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Oct. 1, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
47:53
WarRoom Battleground EP 623: The Left's Undermining Of Confidence In SCOTUS; Playing Down Abortion
Participants
Main voices
b
ben harnwell
14:11
m
mark paoletta
06:48
Appearances
c
chris hoar
03:33
d
dave brat
01:34
r
richard stern
04:50
Clips
m
mika brzezinski
00:12
s
steve bannon
00:29
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is what you're fighting for.
I mean, every day you're out there.
What they're doing is blowing people off.
If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians, get total control and total power.
Because this is just like in Arizona.
This is just like in Georgia.
It's another element that backs them into a corner and shows their lies and misrepresentations.
unidentified
This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
As we've told you, this is the fight.
unidentified
All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth.
War Room Battleground.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
Make us bilingual, so we listen both to the rational and to the emotional, especially pride and shame.
Because what I think we have here is a guy, Trump, who for personal reasons feels ashamed.
I think he does.
Harsh father.
And that would be neither here nor there, except that it's taught him how to grill into the kind of Shame felt by a very proud people.
Coal miners, you know, we kept the lights on.
We won World War I, won World War II.
So they have been structurally shamed.
And I think he appeals to that by turning shame to blame.
And I think he does it in four kinds of... He has an anti-shame ritual that he runs us through.
It goes like this, and it's almost every week, Renee.
For moment one, he says something transgressive.
You know, all immigrants are poison of the blood of America, or they're eating your pet cat or dog.
Moment one, transgressive state.
Moment two, the pundit reshames Donald Trump for saying this outrageous thing.
You can't say that.
America's an immigrant society.
How can you say that?
How can you promote a lie?
Okay, so moment two, pundit reshames Donald Trump.
Moment three, Donald Trump becomes the victim of this shaming.
He says, oh, look how hard it is.
Look, they're all ganging up on me.
Have they ganged up on you?
Do you feel shame too?
Yeah, I'll take the hit for you, because they're coming after me now, but they're coming after you later.
And in moment four, Donald Trump roars back at the shamers.
That's cathartic for them.
Yeah.
And I think, actually, that the Democratic part of America is listening to moment one and moment two, the outrageous state of the shaming, but that the Republican part of the country is listening to moment three and moment four, and that is to, you know, feel his victimhood and his revenge.
And that is how shame is turned into blame, which has grown and grown and grown.
The little moments, the 1, 2, 3, 4, have changed through time.
Issues have changed.
But that repeated ritual is working on people.
And so, yeah, the Democrats need to first see that's what's going on.
When it looks like he's just railing and off the rails and they're duped.
No, no, no, no.
There's a language we need to tune into.
and get heard so that our very good proposals can be heard.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Good evening.
Monday 30th of September, Anno Domini, 2024.
Harnwell here at the helm, filling in for Steve Bannon.
Very interesting introduction there in the cold open.
Thank you, Denver, for putting that together.
I just want to say, with all due respect to the lady who preceded me and was talking, in Springfield, they're eating the dogs, They're eating the cats.
They're eating the pets of the people who live there.
That's what Donald Trump said.
He was absolutely right as well.
She needs to get herself onto one of the many social media platforms that still allows free speech and look at some of the video clips that people have been uploading there.
Absolutely true.
And Donald Trump, I think, showed not for the first time his courage and his vision in speaking that truth out and saying what many Americans were seeing and hearing.
That the establishment has tried to clamp down on.
So, let's see the developments then.
Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat in Oregon, has launched his plans to reform the Supreme Court, suggesting lifting its numbers from 9 to 15 and the rolling 18-year term limit.
Mark Pelletter joins me.
to digest this, it's possible chances of success, whether it's simply performative,
as one might suspect, rather suspect, five weeks away from an election. Mark, good
morning to you. Tell me, I was particularly struck by his claim that the goal of this
bill, and I quote, is to restore public confidence in the Supreme Court. First
off, can you tell me something, does, for however high or low the Supreme Court's
approval ratings are, does it need to take any lessons from Congress?
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
Thanks for having me on, Ben.
It's a bill to destroy the Supreme Court, the independence of the Supreme Court.
And no, Congress, as I've pointed out many times, needs to get their own act together.
Their approval rating somewhere in the 16 to 18 percent with a 70 percent disapproval rating.
The American people despise Congress because of just this kind of stuff and the hypocrisy that you see every single day.
This bill, This is a, you know, one of a number of bills that just reveals the Democrats for what they are, which is this authoritarian party that wants to control the Supreme Court, just like Hugo Chavez did.
And you think, you know, making a reference to a strongman down in Venezuela isn't apt, but it really is.
You know, Hugo Chavez, when he came in, in 99, the Supreme Court struck down a lot of his Crazy, left-wing confiscatory acts.
And what did he do?
It was, I think, a 20-member Supreme Court.
He added 12 justices to that Supreme Court in 2004, working with the legislature, which he controlled.
And Over the next 10 years, that Supreme Court never once ruled against Hugo Chavez.
And listen to this now, 45,474 cases.
There's a study from a Venezuelan law professor that looked at that over 10 years until Chavez died.
It didn't get much better on Maduro.
But the point is, is that this is what these bills are meant to do, which is to say they want to take control of the Supreme Court.
They're furious that it's an independent Supreme Court and it found, as the Constitution provides, that, you know, there's presidential immunity for official acts, you know, that affirmative action is illegal, race-based affirmative action is illegal, that, you know, Loper Bright overturning the Chevron case and emboldening or, you know, creating this administrative state that controls our lives is illegal.
And so—or they're reining it back.
So, the Wyden bill basically adds six justices, OK?
But it also does other things, like it releases the IRS on the justices.
It makes each justice go through an audit every year.
Congress isn't subject to that, right?
And to release it, he wants to have a two-thirds supermajority to overturn an act of Congress. Now, this is — now, just
think about that. This is the Congress now saying, I am going to tell you, I'm going to control
how you do your job, justices of the Supreme Court, independent branch established by the
Constitution. So this is what they think is right, is permissible, is appropriate, is to have the
Congress say, we're going to tell you, justices, the Supreme Court, how to do your job, how to
reach decisions.
If you're allowed to do that, which is to say a two-thirds supermajority, why couldn't you say unanimous?
Or why couldn't you say every Democrat would have to agree in terms of striking down a bill?
So it's just an assault on the Supreme Court.
Kamala Harris has also supported a bill by Senator Whitehouse, which is even, I think, even more radical.
I mean, Senator—Senator Wyden is the head of the Finance Committee.
He's been after Justice Thomas for several years, OK, and using—kind of the Finance Committee controls the IRS.
So he's got his own little weapon, if you will, of unleashing the IRS on the justices.
What the White House bill does and what Kamala Harris is endorsing is to, I call it, pack and replace.
Every time you add a justice, it goes up to 18 justices is her plan, right?
But with each new justice, it's only the nine most recent justices that would have appellate jurisdiction, basically active service justices.
What does that mean?
That means in May of 2025, if Kamala Harris is elected, Clarence Thomas will be out of commission for almost every single Supreme Court case.
He will be waylaid by this bill if it went into law.
That's what they are doing.
They are hell-bent on replacing, destroying the court, replacing the conservative justices and controlling the Supreme Court on all these decisions.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Mark, tell me something, if you wouldn't mind.
One of the measures has within it this two-thirds vote to force a fellow justice, or presumably more than one, to recuse themselves against their will.
Well, if that measure were to go through right now, that could mean that the six Republican-appointed justices could force recuse the three Democrat justices, right?
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
Yes, I guess that's two-thirds.
And I'm glad you read the bill, Ben.
Yes, that's another provision in there where it's going to have two-thirds of the justices.
Again, it's trying to control the court in how they do their business.
Right now, justices are responsible for determining whether they're going to recuse themselves from from cases.
Just like, okay, there is really no recusal laws in Congress.
In fact, it allows them to, but to the extent that they're supposed to be.
The rules say in the Senate ethics book, and manual, and in the House, that individual members of Congress are responsible for determining whether they're going to recuse themselves.
Okay, so So, Senator Wyden is trying to impose on the Supreme Court something that the Senate is not subject to.
So, there is no problem with recusals.
There's none of these cases, OK, when you look at what I call the gaslighting of these cases.
I've done a lot of writing, and I'd refer you, the posse, to MarkPayla.com, in terms of all the op-eds of liberal justices You know, sitting on cases where, you know, their spouses were involved or, you know, other people came before the court for which they had a relationship, and the left had no problem with that at all.
Nothing Justice Thomas or Justice Alito or Justice Gorsuch or any of the justices, in terms of sitting on cases, has had a problem or any need to recuse.
So, you know, they're creating, and as I pointed out, In all of these ethics attacks, so-called ethics attacks, what they're trying to do is undermine confidence in the integrity of the court, the American people's support for the Supreme Court, because they don't like their opinions.
This is all about trying to control the Supreme Court's opinions.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Mark, at the very time that the Democrats are launching attack after attack on President Donald Trump, saying he's a threat to the Constitution, it would appear, looking at these These statements coming out from senior Democrat senators and the nominee herself, that these are the people who are the actual threat to the US Constitution.
Mark, thanks for coming on the show.
You mentioned your website, but where else can people go to keep up with your first rate analysis on all things Supreme Court related?
mark paoletta ▲ ● ▼
Thanks, Ben.
I'm at Mark Paoletta on X. Follow me.
I post up a lot.
And then I have a website, markpaoletta.com, where I put all my op-eds and congressional testimony and the like.
And I'm at the Center for Renewing America, headed by Russ Vogt, a great patriot, and have a lot of work over there on the presidential power to impound funds, which is a topic for another day.
But thanks for having me on.
I appreciate all you do and the posse does.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Thanks very much, Mark.
We'll catch up again with you soon.
God bless.
For our next guest, we have a quick cold open.
mika brzezinski ▲ ● ▼
Over 50 people of color who've had abortions, including activists, actresses, television writers, politicians, and two black members of Jane, which we'll get to in a moment.
unidentified
What did you set out to accomplish and what did you discover?
Well, one of the things that I found when I had my abortion is that I looked at the conversation that was happening on television, in the news, in politics, and it didn't include people who looked like me, despite the fact that the majority of people who have abortions are people of color.
And so we wanted to be able to write ourselves back into history.
We wanted to be able to say, wait a second, abortion's been around since the beginning of the time, right?
It has been in Egyptian papyruses.
It has been in ancient Chinese medical textbooks.
But where are us?
Where are our stories?
Where are we in this conversation?
And so all of us deserve to see ourselves in history and also be able to see where are we going with what's next to liberate abortion.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, my next guest, Christy Hamrick, works at Students for Life America.
Christy, good morning.
Tell me first off, that lady that was talking on MSNBC, She did say something which you often don't hear from the pro-choice brigades, normally often pushed out by the pro-life side, which is that the majority of people who have abortions are people of colour, are black, which is actually the statistic, the go-to statistic.
Tell me first off, How is it?
That's the first time I've ever actually seen someone on the pro-abortion side, the pro-choice side, cite that as if that is something that empowers black women, black mothers.
Give me your first reaction to that and then I have some of the further questions for you.
unidentified
Well, my first reaction really is that it's a tragedy that we've lost so many children, so many people of color, in particular black Americans, to abortion.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, called people of color human weeds.
She wanted to see people who she did not like to be prevented from procreation.
She wanted to do with birth control and or abortion.
So the prejudice that was exhibited against people is outrageous.
We see all kinds of tales of people of color being experimented on with contraception and abortion pills, and the Tuskegee syphilis trials, where we were absolutely cavalier about the sexual health of individuals.
I think that should be a national shame and a national disgrace.
But it is accurate that a disproportionate number of Black lives are ended with abortion.
And in particular, what's horrifying, for example, in New York City, more children are aborted than born.
This is not good news.
This is not empowerment.
This is a national tragedy.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Many of our viewers will be familiar with Father Frank Pavone, who runs an organization called Priests for Life.
About 15 years ago, when I was working in the European Parliament, I hosted one of his key aides, Dr. Alvide King, in the European Parliament, and then I organized another event in the British House of Commons.
And something Dr. King, who's Martin Luther King's niece, she has said repeatedly over the years is that the pro-life movement is the civil rights movement of today.
And I was shocked listening to the fuller, because we only had a minute excerpt.
From this clip where this lady was talking to Morning Mika, that the full thing, she actually goes on and says that the right to choose is actually, correctly understood, is the key aspect of the civil rights movement.
They were turning a huge argument from the pro-life its head. I mean, I've never seen anyone with the audacity
to do that before, principally because of the fact. I've never seen anyone put these
things together because it raises the question, well, hang on, if black people are the number
one object of abortion, how on earth are you going to make that argument that the pro-choice,
the right to choose, the right exercise and the right to kill black babies is
any way positive for the civil rights movement in 2020?
It's the question, of course, that you wouldn't expect Morning Meeker to pose, but it's the question that really sort of demands to be answered.
And of course, the pro-choice lobby Never want to deal with that.
Tell me some more, if you will, because the rest of this argument is about sort of following the abolition, I think it was two years ago, of Roe versus Wade, the Dobbs decision.
And there are scare stories now coming out.
From the mainstream media, from the progressive mainstream media saying that basically women are back to dying on backstreet alleys with coat hangers.
What's the reality of the situation?
Because of course, another thing that they never tell you is that abortion isn't a perfectly safe procedure.
And so many women were actually dying following abortion procedures that had That night had gone wrong, because as I say, it's not a perfectly safe procedure in and of itself, when all the procedures are followed correctly.
Tell me though, what is the reality?
Have we returned to back alley, coat hanger, do it yourself abortions?
unidentified
Well, what's ironic is that the do-it-yourself abortion is what the Biden-Harris administration has wrought.
The number one means of abortion right now, for example, is chemical abortion pills, and used correctly, have four times the rate of accidents, ten times the death rate of surgical abortion, They're not safer than a Tylenol.
They were actually brought onto the market with a black box warning, which means that they can kill the person who takes them.
And you see all the frenzy recently out of two deaths in Georgia from women who allegedly took pills.
We know of more than 30 women who have died taking these pills.
And here's the thing.
We do not have a national abortion reporting law.
So while abortion is ignored, Some states like California, an abortion sanctuary state so-called, they don't track at all.
We track childbirth, but we don't track abortion.
And we know there are problems.
I had an op-ed up with Christian Hawkins over the weekend at Real Clear Politics that illustrates the lies and hypocrisy of the abortion lobby on this particular point.
About 2% of the population has a peanut allergy.
And all of us have seen the change in culture because of peanuts.
You're not going to hand them out at schools.
You're going to have peanut-free tables.
You're not going to hand them out on airplanes.
Because you could die if you have a peanut allergy.
And we've all seen society change.
About 2% of women are going to get an ectopic pregnancy.
And yet, they will give chemical abortion pills out to people and not require an ultrasound screening to determine Where the pregnancy has implanted.
Ectopic means it's not in the uterus.
So they give you pills and you're bleeding and you're like, oh, I had an abortion, but you didn't.
The pregnancy continues and you can die from internal bleeding from rupture.
So if you wouldn't give a child a peanut butter sandwich without knowing about their allergic status, why would you be okay with giving women chemical abortion pills, which also could result in their death?
It's because abortion isn't seen as anything other than a political issue.
And we're willing to hurt women to help Planned Parenthood.
I think that's a national tragedy.
And in regards to your earlier point regarding to the loss of black life, this is a human rights issue.
We reject prejudice against people on age, sex, race, stage of development, parental income, the events of their conception.
As soon as someone's worth comes from somebody else's value system, we're all in danger.
And that's what's really shocking about it.
We didn't want slave states and free states.
We fought a war over that.
It shouldn't be over here, we're willing to kill you, but not so much over here.
So that what gives a child value isn't their innate humanity, but is in fact whether or not somebody else likes them.
That's a slippery slope to nowhere.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
You're absolutely right what you were saying earlier, that the pro-choice movement originally grew out of the eugenics movement.
And then after a couple of decades, it is predominantly sustained by the population control movement up until this day.
That's the driving force now, because it's never entirely lost its eugenics founding.
Tell me, in the two minutes that we've got left, Christy, tell me, it seems to me that certain Republican lawmakers are getting slightly jittery about this now, post-Dobbs.
What is the one thing you would really want them to know about the messaging specifically coming out of the pro-choice camp right now?
unidentified
You can't run from the pro-abortion bully.
I mean, for those Republicans or any politician who is weak in the knees when it comes to defending the human rights issue of our day, which is the worth of all human beings, regardless of their location, when it comes to this issue, You have to stand strong.
You've got people like Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio who really give a master class in how to be very articulate defenders of life.
But let's remember that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are for abortion all the way up to infanticide.
While Tim Walz was governor of Minnesota, they documented eight babies born alive during abortions who were left to die.
That's radical.
The Democratic Party's position of abortion without limits, with taxpayer funding, up to and including infanticide, and they would talk about comfort care, which is not really comforting to the person left to die.
This is a horrifying, radical situation.
That's what's at stake.
If we can't clearly articulate the scope of abortion that's desired in the Democratic Party, we cannot then, in any other party, articulate a vision for life.
So don't run from the bullies, make your case, stand strong, and know that Americans don't want abortion up to and including infanticide.
That is a very mainstream position.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Great.
Christy, 30 seconds quickly.
Where do people go to keep up with your analysis?
Where can they find out more about Students for Life?
unidentified
Sure.
You can come to studentsforlifeaction.org or studentsforlifeofamerica.org for our C3 activity.
And C4 is Students for Life Action, where we're looking at the political response to abortion.
And in regards to chemical abortion pills, which are the number one way of means of abortion death in America, you can go to thisischemicalabortion.com and learn more.
Because this is an issue that's leaving women to bleed at home.
It's dangerous.
It is.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Christy Hamrick, thanks very much for coming on the show.
It is absolutely true that the pro-life movement is the civil rights movement in the United States today.
Standby, we're back in two minutes.
unidentified
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dave brat ▲ ● ▼
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unidentified
All this nonsense, all this spin.
They can't handle the truth.
War Room Battleground with Stephen K.
Bannon.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Welcome back.
Well, recent evidence has suggested that some 500,000 postal ballots down in the Sunshine State that were rejected by the U.S.
Postal Service as undeliverable have actually made their way to county supervisors and being counted.
Linda Sienkiewicz, who better to discuss this with than you.
unidentified
Tell me what's going on down in Florida.
Well, thank you, Ben, for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
And I have actually referred to this as the Florida debacle.
The Miami Independent is one who's been on top of this and on top of the other cases.
So remember, we talked last time about 219,000 ballots or requests for absentee ballots had come into Pinellas County on June 23rd.
Well, the problem was they were closed.
And a lot of them did not vote.
These were not the people requesting them, and a whole bunch came back undeliverable.
So remember that 219,000.
And it's not just Pinellas County, it's also Miami-Dade has a problem as well.
What's happened now is, as you said, there's like half a million other ballots that have come back saying they're undeliverable, but they were actually from deliverable addresses.
But going back to that 219,000, the election officials are now saying there was only 20.
Remember 219,000?
are now saying there was only 20. So, remember 219,000? And now they've changed that number
to 20, and that 198,166 ballots were made or requested on September 9th. So, there's
some funny business going on down there, if not criminal, with them making all these changes
to the data they've received.
And Miami-Dade County, theirs was altered from June 26th to September 13th as well, which is a huge problem.
You can't just change the numbers coming in.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Linda, tell me more about this state registration cutoff moving from June 16th to September 13th.
That's a huge difference in moving the deadline with all the attention that's going on right now on voter integrity and otherwise.
Tell me, should people see this and be suspicious?
unidentified
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, they have altered information within the election officials' authority.
We need to know who's doing this.
The problem is that the court stuff that was done in June over those ballots, those 219,000, the judge has sealed all the evidence.
He won't let anybody, you know, question who these people are.
So in the midst of that going on, you have the numbers changing and things being altered.
So I know there's a number of lawsuits right now, but it's a huge problem.
Like I said, these would definitely be criminal charges.
I mean, I'm not an attorney, but that's what I would look for.
You can't alter that stuff, and they are.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
So you said that these have been sealed right now.
When might they be unsealed?
Is it before or after the election?
unidentified
We don't know.
That's the problem.
We don't know.
And like I said, having a number of them that are undeliverable to addresses that are deliverable.
But what ended up happening, actually, that half, that specific half million did not even get sent.
And they wound up going into the totals during the primary.
So they weren't, those particular ones were not mailed.
And they end up getting counted in the primary votes.
I mean, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that's all over the place down in Florida, and we should all be concerned.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
And presumably looking at this, the establishment's answer is nothing to see here, folks.
Move along.
Nothing to see here.
unidentified
Oh, of course not.
Right.
But the most egregious stuff that's going on that I really think we should talk about are the overseas ballots that are being sent.
Now, remember, I joke, but we're a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and I always joke that, you know, if the DNC would actually get me something with election integrity.
Well, actually, I do have a story about the DNC.
They probably don't want us talking about it, is that they have decided to have $300,000 be put into pushing for overseas ballots.
They're saying they want 9 million US citizens that are overseas to actually vote.
Well, first of all, there's only 2.4 million that are eligible to vote that are there.
But the problem is, is there's no verification of ID at all, none.
And to back that up, there's an organization called Vote Forward.
That's a 501c4 Democratic leaning organization that they are pushing their stuff out there.
And then you have vote from abroad, which again is backed by the Democrats and pushing people to register to vote with no verification.
Well, what we did here last Thursday in Connecticut is I sent a certified letter, which you can find on our website to our secretary of state to say, Hey, How are you able to prove that they are U.S.
citizens, and how are you able to prove that they should be voting in Connecticut?
We want everybody to go to our website, do the letter, send it to your Secretary of State as well.
We need answers on this.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Linda, on that point, would you run past the website?
I mean, it's in the name, isn't it?
FightVoter4.org.
But let's just give a quick mention.
I think the research that you've put out today is absolutely outstanding.
Everybody in America should know this.
So go to your website, basically.
unidentified
FightVoter4.org and social media.
Social media, we're on X, we're on Instagram.
I'm not sure what the others are.
My director of communication handles that.
But our website, like I said, go there and also go and download our data.
We're still giving away the free data.
We've given it to thousands of people and they are actually making a difference across the country utilizing our data.
So like I said, we're just so proud to be able to do what we're doing at this point.
So thank you.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Linda Sinkiewicz, absolutely outstanding.
Many thanks for coming on the show.
And as always, we'll catch up again with you soon.
God bless for now.
Thanks, Linda.
unidentified
Thank you.
God bless.
Thank you.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, so back in May, resident Biden called on Congress to provide $25,000 for some 400,000 first generation homebuyers.
Well, not to be outdone when it comes to giving away taxpayers' money.
Kamala Harris has upped the stakes and she says that this £25,000 in assistance should be available to all first-time homebuyers in the country.
Who better to discuss this with is Rich Stern from the Heritage Foundation.
Rich, tell me, what were the actual consequences?
I mean, it sounds like if you're not paying great attention, It sounds great, you know.
He's going to say no to $25,000 free money.
But let's dig deep a little bit, because that's what we do here on The War Room.
What would the actual consequence be of giving all first-time homebuyers $25,000?
It seems to me that it would just raise the house prices by $25,000.
Courtesy of U.S.
taxpayers, they'll pay for that, and home sellers will get the proceeds.
Tell me a bit more about what they are in economics, what the actual consequences of this But neither will be.
richard stern ▲ ● ▼
Oh, absolutely.
Tremendous inflation.
That's the first headline thing you get out of this.
But, you know, as you pointed out there, people like the allure of promised free government spending, free government benefits.
But, you know, we all know this.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
So where would the money come from?
The government would print those dollars, meaning the value of every other dollar in existence goes down.
Which is where you get inflation.
Every dollar purchase is less, and so that money you're handing to some firm's time homebuyers means that everybody else's dollars buy them less and less.
But, you know, there's another point of this as well, which is that that purchasing power that's being shifted over comes out of other ventures, other investments.
So, sure, you might be able to get somebody who is a first-time homebuyer might be able to buy a home, but it's coming at the expense of investments stripped from somewhere else in the economy.
Someone is losing a job because of it.
Someone is not going into business where they'll be able to hire and employ people because of this credit.
So really, at the end of the day, it's a Sophie's Choice.
It's the government making a wealth redistribution decision to redistribute from some people to other people and using inflation as the metric to do it.
It's not the government producing anything.
The government can't produce anything.
And all it can do is just redistribute wealth that somebody else created.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Seems to me that it's the Democrats' longstanding project to turn North America into South America.
Look, we used to laugh, right?
We used to hear about Mexican politicians buying votes for $10.
Find your local politician down at the bar and they'll give you $10 cash.
We used to laugh about that in the West, those sort of practices.
What the Democrats are doing in the United States today is upping that game massively.
They're showing that the Latin American vote sellers were just amateurs.
They're not buying votes for $10.
They're buying votes for $25,000 apiece.
And it is absolutely astonishing.
I think we discussed a couple of weeks ago on the show, Rich, that the U.S.
debt is now, interest repayments on the U.S.
debt are the second largest budget line of all federal government spending and could
possibly even become within the next six months or so the number one budget outlay in the
United States.
That is the precarious situation, the economic situation for the United States right now.
It's amazing, I think, given that reality that the U.S. is adding $1 trillion onto its
debt every hundred days or so, that someone who wants to be President of the United States
will come out with a policy this irresponsible.
richard stern ▲ ● ▼
Well, you know, I think your point hits the nail on the head, right?
Which is that the left in this country is giving socialists around the globe a run for their money, buying off and bribing votes.
That's part of inflation for you.
It's gone from 10 bucks to 25 grand.
But that story of inflation runs right into this other thing, which is the high cost of interest payments for the federal debt.
So, you know, there is only so much money that you can flood into a system before you absolutely tank it.
And so what the Fed's been doing here is holding the wolf by the ears.
The Fed either has the print money, meaning hyperinflation, to feed federal deficits, or the Fed has to hold down the money supply to try to corral inflation, but the government is still running these massive deficits, eating all of the money out of the money markets, meaning the interest rates are through the roof.
So the only thing the Fed is really deciding here is how the pain is being felt across the economy, And in the last couple of years, they've been trying to hold down the money supply to hold down inflation.
And it's turned into the whirlwind you were just talking about, where we are now spending hundreds of dollars per month per American household, just on interest payments on the federal debt, over a trillion dollars, more than we spend on defense, as you pointed out, more than we spend on anything other than Social Security.
And that is that debt-death spiral that we have been warning about and talking about.
And so there's only one way out of this, right?
Which is the federal government either has to let that spiral continue, or the Fed has to print so much money, they'll be right back to hyperinflation.
It's a lose-lose situation for the American public.
And it's because of the bureaucrats and politicians that continue to spend money that's really yours.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
The other thing, looking at the Democrats' proposals, Rich, is that I think she's planning on building 4.2 million homes, right, in the United States.
What is that actually going to do to people who own property, to have a home and have the majority of their wealth in that property?
What will happen to them?
richard stern ▲ ● ▼
Well, it depends on the manner in which that she goes about, quote, building these homes.
But, you know, let's remember, of course, that the private sector actually does this.
You know, I don't know Harris personally, but she doesn't strike me as somebody who's actually good at specifically building homes.
Frankly, I'm not either.
I work at a think tank.
But that's why we have great American home building companies that do this for a living.
They know what they're doing.
Building a home, producing any kind of product, is not as simple as the left thinks it is.
You don't just snap your finger, print some cash, and slosh it around, and magically homes grow out of the ground.
It takes real work from people who know what they're doing, who do this for a living, who put these things together.
And so, you know, the manner in which she's going to do this probably is just going to lead to more scarcity across construction materials.
It'll probably upend all kinds of neighborhoods.
Who knows what they're going to do to make this work?
It tracks all of the myriad issues of all of the central planners in human history who just create starvation and scarcity and shortages in their wake.
Let me give you one startling stat on this one.
So, you know, we talk about inflation as having been 20% under the Biden-Harris regime, and that's bad enough.
It has been 38%, almost double, for construction materials.
Why?
Because they prioritize the spotted owl over lumber, because they prioritize Chinese imports over domestic production of concrete and other things.
So, you know, at the end of the day, I would take with a grain of salt anything that she's promising.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Rich Stern, thanks.
We love you guys at the Heritage Foundation.
Quickly, where do people go to keep up with your analysis on all things economics?
richard stern ▲ ● ▼
Always a pleasure to be on, and thank you for having me.
You can find me at Rich A. Stern at Twitter.
You can, of course, find my bio page at heritage.org and read everything I've put out, and that of all of my colleagues and everybody else on the budget team at the Heritage Foundation.
So, thank you again.
Always a pleasure to be on.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Rich, thanks.
We'll catch up again with you soon.
God bless for now.
richard stern ▲ ● ▼
You too.
Thank you.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, since this, tragically, since last Thursday, at least 116 people have died in the United States since Hurricane Helen made landfall in Florida, then sort of crossing over up into North Carolina.
We've all seen the pictures of the devastation, apocalyptic devastation.
It's absolute, absolute tragedy.
But Chris Hoar, obviously, this is something I think This is where you guys can be, right?
This is where in the absolute collapse of standard telephone signals, terrestrial cellular signals, this is where having a satellite phone could actually be a life saver.
Tell me a little bit about what's going on right now.
chris hoar ▲ ● ▼
Well, yeah, Ben.
Unfortunately, millions of people are without power and without cell service across Florida and in the South, and particularly North Carolina, which, as you said, has been absolutely devastated.
And what we're hearing from officials in North Carolina is that they don't even have a timeframe for getting power back on in places like Asheville and other cities and towns.
Across the state.
So this is a very dire situation.
Satellite phones are one solution that we have.
We can get you a satellite phone as soon as today.
We have equipment on the East Coast, across the East Coast, in fact, ready to go out and we can even do same-day delivery of satellite phones.
They will work immediately.
Satellite phones don't require power or Cell towers to operate if the grid is down, the cell phone towers are down, the satellite phone is still going to work for incoming and outgoing calls and incoming and outgoing texts.
And so you can get a free satellite phone delivered immediately from sat123.com.
That's sat123.com.
Or you can call 941-841-0844.
unidentified
That's 941-841-0844.
chris hoar ▲ ● ▼
say t123.com or you can call 941-841-0844. That's 941-841-0844.
The other problem that we have, as I said, is the power outage. And we got say
millions of people without power.
But we have generators that are solar powered that can get your power back on as soon as
today. And we can deliver those immediately to you in some cases. So you can check those
out at sat123.com. But Ben, we have generators from as little as 220 bucks that can power
tablets, laptops, cell phones, satellite phones, whatever it is you need, all the way up to
generators that can power your entire house, including your air conditioning, lighting,
refrigeration. And those are available for immediate delivery as well. So we really have
solutions for the problem that is very real and life-threatening for many people in the
South, Ben.
unidentified
Bye.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Chris, let me just have that point that you said confirmed.
I will give out your telephone number.
I will ask you to give out your telephone number once again at the end of the show in a couple of minutes.
So folks, if you have a pen and paper, we'll give that number out again.
You can jot that down.
You said even with all the devastation and chaos that's being seen right now as the midst of these storms and hurricanes are passing, You said you could even get same-day delivery out there.
So folks are out there, perhaps they're in Florida or North Carolina, and they're absolutely desperate.
They have no communications.
If a family member elsewhere in the United States is able to, they'd be able to get a parcel sent out even potentially arriving the same day or the next day of a generator or of a satellite phone.
Is that what you just said?
chris hoar ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely, Ben.
Yeah, look, we work with local couriers, with hot shot drivers, who can get into places that other people can't.
We understand that this is absolutely, you know, to be without power and communications is life threatening.
And it's, you know, it's causing absolute chaos.
And it's going to continue, unfortunately, for some people for months.
You know, as again, the authorities in North Carolina are telling us that they have no
no even estimated date of when the power will be restored to many communities.
So look, obviously, they're doing their best.
There's a lot of brave men and women working overtime to get the power back up and get
cell towers back up.
But it is it is such devastation that say they don't even have an estimation of when
that power can be back up.
So yeah, we you know.
We understand how serious this is.
We've been here for 20 years, been delivering equipment as soon as the same day, and that's why we have equipment placed across the East Coast.
so that we can do that.
And you can give us a call, as I said, at 941-841-0844.
That's 941-841-0844.
Or you can go to sat123.com.
That's sat123.com.
If you give us a call or use our online chat, then we'll be able to help you figure out
what the equipment is that you need for your house or for your business.
Say we have every type of generator from the very small portable to the larger ones that can power an entire building or an entire house.
But yeah, time is of the essence, obviously.
So that's why, you know, we are prepared to deliver this equipment immediately.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
And it's worth pointing out, you should take that number that you gave out, Chris, and, folks, you should put it in their mobile phones now.
Because, of course, if tragedy strikes, phoning you guys and asking for the generator or the satellite phone isn't as easy as it is under normal conditions.
Folks, we've reached the end of the show.
We'll be back at 10 a.m.
tomorrow.
Thanks for joining us.
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