to me that that's true.
And there are a bunch of people who are like, well, that's because you're not a bricklayer.
Again, I said yesterday, if you're a bricklayer and you hurt your back, that's a completely different thing from a person who was a bricklayer, worked their way up to the management level of the bricklaying company, is still healthy, and then is forced to retire or decides to retire.
Not the same thing at all.
If you're talking about a health problem, health problems are an entirely different category.
In fact, if you have a serious health problem, we're not talking about retirement, we're talking about disability.
Because if you break your back at the age of 50, we have disability and it seems like we probably should.
Not at the federal level, but at the state and local level.
We should have support systems for that.
But that's not the same thing.
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Okay, so what I'm hearing from people is sort of this left-wing argument that has now horseshoed
around to some parts of the right.
And that is that work is joyless and soul-deadening, particularly blue-collar work, which actually
seems elitist to me.
I mean, I'm hearing a lot of people who are like, well, of course you want to continue
working until you're old and gray, but that's because you sit behind a desk and you talk.
Yes, I like my job.
That's true.
I love my job.
And I've worked hard to get this job.
And we employ 300 people at this company, which means that we are responsible for the support of thousands of dependents.
I love that.
That's great.
I plan to work until I can no longer work.
Literally until I can't.
Okay, but I don't understand why that wouldn't also be true of, say, an electrician or, say, a plumber or a guy who started off as a bricklayer in a bricklaying business, now owns the bricklaying business.
That seems kind of, actually, elitist to me.
At the same logic, a fulfillment doesn't apply to people who are blue-collar.
I know a lot of people who are electricians and are approaching retirement age, they don't, many of them don't want to retire.
They like being an electrician.
In fact, they feel useless if they do retire.
And here's my real question.
If you really believe that work is inherently degrading and joyless, even certain sectors of work, it's inherently degrading and joyless and terrible.
So then what does an ideal retirement age look like?
What you're really arguing against is the work itself.
You're not really arguing about the retirement age.
What you're really arguing against is the work itself.
What does an ideal retirement age look like if you're in favor of this?
Does a retirement age look like 21?
I mean that's when you're young and you're healthy and you can really enjoy retirement.
Why not push it to 21?
Why exactly do we have to wait until you're 65 and you're feeling beat up and a little bit old in order to allow you to retire if it's quote-unquote allowing you to retire?
Now my point is no one's quote-unquote allowing you to retire or shouldn't be.
It's your decision whether to retire and it should be your decision whether to retire.
The question of whether the taxpayer subsidizes that is an entirely different issue.
I don't think that it's the government's business to subsidize your retirement.
I'm not talking about people who are on the cusp of receiving Social Security, by the way.
Because the government did steal your money.
And presumably there will have to be a phase out with regard to the age provisions of Social Security.
What I am saying is that as a general ideological matter, you should be allowed to keep your own money.
There has never been, as my friend Matt Walsh says, a greater robbery of the middle class than social security.
They literally take working families, and they tax them, and they steal their money, and then they use that to pay elderly pensioners, many of whom are upper income.
That is wrong.
It is morally wrong.
It is a Ponzi scheme for political benefit of the politicians.
That's what it is.
That was the point that I was making yesterday.
And again, I think this goes to a deeper ideological point that I was making just a moment ago, which is what do you think work is?
One of the fascinating things that some of the people who are sort of on the right on this typically would be considered right wing of the political spectrum who were very upset with me yesterday.
They were saying, well, you don't respect the blue collar worker because you're saying that people quote unquote don't deserve to retire.
My point is that I don't think that retirement is a good personal decision.
I think there's a deserve about it.
You deserve whatever you can pay for.
As far as what you deserve from the public, from the guy who's still working, that's a completely different story.
But it is interesting to me that many of the same people who will, for example, object to automated technologies because they say that it kills jobs and people need jobs.
The universal basic income won't do it.
You can't just cut somebody a welfare check and find a sense of fulfillment in that.
Suddenly believe that the logic reverses itself when you hit 65.
When you hit 65, they can cut you a welfare check in the form of social security and that somehow this is more fulfilling than when you were 30 and they were cutting you a welfare check in lieu of a job.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have jobs are good and also jobs are bad.
You gotta pick one.
And my general perception is that human beings like to work in one form or another.
And that human beings are really not made to quote-unquote retire in the way that we think of it.
Like sitting on a pool deck somewhere for 20 years.
That's not what human beings are created for.
From a biblical perspective, you might say, thou shalt work six days a week and on the seventh thou shalt rest.
You might say that.
As long as you still have your health and as long as you still have your mental aptitude, it seems to me like most people want to work and should.
And that doesn't mean the government forces them to.
We're not talking about sending you to the salt mines when you're 70 years old.
And I'm just bewildered by this perception that that's somehow an elitist sentiment, when the point that I'm making is that I believe it is human nature for people to want to feel productive, useful, and purposeful.
And if you can't find that production and purpose anywhere else than a job, which seems to be the way that it works in America these days, because again, church and family have disappeared, then you're gonna have a bigger problem than you think when you quote-unquote retire.
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Meanwhile, in the world of daily politics, the big story of the day yesterday was the testimony of special counsel Robert Herr.
Robert Herr is, of course, the former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's possession of classified documents after he left the vice presidency.
And Democrats are fighting mad at Robert Herr.
Why?
Well, I mean, he didn't prosecute Biden, even though Biden fulfilled every element of the law that would be required to prosecute him.
He was grossly negligent in his handling of classified materials by every available piece of evidence.
The reason that Democrats are mad at him is because Robert Herb presented them with a choice, and it was a very bad choice.
Choice number one, Joe Biden was responsible for his violations of law and should be prosecuted.
Choice number two.
Joe Biden is responsible for violations of law, but he shouldn't be prosecuted because he's a sympathetic senile old man.
And that's the reason why Hur didn't recommend prosecution.
He said, yes, he fulfills all of the conditions of violation of the law for years on end.
He kept classified documents from like skiffs in his house and in a variety of other locations.
But the reason we can't prosecute him is because he's senile.
The reason we can't prosecute him is because he is a doddering old fool.
And if you get that guy in front of a jury, it's going to be very hard to convict an 81 year old man of keeping classified documents next to his Corvette in the garage.
That was the actual report from Robert Hur.
We went through it at the time.
Democrats are fighting mad at this because, of course, Democrats wanted Biden exonerated on the law, which couldn't happen because he violated the law.
And then because he couldn't exonerate him on the law, he had to exonerate him.
He didn't really exonerate him legally.
He had to let him off the hook because he was a doddering old fool.
And Democrats don't want Joe Biden called a doddering old fool in the run up to a presidential reelect effort.
And so what you got yesterday is Democrats berating Robert Herr, just really, really mad at Robert Herr.
So here is the worst congressman in the country, probably, Adam Schiff, just as a congressperson.
I'm not talking about like terrorist supporters like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar or something.
I'm talking about just like as a congressperson who is corrupt and venal, Adam Schiff is unparalleled.
So here's Adam Schiff berating Robert Herr for the great sin of pointing out that Joe Biden is feeble, which is why you can't prosecute him.
And you also understand DOJ policy that you are to take care not to prejudice the interests of the subject of an investigation, right?
That is generally one of the interests that DOJ policy requires that prosecutors respect.
And it was your obligation to follow that policy in this report, was it not?
It was also my obligation to write a confidential report for the Attorney General explaining completely my decision.
What you did write was deeply prejudicial to the interests of the President.
You say it wasn't political and yet you must have understood.
You must have understood the impact of your words.
You must have understood the impact of your decision to go beyond the specifics of a particular document to go to the very general, to your own personal, prejudicial, subjective opinion of the President.
One you knew would be amplified by his political opponent.
One you knew that would influence a political campaign.
You had to understand that.
And you did it anyway.
And you did it anyway.
Schiff is such a smart machine.
Again, the only reason Joe Biden isn't in the dock right now is because Robert Herr said that he's senile.
That's literally the only reason.
It's now that button choice meme.
Button one, Biden is senile so we can't prosecute him.
Choice number two, Biden is Nazi now.
We should prosecute him.
Those are the only two choices.
There is no third choice where Joe Biden did not violate the law.
That choice is not available.
Democrats cannot have it both ways, but they were trying to.
So one House Democrat, this would be Hank Johnson, who believes that the island of Guam is going to tip over.
That's literally a thing that he once said.
Accused Robert Herr of trying to get a favor from Donald Trump with this report.
Honest to God, if you ever want to know why the Founding Fathers designed it so that there were checks and balances in American government, and we shouldn't look to government to get things done, look no further than every public hearing where every single congressperson makes an ass of themselves.
These people have a collective IQ lower than the wattage of the light bulb right here.
Like, significantly lower.
And we're talking about 435 people have a collective IQ lower than a 100-watt light bulb.
It's amazing.
Here's Hank Johnson just being terrible, as usual.
Are you a member of the Federalist Society?
I am not a member of the Federalist Society.
But you are a Republican, though, aren't you?
I am a registered Republican.
Yes, sir.
And you're doing everything you can do to get President Trump re-elected so that you can get appointed as a federal judge or perhaps to another position in the Department of Justice.
Isn't that correct?
Congressman, I have no such aspirations.
I can assure you, and I can tell you, that partisan politics had no place whatsoever in my work.
It had no place in the investigative steps that I took.
It had no place in the decision that I made.
And it had no place in a single word of my report.
Okay, but again, the implication by Democrats is the only reason that Robert Hurd was hazy now is because he's a mean old Republican.
Again, that's the only reason that Joe Biden isn't being prosecuted.
And then it was fun to watch as Democrats tried to spin it the other way.
So they tried to say, well, OK, sure, Biden, maybe he's seen it, but does it really matter?
So, for example, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, he says, well, sure, Joe Biden can't remember things anymore.
Sure, Joe Biden would fail a game of go fish.
Sure, like.
OK, fine, but does he really need a memory?
Do we need brains anymore?
Maybe not.
The fact is, Mr. Biden sat through five hours, and he did an admirable job.
And he did an outstanding job in the State of the Union, laying out the case for the future of America, for the middle class, for democracy around the world, for standing up to the Russians, not bending down to them.
That's what's important.
Not if you can be like on the $64,000 question.
Assuming it was legit.
And answering every single question correctly.
That's not what you need to be president.
To be president you need to have values.
You need to have an understanding of what values America has and needs to maintain to keep the world safe and peaceful.
That's dealing with Ukraine.
That's dealing with difficult people like Netanyahu and Israel to try to get something done that's correct.
What is wrong with Robert Herr?
Robert Herr is just sitting there like, why are you lecturing me?
What the hell?
Medicaid are important institutions that help seniors, not senile people.
I mean, I object to that comment.
People say he's not nobody suggest he's senile.
And that's disrespectful of senior people with any kind of memory disability.
Lots of seniors have memory disability, but they're not senile.
And to do such was shameful.
Joe Biden is a competent, good president who knows American values.
No, he is not.
He's a terrible president who is not competent, which is why the polls have him losing to Donald Trump right now.
Absolutely insane.
In just one second, we're going to get into the actual transcript of what Joe Biden said.
And this dude has applesauce for brains.
Legitimately applesauce for brains.
Like, not even like chunky applesauce.
Smooth applesauce.
It's gone all the way through the blender.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so.
Let's talk about what's actually in the transcript.
Because we've heard from Steve Cohen that, in fact, Joe Biden did an admirable job.
And ABC and CBS did the same thing.
They said, oh man, we read the transcript and this guy is sharp as a tack.
I mean, he is right on the money.
Here are ABC and CBS doing press for the White House, which is what they do.
I have reviewed the full transcript myself, all 250 pages of it, and there are moments where the president does have memory lapses, especially, for instance, in his recall and description of his son Beau's death.
The president struggles to remember the year that Beau died, though he does remember the exact date.
But overall, George, I have to tell you that the image that you get of the president that you take away largely
mirrors that of his public persona.
He staunchly defends his handling of classified material, has detailed recollection of events
from years ago.
He is also very conversational, even jokes with the committee.
And yes, he does go on some lengthy tangents and tends to ramble, as Joe Biden does.
Many of the details that Biden couldn't recall, such as how boxes were packed up, how they
were transported, those are things that would likely be tricky for anyone to remember decades
It is notable, though, that her wrote that Biden could not remember when his son Beau died.
That's just not true.
One thing is very clear from the transcript.
Biden was cooperative throughout the entire interview process.
Sharp as a tack.
I mean, that dude is really on top.
Okay, so now let's talk about what's actually in the transcripts.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, transcripts of her interview with Biden released Tuesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon support her assessment there are significant limitations surrounding Biden's memory.
Throughout the five hours of interviews on October 8th and 9th, Biden struggled to recall relevant details about his handling of classified records or when he served as vice president.
The transcript also confirms Biden could not recall when his son Beau died and further shows the president raised that subject unprompted.
Which, of course, contradicts the lie that Joe Biden told at his February 8th press conference, where he mixed up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.
You remember, he started yelling that Robert Herb brought up his son, which is a lie.
It was Joe Biden.
Not only is that the case, not only is that the case, that when Biden started talking about Beau, Herb said, Sir, I'm wondering if this is a good time to take a break briefly.
So Herb tried to say to him, like, do you want to stop?
Because this is emotional.
Remember that Joe Biden basically called him a son of a bitch.
Early on in the October 8th interview with her, the special counsel asked Biden if he ever transferred any documents from the vice presidential residence to his primary Delaware residence.
Biden answered that he did occasionally.
And then he said, quote, you left everything in place.
I just hope you didn't find any risque pictures of my wife in a bathing suit, which you probably did.
She's beautiful.
That's not weird.
It's not a weird thing to say.
You're talking to a special counsel.
You're talking about how hot your wife is in a bathing suit.
That's not strange at all, you old weirdo.
And then, he didn't stop there, according to the Free Beacon.
He proceeded to provide the special counsel a history lesson on his struggles as a frustrated architect designing plans for the home as it was being built.
Biden went into great detail about how he obtained its furnishings, including a beautiful desk he purchased during his career as an attorney.
During this tangent, Biden also revealed that he hit a target hundreds of yards away with a bow and arrow during a visit to Mongolia in August 2011.
Quote, I'm not a bad archer, but I hit the bleep target A video uploaded by the Obama administration at the time, by the way, shows Biden shooting a bow into an empty field.
So, there's that.
Then, apparently, he started talking randomly about his tort classes in law school.
school. He said, we had a really difficult professor.
You're calling me to, you know, you're doing law school, discuss
the case. You know, in your first tort class, I never heard the
case. I stood up and spoke for 10 minutes.
The whole class stood up, started clapping.
That is not remotely true.
As somebody who went to law school, no, that has never happened to anyone in law school.
And I went to a better law school than wherever he went, University of Delaware or wherever.
Okay, then it got weirder.
Joe Biden apparently, during this transcript, detailed a bizarre episode during one of his first jobs out of law school involving a 23-year-old construction worker with a seared penis and missing testicle.
Quote.
Robert Herr must have been sitting there like, why are we talking about barbecue testicles?
I don't even understand what's happening right now.
wrong pants, wrong jeans, caught a spark, caught fire, got caught in the containment vessel,
lost part of his penis in one of his testicles.
He was 23 years old.
Robert Herr must've been sitting there like, why are we talking about barbecue testicles?
I don't even understand what's happening right now.
That's so weird.
And then apparently, my favorite part of the transcript, My favorite part of the transcript is when he apparently started talking about his Chevy Corvette.
And he started talking about the torque of electric vehicles.
By the way, you know how it works.
It's really cool.
And Hurst said, sir, I'd love to hear much more about this, but I do have a few more
questions to get through.
He's like humoring the old man.
Sure, let's talk about, we'll talk about your love of Chevy Corvettes in just one.
Honest to God, this part of the conversation reads like a conversation that I would have
with my seven-year-old son, legitimately.
He's like, Biden just ignores him.
Her's like, we have some stuff to get through.
And Biden is like, well, let me tell you more about about torque.
You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down until it gets about six, seven grand.
And all of a sudden it'll say launch.
All you do is take your foot off the brake.
The transcript then indicates, makes car sound.
And her goes, it's on my bucket list.
Don't worry, guys.
Sharp as a tack, our president of the United States.
Again, you guys, you can't have it both ways.
Either he's sharp as a tack, in which case he should go to jail for, you know, stealing classified materials and holding them in his house.
Or he is not sharp as a tack, in which case he should basically be let off the hook.
But you can't have it both ways.
And it's pretty obvious which one it is.
You got applesauce for brains over here talking with Robert H.E.R.
and going, I want to know how a choo-choo train works.
Our genius president!
Things are working out great.
By the way, guys, like, really well done on our nomination process in the last couple cycles.
Just really, really well done.
All right, so what did Robert Herr actually say in his testimony?
He said many things that are relevant.
First, he said Joe Biden obviously willfully retained classified information.
My team and I conducted a thorough, independent investigation.
We identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his Vice Presidency when he was a private citizen.
This evidence included an audio-recorded conversation during which Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter that he had, quote, just found all the classified stuff downstairs, end quote.
Oops.
Also, Robert Herr said that Joe Biden had classified materials at seven different locations.
Mr. Herr, classified documents were found at the Penn-Biden Center?
That's correct.
They were found in President Biden's garage?
In Wilmington, Delaware, yes.
And in his basement den?
Also in the same home, yes.
And his main floor office?
Correct.
And his third floor den?
Correct.
At the University of Delaware?
Correct.
And at the Biden Institute?
Correct.
Well, that seems bad.
He had classified documents literally everywhere.
Her said, yeah, I have lots of reasons to believe that Joe Biden lied to me.
At any point in your investigation, did you have any reason to believe that President Biden lied to you?
I do address in my report one response the president gave to a question that we had posed to him that we deemed to be not credible.
Oops.
Oops.
In fact, Robert Herbert went even so far as to say that a reasonable juror could have voted to convict based on the fact alleged.
Which, um, that's saying that he's guilty, basically.
Based on the facts and anticipation of defenses presented in your report, could a reasonable juror have voted to convict?
As I said in the report, some reasonable jurors may have reached the inferences that the government would present in its case in chief.
So a reasonable juror could have voted to convict based on the facts that you presented?
So, I mean, he's saying all the things.
He even said that Joe Biden's ghostwriter, when he was contacted by the special counsel's office, took all the audio files and tried to trash them.
I said this earlier in my opening statement, page 200, Joe Biden, this is a quote, Joe Biden risked serious damage to America's national security when he shared information with his ghostwriter.
Shared it with his ghostwriter, the guy who was helping Joe Biden get $8 million.
And oh, by the way, Mr. Herr, what did that ghostwriter do with the information Joe Biden shared with him on his laptop?
What did he do after you were named special counsel?
Chairman, if you're referring to the audio recordings that Mr. Zwanitzer created of his conversations with... That's exactly what I'm referring to.
He slid, if I remember correctly, he slid those files into his recycle bin on his computer.
Tried to destroy the evidence, didn't he?
Correct.
The very guy who was helping Joe Biden get the $8 million, the $8 million Joe Biden had used, the motive for Joe Biden to disclose classified information, to retain classified information, which he definitely knew was against the law.
When you get named special counsel, what's that guy do?
He destroys the evidence.
Well, that happens to be the case.
Okay, so Democrats try to say that Robert Hur exonerated Biden.
He didn't, obviously.
What the report said is that he actually probably committed the crime, but he's senile.
So here is Pramila Jayapal.
Again, the number of dullards in our Congress is just astonishing.
Here's Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, trying to browbeat Hur into saying that he exonerated Biden when he clearly didn't.
So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden.
For every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the President violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials.
The primary law that you analyzed for potential prosecution was part of the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C.
793E, which criminalizes willful retention or disclosure of national defense information.
Is that correct?
Congressman, that is one statute that we analyzed.
I need to go back and make sure that I take note of the word that you used, exoneration.
Mr. Herr, I'm going to continue with my questions.
I'm going to continue with my questions.
I know that the term... I know that the term... You exonerated him.
I know that the term...
...whether sufficient evidence existed such that the likely outcome...
You exonerated him.
...would be a conviction.
I did not exonerate him.
I know that the term willful retention has a...
That word does not appear in the report, Congresswoman.
Mr. Herr, it's my time.
I love that.
So she's just lying about what he said.
And then the minute he says that's not true, she goes, I reclaim my time.
These clowns.
The actual bombshell in all the testimony was none of this.
This is all for show.
We knew all this from the report.
The bombshell is that her actually said that the White House asked him to water down the report, which is kind of amazing.
I thought that the White House wasn't supposed to get involved with the special counsel.
I thought the special counsel was free to pursue whatever he wanted, but apparently they literally contacted him and tried to get him to water down the report so as to downplay the actual rationale for not prosecuting Joe Biden.
So is it correct on that February 5th letter that was sent to you asking you to change references to the President's poor memory?
Wasn't there a request by the White House to do that?
There was a request, yes.
And Mr. Chairman, I think the record should show that the gentleman from Maryland earlier said that that was not That was not the case.
I think he said, nor did he seek to redact a single word of Herr's report.
Obviously, Mr. Herr is telling us differently here.
And didn't the White House then go to the Attorney General himself and say that he would like to see changes to the references in regards to the President's memory?
The White House counsel did send such a letter.
Okay, well that would be the big story, right?
Is that the White House literally tried to push the special counsel to change the report so as to politically help Joe Biden.
Which again, was not possible.
Just the logic of the case, that was an impossibility.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
Joining me in person is Peter Schweitzer.
He's the author of the brand new bestseller, Blood Money, by the powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.
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