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March 28, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:32

Barack Obama Is BACK

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	So, Joe Biden is in serious electoral trouble, as every Democrat knows at this point, in the current polling average from RealClearPolitics.
	Donald Trump is currently leading in every swing state.
	Donald Trump is currently leading in the national poll averages.
	Joe Biden is wildly underperforming.
	Donald Trump is in the best polling position he has ever been in, including during the 2016 race that he actually won.
	And now Democrats are turning on all the alarms, and that means they're calling back in Barack Obama, as well as Bill Clinton.
	Apparently.
	Both Obama and Clinton have decided that they are now going to get involved in the Biden campaign.
	Now, the problem is that that actually is a conflict within the Democratic Party.
	Bill Clinton did not govern the way that Barack Obama governed.
	They governed actually quite disparately.
	So, Bill Clinton started off as a wild lefty.
	If you look at his governance in 1993, 1994, when he was pushing Hillarycare, he governed too far to the left, and then he got clocked in the 1994 congressional elections, and then he swiveled back to the center, and that's when you got welfare reform, that's when you got balanced budgets, that's when you got moderate third-way Bill Clinton, who ended up being a pretty popular president despite the Monica Lewinsky scandal by the time that he left office.
	On the other hand, Barack Obama took precisely the reverse trajectory.
	He started off as a moderate.
	He ran in 2008 as a slightly left-leaning Republican.
	He suggested, for example, that he was against same-sex marriage.
	He talked a lot about American opportunity, about how he, in his very personage, was the embodiment of the American dream, how anyone could get ahead, how there were no red states, no blue states, just the United States.
	And then, by 2012, he had swiveled radically to the left.
	After he passed Obamacare in his first two years, just like Hillarycare was attempted in 1993-1994, when Barack Obama passed Obamacare and the American public didn't like it and clocked him in the 2010 election, instead of swiveling back to the center the way that Bill Clinton did, he instead swiveled hard to his left.
	He got nothing done.
	Of major significance between 2010 and 2016.
	There were no major acts that he was able to pass between 2010 and 2016, as opposed to Bill Clinton, who actually cut deals with Republicans, came to some sort of conciliation with people he hated like Newt Gingrich.
	Bill Clinton swiveled back to where the American public wanted him to be.
	He got the message.
	Barack Obama did not.
	Both of them won re-election.
	Bill Clinton won re-election on the strength of swiveling back to the center.
	And Barack Obama won re-election on the basis of fragmenting the American body politic and then attempting to cobble together a coalition of supposed victims plus white liberal women in order to defeat a milquetoast Republican candidate in Mitt Romney.
	So these are two very different strategies.
	When you say that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are now in Joe Biden's ear, the question is which one Joe Biden is going to follow.
	If Joe Biden were to follow the strategy of Bill Clinton, he would swivel back to the center.
	He would, for example, be stronger on foreign policy with regard to Israel, with regard to Russia.
	He would, for example, stop talking about transing the children.
	He would, for example, close the border.
	He would take a bunch of actions that are right within the immediate domain of his presidency,
	and he would start to swivel to the center, and he'd go after moderates and independents.
	If, however, he were to follow Barack Obama, he would double down on the far left crazy,
	and he would continue to cater to the most radical members of his base.
	Now, one thing that has happened in the Democratic Party is obviously Bill Clinton is no longer viewed
	with the same sort of magic with which he was once viewed.
	If you go back to the mid-2000s, Bill Clinton was the model Democrat.
	Bill Clinton was the guy they all looked up to because he was the last Democratic President.
	But then Barack Obama came along and his star power just outweighed Clinton's by miles.
	Suddenly, Barack Obama was the model Democratic President, a historically amazing figure despite the fact that he had a historically bad presidency.
	Bill Clinton was relegated to second-tier status.
	And so it seems quite likely that Joe Biden, despite the fact that Joe Biden is much more like Bill Clinton in terms of his own personal political inclinations, he tends to follow wherever the wind blows, whereas Barack Obama is a true believer left-wing Democrat.
	Because Joe Biden believes in the magic of Barack Obama.
	After all, it was Barack Obama who made him president by making him vice president.
	Because of that, it is very likely that Joe Biden is going to follow Barack Obama down that primrose path.
	There's only one problem.
	Everybody who has tried to replicate the Barack Obama model loses.
	Barack Obama is one of one.
	Bill Clinton is not one of one.
	Bill Clinton is a fairly traditional Democratic Southern politician who is capable of shifting and moving his policies based on what the American people wanted.
	Barack Obama was a uniquely charismatic figure with a unique draw for specific segments of the voting population.
	That is not replicable.
	Bill Clinton is replicable.
	So in other words, if Joe Biden follows Barack Obama, he's a fool.
	If he follows Bill Clinton, that would be quite smart.
	If he follows James Carville, that would be smart.
	If instead, he decides that he is going to follow We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	According to the New York Times, however, Barack Obama is now in Joe Biden's ear all the time.
	Quote, So it's not even, by the way, that Barack Obama is calling Joe Biden and getting Biden to shift strategy.
	of Barack Obama to catch up on the race or to talk about family. But Mr. Obama is making calls of his
	own to Jeffrey Zients, the White House chief of staff, and to top aides of the Biden campaign
	to strategize and relay advice. So it's not even, by the way, that Barack Obama is calling Joe Biden
	and getting Biden to shift strategy. Barack Obama is actively taking control of Joe Biden's campaign.
	This is the problem when you take all of Barack Obama's old staffers and then you just dump them
	into the new administration for term three of the Obama administration.
	Barack Obama, by the way, at one point actually said this is what he wanted.
	Barack Obama literally went on national TV and when asked if he would ever consider running again if there had been no constitutional provision against it, he said, what I'd love best is to basically run a presidency without actually being president.
	Well, the easiest way to do that is to staff up the Biden administration with all your friends and family members and then call them up behind the scenes and tell them exactly what to do.
	Apparently, that is exactly what Barack Obama is doing right now.
	Barack Obama is the most dangerous political figure in American politics of my lifetime because he was able to masquerade as a moderate unifier while actually being a deeply divisive, racially divisive figure by 2012.
	As the New York Times says, this level of engagement illustrates Mr. Obama's support for Mr. Biden, but also what one of his senior aides characterized as Mr. Obama's grave concern that Biden could lose to former President Trump.
	The aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly, said that Obama has always been worried about a Biden loss.
	And so, the aide added, he is prepared to eke it out alongside his former vice president in an election that could gum down to slim margins in a handful of states.
	Perhaps for the first time, according to the New York Times, the two are on the same page about Biden's future and a sign of things to come.
	They are to appear together with former President Bill Clinton at a major fundraiser for the Biden campaign at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday.
	Now, again, who Biden appears with is really not particularly important.
	Political popularity is non-transferable.
	If Donald Trump stands next to an unpopular Republican in a particular state, it does not mean that that unpopular Republican is now going to win, because Trump's popularity is not automatically transferable to that unpopular Republican.
	If Barack Obama stands next to Joe Biden, it's not like black voters are suddenly going to go, oh my god, now I love Joe Biden.
	That's not the way any of that works.
	The real question again is which strategy Joe Biden is going to follow.
	The Barack Obama strategy or the Bill Clinton strategy?
	Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday was asked about Obama and Clinton campaigning with Biden and how much weakness that shows, which of course is obvious.
	If you have to find the last two Democratic presidents to campaign alongside you and hold up your arms like Moses in the battle with Amalek, Then you got a problem on your hands.
	Joe Biden is not capable of winning this election on his own.
	He's got to call in the other guys who, by the way, are still younger than he is.
	That's crazy.
	Bill Clinton left office in 2000 and he is still younger than Joe Biden.
	President Obama and President Clinton strongly support President Biden's leadership and obviously his agenda.
	All three have agreed overwhelmingly on the issues that this president has been fighting for for the past three years.
	I mean, they may agree on the issues, but they certainly do not agree when it comes to their various approaches.
	And that is the problem.
	So, again, Joe Biden has that choice.
	Does he pander to his radical wing, or does he move toward his moderate wing?
	He continues to evidence that he wishes to pander to his radical wing, which is a very, very bad decision.
	So, for example, this was two days ago.
	He's giving a speech, and the pro-Hamas protesters are doing what they usually do.
	They show up at his speeches and start screaming at him in bleep-bloony voices about how he needs to support Hamas and stop Israel from finishing off Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
	And instead of Joe Biden either ignoring them Or saying, you're immature and you don't know what you're talking about.
	Which is true.
	Instead, he starts to pander to them.
	Which again, this is the sign of a campaign in full-scale desperation.
	Because these quote-unquote young progressive voters are incredibly low propensity voters.
	Many of them will not show up to vote.
	And when you decide that you're going to reach out to those people at the expense of the broad swath of the American public that supports Israel as opposed to protesters like this, you are making a category error.
	This is very foolish.
	But here's Joe Biden doing it.
	Just think back before the ACA.
	A patient with a heart disease, diabetes, or a child with asthma couldn't get coverage.
	Why?
	Because the insurance company considered those pre-existing conditions that allowed them
	to deny coverage.
	What about the health care in Gaza?
	What about the health care in Gaza?
	Everybody deserves health care.
	What about the health care in Gaza?
	child care.
	Everybody deserves healthcare in Gaza.
	Here's some crazy Now they're being ushered out of the rooms, they scream
	like crazy people.
	Shrieking, like banshees.
	Be patient with them.
	They have a point. We need to get a lot more care into this process.
	They have a point.
	And then you get the progressive base cheering him.
	We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.
	Again, why is he elevating that issue?
	By every poll, Americans actually, they have feelings about what's going on between Israel and Gaza.
	But by virtually every poll, this is not even remotely a top priority for Americans.
	It's not like for Democrats, it's not a top priority.
	For independents, it's not a top priority.
	For Republicans, it's not a top priority.
	This is a foreign conflict that involves zero American troops.
	Involves less American military and financial involvement than what's going on in Ukraine right now.
	But Biden has elevated that issue specifically in order to appeal to the progressive base, which is a dumb political move because the progressive base does not like him.
	Many of them are not going to show up to vote anyway.
	Plus, they're crazy and it's morally wrong.
	How crazy is the progressive base?
	Well, the crazy progressive base story of the day comes courtesy of Vanderbilt University.
	Now, I do have to point out here that there is something unique that is going on on the progressive left.
	The issue of what's going on with the Palestinians in Hamas has become the issue.
	I mentioned before the total insanity and the danger to the West in the quote-unquote queers for Palestine movement, the far left that is in favor of a genocidal terror group in Hamas.
	That seeks to wipe every Jew off the planet, has committed vast acts of sexual abuse, kills gay people, and wishes to impose Sharia law.
	And you say to yourself as a rational person, why would they do that?
	That supposedly disagrees with all of their sentiments.
	And the reason they do this is because they literally hate the entire Western system.
	And so they are allied with anyone else who hates the Western system.
	It is an alliance of convenience.
	It is an alliance of ideological convenience.
	Anyone who hates the Western systems, Western meritocracies, Western traditional values, anybody who hates those things, they are in favor of.
	And the worse those people are, the more they are in favor of those people.
	And this is why what's going on between Israel and Gaza, between Israel and Hamas, more specifically, why that has become such a litmus test for the far left.
	Because they are willing to tolerate literally the worst people on the planet.
	They're willing to back and support literally the worst people on the planet who would kill them if they had a chance.
	They're willing to support those people because it shows fealty.
	It's skin in the game.
	It seems crazy, but the crazier it is, the more fealty you are showing to the movement that wishes to destroy the West.
	If you are truly in favor of a mission to destroy the West, and you believe Western values are really bad, and you believe America is really bad and a nefarious force on the world stage, Then the reason that you're allying with specifically these people is because they are the worst, not in spite of the fact they're the worst, because they are the worst.
	For a lot of these folks, it's like joining a cult.
	You have to do the craziest thing possible to show fealty to the cult.
	Well, the craziest thing possible is to support Hamas in this particular battle.
	We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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	So how crazy are these people?
	Over at Vanderbilt University, a bunch of undergrad students whose parents should be ashamed of themselves.
	They've done a horrible job parenting.
	And yes, blame the parents.
	You're talking about 18, 19, 20-year-old people who are complete dolts, who have no moral center whatsoever.
	Well, a wave of undergrad students rushed Kirkland Hall, which is where the Vanderbilt Chancellor's Office is located, according to Susie Weiss writing for the Free Press.
	And they began a sit-in, a response to the college administration shutting down a student government vote over whether the school should divest funds from Israel.
	Which, again, the school should not divest funds from Israel.
	It's always amazing to me that all these people are calling for divestment from Israel, but not from, say, Iran.
	Or, say, from Russia over the Ukraine war.
	Or from China, which is currently engaged in the persecution of a million Uyghurs.
	I don't care about any of that, because, again, all of those states happen to be anti-American.
	They care about the state that's pro-America.
	In any case, these protesters stick around for 25 and a half hours, and then police started removing and arresting some of the students for trespass.
	So the craziest moment here comes courtesy of one of these students who literally called 911.
	Why did the student call 911?
	Because a friend of the student, who was part of the sit-in, had to change her tampon.
	I'm not kidding.
	Specifically, she was quote, being denied the right to change her tampon that has been in for multiple hours, which leads to an increased risk of toxic shock syndrome.
	And the 9-1-1 operator was like, ma'am, do you have an emergency?
	And the student said they wanted medical assistance, and the 9-1-1 operator was like, well, I mean, do you need an ambulance?
	And the student is like, well, no, we don't need an ambulance, we need a tampon.
	So you went to a protest, and you didn't bring a pad, you brought a tampon, and now this is a 9-1-1 call, because you're all fragile snowflake morons with perverse senses of morality.
	And somehow, the First Amendment owes you a tampon because you were too stupid to bring a replacement.
	In another one of the videos, one of the protesters approaches the police and the administrator, demanding to know what will happen to her friend should she leave the sit-in to change the tampon in question.
	And the officers say that she won't be arrested if she leaves the building.
	But this protester is like, but then will she be arrested ever?
	She doesn't feel safe.
	Here is this protester.
	Like a serious situation. I need to know there's someone here who's going to go into like toxic stuff.
	And we will take care of it. We're going to escort them out.
	Okay, hold on. Hold on. She leaves the building and then what happens?
	If we leave the building, right, let's take her back to her room and get food.
	And that's all I can tell you right now, right? Get food, get food.
	I need to know what is going to happen when she leaves the building.
	She's not going to be arrested if she leaves the building.
	Okay. So we will not be arrested as soon as we leave the building.
	No, you're not going to be arrested as soon as you leave the building, right?
	If you want to go back and get... I don't know.
	If I knew, I would tell you.
	Because I don't know.
	So who knows?
	I don't know yet.
	So who knows?
	I don't know yet.
	All I know is...
	All I know is...
	If we have somebody that's in a medical situation, let's get them the medical attention they need.
	get them the medical attention they need.
	Let's get her to her room, right?
	And I'm telling you, when you go out the room, you're not going to be arrested for leaving the building.
	She does not feel safe!
	You have verified nothing for her!
	All you've said... Verified nothing.
	They're yelling at this guy for no reason.
	That's not what I said.
	You said she cannot stay in her room.
	You didn't say she could stay in her room, though.
	These cowering, pathetic administrators and the cops who are standing there, the renter cops who are standing there, they should arrest these people for trespass.
	Now, they're violating the rules in Vanderbilt.
	And instead, they're catering to them.
	And this is the entire older generation of Democrats right now.
	They have decided to cater to the whims of a group of childish idiots.
	This is what they've decided to do.
	Joe Biden is doing this at the presidential level.
	College administrators are doing this at the college level.
	A bunch of weak-minded dolts are being led by another bunch of weak-minded adults who happen to also be young people who believe whatever they see on TikTok.
	Joe Biden, remember, was supposed to be the adult in the room.
	The people at Vandy are supposed to be the adults in the room.
	Where are the adults in the room?
	Why don't you be an adult for a damned change?
	But instead, you're going to cater to these people in the hopes of winning their votes.
	That is the way a country dies.
	It really is quite pathetic.
	So again, Joe Biden has a choice.
	He could be the adult in the room.
	Again, to go back to the Bill Clinton vs. Barack Obama model, in 1992, Bill Clinton is running for president, and there is a speaker named Sista Soulja, and Sista Soulja says some truly racist things about white people, and Bill Clinton, running for president, has what they call a Sista Soulja moment.
	It's literally named after this moment when he calls out what she is doing and he says, she is being racist.
	And this was considered an act of bravery because he was saying that, yes, it is possible for a black radical to actually be racist against white people and you shouldn't use the kind of language she's using.
	And there's a big win for him in the Democratic primaries and in the general election in 1992.
	No Democrat will do that now.
	Now they would all cater to Sista Soulja.
	Now they would decide that Sista Soulja is right.
	That actually, she has some important things to say, as Joe Biden said.
	Or maybe we have to send some administrators down to massage her shoulders the way they did at Vanderbilt University.
	When you cater to crazy people, you end up with a crazier country.
	And I hope in electoral laws, you deserve to lose if you decide to cater to the crazy that's drawn every side of the political aisle.
	All the American people want is some semblance of normalcy.
	That's all they want.
	They're begging for it.
	We're begging for it.
	Some semblance of just being an adult with a normal set of values.
	That would be amazing from anyone at any time.
	And instead, we've just decided that we're gonna elevate crazy on pretty much every side of the political aisle.
	And it's totally wild.
	It's insane.
	We're tearing ourselves apart by elevating crazy.
	Now, I think there's a reason why we are elevating crazy to this extent in the end.
	And I think the real reason why we're elevating crazy across the aisle is because we don't have a centralizing set of values.
	It used to be that the older generation would say to the younger generation, guys, you're morons.
	You don't know what you're talking about.
	Let me give you some time-tested wisdom.
	As Thomas Sowell has talked about in the realm of economics, but it's true across all branches of knowledge, there are a few ways that you gather data that is useful in your life.
	Way one is you do controlled studies.
	But even controlled studies are not gonna be as good as time-tested wisdom used over the course of centuries.
	This is why it is very important to transmit culture and rules and values to your kids.
	This is why religion has traditionally been an extremely useful preserve of actually maintaining cultural and systemic health.
	Because when I teach my kids the rules and I say that God says you should do X, Y, and Z, I'm not just saying that God says you should do X, Y, and Z because I read the Bible this morning.
	I'm saying that God says do X, Y, and Z because I have a transmitted history of cultural utility that is thousands of years long, that these rules have worked over the course of thousands of years, and I'm transmitting it to you.
	And the proof of the godliness of the rules on a utilitarian level is that they work.
	The rules are useful, and thus it's pretty good proof that if God said them, he was right.
	And even on a utilitarian level, if God didn't say them, he was still right, is sort of the idea.
	But as religion has declined, as people are afraid, as parents are afraid of inculcating values in their kids, you got a problem.
	We'll get to more on this in just a second.
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	Now, there are some critiques that have been made of classical liberalism along these lines, and those critiques are somewhat well-founded.
	There are a lot of people, conservatives, who are out there saying that classical liberalism, which suggests freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all these sorts of ideas, that the problem with that is that it can lead quickly to moral relativism if there is no centralizing, coherent set of values we all share.
	That's true.
	Liberalism can lead to moral relativism.
	The idea, let a thousand flowers bloom, is fine as long as the flowers are within a certain set of parameters.
	If you are basically saying that all views are equivalent and that is why liberalism is important, that's wrong.
	Not all views are the same and not all views are good.
	There are certainly very many bad views.
	The rationale for liberalism is as a restriction on tyrants.
	That's what liberalism is for.
	Liberalism is a response to people who would shut down valuable speech.
	That's what liberalism is for.
	But the roots of classical liberalism lie in a shared tradition of virtue.
	That's true for any set of freedoms.
	Any set of freedoms has to exist within a set of broader rules.
	Think about any game that you're playing.
	If you're playing chess, you have the freedom to make any move that is within the rules on the board.
	If you just upturn the chessboard, that is not liberalism anymore.
	Now what you have done is you have taken the freedoms and you have extended them into a realm that defeats the freedoms and destroys the freedoms.
	There has to be a shared set of rules and parameters in order for any of this to uphold.
	Okay, well, what has happened in our culture is that religion and religious values, Judeo-Christian, Biblical values, these used to be the shared basis for our culture, and then we could share a lot of freedom within those broad parameters.
	But as Judeo-Christian values have devolved, as they've fallen apart, as fewer people go to church, as fewer people go to synagogue, as fewer people go to a church or synagogue that actually teaches the Bible, and there's still people who are going to church or synagogue, and those synagogues and churches are just teaching the church of Karl Marx or the church of John Dewey or the church of FDR or the church of Barack Obama or the church of Joe Biden, As that has happened, religion has declined.
	And as that happens, you let in the crazies.
	Because once there's no shared set of parameters, then any conspiracy theory at all gets through the door.
	I was thinking about this a lot this week, in the context of what's going on with just, it seems like every conspiracy theory is now being given a hearing.
	The only reason that conspiracy theories end up gaining a lot of traction is when there is institutional distrust.
	And that institutional distrust has certainly been earned by, for example, the legacy media or the scientific community, which promotes absolute lies on a fairly regular basis because they have a set of values and narratives that override the facts.
	And the converse of that is that people aren't going to trust anything that you have to say.
	When the government, it turns out, is incompetent at many, many things, and also involves itself in your life in many, many things.
	You're going to have institutional distrust for the government, and anything the government says, you are now not going to believe.
	The big check on this used to be godly values.
	It used to be church.
	It used to be going out and touching grass, being with some real people and discussing what's rational and true.
	But as sources of truth decline, and the biggest source of truth of all, of course, is religion.
	As those sources of truth and values decline, what fills the gap is a necessity to explain the world around you.
	People want to explain the world around them.
	And they have a bunch of tools, historically, that they've used to explain the world around them.
	One of those tools, the most important tool, is the tool of biblical religion in the West.
	The tool of the idea that there is a God who stands above the creation of the universe, and there is a logic to his universe, and there is a set of moral rules that guide you through that universe.
	That is the basic religious principle of all biblical living.
	As that declines, people see a disconnected set of events and they immediately search for some sort of explanation for that disconnected set of events.
	Many people find that in slavish adherence to a political party.
	Okay, there's a political narrative and that political narrative is now going to be framed onto reality to explain everything.
	We'll have a monocausal explanation of everything.
	This is what leftism is.
	Marxism suggests, for example, that there's a monocausal explanation of everything and it's class conflict.
	You wanna understand why this girl is acting all weird at Bandy?
	It must be because of class conflict.
	Really, underneath, it's a reflection of the deprivations of capitalism.
	And then you have right-wing explanations that are similarly all-encompassing, that anything bad that's happening in the world must be the result of a cadre of evil elites who are sitting there and planning everything out.
	That'd be sort of the far-right equivalent.
	This is why conspiracy theories thrive, because when institutional trust declines, and when biblical values, which was the ultimate explanation for everything, when that declines, there's nothing to fill the gap except for constant conspiratorialism.
	And it's why there is this now, this new push to explain everything through conspiracy.
	Everything.
	Everything is a conspiracy.
	Because the world's a puzzling place and you need an explanation.
	And the easy explanation is to make one up in your own head about how there is a group of people in a back room somewhere who are manipulating all the systems.
	It can't just be that life is totally chaotic and that there are a lot of people who are morons out there doing stupid crap.
	It can't be that.
	It has to be that there is actually something deep and nefarious going on.
	And it's every single story.
	Right?
	When there's a bridge collapse in Baltimore, You end up with the left making the claim that it has something to do with dirty fuel, and you have the right making the claim that it has something to do with DEI, and I don't know, because I don't know the facts yet.
	The facts are still coming out, and when the facts come out, then we'll know exactly why that happened.
	We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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	You get weird conspiracy theories about Princess Kate.
	Princess Kate goes missing.
	And it's fairly obvious that when a fairly prominent person goes missing, it's probably a health problem.
	And instead, you get just tons of conspiracy theories on all sides of the aisle.
	And then, when Princess Kate comes out and says, I just had to have chemotherapy for cancer, a new slate of conspiracy theories arises.
	According to the Washington Post, users on TikTokX and Facebook shared videos pointing out alleged AI breadcrumbs in her latest video, such as a ring disappearing and reappearing on Catherine's hand.
	Others said her hair moves unnaturally, or that the bed of daffodils in the background is suspiciously still.
	The tendency of our society right now to buy into nearly every conspiracy theory and to give it all a hearing without just saying, nope, that sounds stupid, is a reflection of the complete decentralization of values.
	Because now you'll be willing to hear pretty much anything.
	Is the CIA behind everything that you see and hear?
	Is it possible that the moon landing never happened?
	Is it possible that there's a cadre of sick people in perverse industries who are all working together behind the scenes because of their race or religion?
	These kinds of conspiracy theories are arising because of the vacuum of values.
	That vacuum of values Is almost solely due to the decline of religion.
	The decline of religious life in America is the single worst thing that's happened to the United States since about 1950.
	It continues apace today.
	All the institutions, the secular institutions that were supposed to fill that gap failed because of course they were going to fail.
	Because no secular rationale can fill the explanation that God plays in our lives.
	And so what you end up with is a bunch of fools running around suggesting their own supposedly plausible explanations for what is happening.
	And again, this is why the ultimate explanation, the most self-serving conspiracy theory of all, and the one that has arisen on all sides of the political aisle, is a sense of victimization.
	Because when you feel that the world around you is chaotic and confused and discombobulated, when you feel that, you feel like a victim.
	And then you look for an explanation as to why your failures are not your own fault.
	And it must be because there's someone who's stopping you from succeeding.
	And the hardest thing to understand in the world when you are failing is that maybe it is your fault.
	Maybe you do need to change the things that you're doing in your life.
	This is true, by the way, for 90% of human problems.
	At least in a free West.
	There are certainly places in the world where tyranny abides.
	That is not true in the United States of America.
	90% of people's problems are generally solvable by them and by the community in which they live.
	And this attempt by politicians always have a stake in engaging in the conspiracy theory because the beauty of being engaged in a conspiracy theory is that the prophet is the person who promulgates it.
	The person who promulgates the conspiracy theory is the person that you're supposed to listen to because they will guide you forward.
	They will help you.
	They will alleviate all your problems if you just give them enough power.
	They will fight it.
	They will destroy the Matrix.
	They will destroy all the things you're seeing, and they will lead you free.
	It'll be like Plato's cave.
	They'll come back from outside the cave, and they will lead you back toward the light.
	They never lead you toward the light, by the way.
	Because every failure can now be attributed to that same conspiracy.
	If they fail to lead you to it, if your life does not get better, if you buy into their conspiracy theory and your life still does not get better and you give them power and your life still does not get better, they just say that's because the conspiracy is so damned powerful there's no way they can overcome it.
	This is the danger of conspiratorial thinking and it is filling up every cup that has been left empty by God and religion and community.
	It's filling up all the political cups right now.
	It's extremely dangerous.
	The left-wing brand is, of course, what Joe Biden is doing right now by suggesting that the system is rigged against a wide variety of people.
	But it's also happening on the right, where the suggestion is, without evidence in many cases, that the system is rigged.
	Here's the thing.
	There are situations in the United States where the system is rigged, but you can tell what they are not because someone posits a conspiracy theory without any evidence whatsoever, just spitting out dumb conspiracy theories, but because people say it and they do it.
	It is not a conspiracy theory, for example, to suggest that Asians are being discriminated against on college campuses.
	You know how you know it?
	Because you can see it in the statistics and in the recruitment materials and in all of the documentation at all of the major colleges.
	That's not a conspiracy theory.
	You know what is a conspiracy theory?
	It is a conspiracy theory that there is a cadre of powerful people who are manipulating the music industry so as to hide their own devilish hand.
	That's a conspiracy theory because you don't have any evidence for it.
	But it helps people sleep at night.
	What America needs wants to get back to normal.
	Same thing it always needed.
	Church, community, a fact-based, rational approach to politics.
	That's all people need.
	Maybe they don't want it.
	Maybe it's too easy in this day and age to jump immediately to some sort of narrative that explains why you're a victim of the society in which you live, in the freest, most prosperous society in the history of humanity.
	But that's not gonna lead you to a happy life, and it's not gonna lead America to a happier place.
	In just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden's economy.
	They're trying to wish-cast themselves into a polling victory.
	It's not gonna happen.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Meanwhile, the Biden administration trying to wish cast itself to victory.
	So they're appealing to the far left of their own base.
	And then they're also trying to wish cast themselves to victory.
	So Janet Yellen is trying to convince Americans that they really feel good about the economy.
	She's using the old Jedi mind trick here.
	I mean, I don't know if that applies among hobbits, but here she is attempting it.
	What I want Americans to see is how successful the president's agenda, which is not just a short-term agenda, but a medium and longer-term agenda that is designed to create good jobs in parts of the country that in many ways have been left behind and making us more secure and bringing down costs for Americans.
	I mean, they've been so successful.
	Well, there's only one problem, which is that they have not actually been all that successful.
	According to the Federal Reserve Governor, Chris Waller, he said on Wednesday night, he's in no hurry to cut interest rates after hotter inflation data in the first two months of the year.
	So there's no rush to cut the policy, right?
	He said, the recent data tells me it is prudent to hold this rate at its current restrictive stance, perhaps for longer than previously thought, to help keep inflation on a sustainable trajectory toward 2%.
	Which of course is correct.
	The fact is the Biden economy is overheated.
	It's been overheated by Joe Biden.
	He's spending too much money.
	And he pledges higher taxes and more spending.
	And by the way, again, one of the stupidities of American politics is that you're not allowed to talk about the actual issues in American politics lest you offend somebody.
	One of the biggest actual issues is, of course, the retirement age.
	Got myself in big hot water a couple of weeks ago because I said, hey guys, the retirement age in the United States should not be 62, it should not be 65, and it should not be 67 when it comes to publicly funded retirement.
	Oh no!
	Every single human being who knows anything about economics or public spending understands that social security will go insolvent.
	The Biden administration has no plans on that.
	And if you mention any plans on that, apparently you get electrocuted.
	Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen actually said, quote, that Biden does not have a plan.
	Only principles when it comes to preventing Social Security from going insolvent.
	No plan, only principles.
	So, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told Yellen, I'll note there's already been $4.9 trillion in new taxes proposed for those making over 400 grand a year.
	It seems to be the go-to place.
	Fill in the blank.
	We're going to tax those over $400,000 a year for whatever.
	Of that $4.9 trillion, none of that has been dedicated to Social Security.
	Cassidy asked Yellen what the tax rate would have to be on those earners to address the unfunded accrued liability for Social Security.
	Yellen said, I don't have that computation.
	And then she said, the president does not have a plan.
	He has principles.
	What exactly would those principles be?
	The principles are that you can't do anything with it and you're going to kick the can down the road until Social Security goes completely bankrupt, at which point you will slash the benefits and blame whoever's in power.
	That is the way this is likely going to go and everyone knows it.
	Washington, D.C.
	has become a place where no problems get solved, including the ones created by Washington, D.C.
	You just kick it down the road until somebody else opens the time bomb.
	That's effectively where we are.
	Now, they're hoping, against hope, that basically the way out of this dilemma is just a massively booming American economy.
	And despite the fact that we are reproducing at 1.6 as opposed to the 2.1 necessary in order to even sustain a demographic curve, That this will all be fixed by AI.
	According to Axios, over the last 15 years, weak capital investment in rich countries has held back productivity growth.
	That may be about to change.
	The pathway to higher incomes and standards of living rests on economies finding ways to deploy their labor forces more productively.
	Productivity growth has been weak in the United States and Western Europe since 2008, but things look better among many emerging markets.
	Right now, authors from McKinsey are optimistic a confluence of factors will make the years ahead different.
	They say that there is new global demand, and countries experiencing labor shortages, and they're hoping that AI is going to fix all the problems.
	Well, maybe AI fixes all the problems, or maybe AI creates a bunch of new sets of problems.
	I tend to be optimistic about the power of AI.
	I mean, it's just unbelievable what the AI can do.
	If you've checked ChatGPT lately, they've fixed, like, nearly all the bugs that originally were disturbing about ChatGPT.
	With that said, is that going to solve the economic malaise?
	The lack of innovation that exists outside a peculiar strain in Silicon Valley?
	I really don't think so.
	Not when, especially creators, are being taxed into the ground to fund ongoing liabilities that we have no plan to actually solve.
	Meanwhile, the White House continues to futz around on things that seem like fairly easy political issues.
	So, obviously, the Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is a bit of a shocking video, obviously.
	The Francis Scott Key Bridge has collapsed.
	The White House is now warning of a difficult path on rebuilding.
	It took seven years for the bridge to be built in the first place.
	Unclear at this point exactly why the bridge went down, although I have a good explanation, which is that it got hit by a giant ship.
	That'd probably be the reason.
	Apparently, multiple alarms were heard from the ship's data recorder at 1.24 a.m.
	At 1.26, the pilot asked nearby tugboats for help.
	At 1.27, the pilot ordered the ship's anchor be dropped.
	This is all just minutes before the crash.
	The crash took place at about 1.30 a.m.
	And it was because they did warn people on the bridge what was going on that there were no cars on the bridge, apparently, at the time.
	The administration has a pretty easy job of this, which is we'll handle whatever is coming our way.
	There will be supply chain disruptions.
	This is a terrible tragedy.
	It's horrible this happened, and we're going to rebuild as soon as possible.
	It's actually not all that hard.
	It actually is a place where the federal government and interventionist federal government Under Joe Biden, he could theoretically get a political win out of this.
	He could say, listen, I've been talking about infrastructure spending for years at this point.
	We need to go and rebuild this thing as fast as humanly possible.
	And I'm here to say that that's exactly what we're going to do.
	Right.
	Joe Biden, all he has to do is travel one hour to get to that bridge.
	He is not doing that.
	Karine Jean-Pierre says Joe Biden will visit Baltimore at an appropriate time, presumably when the Matlock reruns are not on.
	I don't have an update for you.
	Obviously we want to do it when it is the appropriate time on the ground.
	We're going to continue to have conversations with obviously local officials on the ground to get To get a sense of what their needs are, but we want to make sure that we do not disrupt their efforts.
	You just heard from the Secretary and Vice Admiral, this is a major, major undertaking and so we don't want to get in the way.
	But you heard from the President, he wants to get there as quickly as he can.
	Well, I mean, as quickly as you can be like in a car right now, like going to the to the bridge.
	That's like that's that's what he would be doing.
	But Joe Biden is not a problem solver.
	He's a problem creator, which is presumably why the Biden administration is still suing the state of Texas to prevent them from taking measures to close America's southern border.
	Again, we have an episode of Divided States of Biden is up right now about the fentanyl crisis.
	That is, in fact, a border crisis, as I spoke to President Trump about.
	That is the same issue.
	The border, the fentanyl crisis, one in the same.
	Well now, a panel of federal appellate court judges late on Tuesday continued to block Texas from arresting and jailing migrants under state immigration law SB4, keeping a hold on the measure while it weighs its legality.
	In a two-month decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Texas' request to suspend the lower court order that found SB4 unconstitutional and in conflict with federal immigration laws.
	Now, again, basically the case the federal government is making is we are occupying the area on immigration.
	Therefore, states cannot legislate on immigration.
	Also, we're not going to do anything about immigration, which seems like a fundamental dereliction of duty on the part of the federal government under Joe Biden.
	S.P.
	Ford creates state crimes for entering or re-entering the state from Mexico outside an official port of entry.
	Those actions are already illegal under federal law.
	Law enforcement officials at the state, county, and local level would be authorized to stop, jail, and prosecute migrants suspected of violating these new criminal statutes.
	It would also allow state judges to order migrants to return to Mexico as an alternative to continuing their prosecution.
	The Biden administration, for its part, is suing to stop that because they like the open border, apparently.
	And just another indicator of how poorly thought out and run this presidency is, and how inhot to their left wing they are, because there really is no practical reason why you would not just reinstall the remain-in-Mexico policy that Donald Trump had already negotiated with Mexico, or change border patrol policy such that if you arrive and you do not have any sort of serious asylum claim, we can't just reject you and send you back across the border.
	Instead, the Biden administration is facilitating illegal entry.
	They're leaving the border wide open to extraordinary amounts of fentanyl crossing that's on the border.
	I know because I've been down there and I've looked at it.
	We did a full investigation on it.
	That was episode one of Divided States of Biden.
	You should go check out both episodes if you want to understand what's going on with fentanyl and the border.
	Well, meanwhile, the media piranhas over at MSNBC and NBC News have decided that it's not enough for them to have rejected Ronna McDaniel as a contributor to the network.
	Now they have to get whoever even asked her to be at the network fired.
	According to the Washington Post, they say that MSNBC President Rashida Jones participated in recruiting RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel earlier this month, and McDaniel was offered a more lucrative contributor contract after she agreed to appear on MSNBC and not just NBC News.
	Obviously, this investigation is the predicate to the firing of Rashida Jones.
	Anyone who deigned to talk to the former RNC chair, had to be fired.
	Now, again, I've had this experience myself.
	Just last year, I wrote a newsletter for Politico, and everyone lost their damned minds at Politico.
	They had to have these full-scale, 100-person editorial calls, struggle sessions, where they were ripped up and down for allowing me to write the sacred playbook for Politico.
	Ooh-hoo-hoo!
	The playbook!
	Ooh!
	I remember it was a huge controversy at the time.
	Our senator, Tom Cotton, Who's editorial about how we should unleash the National Guard on rioters, how that was treated as not only verboten, so dangerous that the op-ed editor had to actually, James Bennett, had to actually be fired from his job.
	Now they're doing the same thing over at NBC and MSNBC.
	Again, this all falls within a particular matrix of thinking with regard to the media left.
	For the media left, if you disagree with them, it's because, talk about conspiracy theories, you're a tool.
	You're a tool of some unnamed forces.
	The latest episode of this particularly stupid show comes courtesy of our friends over at The View.
	When I say our friends over at The View, I mean the low IQ idiots who are on panel at The View.
	Again, enough brain power to possibly toast a piece of bread extremely lightly.
	Maybe melt a little bit of butter in that brain microwave over there.
	Not much going on at all.
	The electrical signals between neurons, very weak.
	Not a lot of wattage.
	In any case, they had on an extremely good writer named Coleman Hughes.
	And Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of the crew there are very angry at Coleman Hughes.
	Why are they angry at Coleman Hughes?
	They're angry because Coleman Hughes is an iconoclastic black writer.
	Which is a thing you can't allow.
	He's a person who says not all the time left-wing things.
	And so Whoopi Goldberg spends 10 minutes berating him for not being a Democrat.
	Explain to folks what you mean by this.
	Arguments for a colorblind America.
	What do you mean when you say that?
	So a lot of people equate colorblindness to, I don't see race, or to pretending not to see race.
	I think that's a big mistake.
	We all see race, right?
	And we're all capable of being racially biased, so we should all be self-aware to that possibility.
	My argument is not for that.
	My argument is that we should try our very best to treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and our public policy.
	Okay, so perfectly rational, perfectly reasonable.
	But that's too much for Whoopi Goldberg, who starts to go nuts on him, because again, these are verboten perspectives.
	When you say that socioeconomics picks out people in a better way than race, when you do look at the socioeconomics, you see the huge disparity between white households and black households.
	You see the huge disparity between white households No.
	and hispanic households so your argument and i've read your book twice because i
	wanted to give the chance uh... your argument that race has no place in that
	equation is really fundamentally flawed
	no two separate questions
	one is whether each racial group is socio-economically the same that
	I agree with you, they're not.
	Yeah, they're not.
	And the stats show that.
	Yeah, of course, I agree with that fully.
	The question is, how do you address that in a way that actually targets poverty the best?
	And what Martin Luther King wrote in his book, Why We Can't Wait, is he called it, we need a bill of rights for the disadvantaged.
	And he said, yes, we should address racial inequality.
	Yes, we should address the legacy of slavery.
	But the way to do that is on the basis of class.
	And that will disproportionately target blacks and Hispanics because they're disproportionately poor, but it will be doing so in a way that also helps the white poor, in a way that addresses poverty as the thing to be addressed.
	Okay, so he keeps his cool.
	Sunny Hostin then goes on to suggest that he is a pawn of right-wing nefarious forces.
	Your argument for colorblindness, I think, is something that the right has co-opted.
	And so many in the black community, if I'm being honest with you, Because I want to be.
	Believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right, and that you're a charlatan of sorts.
	I don't think I've been co-opted by anyone.
	I've only voted twice, both for Democrats.
	Although, I'm an independent, I would vote for a Republican.
	Probably a non-Trump Republican, if they were compelling.
	I don't think there's any evidence I've been co-opted by anyone, and I think that that's an ad hominem tactic people use to not address really the important conversations we're having here.
	And I think it's better, and it would be Better for everyone if we stuck to the topics rather than make it about me.
	It's not about you, but I want to give you the opportunity to respond to the criticism.
	I appreciate it.
	There's no evidence that I've been co-opted by anyone.
	I have an independent podcast.
	I work for CNN as an analyst.
	I write for the free press.
	I'm independent in all of these endeavors and no one is paying me to say what I'm saying.
	I'm saying it because I feel it.
	Again, the fact that he stays calm there is a credit to Coleman Hughes because being insulted as a tool of the establishment because you happen to cross swords with the adults over at The View is truly an amazing thing.
	Here, I'm playing a lot of Coleman Hughes here because he did a tremendous job on The View.
	And it's also rare when The View has on somebody who, again, has more than a double digit IQ.
	Here is Coleman Hughes taking on another one of the intelligentsia, Joy Behar, on the similarity between white supremacy and leftism.
	You write that the anti-racism movement, there are a couple of People I don't even know who they are.
	Robyn D'Angelo.
	Robyn D'Angelo, Ibram Kendi, for instance.
	Okay.
	Well, you say that that is just another form of racism, and you even say it has a lot in common with white supremacy.
	How can you compare those two things?
	You're comparing it to white supremacy.
	Because they both view your race as an extremely significant part of who you are.
	So white supremacists, they obviously say, we all know what they say, okay?
	Neoracists like Rob DiAngelo, they say that to be white is to be ignorant, for example.
	Well, this is a racial stereotype, and I want to call a spade a spade and say this is not the style of anti-racism we have to be teaching our kids.
	We should be teaching them that your race is not a significant feature of who you are.
	Who you are is your character, your value, and your skin color doesn't say anything about that.
	That's actually misrepresenting what Robin DiAngelo's position is.
	It's in her book.
	I mean, Coleman Hughes happens to be correct.
	Again, points to him for staying calm.
	I've been in these situations myself.
	It can be very difficult to stay calm when people are just spewing foolishness and insults at you at the exact same time.
	Well, folks, we've talked about a lot on the show.
	Joe Biden's economy has been inflation ridden.
	Inflation continues to run about 50% hotter than you're supposed to want it to run if you're the Federal Reserve.
	Joining us online to discuss all of this is Philip Patrick.
	precious metal specialist spokesperson for Birch Gold Group.
	They've been our gold favorites for years, of course, and they're a big sponsor of the show.
	Philip was born in London, earned a degree in politics and international relations at the
	University of Reading and spent years as a wealth manager at Citigroup in London's Wall Street before
	taking his current position with Birch Gold Group back in 2012. Philip, thanks so much for
	the time. Thank you for having me.
	So let's talk about Congress finally passing a federal budget six months into the fiscal year.
	What does all of that mean for 2025 and beyond?
	I mean, it doesn't look good.
	Looking at the 2025 proposed budget, it looks like more of a wish list, not so much a budget, but part of his re-election campaign.
	I mean, $7.3 trillion In total spending, that's a trillion dollars more than he wanted for 2024.
	It's just absurd.
	Now, it does come with proposed tax hikes, but they would only pay for one third of the additional debt.
	Now, thankfully, it looks like there's zero chance of this passing the House, which is why it looks to be more political theatre than a serious budget.
	But essentially, it's more of the same thinking that got us where we are today.
	The Biden regime has already racked up six trillion dollars in debt.
	That's almost as much as Obama's total debt over eight years.
	And of course, Biden's done it in a little over three.
	The economy is suffering on the back of it.
	So his solution is just more spending and more of the same.
	Of course, we know the 2024 budget was finally passed on Saturday, and it largely tracks with the deal made with former Speaker of the House McCarthy, worked back in 2023, which is absurd, right?
	We can't forget McCarthy was ousted to prevent exactly this from reoccurring again.
	And here we are again, another $1.7 trillion in debt.
	It's a complete and utter surrender.
	It's just outrageous.
	And ultimately, as we know, it's unsustainable.
	We cannot continue down this path.
	Well, the fact is that as Congress continues to kick the can down the road, spending more and more money, borrowing more and more money, they're always leaving it up to the Federal Reserve to sort of fill in the gap, which means that it really is the Federal Reserve in control of the nature of the American economy.
	Central banks have far too much control over pretty much all the Western economies right now.
	This is why everybody who's an investor is constantly watching to see Which way Jerome Powell is blowing on any given day looking for the weather vane.
	Well, right now the Federal Reserve has claimed that they are going to look at several interest rate cuts this year.
	But the inflation rate is currently running at 3% annualized minimum.
	Maybe running higher than that.
	And we're supposed to be at 2% before you start cutting interest rates.
	If you cut the interest rates, presumably the inflation goes back up.
	What do you think are the prospects of future interest rate cuts?
	Are they going to cut just before the election to try and boost Biden?
	What do you think is going to happen here?
	Look, two months ago I would have said absolutely yes and it looked like we were getting set up for that.
	As you implied, certainly a political move given where inflation is.
	Today I'm not so sure.
	I mean, Jerome Powell gave a 60-minute interview back in February and he said, and I quote, It's probably time or pastime to get back to having an adult conversation amongst elected officials about getting the federal government back on a sustainable fiscal path.
	And I thought he made the point even clearer when he said, and again, I quote, every generation should really pay for the things it needs and not hand the bills down to our children and grandchildren.
	For me, this was basically a slap in the face to the Biden administration.
	This is the man who's responsible for maintaining the dollar's purchasing power, essentially telling elected officials to stop, to grow up and stop robbing from our grandchildren and pay our own bills.
	I have to say, I haven't been Powell's biggest fan, but I respected him for this.
	You know, after all, he may not lower interest rates, particularly on the back of surging inflation on the last two reports.
	So we'll wait and see.
	But he may have his legacy in mind now and do the right thing.
	So despite everything that's going on, obviously, America, in terms of its economy versus the rest of the world, we're sort of the best house on a bad block right now, in the sense that investment dollars are still flowing into the United States because there's legitimately no place else to put those investment dollars.
	With that said, there has been a move by America's enemies to de-dollarize.
	That's happening in China, it's happening with Russia, it's happening with many of the BRICS nations.
	What do you think is the future of the American dollar if we continue to spend like this?
	Look, it doesn't look good.
	I think you're absolutely right.
	We are, pardon the expression, the tallest midget in the room still, but we are creating a case for de-dollarization, and we're doing it in two forms.
	First of all, devaluation, right?
	Let's not forget the dollar's lost 16% of its purchasing power since the pandemic.
	Now, we see that as inflation here in the US, but other nations that own dollars see it as currency devaluation, and they're seeing You know, the value of their purchasing power starting to dwindle.
	The other side, of course, is weaponization, right?
	When Biden regime froze Russia's dollar reserves, they sent a message to the rest of the world.
	Your assets could become liabilities overnight if you make a decision that isn't popular here in the United States.
	Now, what we've seen on the back of that is two record years consecutively of gold buying by central governments.
	And it's pretty obvious why, right?
	Number one, it's the only asset that isn't someone else's liability.
	It cannot be defaulted on.
	By buying gold, it achieves two things for the BRICS and other nations.
	Number one, it's just been a good trade, right?
	In the same time period that the dollar has lost 17%, gold is up exactly 17%.
	Secondly, by Russia, China, Brazil, By them holding dollars, they're creating demand for dollars.
	The more demand, the stronger the dollar becomes, and the stronger the stick we are using to beat them.
	So by buying gold, it allows them to de-dollarize, puts pressure on the dollar, and longer term will weaken the argument for the dollar as global reserve.
	So I think the train of de-dollarization can continue, and it's concerning to say the least.
	That is Philip Patrick of our friends over at Birch Gold Group.
	Philip, really appreciate the time and the insight.
	Thank you.
	And again, guys, Birch Gold has been the exclusive gold partner of The Daily Wire for over seven years now, helping thousands of our listeners.
	They can help you as well.
	Text Ben to 989898.
	Get your free info kit on gold and talk to a precious metals specialist like Philip about protecting your savings from persistent inflation with gold.
	Again, text Ben to 989898 right now.
	All righty, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	We'll be joined on the line by Bishop Robert Barron.
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