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Feb. 8, 2023 - The Michael Knowles Show

01:18:03

Daily Wire Backstage: State of the Union 2023 Coverage

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	Hey, Michael Knowles here.
	The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage State of the Union 2023 coverage is available now.
	Join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and the God King Jeremy Boring as we discuss everything from Chinese spy balloons, satanic rituals sponsored by Pfizer, to Biden's disastrous State of the Union address.
	Let's take a listen.
	Speaker, my fellow Americans, welcome to the Daily Wire backstage.
	I am Jeremy Boren.
	I'm joined by Candace Owens.
	Ben Shapiro.
	Andrew Klavan.
	Mm-hmm.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Matt Walsh.
	And Michael Knowles. - Oh.
	At the end of this, this is going to be basically what you're getting from us all night tonight.
	This is the kind of wit one can expect when we're forced to stay at work late and watch a boring-ass one hour and a half speed.
	If you want to hang out with us after that, and honestly, I can't imagine what would motivate such behavior, we will be doing a killer members block where we take questions from our Daily Wire Plus members.
	You can become one and get your question in there by going to dailywire.com slash subscribe to get 40% off.
	Why 40% off?
	Well, because 40% off may not be enough to buy the president, but it's enough to influence the culture.
	That's right, it's our president is for sale sale at Daily Wire Plus slash subscribe.
	Guys, the last time we were all together, of course, it was election night, and it was disappointing, not as disappointing as having to watch the State of the Union, of course.
	And Stephen Crowder was with us, which just goes to show that Things happen really fast in our business.
	Again, not State of the Union speeches.
	They're interminable.
	And the Grammys had not come out as openly satanic.
	It's true.
	It's true.
	Sponsored by Pfizer.
	So on the nose.
	I'm telling you, God is just...
	His writing is...
	It's really degraded over the past few years.
	God's writing is so on the nose.
	He's casting weird German Nazi-esque characters as the head of the World Economic Forum.
	And he's got...
	And he's got...
	The president's son being a drug-addicted derelict who's taking money from the Chinese, probably, and dad leaving classified documents next to the Corvette.
	And they already used that storyline already.
	This is lazy, lazy writing.
	Chinese spy balloons.
	And now the Grammys going totally satanic.
	I will say about the Grammys going satanic that I think it does say something a little bit deeper about our culture that Jill Biden was there.
	Right?
	There was a time when satanic imagery was at least fringe, right?
	It was the counterculture, and it was rebelling against the culture.
	And now it's just the culture.
	It's what we just call the culture.
	And the reason for that, here, we're going to get into here.
	John Milton's Satan is the villain of the piece in Paradise Lost, right?
	His whole thing is that he's rebelling against God, not because he's doing anything good or anything noble or anything true or beautiful, but because he would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
	And over the course of time, I think Western culture now sees Satan as the hero.
	And Satan is the hero because Satan is narcissistic and into himself.
	And that's exactly what you saw at the Grammys.
	A bunch of people who are narcissistically prancing around calling themselves non-binary, gender, queer, transgender people.
	Who was that you said was there?
	Jill Biden.
	Dr.
	Jill Biden.
	Oh, Dr.
	Jill Biden.
	Damn it.
	I always mess that up.
	I always mess that up.
	It's so frustrating because my life's a real doctor.
	That's what people don't understand when we talk about how the left is satanic or a lot of pop music is satanic.
	And most of it is satanic, but it's not theologically satanic.
	They're not literally worshipping the devil as far as they understand it.
	They're worshipping what the devil worship, which is the self.
	So it's kind of like a secular satanism.
	At the same time, I think we should also recognize that the left likes to use the term gaslighting.
	Which is all they do with things like this, because part of the reason that they do it is that they can have the satanic ritual being broadcast by CBS, and then conservatives react to it by saying, hey, look, there's a satanic ritual on TV, and then the next day you get the headlines from the Daily Beast and all those saying, well, conservatives, with their conspiracy theory, that there was a satanic ritual in the Grammys.
	It's what literally happened.
	We're just observing.
	Face tattoo syndrome, right?
	It's like when you go into the Starbucks and the barista has a giant face tattoo, and you're like, Give him a weird look.
	He's got a face tattoo.
	And then he's like, what are you staring at?
	Take your face tattoo.
	That's what I'm staring at.
	But it brings up the point that Jill Biden was there that they are now the culture and we are the counterculture.
	We should stop reacting to them and just let them react to us because they do.
	But they baited us intentionally.
	But if they had gotten up, if we had gotten up and sung Jesus Loves Me This I Know, they'd have gone insane.
	And we should do it that way.
	I would have gone insane too.
	That song is terrible.
	I would have had some problems.
	But the one thing is, though, when you say that they don't worship Satan, they actually do worship something satanic.
	I mean, there are only two ways to look at life.
	One is that your body is your real you, and your lust and your desire is your real you.
	And the other is that your lust and desire are in the way of something even higher, that they're part of your life, but there's something even higher that you're striving for.
	And what they're saying is, no, they're not.
	And unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, that's what rock and roll has been saying.
	It started, you know, so it's only coming to fruition.
	And it's coming to fruition in dullness.
	That number was so boring and so anodyne.
	Well, do you know what's so sad about it?
	With Sam Smith in particular, Sam Smith is actually, I think, a talented pop musician.
	He's got the voice of an angel, now the voice of a demon, and his songs are pretty good.
	And what was amazing is his biggest hit, the one that I knew him from, was I Know I'm Not the Only One.
	You know, you say I'm crazy, but you don't think I know what you've done.
	It's about this marriage where the husband goes out and cheats, and it's falling apart, and it's presented as this terrible tragedy.
	You like that song.
	I do actually like that song.
	I think there's a lot of...
	Listen, I'm a pop culture maven, you know?
	But it's sung beautifully.
	It's got a lot of longing and tragedy to it.
	This song was about the exact same topic.
	In fact, it followed the exact same formula right down to the seconds of the time codes.
	The difference is this was about how funny and hot and titillating it is when, you know, daddy goes to the body shop and gets hoochie hoochie or whatever.
	And so it's so sad because he had an instinct toward beauty.
	Then he sells his soul to the devil...
	And it didn't even work.
	It was a crappy song and the ratings were in the gutter.
	Michael, I really hate to tell you Santa's not real here, but all of his prior music, which I absolutely adore, I love the Catholic reimagining of it.
	It was not about a marriage between a man and a woman.
	It was about these gay affairs.
	No, wait, he's a gay guy?
	Yeah.
	Yes, but it was music about love and about loss, and his music was so beautiful.
	And what's really happened, because I question this myself, it's, you were so talented, you had everything, you made it, people were listening to your music.
	Why did you have to give yourself to this sort of demonic nature that we're seeing inside of you?
	What happens when you get to Hollywood that they basically say, okay, now you just have to do a demonic ritual to prove that you're really one of us?
	The most bizarre part of the entire performance is a standing ovation at the end, by the way.
	You can see a couple of things, I think like J-Lo and Ben Affleck were maybe for a second like, should we be clapping to this or are we actually at a satanic ritual?
	But they got a standing ovation.
	Like no one in the room went, okay, this might be a little far.
	And they keep moving the goalposts.
	By the way, this is not the first time they went full satanic at the Grammys.
	WAP, can we forget the WAP performance?
	I will never be allowed to.
	You will not be allowed to, is an expert on all matters WAP. And, you know, it's been going, treading in this direction for a very long time.
	I think this time is the first time that they just were so in your face.
	First, it's a conspiracy theory.
	The left, you know, we always say it's satanic, it's demonic, Hollywood's evil.
	And then they go, oh, no, we're not, no, we're not.
	And then they do this.
	And they acknowledged it, too.
	You saw CBS tweet it out.
	They said, in response to Sam Smith, they said, we are ready to worship.
	And it made me think, 1952, CBS would not allow I Love Lucy to use the word pregnant.
	So scandalous was that word.
	Now, CBS News is essentially saying, hail Satan.
	And it cannot...
	You can't convince me that it's an accident that that was going into the break sponsored by Pfizer.
	Of course it was intentional.
	Of course it was intentional.
	It was.
	No, because, look, we're a conservative media company.
	We sit around thinking, okay, how do we own the libs today, right?
	I mean, that's one of the things we think about.
	To drink their Because it's so tasty and it fills the tumblers.
	They think the same way.
	They're a news network.
	That's right.
	And if you think that it was an accident, it was a mere coincidence that Pfizer was the commercial right as the devil is walking off stage, I got a bridge in Brooklyn.
	There's something to what you were saying.
	One high point, though, was that Ben Affleck's face, since you mentioned Ben Affleck, it did reflect how I feel about having to listen to the State of the Union show.
	I just want to point out that Matt Walsh's laryngitis voice is the sexiest voice on the panel tonight.
	And for that reason, Matt, I think you should read the first ad.
	Yeah, well, speaking of Satanists, that's probably not the right intro.
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	One other thing, by the way, I think it's worth noting That the guy that was performing that song with Sam Smith, Kim Petras, right?
	And they won...
	It was a big moment because two white males won Best Pop Duo because they both don't identify as white males.
	But Kim Petras...
	He transitioned surgically to become a female at the age of 16.
	And this is something we're told, of course, never happens.
	We don't do surgical transitions of minors.
	Yet, like one of the biggest pop stars in the world right now, that's literally what happened to him.
	You know, I think also his real name is Tim, which is kind of clever to go from Tim to Kim.
	And he goes up and he says, look, people say that this performance was religiously not cool.
	Because you might say it's actually burning with the eternal fires of hell.
	But look, I've always been interested in religion, but religion doesn't want me because I'm trans.
	And I thought, you know, look, religion is a habit of virtue and justice to render to God what he's due.
	Religion wants you.
	God wants you.
	God loves you.
	If you say that, well, the condition of my going to church or being religious is that you have to pretend that I'm a woman, you're demanding that everybody affirm a lie.
	And that's something that religion cannot do.
	Oh, come on.
	Shockingly, I know.
	You ruin everything.
	These guys always do this, though.
	They say it's God's fault.
	It's the church's fault.
	They don't want me.
	They don't want me.
	There's a point to what Drew was saying earlier about how anodyne, the actual number was.
	And it was.
	I mean, it was almost bizarrely sexless.
	It's satanic, but there's nothing sexy about it or interesting, really.
	The same with the wall performance, by the way.
	It wasn't actually sexy.
	I tend to agree, obviously.
	I mean, I think that one of the things that happens is that when the taboo becomes the culture, there is no more forbidden for people to even be tempted by.
	And this is one of the things that you're seeing in our culture is that by every available poll, married people have better sex lives than people who are single because what they're doing exists in the boundaries of love and also within the boundaries of commitment.
	But there's also something to the idea that the human being is constantly seeking the new and the fresh or whatever it is.
	When nothing is new and nothing is fresh, and you've made all the taboos just the mainstream culture, there's nothing left to transgress.
	So when Madonna was doing the virgin slut routine back in 1980, and that's what they call it.
	It's not my term for it.
	It's sort of the cultural term for it.
	When she was taking advantage of the imagery of the Virgin Mary and then subjecting that to very sexy movement...
	Then the idea was that she was subverting expectation, but there was no expectation left for them to subvert.
	And so how exactly do you transgress?
	When there's nothing left to transgress, it becomes very difficult to be transgressive, other than ideologically transgressive.
	Yeah, I would like to add, I talked about this on my podcast, because I was very interested in this.
	Like, why is he doing this?
	And I started talking about just the actual meaning of the word diabolical, and I played a Catholic priest.
	There we go.
	I'm very proud of that.
	We first talk about the actual meaning of the word diabolical, where it comes from and what it means is to separate, and what they're actually aspiring to do.
	You go, why put on this diabolical performance?
	And really, when the serpent comes up to Adam and Eve, and one of the first things that they recognize after they bite into the forbidden fruit is that they feel shame, right?
	Which means in order for Satan to assert dominance, he needs to remove people from their shame.
	He needs to separate them from this wholesomeness and this goodness, right?
	And to say, there's actually nothing wrong with you being naked.
	Why do you even feel that?
	So you see that Hollywood is kind of pushing for people not to think that there's anything to be shameful for us.
	And the androgyny.
	There was a story this week that actually made me want to move away from Earth.
	You know how sometimes you think I want to get out of the country, but it made me want to leave the planet.
	The neutral.
	Yeah, yeah, really.
	For some of you.
	But there was this girl on YouTube who does a show.
	I think she's a gamer girl.
	Twitch.
	She called herself QT Cinderella.
	On Switch, right.
	That's right, Switch, the gamer channel.
	And somebody made a...
	A mock porn of her.
	They put her into...
	What's it called?
	Deepfake.
	A deepfake porn thing of her.
	And she was shattered.
	She went online.
	And it was absolutely heart-rending.
	I mean, it was such a cruel, low, stinking thing to do.
	And at the same time, she was sitting there going, you know, F the internet.
	F everything.
	And I thought, well, yeah.
	You know, like, it's not her fault that the culture fell apart.
	But it did.
	And she is part of it.
	And she's in it.
	And this is what people are doing to one another.
	It was one of the most...
	Disgusting acts.
	And conservatives were laughing at her for crying about it.
	And I just thought, like, you know, it's like, taxi, could we go to Mars, please?
	Because I think that this is, you know, the results of worshiping Satan are not good.
	They're not fun.
	They're bodies stacked in rows.
	Women being abused and people treating each other like garbage.
	Part of the reason, not to take this into the direction of talking about porn again, because I feel like that happens on every show now, but the reason why, because I saw some of that too, conservatives were laughing at the girls who were in the deepfakes, and the reason they were laughing about it is because the conservative argument against porn has always been this kind of practical, well, porn feeds the sex trafficking industry and it's bad.
	It's like those kinds of arguments.
	And then you do AI or deepfake, and then now those conservatives are out of arguments against porn because there's not any actual person involved.
	But what they lost is like, what does porn do to, like, what is it fundamentally?
	What does it do to the person consuming it?
	What does it do to the culture that allows it?
	We never had those arguments.
	There's three kinds of beings.
	We're just talking about demons.
	Some beings are purely body.
	They're corporeal beings.
	Some beings are pure spirit.
	That's angels and demons.
	Then we are hylomorphic.
	We're both body and spirit.
	The The problem with porn is it just treats us like animals.
	It treats us like we're pure meat.
	And then when we see that, even people who have gotten accustomed to it in the culture, when you see that, when someone violates you and puts your head on a body or I don't know, whatever they did in the AI porn, you just think, this is a violation not just of my body.
	Obviously, it's not of my body.
	It's a violation of my soul.
	This is, I think, one of the broader points that ties back into what happened with the Grammys and the reaction to it.
	It's why the libertarian instinct, which is, well, if you don't like it, just turn it off.
	The question is not whether people have the freedom to turn things on or turn things off.
	The question is what does it do to the common pool of culture in which we all live when this sort of stuff is promulgated by the biggest institutions in our culture.
	We shouldn't be arguing over whether someone has the right to do it or not.
	That's actually a secondary question when the primary question is, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
	And people refuse to even have that argument.
	They're so consumed with the secondary question of what we ought to do about it That they completely allied the first question, which is, as a society, can we agree that this stuff is just bad?
	How about that?
	Well, no, we can't.
	And this actually goes, I mean, obviously, the President of the United States' wife is there when it's in this performance.
	Well, the President of the United States is there.
	The effective president.
	The de facto.
	But I want to say that there's another piece of this that, Candice, you hit on, which is that it was actually boring, that it was sexless, that it's anodyne, that it's joyless.
	And I've been thinking a lot about, you know, people love to call us grifters, and they like to call us grifters because sometimes we say things that our audience disagrees with, which I always think that's really funny.
	So you mean that in order to be authentic, I'm willing to say things that might risk...
	Some of our money going away.
	That makes me a grifter.
	But the greatest grift of all is the purity grift.
	In politics, it's the political purity grift.
	And the political purity grift says, whatever moment we're in, you must be so truly that moment that you can always stab anyone on your own side who isn't perfectly, absolutely in line with this exact moment.
	But of course, you can't actually apply that across any period of time because human beings are messy, human circumstances are messy, politics changes.
	Like all the people who are right now political purists, you know, if you don't support Donald Trump, they all voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
	Every one of them voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
	And if you've reached a point of political purity where you're like, Paul Ryan is the scourge of the earth, Kanye may have had a point about the Jews, you know, like.
	You've reached a point where this political purity nonsense reveals itself as a grift.
	And in a way, what I think you're watching at the Grammys is just the left's version of the political purity grift.
	Why does a guy who is so talented...
	Who can put together such beautiful music, who can truly transcend politics, can transcend moments, can touch us all.
	We've all, with all of our diverse points of view, been just as enthralled with his music as anyone on the left has been enthralled.
	Why is he putting out something that means not only nothing to us, it means nothing to them?
	Because it is a virtue signal.
	It is a way of appeasing the political purity grift on his side.
	And the true grift in politics is to never authentically Be what you are or say what you believe for fear that the dominant power of your tribe will reject you for it.
	Hence the standing ovation.
	I'm like, none of you thought this was weird.
	Because if you don't stand up, you're not pure.
	You haven't survived the purity test.
	That's right.
	And that's the whole point of liberty is we should all be disagreeing with each other.
	I mean, that is the great thing about this place is we've all been fighting with each other since we started.
	But our conservatism consists of...
	We're being concerned about liberty and the things that make liberty work.
	I mean, I don't only think that it's bad because people are going to do things that are bad if they're free.
	I think that there comes a point when it's actually threatening to the body politic of a free country to do certain things.
	And I think that, look, there's plenty of things that you can do in the privacy of your home that I might disapprove of that aren't going to pick my pocket or break my leg and aren't going to threaten the polity.
	But some of this stuff, when you have the establishment The Dr.
	Jill Bidens of the world supporting this kind of garbage, which is not just artistically bad, but it's also morally bad.
	Something has gone terribly wrong.
	You've lost the authority to say no.
	One of the things that we talk about all the time now is the distinction between adults and children, and we should allow adults to do things that children can't do.
	Obviously that's true, although I would say that there are certain things that adults should also not be allowed to.
	With plenty of limits, yeah.
	But one of the things that we ought to say here is that popular culture is designed for kids.
	To pretend that the Grammys is not directed at kids is a lie.
	To pretend that what was put on the Grammys was designed for adults 18 and up, it's just not true.
	Because if you ask a 12-year-old what exactly they're listening to, they're listening to exactly the same thing that a 15-year-old is listening to, which is exactly the same thing an 18-year-old is listening to, particularly when it comes to music.
	Music happens to be an area where those boundaries are unbelievably permeable.
	I would say I watched the Grammys more as a child than I did.
	And what's the message that came out of that performance?
	I got dinged by our publicists over at Media Matters on this point, but it's a true point, so I'll reiterate it.
	Symbols have a purpose.
	We live in a semiotic world.
	Symbols are very, very important.
	That's what makes the world intelligible.
	And what was the performance?
	At a physical level, it was a bunch of transvestites.
	Sam Smith calls himself a pansexual or something.
	He's a non-binary, pansexual.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I didn't want to be imprecise.
	Please get that straight.
	No, good point.
	Don't get it straight.
	Don't get it straight.
	And get it very crooked, actually.
	And the other one is a transgender, and then the rest were a bunch of drag queens.
	And you see this in a bunch of Sam Smith's videos, too.
	It was a very pro-trans performance, as we see everywhere.
	And the symbol of that was the devil.
	And I couldn't help but notice, very often, artistic depictions of demons and weird occult stuff is androgynous and trans and weird.
	And I think the reason for this is...
	Wasn't that Lil Nas X also?
	Little Nas X did the same thing.
	The reason for this is, at least the traditional Christian understanding, is the devil hates human beings especially because we have flesh.
	And he doesn't want to bow down to some ape that has flesh on him.
	And that the fleshiness of this world is very offensive to demons that are pure spirit.
	Our publicists knocked me for making this connection.
	I didn't make the connection.
	Sam Smith is the one putting on the performance.
	The fact that Little Nas X made the connection, the fact that this is the symbol they're all using, should tell us something about this real political problem.
	Transgenderism is really a mockery to creation itself.
	I mean, it's the ultimate mockery to creation itself.
	I gotta say, I did, after seeing some of the performance, I did leave quite encouraged for the reason we've all kind of outlined already, which is that, like, these people are really out of ideas.
	Yeah.
	They've just totally run out of ideas.
	You mentioned Lil Nas X.
	This exact thing was already done.
	And it was done in a more shocking way even then.
	He was, like, giving a lap dance to Satan.
	Right.
	But even then, at that time, you're like, okay, I've seen this.
	This exact imagery has been used so many times.
	Well, but this is the thing.
	Tribal...
	Tribalism, cultural ubiquity, the purity grift, it is boring.
	Because the thing you actually can't do in the transhumanist moment, the thing you actually can't do is transgress the popular opinion of your tribe right now.
	And so to be a political purist isn't to have the right ideas.
	It's to see which ideas are the most in vogue and then just emulate them.
	Just repeat them back.
	So all that he did is he said, oh, Lil Nas X did this and it worked.
	I'll do it.
	It's derivative by design.
	There's a reason that in dictatorships everybody dresses like the dictator.
	There's a reason that communist countries can't produce art.
	It's this.
	Because art is transgressive.
	You're trying to make statements that are not always in vogue.
	You're trying to challenge an audience.
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	Oh!
	It's so pretty.
	Yeah.
	Don't shoot it down.
	Let it flow above my head.
	What should we do?
	What should we do?
	No, no, no.
	I just want to be clear that I ordered them not to do this joke, but I was overruled by my generals.
	I heard somewhere we have a $100 million entertainment budget.
	How much when...
	10% for the big guy.
	Is this going to be there the whole time now?
	It's going to be here for eight days, actually.
	Yeah, it's going to fly over all of our important installations.
	I didn't know it was an actual balloon.
	That's surprising.
	Sophisticated technology.
	My hearing aid and or Corvette.
	Does it contain classified documents?
	What's in it?
	No one knows.
	The comedy on this show has just been tremendous.
	I was going to say, this is the death.
	We just lost 20,000 viewers a month.
	And deserve to lose.
	Is he slipping your hair?
	Mr.
	President!
	Not again, Mr.
	President!
	This is the most fun we're going to have before he starts actually speaking.
	Let's bring it all out.
	No, it's not Jen.
	I'm a great storyteller.
	I want to tell you a little story.
	You're not even moving the mouth while you're doing it.
	Would you like to do this?
	No, Walsh.
	No, I don't.
	Dog-faced pony soldier.
	My dad was standing with me in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
	One day on the street.
	Watching Sam Smith.
	What?
	Two men.
	And Mr.
	President, you walked with MLK, right?
	I did, I did, but let me finish my story.
	It's funny when the mouth moves.
	Okay, thank you.
	I can't do it all the time.
	Not much.
	And there were two men going at it like jackhammers on his face.
	My father said...
	Joey said, that's what love looks like.
	And I said, thanks.
	Pop.
	Corn pop.
	That's another story.
	No, no more stories.
	Thank you, Mr.
	President.
	Thank you, Mr.
	President.
	The eyes are so realistic.
	Now I'm looking forward to the state of the union.
	Yeah, they say there's no great comedy at the Daily Wire.
	That was me, I think.
	What about this balloon guy?
	Yeah, we haven't talked about the balloon.
	We probably should, Mr.
	President.
	I think we all got played with this whole balloon story.
	I agree.
	I think the whole thing is just a sham to get them out of having to go have their meeting with The Chi-Coms, right?
	And to get us to stop talking about Pfizer, as far as I'm concerned.
	It's amazing.
	We finally...
	There's a huge release on all this information.
	You get the guy who was a year below me in college, oddly enough, the Pfizer exec guy.
	He's there.
	He says, yeah, we're doing directed evolution, gain-of-function research.
	Yeah, it definitely affects menstruation.
	Yeah, this, that, and the other thing.
	And then what?
	All of a sudden they say, hey, look, a squirrel.
	Look up there.
	Hey, look, there's a shiny object in the sky.
	And then we all fall for it.
	Do you really think they were just trying to get other Chinese...
	Conference?
	Yes.
	Wow.
	Why?
	Why would you think that?
	Because I think that the Chinese are spying on us all the time.
	For Montana?
	Yeah, but this balloon was the size of five greyhound buses.
	They keep showing it like as a thing at a carnival.
	It was enormous.
	It's like, you know, you can't let them fly.
	It was carrying the wizard.
	I agree that you...
	The Wizard of Oz.
	Yeah.
	I agree that we should oppose Chinese spying, but they didn't even do that.
	Yeah, they didn't.
	They just blew it up, made a big news story, drug it out for as long as the news cycle would allow for it to go.
	Oh, you're attributing cleverness to it.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I look smart.
	No, what happened is that he's an idiot, and he was like, oh, look, my generals told me that there is a Chinese spy balloon above American soil.
	Perhaps no one will see it.
	After all, I cannot, since I'm clinically blind.
	And a bunch of people in Montana looked up in the sky, and behold, an enormous spy balloon.
	And they said, a spy balloon!
	And Joe Biden said, uh...
	Donald Trump gazed directly into the sun.
	And for eight days, it floated above American soil, moving slowly past all American military installations.
	And then, I can tell you, honestly, the proof is in the pudding.
	The timeline is obvious.
	This thing was crossing American soil early last week.
	On about Friday, this started to become a major issue for Joe Biden.
	And everyone on the left came out and said, you can't shoot this thing down.
	Why would we shoot this thing down?
	We can never shoot it down.
	If you question him shooting the thing down, it's because you just don't understand foreign policy or politics.
	Of course he's not going to shoot it down.
	They were fully in control.
	And then Saturday morning, a schmuck comes out.
	And he's like, well...
	I said on Wednesday...
	We should shoot it out.
	And apparently everybody ignored him.
	And then it floats all the way to the usher.
	It's like, it's over water.
	No.
	And then they send the F-22 to kill it.
	The whole thing is ridiculous.
	And the clearest attempt that was an obvious indicator that it was an attempt to backfill is that they sent out anonymous Defense Department officials who tried to claim that this happened during the Trump administration.
	Unbelievable.
	It's a lie.
	It did not happen during the Trump administration.
	But even John Bolton said it wasn't true.
	We're calling him xenophobic, hate Chinese people, and then now they're like, oh no, he did let them float balloons.
	I mean, that was the most ridiculous part.
	The PR maneuver to try to blame Trump was like, wow.
	And then you saw the response after all the officials, not just pro-Trump ones, but John Bolton, you mentioned, he said, I've heard any of this.
	They said, oh well, yeah, we, no, they were there, but we didn't see them.
	We missed it.
	Yeah, but we definitely know they happened.
	You're right, that's totally the same thing as a giant Chinese spy balloon floating across the entire continent of the United States over the course of a week.
	Can I just, can I just be up to twist it into a dog?
	Are you going to hold that the whole time?
	I think he has to.
	How dare you suggest that the president is a meat puppet of other people?
	By others, outsiders.
	The president is his own paper bag.
	How dare you, sir?
	Is that what symbolism is?
	Well, you're the one who said this.
	Yeah, hold on.
	I'm seeing symbols.
	Who's going to be the most excited when he comes in?
	That's what you really wonder, right?
	Like, when he walks in and they do, like, they all pretend to be excited and, like, as if our world...
	Oh, great!
	So great to see you guys.
	I invited Barno because he's famous.
	I hope they fly the Ukrainian flag again.
	This is crazy.
	Literally, what is he doing here?
	I told you, when I was a young man, when I was an actor, I had a job as a fake sommelier at George Soros' wedding.
	It's one of my weirdest jobs I ever had.
	Do you know who was at the wedding?
	Bono.
	He's at like every liberal event in the world.
	I love the excuses they have for this.
	So clearly they invited Paul Pelosi so that Joe Biden can point up there and be like, and there were people, there were people in this room who wanted him to be hit in the head by a weird naked man who he'd called for some gay people.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That is why they're doing that.
	Other people are a bunch of cancer survivors that he can talk about his cancer moonshot because, as we all know, the thing that prohibits science from solving cancer is that we don't have sufficient commitment to solving cancer.
	That's it.
	If we just focus on cancer more, that will do it.
	That's an exciting one.
	And he's also having the family of Tyree Nichols, who they didn't care about five minutes ago and will not care about five minutes from now.
	But Joe Biden can pretend that he cares deeply about the fate of...
	Yeah, Ben, you talked about this on your show last week about how Disgusting it is that politicians show up at funerals like that.
	I'd never actually thought about it.
	It is genuinely disgusting.
	You listen to the speeches that Kamala Harris and Al Sharpton gave at that funeral and it is just a political stump.
	It's gross and they do it all the time.
	So you remember the Paul Wellstone funeral?
	Where they showed up at the Paul Wellstone funeral.
	Paul Wellstone was a senator from Minnesota.
	He died in a plane crash.
	And they basically held a political rally.
	And then you remember that there was the Arizona shooting.
	And Barack Obama showed up at the memorial for victims of the Arizona shooting.
	He did a whole gun control pitch.
	And then he did the same thing in Dallas.
	And people showing up randomly at the funerals of people they don't know and then giving speeches there is disgusting.
	I'm sorry.
	George Floyd's funeral, the three-day funeral.
	Anything had been grosser than that.
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	Don't let that stop you.
	Can we talk about the Paul Pelosi thing for a second?
	We just saw Paul Pelosi.
	Can we talk about the Paul Pelosi thing for a second?
	Because I think it was a totally botched...
	The conservatives botched the whole story completely.
	Of course.
	And I don't blame people for speculating because they're being weirdly secretive about things.
	They just released a 911 tape.
	Selective leaks.
	And then we find out later that they only didn't release it because the 911 operator...
	Completely makes a fool of herself, and I think that was the issue with that.
	But the real story, which I said from the beginning, it's very plausible that this really was just a homeless drug addict in San Francisco that broke into the house.
	There's no reason to get into any theories about gay lovers and all that kind of stuff.
	So the real story is that The crime problem in San Francisco is so bad that even Nancy Pelosi's house isn't safe.
	And that should have always been the point, but instead we went into this whole thing about being hookers and all the rest of it.
	I do think one thing that is true, though, is that when these incidents tend to happen to her, they keep it very hush-hush.
	Let's just give you an example on the right.
	Brad Parscale.
	When he got arrested, that tape was out before he made it into the cruiser.
	It was like circulating on Twitter.
	It was unbelievable how quickly it was released.
	And for whatever reason, when it involves her husband, it's so hush-hush, they go through everything not to give the public any information.
	In this situation, actually, when it actually was revealed, I thought this would have helped them.
	It actually would have put to bed a lot of the conspiracies.
	When I saw it, as much as I detest Nancy Pelosi, you can't see an 80-year-old get hit like that and not feel a tremendous bet.
	I mean, I was like...
	Wow, I feel really bad that he actually went through this.
	This is an old man that's getting beat up in his own house, and you hear the call, and it's like he's in such pain for the dispatcher to understand.
	No, this is a hostage situation.
	He's not being subtle.
	I need you to just, you know, have a basic level IQ here.
	She's starting to hang up the phone.
	Okay, bye.
	He's like, no, no, no, no, no.
	No, not bye.
	Remember how they originally played it that you did an amazing job?
	Yeah.
	They did, for like weeks.
	Yeah, they did.
	She saw the subtleties of what he was saying, and she could see his coded language.
	Yeah.
	It really was an amazing thing.
	And they took down that reporter on NBC, and he actually factually stated...
	So there was a lot of room for conspiracy because they were being...
	What I said at the time, I said at the time, it is perfectly plausible that this was exactly as it has been described to us.
	But the problem is they've created an environment where it is also plausible that if Paul Pelosi were hit in the head by a gay, naked lover, they also wouldn't tell us.
	The media is now so uninvested in ever scrutinizing anything that could have any negative consequence for the Democrats that we're ready for...
	The conspiracy is happening all the time right there in the open.
	So we're ready to not believe or believe anything on that basis.
	We were all asking, who's lying and who's covering up?
	Is it the Democrats or the Republicans?
	What everybody seemed to miss here is there was a third party that could have been lying and trying to hush stuff up, and it was the cops.
	Who released the information to the press that, oh, actually he referred to the invader as a friend on the phone call?
	Who released to the press, oh, he was in his underwear, oh, he had a drink, oh, he had this...
	It was the cops who were releasing that to fuel the conspiracy theories to cover their own derrieres because they were in common.
	Can we talk for a second about what the political situation is for Joe Biden going into the State of the Union?
	If we have to.
	I hate the State of the Union more than any of you, probably all of you combined with the fiery, passionate hatred of a thousand sons.
	I despise it.
	I think it's a monarchic institution that elevates the Article 2 branch of government above the Article 1 branch of government.
	But what's the problem?
	This is to articles that Joe Biden's judges don't know about.
	And the pathetic spectacle of a doddering old fool walking down the aisle to the throngs of cheering morons pretending that they like him and care about him while we all sit here for 60 minutes and watch him read a canned speech from a teleprompter in which he pledges to do a bunch of things that he will not do and lies a bunch is the worst thing in the world.
	But what exactly is he trying to do?
	Is this, as they say, the launch of his second...
	I was going to say a second presidential campaign, then I had to correct myself because he's run for president like one million times.
	So presumably he's running again, or at least being ambulatorily wheeled again toward the presidency.
	What does he have to do here?
	I think the one thing that always gets me about Joe Biden is after four years of listening to how Donald Trump lied about this and lied about that, and no one's going to defend Donald Trump as the icon of truth.
	He was kind of a carny barker, exaggerated things.
	This guy lies with such aggression that it's offensive.
	It is offensive to be told that you can afford bread when you can't.
	It's offensive to be told that everything is tickety-boo when everything is going down the crapper.
	This immediate moment...
	He has had this jobs report, which I'm suspicious of.
	I'm not sure I believe this jobs report, which has cut the unemployment rate to something like its lowest level, which, by the way, is actually bad for inflation, which is our real problem.
	Right now, we have this tremendous problem that ordinary people are having a hard time buying the staples.
	That is the state of play.
	Would you like me to explain the jobs report, by the way?
	The reason that the jobs report came in hot at $500,000 is because they underestimated the jobs growth in November or December.
	And so when you average it all out, it doesn't look nearly as good.
	Right, exactly.
	So you tend to get these kind of like weird snake-eat-the-rabbit kind of bumps sometimes in the employment markets.
	But the real problem...
	Is that there's only one chart that matters, and that is the line of employment before the pandemic versus after the pandemic.
	So if you look at the line of employment before the pandemic, it looks like this.
	The pandemic hits.
	If that line were to continue, it would be in this trajectory.
	The pandemic hits, the job market goes boom, plummets.
	When it starts to recover under Trump, it takes a V-shape.
	It goes directly straight up back toward that line, that original line, and then Joe Biden takes office and it levels off.
	And so it's been trailing...
	Almost in parallel what the line should be, except there's all these missing jobs.
	So all those missing jobs are missing.
	So we've regained the jobs that we lost during the pandemic.
	But we should be well ahead of that, considering that we're now two years out of the pandemic.
	But the important thing is you have polls showing more people than ever saying they're unhappy with the government.
	A, the government is the biggest problem we're facing.
	That's the largest problem, according to the polls.
	B, people say they're worse off than they were two years ago.
	A record number of people say that they are doing worse than they were doing two years ago.
	And a record number of people are saying that the government is going in the wrong direction.
	To have this guy stand up and say everything is great, it's just insulting.
	So it's boring and insulting, which is just a bad combination.
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	Magnificent.
	Smells like victory.
	You win.
	You killed it.
	Honestly, if I had to rage, that was...
	That's correct.
	You're getting strong now.
	Never heard better.
	You're getting strong.
	Yeah, I think that it's true.
	Donald Trump's lies were so offensive because of the way in which he lied.
	And when I say they were offensive...
	You mean hilarious.
	People will get angry with me.
	They were hilarious.
	People get angry, but they were offensive.
	They offended our sensibilities because we were used to being lied to the other way.
	All of our sensibilities were sort of formed to embrace political lies.
	And then he came along and offended those sensibilities.
	And in some ways, that was his superpower when he did it for the good.
	When he did it to cover his own rear end when he was doing bad things, when he was not being fully honest...
	It was a bad thing.
	Trump was a mixed bag, and he's extreme in both directions.
	Extremely good.
	But they did offend the political sensibility, and this is why the left really thought he was Hitler.
	This is why people were weeping in the streets and all this crazy stuff.
	I mean, people lost their minds.
	The strange thing about politics...
	Joe Biden's lies are so much more consequential.
	They're so much more damning.
	They're planned.
	He is truly one of the most corrupt people in American public life in our lifetimes.
	But his lies do not offend the sensibilities of the public.
	And so people at home can't afford eggs, and he's going to get up there and say that we have a great economy.
	And people will fill the fence, but they'll look around, and there won't be anybody screaming in the streets, and there won't be any journalists fainting, and there won't be any celebrities threatening to leave the country.
	And so they go...
	They'll be defending the lie.
	But that's the press doing that.
	They create that atmosphere.
	I don't believe that.
	I understand that that's what it is.
	I think the people at home are, like, the Democrat people that I know and I'm friends with and that are in my family, actually they are offended.
	I hope so.
	And I think that we don't believe so because the press pretends not to be offended.
	And they tell us it's not a big deal.
	Yeah, the press is telling us, oh, it's not a big deal, and they keep moving on.
	But the average American, I think, is suffering enough.
	They understand that they're being lied to.
	They're not happy with the entire balloon gate, Chinese balloon gate.
	And so I do think that there is this disparity between what the press says and what the people actually feel.
	And I think that's shown by, you know, CNN suffering their numbers and things of that nature because they're no longer seeing their viewpoints reflected in what they're watching.
	Numbers is a kind word to use about their audience.
	And also to answer the original question of what does he need to do tonight politically.
	Yes.
	The answer, of course...
	Talk to the bag, man.
	No, I refuse.
	Talk to the camera.
	The answer, of course, is that it really doesn't matter at all what he says on the State of the Union.
	The State of the Union has zero political impact whatsoever.
	I don't think there's any evidence that it affects the polls in any kind of long-standing way at all.
	Not in a year before an election year.
	Whatever happens tonight, everyone has forgotten it by Thursday at the latest.
	Matt, would you like some ice cream?
	Donald Trump has already forgotten.
	I'm sorry, Joe Biden has already forgotten.
	Did you see the Washington Post column today saying, the headline, I'm not getting it verbatim, but it's pretty close, eggs are not really that expensive.
	I love that.
	The thesis was, when you really think about it, when you really think, I know you're paying $5, $6, $10, $15 for eggs, when you can get them.
	They were sold out the other day at my grocery store.
	It's really actually expensive.
	These are not the droids you're looking for.
	Actually, these are not very expensive eggs.
	I was a chicken farmer once.
	No, you were not, Mr.
	President.
	Is there going to be a party who blows into the bag and just smacks it?
	This is the thing, though, that when there is no social proof to reinforce the thing that you're feeling inside, you tend to second-guess yourself.
	And I think this is part of what explains the poor showing that we had on election night.
	Also, why did Barack Obama...
	Barack Obama won re-election with the worst sort of economic indicators of any president who'd won re-election in modern life, but there was no social proof to validate the way that people felt.
	This is the power that the media had.
	If we get that Obama had the advantage of that 2008 crash...
	So even though his economic numbers, we knew his economic numbers were bad, but they were better than when he took office and got the entire press corps with him.
	And so they kept saying, oh, there was so much better, such an improvement, so great.
	I mean, there was a piece in the New York Times today, I think it was, in the op-ed page, or knucklehead row, as I call it, where Michelle Goldberg...
	Yeah, it's so funny.
	She's a wonderful columnist because she sees like a sort of shadow.
	She sees the truth, but she's not allowed to think outside of the New York Times philosophy, so she can't quite grasp what it is.
	So she wrote this thing saying, this is a great president.
	This is a great, great president.
	It was like listening to somebody.
	No, he missed the second sentence.
	He's a great president, but he shouldn't run again.
	But he shouldn't run again.
	Which, by the way, is kind of the subtle undertones.
	The problem for the Democrats, of course, is that the people backing her up are Kamala Harris, the least talented human being maybe ever to walk the earth.
	It is truly astonishing, the levels of talent that she does not have.
	They are nearly infinite.
	It's like an infinite regress of talentlessness with Kamala Harris.
	And so they kind of are wedded to her.
	And every so often you'll see a hit piece come out about Kamala.
	And it's like, okay, Pete Buttigieg in the study with the wrench.
	Because you know that he's setting all of those up.
	The truth is, I think that the best ally that Biden has is not even the media.
	The best ally that he has is that he is a dead person.
	I'm not kidding you.
	It is that he is an empty bag.
	Indeed.
	Because he's a deeply unthreatening human being.
	He's a very threatening person in terms of his actual politics, and the stuff that he wants for the country is actually genuinely terrible, and in some cases even evil.
	But, he's also non-threatening because you look at him and you're like, he's such a non-entity.
	Like, can you get...
	Like, he's walking...
	The president's walking into the joint session right now.
	Well, he's walking?
	It's a miracle.
	It's a miracle.
	And you just look at him and he does look so harmless.
	Right.
	He's an old man whose eyes have closed because he's got so much Botox in his forehead.
	This is a guy who pooped his pants in front of the Pope.
	Right.
	I wondered when you'd get it in there.
	He's a waiting all show for that one.
	The question, though, is how do you generate a sense of threat around a person who is like that?
	You can try to generate a sense of threat around his agenda, but he doesn't have the same sort of...
	Threatening talent.
	See, it takes talent to be threatening.
	Barack Obama was a threatening president specifically because he was charismatic and talented.
	But I keep imagining what a textbook is going to look like 500 years from now when they show us the last president of the republic and he's just doddering old man like this was the man they thought was going to...
	It's threatening in a different kind of way.
	I understand that he's not evil looking.
	But he looks like the end of the republic.
	It doesn't say something about him.
	And that's the problem, is that the American people generally don't like to look directly in the mirror.
	When we look at the problems that the country faces, the reality is we can blame our politicians all we want.
	A lot of this is just generated by the American public.
	I mean, this is a democratic republic, and the fact is we keep electing these dolts over and over and over again.
	And that's why the Chinese feel so just sanguine about floating into nearly every arena of American life and just being a...
	What's happening right now?
	Xi Jinping is sending us messages.
	I'm feeling threatened.
	Andrew Klavan, would you like to shoot that piece down for us?
	I was thinking, do you mind?
	I was looking for something sharper, I don't know.
	Sputnik flying overhead?
	The flamethrower, Michael.
	The flamethrower.
	Where did the flamethrower go?
	No, no.
	Drew almost got it.
	The most amusing things we'll get all night.
	An old man trying to prod a balloon with a cigar.
	Yes, we have reached that point in the broadcast and we haven't even begun.
	Actually, that's a great metaphor for the State of the Union.
	No, no.
	Oh, my God.
	It wasn't lit enough.
	These Chinese are amazing.
	That one was made in America.
	So now here's the president of the United States, or the husband of the president of the United States, wandering through the room, shaking hands with a bunch of Supreme Court justices and past Supreme Court justices, it looks like.
	And you have just Kevin McCarthy standing there and Kamala Harris standing there and they clap like automatons.
	And we all pretend that we like the president, which is always, that's always one of my favorite things about the State of the Union, is where the president walks in and everybody on both sides of the aisle pretends they like him.
	Like for that brief moment before they start cheering.
	Or maybe not with Trump.
	I want to know if Kevin McCarthy is going to tear up the speech.
	I hope so.
	I hope he makes it into like some sort of origami thing.
	Maybe just into a swan or something.
	You know, what's amazing about this setting, though, I'm probably the most pro-State of the Union person here.
	Not this.
	I mean, this is going to be interminable and terrible.
	Because you're a monarchist.
	I'm Catholic Italian.
	But I like the looks of it are so majestic.
	And the idea that we're all coming together and we actually have something in common and both houses of Congress are meeting in the same place and both parties.
	So it's fiction.
	No, the idea of it, I mean, it might be a noble fiction, but I like it in theory.
	And then it always makes me think, why does the opposition party feel the need to give the response to the State of the Union?
	When you're doing it from some random room somewhere, with Rubio grabbing for a bottle of water, it cannot look good.
	I was so sorry to see that Sarah Sanders is giving the response, because I like Sarah Sanders.
	I think she's very talented.
	She's the only Republican who probably won't run for president.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You're right, in 2024.
	But I just think, let them...
	Has there ever been a good response?
	No, there never.
	There cannot be, for all the reasons that Michael was saying.
	I'm sorry, the president looks so addled.
	Look at him.
	He's not with us.
	He's just not with us.
	And he's...
	You know this is going to be bad?
	You know this is going to be bad because the New York Times, before it even began, ran a piece about how he's overcoming his stammer.
	They did.
	It's like, that's who's been in public life for longer than I've been alive by a factor of like...
	It took him 80 years.
	Alright, the President of the United States is about to start.
	He's handing his speech to Kevin McCarthy.
	We'll be back with you at the conclusion of the speech to tell you how bad it was.
	We'll see you then.
	Wow.
	That was in on this paddle of horse, huh?
	Franklin Roosevelt.
	See, you're for fear instead of hope, and you're for darkness instead of hope.
	Yeah, you know what?
	Screw life.
	What you don't understand, Ben, is that Franklin Roosevelt defeated Nazi Germany, and Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union, and Joseph Robinette Biden defeated resort fees.
	I'm so moved.
	He was very concerned about ticket fees at the airport.
	Significantly more concerned about that than China.
	China came much later in the speech.
	That was actually the part where he was just listing stuff he was annoyed by and saying he'll ban them.
	That's exactly how I would handle a state of defense.
	Most relatable he's ever been on.
	Yeah, I know.
	That'll get him elected.
	So, I have a few personal favorites.
	You know, we're going to play the hits a little bit here.
	Yeah, let's do it.
	One of my personal favorites was the part where he said, you know, I approached all these oil companies, and I told them they need to start drilling.
	And they said to me, well, how can we build new refineries when you're trying to transition away from oil?
	And I say, well, we're going to need oil for at least about 10 years.
	And people broke out laughing.
	People broke out laughing because you're making their case.
	Because you're a sad, screamy old man.
	Yeah, because you couldn't get the EPA approval to even start digging to build the refinery in 10 years.
	That's the actual truth.
	It is.
	You know, that was serious.
	I don't even have anything to say on the specifics of that speech because I felt the entire thing was like standing in a bar where the guy next to you is drunk and won't leave you alone.
	Yeah.
	Look it up!
	Look it up!
	Tremendously gaslit throughout all of that.
	I mean, people have a lot of conspiracy theories about watching the COVID shots.
	You better hope it's a healthy bout of amnesia because he's pretending that he is going to be the person that is fighting against Big Pharma as if he wasn't the same person that we all just had to fight at the Daily Wire because OSHA tried to ban you.
	Yeah, tried to mandate.
	Joe Biden tried to mandate via OSHA the vaccine to everybody's arm.
	They're applauding as if he's the person now that's fighting.
	I don't understand it.
	The insulin move with Big Pharma, he stopped Trump.
	Trump already did this, lowered the prices for insulin.
	He blocked it, and now he's reintroducing what Trump did.
	So I think people's memories must be going.
	This comment that we pay more for drugs than other countries is because they have single-payer health care.
	So the drug companies have no one to bargain with except the government.
	And when they come to us, they have to bargain with various different people.
	If they're not making profits off us, they're not making profits off anybody.
	If they're not making profits off anybody, 20 years from now, when cancer might be cured, when some cancer might be cured, it won't be.
	You won't even know what you missed.
	You will not even know what they took away from you.
	I like the part where So, which one of you guys hit Paul Pelosi in the head of the hammer, guys?
	I think it was all of us.
	I think it was all of us.
	It was all of us.
	Really, it was all of us.
	Who wasn't hitting Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer while half naked and stoned out of my mind?
	It was really because, you know, the big lie in January 6th and Trump.
	So that's why Paul Pelosi got hit in the head with a hammer and also unity.
	But like, really a lot of unity and Joe Biden wants to be like, he's standing up for all of us, especially the people who hit Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer.
	I thought that part was really profound.
	And speaking of gaslighting, he brings Tyree Nichols' family on and then transitions immediately to a discussion about racist police officers when it was, of course, black police officers that killed them.
	And then also, can I also say that this whole thing about the talk?
	Well, white families never have to have the talk with their kids.
	This is such nonsense.
	When I started driving, my dad explained to me that, son, if you ever get pulled over, be respectful to the police officer.
	If you don't agree with the ticket...
	Fight it in court.
	Doesn't literally every parent have that talk with kids when they start driving?
	And as someone who gets stopped quite often because I drive too fast, I turn on my lights, I put my hands on the thing, I say officer, it's almost the first word out of my mouth, because the minute they hear officer, they know that you respect them.
	I roll down the window and say, I'm white!
	I cannot stress this enough, officer.
	I'll start using officer.
	How did you like the random screaming?
	Random screaming, Joe, is one of the best.
	This was an historic State of the Union, and I'm not actually joking.
	It was the first time that an octogenarian has ever addressed The country as president of the United States.
	Congratulations to us, man.
	This is a great country.
	Literally anyone can be president.
	And it was an old man's speech.
	It was incoherent.
	It was rambling.
	It was shouting.
	It was off his personal peaks.
	The real giveaway, too, was because he's accomplished nothing and he's only failed, the whole speech was just about the stuff that he's definitely going to get to really soon.
	And by the way, the stuff he's going to get to really soon was fixing the luggage fees, right?
	It wasn't even ambitious.
	I don't agree that he's failed.
	I think he's passed a lot of stuff.
	I mean, whatever the hell they call it, the inflation reduction.
	The global warming bill.
	The fact that it's bad.
	It's different than the fact...
	But it hasn't fixed anything.
	He can't come out and say, inflation is really great.
	He tried to a little bit, but it didn't work.
	Well, his stuff hasn't worked.
	Not yet.
	Now we're going to get the whole routine from the media about the Republicans were so mean to him, guys.
	They were so mean to him because they kept yelling at him during the speech.
	I thought that was good.
	I've never seen...
	Has there ever been a State of the Union address?
	Where twice the president makes a claim and then walks it back in real time?
	Because we have the transcript of what the White House releases beforehand.
	And he literally had to have lied in full paragraphs of his speech because he said, the Republicans want Medicare, Social Security, and Medicare...
	And the Republicans are like, no, no.
	And he's like, no one wants to take your Social Security and Medicare.
	Isn't that great?
	And they're like, yes.
	And then he just had to cut out like two paragraphs of his campaign stump speech.
	You're right.
	I mean, he walked that one back.
	I did like the part where he was shouting about how no one wants to switch places with Xi Jinping, which I have some news for him.
	There are a lot of all of them.
	Thomas Friedman.
	Yeah.
	You know, we're ignoring the real issue, though.
	And this was an issue that Matt pointed out to me at the very top of the speech.
	Can we talk about the weird kiss between Dr.
	Jill and Kamala's husband?
	The weird, like, make-out session?
	Oh, was that Kamala's?
	It was weird.
	It was weird.
	It's not a personal matter here.
	What they do in the public forum isn't a person.
	I'm actually going to push back on this and say that it was bad optics at a political speech.
	And I will enjoy for the next 10 years of American public life tweeting out the photo with funny quips.
	But if you actually watch the video of it, It's a slightly out-of-touch thing for them to do in a political environment.
	If they did the exact same thing at the Grammys or...
	Or at one of the Eyes Wide Shut parties.
	No.
	My point is that...
	In the privacy of their own bedroom.
	That's right.
	My point is that if we had seen them do that at an Oscars after party, no one would think anything.
	Oh, they're having an affair.
	Let's play.
	I just want to make this declarative statement.
	All right, all right.
	The media are already going nuts over people yelling at Biden.
	Biden was yelling at us.
	That was the whole damn thing.
	I'm super tired of this whole nonsense where a politician who gives a speech like this, no one can yell back at him.
	I remember they did this with Joe Wilson also.
	Remember the you lie moment?
	It was like the biggest deal in the world.
	Do you lie?
	First of all, you guys claimed that Donald Trump was a Russian plan for like four years.
	For four years and you spent tens of millions and you ripped up his speech.
	Can we drop all of this garbage about how civility must dominate and no one can ever say to the president you're wrong when he's clearly lying about you?
	Have you ever seen British Parliament It's the best thing.
	We should do it like British Parliament.
	The Prime Minister should get up there and we should mock him.
	We should all yell at him.
	It's much better.
	It's much better.
	This is nonsense.
	Or our own Congress historically when they're beating each other over the heads.
	Even when the King, now King, previously Queen for all of our lifetimes, opens the government in the UK and they summons the commoners, the House of Commons, over to the House of Lords For the inaugural speech to open the government.
	They actually go through this kind of pantomime as they cross through Westminster Palace of talking loudly and kind of stomping over there as a way of saying, we don't have to show respect to the king.
	So even in a true monarchy, they...
	When they have a truly monarchical speech by the monarch, they don't have this idea, this faux dignity kind of concept that we have.
	But what Ben says is true, this question time where they beat the living daylights out of the prime minister is because they have this useless king That they can project their country onto.
	They can then go after their politicians as what they are, which is a line saxophone.
	Did you see the biggest applause line of the night, by the way?
	This was actually truly sad.
	They love abortion, right?
	The abortion one, when he said, well, I'm going to get up there.
	I, devout Catholic Joe Biden, I'm going to codify the killing of many more babies into federal law.
	And it was the most enthusiastic...
	Brought the House down.
	By the way, this is a low seat, clapping, all the Catholics just...
	One of my favorite parts of these speeches is where the president of the opposing party pledges to veto legislation that will never even come close to his desk.
	The Republicans don't control the Senate.
	They ain't passing a national abortion ban.
	It's not going to happen.
	I'll protect you from this thing that's never, ever going to happen.
	Can we talk about the gap between who he is and the policies he's pushing are going to be a real dilemma for the Democrats?
	for all of their cherished hopes and dreams.
	He's spending more money than has ever been seen in the history of mankind.
	He's pushing all of their most valuable and cherished goals from transing of the children to completely restructuring the American economy.
	He's doing all of those things.
	But also, he's an incoherent old fool who's yelling at the clouds.
	And so that is a very odd combo.
	And this is one of the reasons they are begging for Republicans to run a bad candidate in 2024.
	They're begging for it.
	Because anybody could tear this guy apart on stage who at least has a sentient bone in his body.
	Biden is trying to trans the kids.
	You know who else is trying to trans the kids?
	There are actually razor companies that are advocating that he trans the kids.
	But there's one razor company that's not.
	You know what that razor company is?
	Tell us.
	That would be Jeremy's razor.
	Well, ladies, look at your man.
	Now back to me.
	Now back at your man.
	Now back to me.
	Does he have a coif as healthy and hydrated and magnificent as you see here?
	Of course not.
	And how could he when he's using chemical-laced products from so-called men's grooming companies that hate him and his masculinity?
	This Valentine's Day, get him a gift that says, I don't hate you.
	Get him a Jeremy's Razors 30% off hair, body, or shave bundle.
	Unlike Mr.
	Klavan over there, I use Jeremy's Tea Tree and Argan Oil Shampoo and Conditioner.
	And the results speak for themselves.
	Stop it, AOC. I will not date you.
	Ladies, your man isn't toxic.
	He just needs a shower.
	But order tonight to make sure it arrives by the 14th.
	Get your Valentine's bundle for 30% off.
	Just go to jeremysrazors.com.
	And there are people out there who think that I can troll you guys.
	I wrote every word of that.
	Why don't we put all of our worst bits into the same...
	It's like a greatest hits in real time.
	Somebody on Twitter said, Ben is a better Joe than Ben.
	Oh, no.
	I thought, this is fair.
	Put the bag away!
	Put the bag!
	Joe, come back!
	Oh, no!
	Joe's back.
	Oh, good.
	Usually, right now I'm controlling him, but usually it's the media who are up his ass.
	Aww.
	It's a sad story.
	I do think that...
	He cringes in shame.
	He crinkles in shame.
	We are literally paid political commentators.
	Our only job in life is to watch the speech.
	And sitting here with you guys for the last almost 90 minutes, we could not watch the speech.
	We were all sitting here.
	I think they just came and took it before the cameras rolled.
	They had to print for us printed copies of it because it was so incomprehensible in real time.
	He is...
	And it is interesting to me how bad he is.
	And some people say, oh, there's no way he could run again.
	But I do believe it's a feature, not a bug.
	I believe his age, you know, we were talking as he entered the chamber that in some ways his sort of harmless aesthetic.
	But it's not just his harmless aesthetic.
	I think it actually is his sort of disconnectedness and his mental slippage.
	All of that works to their advantage because it makes him this sort of Trojan horse in whom they can plant all of their ideas.
	I mean, he really is more than any president.
	Everybody used to say that Dick Cheney really controlled George W. Bush.
	And my argument is always, listen, that's nonsense.
	The president is the president.
	In the president is vested the power of the presidency.
	But it had never occurred to me what happens when you have a president who is actually mentally incapable.
	But his strength, as you point out, Jeremy, is Joe Biden first entered national politics more than 50 years ago.
	That's right.
	And so it doesn't matter if he mumbles and slurs his words and screams and is totally divorced from reality.
	People are very comfortable with him.
	Do you feel bad for any person that poops their pants?
	No.
	Old or young, you just go, this person can't hold their bowels.
	And if they do it in front of the Pope, it's hard to be like, I really, really hate this person because he pooped his pants.
	And that's what you're trying to say.
	You're using a lot of nice words.
	What you're trying to say is real bad for any person that poops their pants in front of the Pope.
	And that is true.
	You are correct that he can run again.
	I don't think he will.
	It feels to me like the media is turning on him.
	I think it's purposeful.
	Suddenly they're willing to cover the Hutton-Biden laptop.
	They're willing to talk about his corruption.
	They're willing to find the classified documents they knew that they were there forever.
	They're not idiots.
	And it seems to me like they're kind of gently trying to back away from this.
	And I do think, Tucker Carlson had done a segment on this a few weeks ago, that they may be priming Michelle Obama for a run.
	And by the way, that's a serious run.
	And I said, that's not something to mock.
	Michelle Obama is not something to mock.
	No, Michelle Obama does not run for president and not become president.
	I have to push back on this idea, though, that this is a superpower of his, that he is incomprehensible and unthreatening.
	It is a superpower if the Republicans don't run someone against him who is a statesman with a point of view.
	I know.
	I know, I'm sorry.
	Unrelated.
	No, but I mean, I think that Trump was an amazing moment in history when things shifted as they had to shift.
	They were shifting already.
	They changed under cover of Trump so that the Republicans are now the party of the working class.
	They are now the party of the ordinary man, which they weren't before.
	And the Democrats are the party of the elite.
	And I think that if somebody stands up who is an actual statesman, I'm not going to say it's Governor DeSantis, but it's Governor DeSantis, who stands up and says, I can do the things that you need me to do in a statesman-like way, like the president of the United States.
	I think you will wipe even Michelle Obama off the map.
	You're such an optimist, Drew.
	What's that?
	You're a real optimist.
	I do not think another television personality, which is what Michelle Obama is, let's face it, Is going to win against an actual person who stands for something.
	But that's very rare.
	I will say that there's something that was interesting, believe it or not, in what Biden was trying to do strategically with the speech.
	And you can see it in how he back-loaded all the controversial material.
	So he actually back-loaded, he knew everybody was going to tune out in the first 20 minutes.
	So he back-loaded everything that had to do with the equity agenda.
	That was all back-loaded, right?
	The policing stuff was all back-loaded.
	The stuff about transiting the kids.
	All backloaded.
	Even some of the environmental stuff tended to be more backloaded.
	He was focusing a lot on what he sees as the blue-collar base.
	He's trying to wrest back away some of those Trump voters.
	And so he's focusing a lot on protectionist economic policy, on subsidies for various types of industry, on unions, right?
	He thinks that he's going to run sort of the Tim Ryan Ohio campaign and that this is going to stand him in good stead.
	I don't think that his party is going to allow that to be the center of that.
	I don't think the media are excited about it.
	Just ask Senator Ryan.
	They wouldn't be cheering when you said that they...
	When he said we need fossil fuels for 10 more years, there was like dead silence from the Democrats.
	Right.
	I think he's going to have trouble squaring that circle, but you can see he's trying to make that move.
	He understands that in order for his coalition to be durable, he does need to expand it and win back a certain base that the Democrats have lost.
	I don't think the rest of his party understands that.
	It's a real problem.
	On the point of wedges, though, we were knocking him because it was a horrible speech.
	There is one really clever thing he did, though, and it was right at the top, which is he got those two lines in about...
	Kevin McCarthy and about Mitch McConnell.
	And there were lines to say, I'm actually looking forward to working with you, Kevin.
	I hope I don't hurt your career by saying that, but Kevin, I think you're great.
	And Mitch, you know, it's going to be great to work with you too, Mitch.
	And that's obviously a dig at MAGA, but it's really a dig at both those guys, because he knows.
	We can see them in the eyes of MAGA. Of course, yeah.
	And after the most contentious House battle in, what, 150 years, I think it was?
	House leadership battle.
	It wasn't his idea, but it was smart.
	I did like the part where he's going to fight inflation by giving everybody $1,000 back on an electric car and building $500,000.
	That'll work.
	That'll pay for my Tesla.
	It won't, by the way.
	The Tesla's expensive.
	It's a great car, but it was expensive.
	It is true.
	It is peculiar that all of the Democrat social policy now is aimed at helping well-off people.
	Yeah.
	We're going to pay for your college.
	No, we're going to pay for your electric car.
	No, we're going to pay for your housekeeper.
	No, we're going to pay for your vacation.
	Even the stuff about the non-compete clause.
	They're going to want to get rid of non-compete clauses.
	He pretends that this is about helping fast food employees, which apparently maybe there are a few that are on non-compete clauses, which I can't imagine.
	I've never had one when I worked there.
	The vast majority of that is not...
	It's tech sector.
	Right.
	It's high income.
	Resort fees.
	No one worrying about how they're going to pay for eggs at home today is like, yeah, finally, resort fees!
	This actually is a great point.
	He was talking about how very specific ways he was going to reduce very specific bills.
	I'm going to mandate that there are no more resort fees.
	I'm going to make sure there are no baggage fees.
	I'm going to make sure that you can get a refund on your airline ticket.
	Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is that inflation, which he says is quote-unquote down, is currently running at 6.5%, which Just three and a half, which is more than three times, like 325%, what they're aiming at, right?
	Normally you're aiming at a 2% inflation rate.
	It's running at 6.5%, and that's down, right?
	So he's avoiding that like the plague, and instead proclaiming that he's going to lower your costs in this way and that way, and just hoping that you ignore the elephant in the room.
	There's so many sort of tacit lies that he was telling.
	His whole inflation reduction nonsense.
	Like, oh, Donald Trump blew out the...
	Numbers on the deficit, and I'm bringing the deficit down.
	No, it's just that the programs under Trump sunsetted, and so therefore less money was spent under those programs.
	Those were unanimously passed by the Republicans and the Democrats because of COVID. I love how he blamed COVID simultaneously for the crime increase as well as for inflation.
	And then he said, COVID just kind of magically shut down our educational system.
	No, you shut down our educational system.
	He kept blaming extraneous factors for all of his problems.
	Well, of course, he gets the personal credit for all of his.
	By the way, teachers are all going to get a raise.
	So there's that.
	They did such an amazing job not teaching during COVID.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They didn't teach during COVID.
	They didn't want to go back to work.
	Also, we have students that are suffering.
	But people can't pass basic reading exams.
	Literacy exams are the lowest they've ever been in this country.
	But you know what we're going to do?
	Let's give teachers a raise.
	That will definitely help the problem.
	And a couple more years of school.
	Oh yeah, because we need, yeah, let's extend it to daycare.
	It shouldn't just be 12 years.
	He said we need more years.
	And that obviously is something that parents should be really paying attention to.
	That's also something that he backloaded.
	Go on.
	That's how you fix education systems, by putting more money into it.
	But if you want to fix law enforcement, you take money out of it.
	Yes.
	A perfectly sound argument.
	One thing that Matt said that I think is absolutely true is this is not going to be a political event at all.
	Usually the State of the Union has a blip afterwards.
	It lasts like two days and it's going to go away.
	But the only thing about this is that You know, it's interesting to us because we're political types and we like political stories.
	And it is a political story.
	It does tell us how the government is, how the strategy of the Democrats is playing out.
	But aside from that, it's not actually a political event.
	The only thing about it that I think helps Biden is that there keep being kind of rumors of his demise.
	And they are greatly exaggerated inside of his own party.
	Not physically.
	He's dead.
	They propped him on a horse like El Cid and they're just riding him around.
	But the thing about what keeps happening is that they proclaim that he was dead before the midterms.
	And then the Democrats slightly overperformed it.
	It's back.
	It's back.
	Go ahead.
	Come on.
	Oh my...
	Oh!
	You didn't break it, but you brought it down.
	You did what Biden didn't do in nine days.
	Wow.
	We call him...
	America!
	America!
	After eight days, the balloon has been...
	Finally, finally.
	Yes, what a success.
	We took care of that thing right away.
	Oh, no.
	Tell us how you did it.
	Tell us how you did it, Mr.
	President.
	It was all me.
	I was here the whole time.
	I didn't see you anywhere there, Mr.
	President.
	It was part of my plan.
	I actually only notice now that it's an ice cream cone in his hand.
	That's a nice touch.
	That's a nice little touch.
	Bye.
	Leave that poor woman alone.
	No, no, no, Mr.
	President.
	Not again.
	Hope is a country.
	If you want to spend even more time with us, you're welcome to come over to Daily Wire Plus.
	God knows why you would.
	Yeah, I can't imagine.
	But we're going to do our members block here in a few minutes, and there's still a little bit of time to get your questions in.
	We're going to be taking only questions from members at the members block.
	That's why we call it the members block.
	Become a member at dailywireplus.com slash subscribe.
	You can get 40% off because it is our president is for sale sale.
	And what do we mean by our president is for sale?
	Well, we literally mean...
	China owns the president of the United States of America.
	It's a subtle love.
	Now I get it.
	It's a rental.
	It's just the worst show ever.
	Can you promise me a member block that paper-bag Joe Biden's not going to be there?
	Yeah, so I agree.
	Nothing's going to come of this.
	It was over before the speech was over.
	The political impact.
	He...
	He almost went out of his way not to dream big.
	I mean, you could say that the cancer thing is big, except there was literally a plot line on the West Wing almost 20 years ago, whether or not to announce that we could cure cancer at a State of the Union.
	You know what they concluded?
	You can't.
	No, you can't actually say that.
	He's also been doing this schtick for like seven or eight years.
	That's right.
	Cancer moonshot.
	Yeah.
	Just one more year, guys.
	I think he's going to do it.
	I think he's going to do it.
	I hate cancer.
	Bold statement.
	Give me someone!
	Who doesn't want to be Xi Jinping?
	No, please, take it all the way off.
	Take it all the way off.
	It's a good run, Joe.
	Can we go home?
	No.
	We can't go home, but we can go do our member's block.
	Head over to dailywireplus.com.
	Right now, for the rest of you, we're going to catch back up with you on the other side.
	There are plenty more horrible political events coming this year, and we will be here to cover each and every one of them.
	We will suffer them all.
	We will suffer them all together.

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