The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220801_bidens-ridiculous-recession-spin-and-pelosis-taiwa
Aired: 2022-08-01
Duration: 01:40:17


=== Montana Family Adventure (12:54) ===

[00:00:15]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:26]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:28]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:30]  I am just back from a trip to Montana with my family, and what a week it was.
[00:00:36]  Can I tell you, I love Montana and I love a mountain vacation in the summer.
[00:00:42]  We spend our summers at the Jersey Shore, where my husband has a lifetime of friends and memories, and it's absolutely great.
[00:00:48]  Love, love, love our friends down here.
[00:00:50]  But the truth is, I'm not a beach person.
[00:00:53]  I don't like the sea or the sun or the sand or the sharks or the bugs.
[00:00:59]  And I love that my family loves it.
[00:01:01]  But I, at heart, am much more of a mountain gal.
[00:01:04]  From the time I was a little girl growing up in Syracuse, New York, to right now, what I've always really wanted to be was a cowgirl.
[00:01:10]  I wanted to have a horse.
[00:01:12]  My mom told me I was going to get one if I moved from Syracuse to Albany when I was 10 and she did not provide.
[00:01:18]  And this trip, I even managed to find a semi-replica of the little shirt that I wore for an entire year of my young life around 1976, complete with cowgirl fringe and snaps.
[00:01:27]  It was amazing.
[00:01:28]  For those of you listening to this, you can check it out on YouTube where I have posted the similarity in the shirts.
[00:01:36]  Score.
[00:01:37]  I also changed my teeth since then.
[00:01:41]  Anyway, it's what I always wanted to be.
[00:01:43]  And so I love going to the mountains.
[00:01:44]  And one of the things I love about the mountain vacation is how active it is.
[00:01:49]  Right?
[00:01:49]  It's like active with a bit of risk associated with many of the activities.
[00:01:53]  Risk or, you know, just physical challenge.
[00:01:55]  Now, one of the things I don't like about the beach, I don't like sitting on the beach for hours making small talk.
[00:01:59]  I don't like small talk at all.
[00:02:01]  I'm not good at it.
[00:02:02]  I'm not one of those women who can like easily shift from subject to subject.
[00:02:06]  I've just, maybe it's this job.
[00:02:08]  I can do it well in an interview, but I can't, like, I'm abrupt.
[00:02:12]  So I'm not good at small talk.
[00:02:15]  But in the mountains, you don't sit around making small talk.
[00:02:17]  You move, you hike, you camp, you raft, you do things you or at least I would never regularly do in the Northeast, at least, like fly fish.
[00:02:26]  There's an element of the unknown, the unfamiliar, but the slightly dangerous.
[00:02:30]  Here's a picture of me catching my big fish.
[00:02:32]  There's a rainbow trout.
[00:02:34]  It's thrilling.
[00:02:35]  But the other thing about being in the mountains is all that fresh air illuminates quite a few profundities about life and its meaning.
[00:02:46]  And that was indeed the case for us.
[00:02:48]  I told you about some of the things I learned after Thatcher, our youngest, was injured on the ski mountain back in March.
[00:02:55]  Like what matters in our limited time here, in my belief, is those people who are within 15 feet of you.
[00:03:02]  Pretty much everything and everyone that matters are within is within 15 feet of you.
[00:03:06]  Nature, risk, and the removal of most material objects can have the effect of clarifying complex life matters for a person, right?
[00:03:15]  Like the fresh air makes you think more clearly.
[00:03:18]  And when we got there last weekend, the first thing we did was immediately go on an overnight camp.
[00:03:23]  We rode horses, all five of us, about two hours to the campsite.
[00:03:27]  And we spent the afternoon exploring, painting sticks.
[00:03:30]  That was something we used to do when we camped all the time when I was a kid.
[00:03:33]  Sitting by the campfire and singing songs.
[00:03:36]  Sleeping in the tent was fine.
[00:03:38]  It was fine.
[00:03:39]  But my daughter, Yardley, was recovering from a cold.
[00:03:41]  Oh my God, we barely got a wink of sleep.
[00:03:43]  Have you ever had this situation where you're in the room with your child who's ailing in some way?
[00:03:47]  Finally, she got over right by me.
[00:03:50]  And the child was coughing up my nostrils all night long.
[00:03:55]  The next morning, she's like, oh, can I have a sip of your water?
[00:03:58]  And oh, she said, she goes, I probably shouldn't because I'm sick.
[00:04:00]  I'm like, are you kidding?
[00:04:01]  You just coughed off my nostrils for 12 hours.
[00:04:04]  Here you go.
[00:04:05]  But, you know, I'm sure you've been there if you have kids.
[00:04:09]  Riding horses in Montana, by the way, is nothing, nothing like riding them in the Northeast.
[00:04:14]  Before we went out there, we took our kids for a lesson.
[00:04:17]  They haven't done a lot of horse riding.
[00:04:19]  My daughter's done a little bit more than my sons, but we took them for a lesson.
[00:04:22]  We went out there.
[00:04:23]  This is in New Jersey.
[00:04:24]  It was one hour split between three children walking around a corral on one horse led by a rope by like the owner.
[00:04:34]  It was like, that is not horseback riding.
[00:04:37]  It was a totally experience out west where they do make you sign a waiver, but they're not, they're like, you don't need to wear a helmet.
[00:04:45]  Nobody really wears one.
[00:04:46]  You can just wear your hat, cowboy hat.
[00:04:48]  We did make our little guy wear one.
[00:04:51]  And you're jumping through like creeks and rivers.
[00:04:56]  Your horse is like up to its belly trying to get through the water.
[00:05:00]  You're going up these steep, steep inclines and steep, steep declines on like rocky ground where the horse could slip.
[00:05:08]  I mean, it's scary.
[00:05:09]  It's scary, but everybody does it.
[00:05:11]  And there's sort of a lifetime in their life of experience telling you this is relatively safe.
[00:05:18]  Later in the week, we went fly fishing, which I absolutely love.
[00:05:22]  I showed you my rainbow trout, but that was not the most exciting thing I caught.
[00:05:25]  I cast my little fly fishing line into the water.
[00:05:30]  I got something on it.
[00:05:32]  I pulled.
[00:05:32]  I pulled.
[00:05:34]  And do you know what I pulled up?
[00:05:36]  I pulled up a three-foot snake, a snake on my fly fishing rod.
[00:05:42]  I managed to capture a picture of it after we got it off of the rod and reel.
[00:05:47]  We were out there with like a guide to show us where to stand and how to do it because I don't really know how to fly fish.
[00:05:52]  And he was helping my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Sharon, at the time.
[00:05:56]  So he couldn't see me.
[00:05:57]  So I'm screaming, going, Oh my God, I caught a snake.
[00:06:02]  And the guy, of course, is like, You didn't catch a snake.
[00:06:04]  I'm like, I caught a snake.
[00:06:06]  He said, You sure it's not a twig?
[00:06:07]  I said, It's moving.
[00:06:08]  It's squiggling on the line.
[00:06:10]  It's not a twig.
[00:06:11]  So the guy came over and got it off.
[00:06:13]  And I said, in the retelling, I was going to say he defanged it.
[00:06:16]  So he defanged it, though it was only a garter snake.
[00:06:20]  Anyway, believe it or not, mine was not the most exciting fly fishing adventure in the family.
[00:06:25]  My son Thatcher was out there fishing.
[00:06:27]  And this is, you know, Montana and Alaska are the only two states with grizzly bears.
[00:06:31]  They also have black bears.
[00:06:33]  And apparently they also have blonde bears because here is the blonde bear.
[00:06:36]  This is a growing black bear.
[00:06:38]  He saw, look at this.
[00:06:40]  It's a small guy.
[00:06:41]  The guy thought maybe this was like a teenager, you know, like if it were a cub, it would have been with its mama.
[00:06:48]  But when they get a little bit older, they leave their moms.
[00:06:51]  And there he was swimming right by my Thatcher in the water.
[00:06:53]  It's crazy, crazy stuff.
[00:06:55]  Then came zip lining, whitewater rafting.
[00:06:58]  By the way, we use Montana Whitewater for both excursions, and I definitely recommend them.
[00:07:01]  And no, they're not paying me to say that.
[00:07:03]  They're just great.
[00:07:05]  So, you know, it's always hard to find.
[00:07:07]  Here we are in the Whitewater Raft.
[00:07:09]  Both, both just great experiences.
[00:07:12]  One day we hiked a mountain and I said to my kids when we got to the top, look around.
[00:07:19]  This is the closest you will get to God in your lifetime.
[00:07:22]  And that is how it felt.
[00:07:24]  Serene, beautiful, picturesque, quiet, clean.
[00:07:30]  I mean, truly God's country.
[00:07:33]  You take a deep breath up there.
[00:07:35]  You exhale.
[00:07:36]  You look around.
[00:07:38]  You don't, you don't get closer to God than that.
[00:07:41]  You just don't.
[00:07:43]  I fired up some John Denver on my iPhone, another thing from when I was little and we camped.
[00:07:48]  And we sang a bit and we held hands and we said a prayer.
[00:07:52]  And that was as good or better than any mass I've ever been to at connecting me to the other side, to what matters, to a power higher than myself.
[00:08:05]  One of the blessings we experienced was that my brother and his fiancé were able to join us for most of the trip.
[00:08:11]  Now, I have not done a week's vacation with my brother since we were still under our parents' roof.
[00:08:17]  He lives down in Atlanta.
[00:08:19]  He's five years older than I am.
[00:08:21]  He is whip smart.
[00:08:22]  His name is Pete.
[00:08:23]  He's incredibly funny, big personality, big personality.
[00:08:26]  And always keep the room going with conversation about something interesting too, really good at explaining things.
[00:08:32]  He's a businessman who's personally faced the ups and downs of running a small business throughout Obamacare, the COVID nonsense, inflation, all of it.
[00:08:42]  And I've learned a lot from him in terms of what's in the news and how it affects real businesses, real people, and in terms of my own life and lessons.
[00:08:51]  Like, do not throw a sneaker at your older brother or he may grab you by the head and shoot water up your nose from the kitchen sink.
[00:08:58]  We were like oil and water when we were growing up.
[00:09:01]  It's possible I occasionally pestered him, but we have since become very close.
[00:09:06]  He coaches middle school football in his spare time.
[00:09:08]  He loves sports.
[00:09:09]  He loves gambling, poker, his family, his friends.
[00:09:12]  But he is not a guy who takes a ton of physical risks.
[00:09:15]  He's more of a cigar-loving golf course guy.
[00:09:18]  So getting him out on a whitewater raft was a feat.
[00:09:21]  And while he admitted not really wanting to do it, he and we all absolutely loved it.
[00:09:27]  We laughed, we screamed, we got scared, we felt relieved, we mocked each other, we supported each other.
[00:09:32]  We had a grand adventure together.
[00:09:35]  The kind of thing you remember long after the fact, right?
[00:09:39]  The kind of thing that bonds you to one another, whether it's your dear brother or it's your sweet loving husband or it's your fun children, all of whom are experiencing this thing together.
[00:09:52]  Now, there was this moment where we were going down a calm part of the Gallatin River.
[00:09:57]  And the guide was telling us that sometimes it's so easy to make conversation with the group in his raft that a guide will forget to pay attention to what's ahead, rocks, sharp turns, and so on.
[00:10:07]  He said the simplest but most important rule of his job is don't forget to guide the boat.
[00:10:13]  Don't forget to guide the boat.
[00:10:16]  And it occurred to me, and I told him at the time, the same applies to parenting.
[00:10:21]  And it's true, right?
[00:10:23]  These kids, whether it was Pete and yours truly growing up in upstate New York, figuring out the rules of life or brother and sisterhood, or my own kids now, ages 12, 11, and 9, they have such strong personalities, likes and dislikes and character traits, which I believe undoubtedly they enter the world with.
[00:10:42]  But there is some room for guidance, for a push now and then.
[00:10:48]  Doug and I considered not doing this trip after Thatcher's injury in March.
[00:10:53]  He's all healed up now, thank God, with a clean bill of health.
[00:10:56]  He had to go three months with no contact sports.
[00:10:58]  He had to sit out, PE.
[00:11:00]  He had to not do a bunch of stuff.
[00:11:02]  We limited our travel and all that, but he is great.
[00:11:05]  He's all healed up and his spleen is 100%.
[00:11:08]  But, you know, we're still, we worry, we worry.
[00:11:13]  Mountain vacations do, as I said, have some inherent risk in them.
[00:11:15]  And we've had enough hospital drama to last us for quite some time.
[00:11:19]  But the solution we already knew and wound up realizing again to seeing one risk turn south is not to avoid other risks.
[00:11:29]  Risk is a part of life, especially well-considered risk, right?
[00:11:33]  This wasn't reckless stuff.
[00:11:35]  As a parent, you guide the boat.
[00:11:37]  You try to keep the child off too rough waters, but you don't leave the river.
[00:11:42]  You don't pull the boat.
[00:11:44]  We climbed a very rocky mountain one day and falling on a rocky mountain trail in the winter in his snow boots was how Thatcher injured his spleen last spring and almost lost it.
[00:11:57]  And when we navigated up that rocky mountain this time in the summer, we held his hand and a little walking stick and showed him the way.
[00:12:06]  And he was a little scared, but he did it.
[00:12:09]  He made it to the top.
[00:12:10]  And at one point, we snapped a photo of him, this one here, wearing his little cowboy hat, made it safely.
[00:12:19]  And it felt amazing.
[00:12:22]  So Thatcher climbed the mountain, and all of us, including Yates and my daughter Yardley, who you can see on this ziplining video, is now at age 11 as tall as I am and is absolutely loving life.
[00:12:36]  Got on the zip line 60 feet in the air and zipped away.
[00:12:41]  And we managed the bears and the snakes and the white waters joyfully and with a zest for life that fresh air and new experiences bring out in us all.
[00:12:53]  And when we got on the plane and headed back east, carrying on all of our bags, of course, that's obvious.
[00:12:59]  We all felt a little stronger, a little braver, a little better, more connected to God and to each other.

=== Recession vs Labor Market (10:35) ===

[00:13:09]  That's a lot to get out of a week's vacation.
[00:13:13]  And I am grateful.
[00:13:35]  But now I'm also grateful to be back with you because I always miss doing the show, talking about the news, connecting with you guys.
[00:13:41]  And thankfully, we are ready to go with brand new shows this week since I'm back live and there is plenty to cover.
[00:13:48]  In just a bit, my pal Jim Garrity of National Review will be here to discuss Nancy Pelosi's possible trip to Taiwan.
[00:13:55]  What do we make of this?
[00:13:56]  Are we in favor of this or not in favor of this?
[00:13:58]  It's really interesting.
[00:13:59]  We'll get into it.
[00:14:00]  And there are several reports now that she is expected to go at just breaking, despite threats from China and even President Biden saying this is not a good idea.
[00:14:08]  But first, the top story today on the Wall Street Journal and in the country is what's happening with the economy, inflation, and the journal reporting this morning about how people are buying more essentials at dollar stores than ever before.
[00:14:21]  Yet the Biden administration continues to insist if you have fears over the economy, you're just thinking about it all the wrong way.
[00:14:28]  You see, things are great.
[00:14:29]  You just don't know it.
[00:14:31]  My first guest is saying this is nothing short of Orwellian, the weird coordinated messaging between the administration and its media sycophants, the lemmings, who just follow whatever they're told to say by the Biden administration.
[00:14:45]  Peter Schiff is the CEO and chief global strategist of Euro-Pacific Capital.
[00:14:50]  He joins me now.
[00:14:51]  Peter, so great to have you back.
[00:14:53]  It is Orwellian because we've spent the past, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years being told this is what makes a recession.
[00:15:02]  And the past, you know, week, less than, being told, forget everything we ever told you.
[00:15:09]  The rules are different now that we have a Democrat in the White House.
[00:15:12]  Yeah, well, first of all, it's not just 20 or 30 years.
[00:15:15]  I mean, it's kind of always been described as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP.
[00:15:22]  And we didn't hear differently until about, I don't know, like less than a week before they released the official numbers for the second quarter.
[00:15:31]  And obviously, the Biden administration was leaked that GDP report.
[00:15:35]  They knew in advance that it was going to be negative.
[00:15:38]  And it wasn't until then that they came out with this ridiculous explanation or excuse that two negative quarters of GDP do not constitute a recession.
[00:15:50]  Because prior to that knowledge, you know, they were pretending we had a strong economy.
[00:15:54]  They kept talking about how strong the economy was.
[00:15:56]  Well, it's been in recession the entire year.
[00:16:00]  Absolutely.
[00:16:01]  And so now with the official numbers coming out, second quarter, gross domestic product fell 0.9%, though it was expected to rise 0.3%.
[00:16:12]  We get a very different sounding message.
[00:16:15]  Now, I just want the audience to understand, the administration made perfectly clear, just like Peter did and like everybody did, what would mean we're in a recession.
[00:16:27]  And that is two consecutive periods, two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
[00:16:31]  They've been saying that along.
[00:16:32]  Even the Biden administration officials have been saying that.
[00:16:34]  It wasn't until it actually happened to him that they and their media allies completely changed, did a 180, and started to say it's a very different story.
[00:16:43]  Okay, so here's the first soundbite, soundbite one, where you can hear the media and Biden administration officials trying to tell us black is not black, white is white, not white.
[00:16:53]  This is okay, so this is actually all Biden admin officials.
[00:16:57]  So take a listen to that.
[00:16:59]  I mean, if the technical definition is two quarters of contraction, you're saying that's not a recession?
[00:17:04]  That's not the technical definition.
[00:17:06]  Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession.
[00:17:11]  You know, the idea that two quarters of negative GDP growth is a technical definition of a recession is wrong.
[00:17:18]  How is that not redefining recession?
[00:17:19]  Because that's not the definition.
[00:17:21]  What you're seeing is that we are in a transition.
[00:17:23]  We've entered a new phase in our recovery.
[00:17:26]  Virtually nothing signals that this period in the second quarter is recessionary.
[00:17:31]  That doesn't sound like a recession to me.
[00:17:34]  Okay.
[00:17:35]  So the rules have changed for no particular reason other than they're just looking at other standards.
[00:17:39]  They're looking at other pieces of the economy that they say are doing well, like low unemployment and saying that changes the rules entirely.
[00:17:45]  Yeah.
[00:17:47]  You know, I guess they believe if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
[00:17:53]  But imagine, Megan, if Donald Trump tried to do the same thing.
[00:17:57]  What if Trump were president and we had two quarters of negative GDP growth and then Donald Trump tried to redefine recession to claim that we were not in one?
[00:18:07]  Do you think the media would go along with that?
[00:18:10]  Correct.
[00:18:11]  No, never.
[00:18:12]  And the media is going along with it because those are the Biden administration officials, including Janet Yellen, right?
[00:18:18]  Like it's not the technical definition to say that two quarters of contraction is a recession since when?
[00:18:24]  It is.
[00:18:25]  It is the technical definition.
[00:18:26]  That's the definition.
[00:18:28]  And, you know, even Fed Chair Powell, they got to him.
[00:18:33]  They were able to intimidate him.
[00:18:35]  So anybody who thinks the Fed is independent, now you have Chair Powell claiming that two negative quarters is not a recession and we're not in a recession.
[00:18:44]  But you know, Megan, two negative quarters is just a minimum for a recession.
[00:18:49]  We're going to get a third negative quarter.
[00:18:51]  We're going to get a fourth negative quarter.
[00:18:52]  We're going to be seeing contracting GDP for years.
[00:18:56]  This recession is just getting started.
[00:19:00]  And the increase in unemployment is coming.
[00:19:03]  People that are pointing to the low unemployment rate and saying this means we're not in recession, that's nonsense.
[00:19:09]  Unemployment is a lagging indicator.
[00:19:12]  The unemployment rate is going to rise as the recession continues.
[00:19:17]  But also, Megan, they're trying to claim that we're not in a recession because we have a strong labor market.
[00:19:24]  We don't.
[00:19:25]  We have a very weak labor market.
[00:19:27]  Real wages are collapsing.
[00:19:29]  Wages have never really fallen this much in real terms in history.
[00:19:34]  That is a weak labor market.
[00:19:36]  When you have a strong labor market, workers can demand raises.
[00:19:39]  They have power.
[00:19:40]  They can go to their bosses and say, I want more money or I'm going to quit and take another job.
[00:19:45]  That's not happening.
[00:19:47]  Workers are being forced to work for pay cuts.
[00:19:50]  In fact, a lot of workers are taking second jobs and third jobs because they can't make ends meet on their main job.
[00:19:57]  That is a weak labor market.
[00:19:59]  So you're saying when inflation's at 9.1% and you're only getting a 5% raise, what you've really had is a 4% pay cut, and that's not a strong labor market.
[00:20:09]  Correct.
[00:20:10]  I mean, let's say we had inflation and a strong labor market, which is what they're pretending.
[00:20:15]  If inflation was 9%, workers would be getting 12% pay raises.
[00:20:20]  They would be ahead of inflation.
[00:20:22]  The fact that they're accepting raises that are much smaller than inflation shows that this is a weak labor market.
[00:20:28]  Workers have no power.
[00:20:30]  They are forced to accept lower wages because the labor market is so weak.
[00:20:37]  Before we get into that, because I do want to ask you a little bit more about the wages, on the administration contradictions, I just want to point this out.
[00:20:43]  All right, first there is Biden's National Economic Council director, Brian Deese.
[00:20:47]  In March of 2008, I think he was working for the Biden administration.
[00:20:51]  He said, economists have a technical definition of recession, two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
[00:20:57]  Now, he's with Biden, two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession.
[00:21:03]  So which is it?
[00:21:04]  I mean, it's a 100%, 180 reversal by him.
[00:21:08]  Biden's chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Cecilia Rose, in May of 2022, two quarters of negative growth is an indicator of recession.
[00:21:17]  Now, as of July 21st in a White House blog post, what is a recession?
[00:21:22]  Some say it's two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP.
[00:21:26]  Then she goes on to say that's neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.
[00:21:31]  She just said in May, two quarters of negative growth is an indicator of recession.
[00:21:35]  Then you got Jared Bernstein.
[00:21:37]  He's the economic advisor.
[00:21:38]  Wait, I got two more.
[00:21:39]  I got two more.
[00:21:40]  September of 19, he says a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining growth.
[00:21:44]  Now, that idea is quote wrong.
[00:21:46]  And then you got Heather Bosey, his economic advisor.
[00:21:49]  May 2019, a recession refers to two quarters of negative growth in GDP.
[00:21:54]  Now, that does not necessarily indicate we're in a recession.
[00:21:57]  Okay.
[00:21:58]  Peter, I can't.
[00:22:00]  Well, look, I'm 59 years old, all right?
[00:22:04]  And I have never in my life heard a recession defined any other way other than two negative quarters of GDP.
[00:22:14]  That's the definition because recession refers to whether or not the GDP is expanding or contracting.
[00:22:21]  It doesn't refer to the level of unemployment or the level of inflation.
[00:22:25]  It specifically is there to reference what is happening with GDP, right?
[00:22:31]  That's how they define economic growth.
[00:22:33]  I mean, I have a lot of problems with GDP, but that's how recession has been defined.
[00:22:39]  Recovery is when the GDP is expanding.
[00:22:43]  Recession is what it's contracting.
[00:22:46]  That's it.
[00:22:47]  And if you've got two negative quarters in a row, you're in a recession.
[00:22:51]  Now, maybe it's a shallow recession.
[00:22:53]  Maybe it's going to be over quickly.
[00:22:54]  Now, I don't think so.
[00:22:56]  I think we're just early in this recession.
[00:22:59]  I think the third quarter is going to be even weaker than the first two.
[00:23:03]  In fact, I think they're going to revise the second quarter number even lower.
[00:23:08]  And I was not surprised by that negative number.
[00:23:10]  I expected it.
[00:23:11]  And in fact, last year, I expected the first quarter to be negative.
[00:23:15]  I was forecasting that the U.S. economy would be in recession in the first half of 2022, back in 2021.
[00:23:23]  And by the way, back in 2021, I was also forecasting that inflation was not transitory and that it would get worse.
[00:23:31]  I said inflation would strengthen and the economy would weaken.
[00:23:34]  we would have stagflation, and that is exactly what we have.
[00:23:38]  You also said that Elon Musk would not buy Twitter and that if he did do it, it would be an economic mistake for him.

=== Forecasting Wage Price Spiral (02:13) ===

[00:23:45]  And we had you on for both of those.
[00:23:46]  And it turns out you were right about those predictions.
[00:23:49]  So just aside, as an aside, all right, let me.
[00:23:52]  Well, that was an easy one.
[00:23:54]  Well, I mean, you kind of stood alone on it.
[00:23:56]  So to your credit, you were right.
[00:23:59]  Let me ask you about this.
[00:24:00]  I don't totally understand it, but I would like to.
[00:24:03]  In the dispatch, which is a news service, right-leaning Jonah Goldberg and others, they're talking about the employment numbers and worker compensation, okay?
[00:24:13]  And how it rose.
[00:24:14]  Worker pay rose 5.1% in the second quarter, which was not enough to match inflation, as you and I just discussed, but they say, but that's strong growth beat economists' predictions.
[00:24:26]  Then they conclude as follows.
[00:24:27]  That is likely to make the Fed uneasy because it hints at the possibility of a wage price spiral, meaning when companies pass on the expense of higher wages to consumers by raising prices, motivating these consumers to seek still more pay raises and kicking off a vicious inflationary cycle.
[00:24:51]  Can you opine on this wage price spiral?
[00:24:54]  And are indeed employers passing on these higher wages to consumers in the form of crisis?
[00:25:02]  The wage price spiral is another fiction created by government in the 1970s to try to blame the private sector for the inflation they created.
[00:25:13]  Inflation is not created by workers demanding raises.
[00:25:16]  It's not created by companies raising prices.
[00:25:19]  It's created by the government expanding the money supply.
[00:25:22]  That's the literal definition of inflation.
[00:25:24]  It's an expansion of the money supply.
[00:25:26]  It's the money supply that is being inflated.
[00:25:28]  And when you inflate the money supply, prices go up.
[00:25:31]  Wages are just another price.
[00:25:34]  They are the price of labor.
[00:25:36]  But just because nominal wages go up 5%, if inflation is 9%, that doesn't mean workers are ahead.
[00:25:43]  And in fact, the wage number is likely accurate.
[00:25:47]  The price number is not.
[00:25:49]  The real increase in consumer prices is probably 18%, not 9%.
[00:25:54]  That means real wages are collapsing.

=== Clean Energy Investment Risks (15:03) ===

[00:25:58]  And that's one of the reasons out of the most recent economic data that we got last week, the savings rate is now at the lowest level since mid-2009.
[00:26:08]  It collapsed down to 5.1.
[00:26:10]  What was happening to the economy in mid-2009?
[00:26:14]  We were in the great recession.
[00:26:16]  So the last time we had a savings rate this low, we were in a huge recession.
[00:26:21]  Why is the savings rate so low?
[00:26:23]  Because the recession is forcing workers to dip into their savings to pay their bills because their pay increases aren't enough.
[00:26:33]  Now, in the Biden administration's defense, the stock market is doing very well.
[00:26:38]  Stocks rallied in the past week and major stock market indexes ended July with their best monthly performance of the year.
[00:26:45]  The S ⁇ P 500, the Dow scored their best month since November 2020.
[00:26:49]  NASDAQ, best monthly performance since April of 2020.
[00:26:53]  So those are good things.
[00:26:55]  And Joe Biden.
[00:26:57]  Well, you know, that's what that's, Joe Biden would like you to look at the stock market now as one sign that he's doing better than we're being told.
[00:27:05]  Megan, remember, we're in a bear market.
[00:27:07]  The bear market rally, notwithstanding, we're still in a bear market.
[00:27:11]  But the only reason the stock market has rallied is because the economy is so weak.
[00:27:17]  See, what's driving the stock market rally is the idea that because the economy is so weak, the Fed is going to pivot, that the Fed is not going to keep raising interest rates.
[00:27:27]  It's going to be forced to stop hiking rates and maybe cut rates to stimulate the economy.
[00:27:32]  So the reason the stock market has rallied is because we're in a recession.
[00:27:36]  So it's hard for Biden to kind of point to the stock market as indicative of his success when it actually is indicative of his failure.
[00:27:45]  Oh, that's fascinating.
[00:27:46]  Okay, here's what he says.
[00:27:48]  He says, number one, we have a record job market at 3.6% unemployment.
[00:27:55]  That's like their biggest argument is that very few people who want jobs don't have one.
[00:28:00]  We've created, he keeps saying this, 9 million new jobs so far just since I've become president.
[00:28:05]  He credits himself for every job people left and then refilled after the COVID lockdown opened up.
[00:28:11]  Businesses are investing in America at record rates, foreign businesses and so on.
[00:28:16]  He points to this CHIPS Act he's doing where we're investing in semiconductor investments, trying to make more of those here domestically, which is a bipartisan push.
[00:28:24]  And we'll get to the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that Manchin just agreed to in our second block.
[00:28:31]  So let's table that one for the moment.
[00:28:33]  But what do you make of 3.6% unemployment?
[00:28:37]  We've created 9 million jobs and businesses are investing in America.
[00:28:40]  And all of that puts the lie to the word recession.
[00:28:44]  Yeah, look, Biden just lies.
[00:28:46]  I mean, that's what he does.
[00:28:47]  I mean, that should be no surprise.
[00:28:49]  They lie about everything.
[00:28:50]  At least he's consistent in that.
[00:28:53]  But sure, the official unemployment rate is 3.6%.
[00:28:57]  But the unofficial rate is much higher than that because there are a lot of people that are not employed, but are not counted as being unemployed.
[00:29:05]  And we still have a very low labor force participation rate.
[00:29:10]  And so I look at that number as kind of being a meaningless, lagging indicator.
[00:29:15]  It is about to rise because, you know, Megan, a lot of companies were reluctant to lay people off over the past six months.
[00:29:23]  They were hopeful that what they were looking at was a temporary downturn.
[00:29:28]  They were hoping that inflation was transitory, that we would avoid recession, because employers don't want to lay people off.
[00:29:35]  It's expensive.
[00:29:35]  You know, you train people, you invest money in your workers.
[00:29:38]  You don't want to just get rid of them unless you really know you need to.
[00:29:42]  But I think now that the economy is so bad and it's obviously getting worse, I think a lot of these companies that were holding on to their workers, I think they're going to start letting them go.
[00:29:51]  And so you're going to see a big increase in layoffs.
[00:29:54]  We're already seeing that in first-time jobless claims, which are now above 250,000.
[00:29:59]  They actually peaked above 260,000 the prior week.
[00:30:03]  This is the highest since the fall of last year.
[00:30:05]  That's a leading indicator, unlike the unemployment rate, which is a lagging indicator.
[00:30:12]  And the idea that Biden created any jobs, I mean, that's ridiculous.
[00:30:15]  He didn't create anything.
[00:30:16]  You basically had a bunch of jobs before he became president where we told all the workers, temporarily leave your job.
[00:30:24]  Go home, don't work.
[00:30:26]  We're going to pay you a bunch of money not to work.
[00:30:28]  So sit at home and stay at home.
[00:30:31]  Now Biden walks into office and now we tell all those workers, hey, you know, the jobs that we told you to leave, you got to go back to them.
[00:30:39]  So people are going back to the jobs they temporarily left.
[00:30:42]  And now Biden is saying, oh, look at me.
[00:30:43]  I created all these jobs.
[00:30:45]  He hasn't created anything.
[00:30:48]  I'm sure if Biden wasn't president, we actually might have actually created jobs.
[00:30:52]  Instead, because of his policies, we probably have fewer jobs and the jobs that we have pay less.
[00:30:58]  It's definitely a sleight of hand.
[00:30:59]  Even I can see that as a non-economist.
[00:31:01]  It's pretty simple.
[00:31:03]  But this, I mean, the biggest headline while I was away was clearly this Mansion deal on this ill-named Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:31:14]  And there's a lot to say about this.
[00:31:16]  I've been fascinated to see like what it's going to do to corporations in terms of their taxes, what it's going to do to people earning less than 200,000 in terms of their taxes.
[00:31:25]  how much money is going into what Michael Schellenberger describes as not green technology, but brown technology of solar and wind, which has enormous consequences to the environment and otherwise that we're just pretending doesn't exist.
[00:31:40]  And yet it appears likely to pass.
[00:31:42]  So what's that going to do to everybody's wallet that's already suffering?
[00:31:46]  And what's it going to do with respect to the Democrats' electoral hopes?
[00:31:51]  Because shoring up their very green left, I mean, I guess may have been a problem for them, but they're really lagging in the middle.
[00:32:00]  So we'll see whether politically that's going to help them or not.
[00:32:03]  But we're going to talk about the economics of it when we come back with Peter right after this very quick break.
[00:32:07]  Don't go away.
[00:32:14]  So Peter, we get this Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which is a lie.
[00:32:20]  I mean, that is just branding, making, forcing people like me to say what Joe Biden wants people to think.
[00:32:26]  But I'll tell the audience, honestly, that's a lie.
[00:32:30]  It's not an inflation reduction act.
[00:32:33]  It's a gift to Biden's green energy supporters who wanted him to do something, anything, on wind and solar.
[00:32:40]  And now you have, you know, folks like the Times referring to this as like the largest legislative climate investment the U.S. has ever made.
[00:32:48]  It aims to reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030, which it won't do, say independent experts.
[00:32:56]  Roughly $30 billion in credits for domestic manufacturing of, quote, clean energy components, including solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and so on.
[00:33:07]  And it does, I mean, the one good thing about it that Michael Schellenberger has been pointing out is it does also include some credits for nuclear.
[00:33:16]  So that's good.
[00:33:18]  They seem to be getting a little bit more open-minded to the fact that nuclear is also a clean energy.
[00:33:23]  It's true clean energy.
[00:33:24]  But that doesn't offset any of the financial problems associated with this enormous spending bill at a time when we're already suffering from record inflation due to too much government spending, due in large part to too much government spending.
[00:33:39]  And the taxes in here on businesses are pretty staggering, not to mention what they say will be the taxes on people who make under $200,000.
[00:33:49]  The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation says taxes on those people are going to jump $16.7 billion in 2023.
[00:33:58]  So this will be a huge tax hike on people earning under 200.
[00:34:03]  Your thoughts on it.
[00:34:04]  Well, you know, it's unfortunate that we don't have a law that requires truth in legislating.
[00:34:10]  But, you know, if you want to know the effect of any kind of bill that Congress is, you know, going to pass or the president's going to sign, it's easy.
[00:34:20]  You just look at the title and you just think the opposite.
[00:34:24]  So this bill is titled the Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:34:29]  That means the bill is going to make inflation higher.
[00:34:32]  That's always the case, right?
[00:34:33]  If they have a tax simplification plan, it's going to make the tax system more complicated.
[00:34:38]  It's always the opposite.
[00:34:39]  And that's exactly what this bill is going to do.
[00:34:43]  If it's signed into law, it will make inflation worse.
[00:34:48]  Inflation will go up.
[00:34:49]  It will not go down.
[00:34:51]  And that's because you do not fight inflation by increasing government spending.
[00:34:56]  You do not fight inflation by raising taxes on businesses.
[00:35:01]  Because when you raise taxes on corporations, businesses, what you end up doing is getting less investment and you reduce supply.
[00:35:09]  So less stuff gets produced and that puts more upward pressure on prices.
[00:35:14]  When the government spends more money, that's more demand.
[00:35:18]  And that's putting more upward pressure on prices.
[00:35:20]  The only legislation that the government could pass that would reduce inflation would be significant cuts in government spending, right?
[00:35:30]  That would reduce or eliminate the budget deficits so that the Fed no longer had to monetize them.
[00:35:35]  Also, the government could substantially repeal all sorts of rules and regulations that are currently running up the cost of doing business.
[00:35:44]  And so if they reduce those costs, then businesses could pass on those savings to their customers.
[00:35:51]  If they want to try to go after taxes, after inflation rather, through tax hikes, the only tax hikes that might work would be taxes that are targeted to the middle class and the poor because you have to reduce demand.
[00:36:05]  You have to reduce spending.
[00:36:07]  Obviously, if you raise taxes on the middle class, they have less money to spend.
[00:36:11]  But they're not going to do that.
[00:36:13]  And of course, I don't prefer that.
[00:36:15]  I would rather have government cut spending.
[00:36:17]  But if it's not going to cut spending, the only choice is to raise taxes.
[00:36:21]  If they do neither, then inflation is going to continue and get worse.
[00:36:26]  Well, I mean, maybe they're onto something because again, according to this nonpartisan data being cited by Senate Republicans, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, they cite, they will be raising taxes on people making less than 200, as I said, by 16.7 billion.
[00:36:43]  They'll jump another 14.1 billion on taxpayers who make between 200 and 500.
[00:36:49]  And the Democrats' response to this is to say, well, that analysis is not complete because it doesn't include all the wonderful goodies that we're going to be getting from middle class families in terms of making health insurance premiums and prescription drugs more affordable and all the great clean energy incentives for families.
[00:37:09]  The clean energy incentives, that's something Schellenberger has been saying all along.
[00:37:13]  That's a lie.
[00:37:14]  They always spend all this money.
[00:37:16]  It doesn't save you anymore.
[00:37:17]  It's a little more affordable.
[00:37:18]  Everything the government gets involved in becomes more expensive and less affordable.
[00:37:24]  The way to get things to be more affordable is to get the government out of the way.
[00:37:27]  It's the competitive free market that brings prices down and makes things affordable.
[00:37:33]  Whenever the government gets involved, it screws everything up, it runs up the costs and stuff gets more expensive.
[00:37:40]  There isn't a single example throughout history in this country or any other country where government got involved in an industry and it made that industry more efficient and it lowered prices.
[00:37:51]  Only the free market has a history of doing that.
[00:37:57]  The administration thinks this is a massive win, and you've got Politico now declaring Biden is back in the game.
[00:38:05]  They say the president is suddenly on the verge of a turnaround that the White House believes could salvage his summer and alter the trajectory of his presidency.
[00:38:13]  All he needs to do now is close.
[00:38:17]  And that means getting Kirsten Sinema to sign on to this and then to take the victory lap that the media will be all too happy to provide him.
[00:38:23]  All Biden is doing and the Democrats, they're taking advantage of the fact that the public is upset about inflation.
[00:38:30]  So they take a bill that is not going to reduce inflation, that will actually make it worse.
[00:38:34]  They name it the Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:38:37]  And now that they have an act with a title that nobody wants to vote against because everybody is in favor of reducing inflation, and then they load it up with a bunch of pork.
[00:38:45]  And that's basically what this is.
[00:38:47]  It's an excuse to enable the Democrats to get all this pork barrel legislation passed by promising the public it's going to lower inflation when it's actually going to make inflation higher.
[00:38:58]  They have, just to put some numbers on it, Wall Street Journal editorial board out very much against this bill for many of the reasons you cite.
[00:39:07]  They say if their aim is to reduce inflation by chilling business investment and the economy, nailed it.
[00:39:13]  $433 billion in climate and healthcare spending.
[00:39:18]  I mean, it's sort of like, what's the healthcare spending doing in there?
[00:39:21]  $615 billion in new taxes and drug price control, quote, savings.
[00:39:27]  They're pointing out how the new tax is going to increase the cost of business investment.
[00:39:31]  And that actually, according to the tax foundation, the coal industry is going to be the hardest hit.
[00:39:35]  That's Manchin's hometown, right?
[00:39:37]  He's from West Virginia.
[00:39:38]  So what's he doing?
[00:39:40]  That companies are going to get tax credits for spending on wind, solar, minerals, as I mentioned, nuclear, yes.
[00:39:46]  quote sustainable aviation fuel and so on, electric vehicle charging stations.
[00:39:52]  But that they say the Biden administration is using regulation to essentially mandate that automakers churn out electric vehicles.
[00:39:59]  And now the taxpayers are going to subsidize that cost, which they can ill afford to do.
[00:40:05]  You know, the best thing that happened to the Biden administration is that Joe Manchin stopped the Build Back Better bill.
[00:40:11]  Because you imagine how much worse things would be if that thing had been passed.
[00:40:15]  Well, I mean, he seems to be saying this is a mini, mini Build Back Better, but that it's much better than Build Back Better, that people are going to like it more.
[00:40:23]  It's less worse.
[00:40:24]  I wouldn't say that it's good, but yes, it's not as bad.
[00:40:28]  And I think there is a lot of pressure on Manchin with the midterms coming up to kind of play ball.
[00:40:34]  I mean, after all, I mean, he is a Democrat.
[00:40:36]  I mean, so unless he's going to switch parties, I mean, he's got to throw him some kind of a bone.
[00:40:42]  So it looks like he's going to cave on this, but it's not nearly as bad as the bill that he blocked, that's for sure.
[00:40:49]  What do you make of the 15% corporate minimum tax, which is what they're going to do?
[00:40:52]  They want to raise revenues for the legislation by raising, you know, the 15% corporate minimum tax.
[00:40:58]  And they say that's going to raise $313 billion through 2031.

=== Destructive Corporate Income Tax (02:11) ===

[00:41:01]  I am not going to pay any of these minimum taxes because we have a corporate income tax.
[00:41:09]  And if a corporation doesn't have any tax, it's because it doesn't have any taxable income.
[00:41:15]  So you can't say, hey, you didn't make enough income.
[00:41:18]  So we're going to tax something that isn't income and call it income so that we can force you to pay 15% on it.
[00:41:25]  I think the whole thing is illegal.
[00:41:27]  I think it's unconstitutional.
[00:41:29]  I think if you have an income tax and you have brackets, and if a company doesn't make enough income to be subject to the tax, well, then it doesn't have to pay the tax.
[00:41:39]  But of course, personally, I would abolish the personal, the corporate income tax.
[00:41:42]  I don't think we should have any corporate income tax because corporations don't pay taxes.
[00:41:47]  They're paid by shareholders, they're paid by their workers, and they're paid by their customers.
[00:41:51]  The corporation itself doesn't pay anything.
[00:41:54]  So why not eliminate the corporate tax altogether and just have one level of taxation on the shareholders when they get their dividends or their capital gains?
[00:42:03]  They're already taxing the workers on their paychecks.
[00:42:05]  The customers pay taxes.
[00:42:07]  They have their own income taxes.
[00:42:08]  Just get rid of the corporate income tax.
[00:42:10]  We shouldn't have it.
[00:42:11]  Now, of course, if it was up to me, we'd have no personal income tax either.
[00:42:15]  I'm opposed to all forms of taxation based on income.
[00:42:19]  I think it's an unconstitutional tax.
[00:42:21]  I think it's a destructive tax economically.
[00:42:24]  But certainly it makes no sense to have a corporate income tax if you already have a personal income tax.
[00:42:30]  Well, we'll see how the public feels about this and whether they agree with Politico that Biden's back and Democrats are feeling a new sense of optimism going into the midterms if this gets through as it's expected to, though, there's still some questions given cinema and so on.
[00:42:45]  Back to the messaging on it and the politics of it.
[00:42:49]  I know you tweeted about this and it's one of the sound bites we played.
[00:42:52]  The Treasury Secretary is out there saying that what we're in is a state of transition, transition, not recession, not recession.
[00:43:02]  And I saw you saying something to the effect of, okay, we're now at the point where you've got the Treasury Secretary suggesting that, oh, recession is just a, it's just a transitory thing.

=== Rising Prices and Pain (06:42) ===

[00:43:13]  It's like yet another stage of our recovery.
[00:43:15]  That's what she wants us to believe.
[00:43:17]  They said the same thing about inflation, right?
[00:43:19]  They like that word transitory.
[00:43:20]  Inflation was transitory.
[00:43:22]  The recession is transitory.
[00:43:24]  It's not even a recession.
[00:43:25]  We're just transitioning.
[00:43:27]  They're right.
[00:43:27]  We're transitioning from growth to recession.
[00:43:30]  That's what the transition was.
[00:43:32]  And now we're in recession.
[00:43:33]  We've been in recession all year.
[00:43:35]  And the recession is going to get much worse now that it's officially begun.
[00:43:41]  And, you know, the Fed is still hiking interest rates.
[00:43:43]  Inflation is still pushing prices higher.
[00:43:46]  So there's no reason for the economy to strengthen.
[00:43:50]  All of the forces that have been pushing the economy down are accelerating and are going to bear even harder on the weakening economy.
[00:43:59]  Okay, which leads me to: does this work?
[00:44:02]  Because if you look at how people are feeling about the economy, they're getting it.
[00:44:06]  They understand it's not good.
[00:44:09]  And just some of the latest numbers there, they pulled consumer confidence.
[00:44:13]  Gallup did recently, and it's hit its lowest level since 2009 in the economy.
[00:44:19]  85% of people surveyed also predict things are about to get worse.
[00:44:24]  They know it's bad and they know it's getting worse.
[00:44:27]  And so I wonder, you know, how do you square that circle, right?
[00:44:32]  Like, look, they can't just stand up there saying over and over.
[00:44:37]  It's a duck.
[00:44:38]  The last time consumers were this pessimistic, we were in a recession.
[00:44:44]  Also, look at Joe Biden's approval rating, just hit a new low.
[00:44:47]  I think it's down to 38.
[00:44:49]  But if you look at his average approval rating for this first six quarters of his presidency, it is the lowest of any president in history.
[00:44:59]  So why is Biden so unpopular?
[00:45:01]  Maybe it's because the economy is in recession.
[00:45:04]  And maybe the fact that he's denying that is going to make him look even worse in the eyes of the voters.
[00:45:10]  At least he could do is be a Bill Clinton and feel and feel our pain.
[00:45:15]  But instead, he's oblivious to the pain.
[00:45:17]  He's telling people that there is no pain.
[00:45:20]  Well, I think there's going to be a lot of pain for Democrats at the polls in November because I think this strategy is going to backfire.
[00:45:27]  Here's what I think it was Biden said.
[00:45:29]  If you ask people how they're doing, they say, great, I'm doing well.
[00:45:33]  If you ask people, how's the economy doing?
[00:45:35]  They say, oh, it's terrible.
[00:45:36]  So he thinks he's going to benefit off the fact that most people, you know, he believes are employed, he believes aren't feeling the pinch.
[00:45:42]  Well, if no, most people aren't feeling the pinch, why are they all shopping at the dollar store now where they used to be?
[00:45:47]  It's not like they were all at the most fancy store in town.
[00:45:51]  They were at like, you know, Target, right?
[00:45:54]  But now they can't afford Target.
[00:45:56]  So why?
[00:45:57]  So if they're all so jolly about their personal circumstances, why do we see this number from Gallup?
[00:46:01]  And why do we see the Wall Street Journal report on the dollar store?
[00:46:03]  Well, I think Biden has a biased sample.
[00:46:06]  He's probably asking his buddies that work in Washington, D.C., and people in the Biden administration.
[00:46:12]  And yeah, they're doing good.
[00:46:13]  They've got fat government paychecks.
[00:46:15]  They're living off the public trough.
[00:46:17]  So all the people that Biden is talking to, yeah, I'm sure they're doing great.
[00:46:21]  But he's not talking to real people who are struggling with collapsing real wages, with depleted savings, watching their grocery bills, their gas bills, their rent, their mortgage payments, their insurance costs.
[00:46:36]  Everything is going up.
[00:46:38]  And again, people are struggling, having to take second and third jobs.
[00:46:42]  You have a lot of people who are no longer retired because they can't afford retirement anymore.
[00:46:47]  So now they're being forced to take these low-paying jobs.
[00:46:51]  You know, this is a horrible economy.
[00:46:53]  The bad news is it's going to get a lot worse.
[00:46:57]  What about gas prices?
[00:46:58]  Because they've fallen.
[00:46:58]  They're down now $4.22 a gallon, which is still astronomical, but it's not as bad as it was a couple of months ago.
[00:47:05]  And the administration has been touting that as, see, we're making progress.
[00:47:08]  Withhold judgment.
[00:47:09]  Well, you know, nothing goes up in a straight line.
[00:47:12]  I mean, oil prices have pulled back.
[00:47:14]  They're going to make new highs.
[00:47:15]  And remember, we are dumping millions and millions of barrels of oil into the market out of the strategic petroleum reserve.
[00:47:24]  Well, at some point, that reserve is going to run dry.
[00:47:28]  There's going to be nothing left to sell.
[00:47:30]  And then we're in a lot of trouble because then prices are going to skyrocket.
[00:47:33]  And that's going to happen anyway once the dollar really rolls over.
[00:47:37]  The dollar has strengthened during this inflationary period, ironically, because inflation is about the dollar losing purchasing power.
[00:47:45]  But on international foreign exchange market, the dollar has been bid up because people are optimistic that the Fed will succeed in getting rid of inflation with rate hikes.
[00:47:55]  And that's pushed up the dollar.
[00:47:57]  But when the markets realize that the Fed failed, that it surrendered and inflation won because the Fed has to go back and try to stimulate a weak economy.
[00:48:07]  I think the dollar is going to tank.
[00:48:08]  And that's going to really push inflation up.
[00:48:11]  I mean, oil prices up to a much higher level because oil is priced in dollars.
[00:48:16]  And so the strong dollar has helped keep the price of oil down.
[00:48:21]  But when we get a weak dollar, that's going to propel the price of oil much higher.
[00:48:25]  I mean, if oil rose to $130 a barrel with a strong dollar, it could go to $200 a barrel with a weak dollar.
[00:48:33]  Gosh.
[00:48:34]  So in our last, you know, 30, 40 seconds, what should people expect in terms of jobs, housing, and overall economy?
[00:48:43]  Well, as I said, this recession is going to get much worse.
[00:48:47]  Inflation is going to keep driving prices higher.
[00:48:50]  Rates are going to go higher.
[00:48:52]  That's going to increase the cost of servicing debt and further undermine the economy.
[00:48:58]  Plus, higher interest rates are another cost of doing business that has to get passed on.
[00:49:03]  So the economy is going to get worse.
[00:49:05]  The housing market, obviously, if you look at home prices, even adjusted for inflation, they're at all-time record highs.
[00:49:11]  They're higher than they were at the peak of the bubble back in 2006.
[00:49:16]  And so housing prices have to come down.
[00:49:18]  In real terms, they will come crashing down.
[00:49:20]  It's always hard to say what will happen in nominal terms because there's going to be so much inflation.
[00:49:26]  But I think that as the recession gets worse, inflation's not going to go away.
[00:49:32]  A lot of people think that the recession will at least cure the inflation problem.
[00:49:36]  It won't.
[00:49:36]  It's actually going to make the inflation problem much worse.
[00:49:39]  So think about what's coming.
[00:49:42]  It's going to be even higher inflation and a much worse recession.
[00:49:46]  A lot of people that have jobs now are going to lose jobs.
[00:49:49]  But even the people who don't lose their jobs are going to have to deal with significant pay cuts.

=== Unusual Presidential Press Coverage (15:46) ===

[00:49:55]  Thank you for being here, and we'll do it all over again soon.
[00:49:57]  Don't go away.
[00:49:58]  Jim Garrity's up next.
[00:50:03]  Will Speaker Nancy Pelosi be making a stop in Taiwan tomorrow, despite warnings from China and her own party and president urging her not to do it?
[00:50:13]  Certainly looks that way.
[00:50:14]  Here to discuss that and plenty more in the news is Jim Garrity, Senior Political Correspondent for National Review.
[00:50:20]  Jim, so good to have you back.
[00:50:21]  How are you?
[00:50:21]  Always happy to be with you, Megan.
[00:50:23]  I've been listening to the editor's podcast while I've been on vacation.
[00:50:26]  I know Rich has been gone and you've been doing a great job manning the fort.
[00:50:30]  They gave you the keys to the podcast studio, you said.
[00:50:32]  You did a great job.
[00:50:34]  And I basically told all of our panelists, like, look, just pretend this is weekend at Bernie's.
[00:50:39]  Rich is away.
[00:50:40]  Charlie's away.
[00:50:43]  We're going to have a raging kegger.
[00:50:44]  It's going to be absolutely out of control.
[00:50:46]  And if this podcasting studio is still standing at the end, that's a good sign.
[00:50:49]  We got through it.
[00:50:50]  Okay.
[00:50:52]  Speaking of weekend at Bernie's, I'm sorry to begin this way, but you just led me into it so beautifully.
[00:50:58]  Something's wrong with President Biden.
[00:51:00]  Something's definitely wrong with President Biden.
[00:51:02]  The latest is his, the White House put out like some speech of him that they controlled.
[00:51:08]  And you can see, first of all, they need to bring back the guy that they used for the January 6th hearings, who was the ABC news executive.
[00:51:16]  He knows how to cut a video together.
[00:51:18]  The people at the White House helping Joe Biden do not.
[00:51:20]  Look at this jump cut, James Goldsmith.
[00:51:23]  Look at this jump cut.
[00:51:24]  Look at the difference between Biden in the first part of this and Biden in the second part of this.
[00:51:29]  It's almost like, you know, when they take the horse to the Kentucky Derby and the illegal trainers stick it with some sort of like a amphetamine and suddenly it's like, oh, I'm awake.
[00:51:40]  I got this.
[00:51:41]  Watch.
[00:51:41]  And to the listeners at home, see if you can tell the difference in where it shifts.
[00:51:47]  But get access to good jobs and training, affordable housing, food and medical benefits.
[00:51:53]  All these steps will reduce crime and prevent crime from happening in the first place.
[00:51:59]  And my Safer American plan is part of my administration's relentless efforts to invest and empower black communities to be architects of their own future.
[00:52:10]  Jim, his eyes are all slit.
[00:52:12]  He's leaning.
[00:52:14]  He's like leaning forward on the desk.
[00:52:15]  He can barely hold it together.
[00:52:16]  And then suddenly it's like, Secretariat, okay, I'm ready.
[00:52:19]  I'm awake.
[00:52:20]  I'm back.
[00:52:21]  I was going to say for all the listeners out there, I'm sure you have your own Media Matters for America tracker.
[00:52:27]  Megan, I cannot confirm that Joe Biden is on meth, as you implied in that earlier comment.
[00:52:33]  I can either confirm or deny or anything like that.
[00:52:36]  He's probably on some sort of medication.
[00:52:38]  Look, probably going for basically going back to the general election of 2020, when as a precaution for COVID-19, Joe Biden was not out on the campaign trail the way a presidential candidate would usually be.
[00:52:51]  You've had people saying, wow, this guy got a lot older that we remember him as vice president.
[00:52:56]  How is he?
[00:52:57]  Is he doing okay?
[00:52:58]  What's his energy level?
[00:52:59]  What's he, you know, what, you know, and we kept getting these, you know, brief, very organized, very, very well-rehearsed, you know, short video appearances through Zoom, which was reasonable as a precaution of COVID-19.
[00:53:12]  But we noticed that like this is not the Joe Biden we were used to seeing.
[00:53:16]  I think it was right around this time last year, maybe about, you know, mid-August, where everything in Afghanistan fell apart and the president did not make any public appearances for four days.
[00:53:26]  When he did start making public appearances, he was making brief remarks and then he was quickly leaving, not taking any questions.
[00:53:33]  And then when he finally did do a sit-down interview with George Stephanopoulos, you may remember that went very badly with, that was four or five days ago, man.
[00:53:41]  It had actually been two days ago, and it was just kind of this weird, odd, cranky grandpa response to this fairly serious crisis.
[00:53:50]  I went through the, at least what the White House had publicly disclosed about Biden's schedule for those days.
[00:53:55]  He'd only had two phone calls with foreign leaders, one with Boris Johnson, one with Angela Merkel.
[00:54:03]  So those of us outside the White House who are not in the Biden inner circle are kind of left asking, well, what's he doing with his time?
[00:54:09]  And then, you know, pretty clearly, even before that event, but it's been very clear since Afghanistan last summer, the president does not do a lot on weekends.
[00:54:17]  He's very often back in the Delaware beach house.
[00:54:20]  He was not there this past weekend because he's still testing positive for COVID.
[00:54:24]  He doesn't do a lot of night events.
[00:54:26]  And basically, you don't see the president speaking very much before maybe about 10 a.m. in the morning and not too much past two or three in the afternoon.
[00:54:34]  You know, the man is almost 80.
[00:54:35]  He turns 80 shortly after the midterm elections.
[00:54:37]  I think it's fair.
[00:54:38]  I have long suspected that the president probably only has a limited number of good hours in the day.
[00:54:43]  And any public appearances he makes, has to make anything really important, we got to put it in those hours because he's got to get to bed early.
[00:54:50]  He's got to get to sleep late.
[00:54:52]  And you know, you got the murder she wrote.
[00:54:56]  Actually, Biden's health was much worse than the public knew, but nobody in the White House was going to let anyone know about that.
[00:55:02]  Well, there does seem to be something weird going on.
[00:55:04]  I mean, I realize he has COVID, but there was this other video that my team cut.
[00:55:09]  I don't have time to play it, but you can see him for a full 40 seconds staring with a big eye and he doesn't blink.
[00:55:14]  And it really does sort of have the feeling of, is he on something?
[00:55:18]  Because that's not normal to go 40 seconds without.
[00:55:21]  I mean, maybe that's some reaction to the COVID medication or something.
[00:55:24]  But I think, look, most of us either have elderly parents or elderly grandparents.
[00:55:29]  We've seen people who are, you know, getting into the late 70s, into their 80s.
[00:55:34]  And I don't want to reuse the Dennis Miller joke about Ronald Reagan, where I don't even let my dad use the TV remote control anymore.
[00:55:41]  I don't want him having his finger on the button.
[00:55:43]  But, you know, the presidency is a really tough job.
[00:55:45]  And it's not the sort of job where you can organize around that.
[00:55:49]  Apparently, the closest the White House has ever come to admitting that Biden's age is an issue was when they said he couldn't do the Europe trip and the Middle East trip back to back.
[00:55:58]  And it would have been 10 days.
[00:56:00]  And look, that's 10 days of overseas travel is a lot for anybody.
[00:56:05]  But on the other hand, they keep telling us the president is in tip-top shape.
[00:56:08]  And I think probably the most blaring and irritating example of this was the White House press secretary, Corine Jean-Pierre, saying that she has a hard time keeping up with Biden.
[00:56:19]  I think she's in her early 50s.
[00:56:20]  She seems to be.
[00:56:21]  She should be fired.
[00:56:22]  Why did she be 79?
[00:56:23]  Don't tell me you can't keep up with a near octogenarian.
[00:56:26]  Come on.
[00:56:27]  What's that saying about peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining?
[00:56:30]  That's Judge Judy.
[00:56:31]  That's her name for one of her books.
[00:56:33]  Yeah, no, that's not true.
[00:56:34]  But I do think the thing you raised is interesting because when the White House staffers anonymously told the New York Times we couldn't send him right on the heels of the Middle East or whatever, the two trips couldn't go back to back because of his age, they were doing it in the context of he needs to be replaced.
[00:56:50]  This is like the New York Times double-fisted article.
[00:56:53]  Remember, they did like one on Saturday, one on Monday that was basically like, he's too old to run again.
[00:56:58]  And it's been an interesting dynamic to see the press, some of the press, and the Democrats starting to actively talk about how we need another nominee.
[00:57:05]  Now you got political like, he's back in the wake of Manchin turning, right?
[00:57:09]  Like he's back.
[00:57:10]  He's got the chips thing through, which nobody was even talking about.
[00:57:13]  Okay, more semiconductors made in America.
[00:57:15]  I guess that's a good thing.
[00:57:16]  And now this, like, is Build Back Better.
[00:57:19]  It's really kind of tiny, but it's a lot of spending on a lot of Democrat wish list items.
[00:57:22]  So the press is going to get a little bit more favorable.
[00:57:25]  So my question is, what does the press do now?
[00:57:26]  Is he the guy who's too old and too feeble and has to be replaced by the stylish, great-haired Gavin Newsom?
[00:57:33]  Or is he the guy who's back and he's going to take us to the promised land, our incumbent sitting president who can definitely defeat anybody who comes up against him?
[00:57:41]  Yeah, it is easy to suspect that there are certain media voices that got tired of the Joe Biden.
[00:57:46]  Can Joe Biden do anything right?
[00:57:48]  And Joe Biden is in the doldrums and all that stuff.
[00:57:50]  And hey, it's time to try to set up the comeback narrative.
[00:57:53]  And look, let's face it, Joe Manchin saying he can do a skinny version of Build Back Better.
[00:57:58]  I'm not calling it the Inflation Reduction Act because I know I'd expect that act to actually reduce inflation and all that stuff.
[00:58:05]  In fact, I think I was watching in the last segment.
[00:58:07]  I hope Peter's doing okay.
[00:58:08]  I saw all the coughing.
[00:58:09]  I think he just couldn't swallow the spin that he was hearing from the administration there.
[00:58:14]  Look, you know, it was very interesting to see, but when I wrote this after Afghanistan saying something's wrong with the president, he shouldn't be this away from the cameras during a crisis.
[00:58:24]  He's not taking questions.
[00:58:26]  This is not normal for a president.
[00:58:28]  We all know it was like, what, 90 some days or 100 days before he did a sit-down interview?
[00:58:32]  And then he did it with Jimmy Kimmel, that famed newsman with all the tough questions.
[00:58:38]  Barely made it.
[00:58:39]  This is a guy who's close to 80 years old, does not have the energy level he used to.
[00:58:43]  And when he says he doesn't remember the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or his Secretary of Defense telling him to keep the Bagram airbase open, he could be lying.
[00:58:53]  He could be just kind of trying to cover his butt and spinning.
[00:58:56]  But also, maybe the president doesn't remember when he was briefed in certain circumstances, you know, not too long ago.
[00:59:02]  This is one of those things where Biden says he doesn't recall hearing that.
[00:59:05]  I might believe him.
[00:59:06]  Maybe he didn't hear it himself.
[00:59:07]  So it's I've long had a theory, Jim, that the reason Kamala Harris speaks like she's speaking to a third grader whenever she's explaining anything is because of the practice with him.
[00:59:17]  Like that's how she speaks to the president.
[00:59:19]  She's this is just how she's become used to addressing anybody and everybody.
[00:59:24]  I was on vacation, but I do want to spend a moment on her comments to this.
[00:59:29]  It was like the Roe versus Wade, you know, people upset about Dobbs and the reversal of Roe versus Wade.
[00:59:34]  And I guess that there were some blind people in the group.
[00:59:37]  And now we've gotten to the point where we no longer have to say our pronouns.
[00:59:40]  We have to describe ourselves physically.
[00:59:42]  Here was the latest example from the vice president of that SOT6.
[00:59:47]  I am Kamala Harris.
[00:59:49]  My pronouns are she and her.
[00:59:50]  I'm a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.
[00:59:55]  I love this.
[00:59:56]  I'm going to start this.
[00:59:57]  I'm going to be like, I am a six foot two Bridget Nielsen imitation with this double D breast.
[01:00:03]  I'm like, why not?
[01:00:05]  Okay.
[01:00:06]  I like, I appreciate there's a blind person, but like blind people are not running around being like, I need everybody to describe everything to me.
[01:00:13]  They have found ways of dealing with their challenges the same way deaf people have.
[01:00:17]  Like there's just no identity now that can't be swept into, I, as a good person, meaning Democrat, will do the extra, will go the extra mile to make you feel comfortable, unlike the evil Republicans who won't speak this way.
[01:00:31]  Yeah, it does feel like there's something weirdly condescending, although I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, Megan.
[01:00:36]  That, you know, my name is Jim Garrity.
[01:00:39]  My pronouns are, what the heck do you think?
[01:00:41]  And I am strikingly handsome.
[01:00:43]  And yes, my weight is just what it should be.
[01:00:45]  Don't worry.
[01:00:47]  Look, I suppose there's this.
[01:00:50]  You mentioned the idea of the Biden comeback story.
[01:00:52]  Do you notice like every three months or so, we get a Kamala Harris got off to a rough start, but now it's the turnaround.
[01:00:58]  She's got a new team around her because there's always new staffers coming and going.
[01:01:02]  And now she's been quieted, but now she's found her C-legs.
[01:01:06]  And now she's ready to start a new era as vice president.
[01:01:09]  And then you pretty much get the same things we got before.
[01:01:12]  I know she's on the emphasizing a lot on abortion rights on her various visits and stuff, but they have her out talking to state legislators.
[01:01:21]  I raised the question a couple of weeks ago.
[01:01:23]  Does Biden and this administration act like they trust Kamala Harris?
[01:01:27]  I'd argue no.
[01:01:28]  I don't think they give her particularly high profile places to speak and assignments and roles.
[01:01:35]  And I think it's kind of fair to ask whether the Biden inner circle who did not like the way she went after him in that very first debate way back at the beginning of the Democratic primary in 2020, I wonder how many everybody, how much everyone forgave her.
[01:01:48]  I wonder how much everyone is ready to see her as part of the team.
[01:01:51]  It certainly does not act like, you know, for all the talk, apparently Biden doesn't even have the weekly lunches that he had with Barack Obama.
[01:01:58]  And so you kind of, for those of you who might have this, maybe it's a suspicious way of thinking that in the end, Biden saw Kamala Harris as just a way to get elected.
[01:02:08]  That basically, I promised I was going to select an African-American woman.
[01:02:12]  She's the, you know, most high-profile one there is.
[01:02:14]  I'll go with it.
[01:02:16]  But I don't really plan on using her as a key asset in this administration.
[01:02:19]  If he had that mentality, what would be different?
[01:02:23]  She was, she reminds me when I was on Fox News, there were certain people who Roger Ells loved from like his olden days, you know, doing politics and so on.
[01:02:34]  And they weren't all older.
[01:02:36]  Some of them were younger, but he just had sort of his cast of favorites who he was loyal to, but he didn't want to hire for jobs on Fox News.
[01:02:43]  And we called them must-dos.
[01:02:45]  Like this one's a must-do.
[01:02:46]  So you have to give three minutes to this person on a big night, even though the audience didn't really want to hear from that person.
[01:02:52]  And the anchors didn't really want to interview that person.
[01:02:55]  And this person was very unlikely to say anything particularly interesting.
[01:02:58]  They were a must-do.
[01:02:59]  And she's a must-do.
[01:03:01]  You know, he said he was going to elect a woman or run with a woman, and she's a woman of color, and so much the better.
[01:03:07]  And so, she's a must-do, who he didn't really like because she called him a racist.
[01:03:10]  And now, their relationship and the press coverage of her is reflecting it.
[01:03:15]  Megan, I'm going to share something with you and only those few people who are listening right now that'll probably be embarrassing for me, but I think it's just a useful indicator of the career trajectory of Kamala Harris.
[01:03:26]  So, I was at the Democratic convention in Charlotte back in 2012.
[01:03:30]  And at that point, Kamala Harris was the California State Attorney General.
[01:03:35]  And she was seen as a rising star.
[01:03:36]  And she only spoke for like five to 10 minutes there, but I was like, wow, there is the next Obama.
[01:03:42]  She's half African-American, half Indian American.
[01:03:44]  She's a woman.
[01:03:45]  She's a prosecutor.
[01:03:46]  She's got it all.
[01:03:47]  Great.
[01:03:48]  We're going to be dealing with another Obama clone, except feminine this time for another.
[01:03:53]  And then once she got to the Senate, if you go back, you watch that speech.
[01:03:57]  It was a perfectly fine, very impressive five to 10 minute remarks.
[01:04:01]  And then somewhere along the line, by the time she got to the Senate, she had lost whatever charm that she had had.
[01:04:08]  Or maybe she just wore out her welcome.
[01:04:09]  Maybe what she had was five to 10 minutes of good material.
[01:04:12]  And then once you've heard it over and over again, she always feels like she's the kindergarten teacher speaking to the slow kids.
[01:04:18]  Hello, everybody.
[01:04:21]  We are going to talk about the law today.
[01:04:23]  You know, this inadvertently condescending tone when she isn't getting into the Fortune Cookie Hallmark card.
[01:04:30]  You know, we are the ones who are the ones that we have been looking for.
[01:04:35]  This like verbal circle that she ends up going in, which is, it's been very interesting to watch.
[01:04:40]  I mean, the Biden presidency has not been really good for any of the Democrats.
[01:04:45]  It's certainly not like it's, you know, her approval rating is actually lower than Biden's.
[01:04:49]  And the interesting thing is, is that you mentioned the New York Times coverage and political coverage.
[01:04:53]  It talks about will the Democrats be running Biden in 2024.
[01:04:57]  You don't see a lot of people saying, oh, it's automatically going to be Kamala Harris.
[01:05:01]  This is not a question.
[01:05:03]  I mean, look, there's a reason Gavin Newsom is running ads in Florida.
[01:05:06]  There's a reason J.B. Pritzker is doing events in New Hampshire and Iowa and places like that.
[01:05:12]  All of these guys are just waiting for the opportunity to fall into their laps for Democrats to say, okay, Biden's too old.
[01:05:19]  Harris, we have no faith in.
[01:05:20]  Jump ball, who wants it?
[01:05:22]  And all these guys are kind of elbowing it to be in position to get it if the opportunity arises.
[01:05:27]  By the way, before I can't move on from her meeting on Dobbs and her obsession with identity without pointing to yet another attendee there, who this is how this is, I mean, you go to a Democrat gathering now, not any normal Democrat, but like woke Democrats.

=== Ron DeSantis Political Strategy (15:05) ===

[01:05:41]  And this is what you're going to be subjected to.
[01:05:43]  This is SOT 7.
[01:05:45]  Thank you, Rahini.
[01:05:46]  And thank you, Madam Vice President.
[01:05:48]  My pronouns are she, her.
[01:05:50]  I'm a white woman with long brown hair.
[01:05:52]  I'm wearing a red dress and I'm wearing a see-through mask so you can see my red lips.
[01:05:59]  Oh my gosh.
[01:06:01]  See-through mask.
[01:06:02]  You can see my red lips.
[01:06:03]  Okay, then you're not mask-compliant, lady.
[01:06:05]  I mean, this is this is how they are.
[01:06:08]  Like, shut up.
[01:06:09]  And you know what?
[01:06:10]  I bet she'd do that even if there weren't blind people in the room, Jim.
[01:06:13]  That's how it is now.
[01:06:14]  It feels almost like a E-network red carpet ride.
[01:06:19]  So what are you wearing?
[01:06:20]  You know, this kind of bizarre describe.
[01:06:22]  Well, who's the designer?
[01:06:24]  What size is it?
[01:06:24]  All kinds of, you know, do we need to do that?
[01:06:27]  I don't know.
[01:06:27]  It's going to cross over to the place where people start to get offended.
[01:06:30]  Like, you can see my luscious red lips through my mask.
[01:06:34]  And they're wet and they're plump.
[01:06:36]  I was like, whoa, taking it to a weird place, lady.
[01:06:40]  Okay.
[01:06:41]  So I do want to talk about Gavin Newsom because there was a recent, I'm trying to remember whether it was Turning Points.
[01:06:48]  Yeah, it was Turning Points, which is a conservative group for young people.
[01:06:52]  And they did a straw poll of their attendees at this recent Florida summit that they had, asking who are you most worried about on the Dem side?
[01:07:00]  You'll be shocked to learn it wasn't Kamala Harris.
[01:07:03]  It certainly wasn't Joe Biden.
[01:07:04]  It was indeed Gavin Newsom.
[01:07:06]  And I've been hearing a lot of talk about him too, just in my own social circles.
[01:07:11]  You know, this guy a year ago, we were dealing with a recall election on him.
[01:07:14]  Now his popularity has surged in California.
[01:07:18]  When he was governor lockdown, keeping Californians basically in prison in their own homes, his approval ratings fell.
[01:07:24]  That was one of the things that factored into the recall.
[01:07:27]  And now suddenly it's like the state has forgotten that because he's got good hair and he's decided to take aim at Governor DeSantis down in Florida.
[01:07:34]  So how do you like his chances of replacing Biden and Harris on the Democratic ticket next go-round?
[01:07:40]  And his chances, I mean, like, could this far, far left Democrat actually win a general election in the United States of America?
[01:07:50]  It would be an unusual set of circumstances, but you look at our last few presidents and they've all been pretty unusual and unexpected choices to end up in the Oval Office.
[01:07:59]  You know, if by some crazy sequence of events, Gavin Newsom ends up the Democratic nominee, I'm sure you would see Republican attack ad operatives saying, oh my God, we've got so much to work with here.
[01:08:10]  We've got the French laundry incident where he was dining inside when he had banned it for everybody else.
[01:08:16]  He's a child of privilege for the very close ties to the very wealthy Getty family out there.
[01:08:22]  There are other California progressives who are members of minority groups who look at him as basically, Gavin Newsom is everything they said Mitt Romney was back in 2012.
[01:08:34]  This child of privilege, this guy who's basically had every office handed to him on a silver platter, extremely wealthy, well-connected, you know, and all that.
[01:08:42]  So there are, you know, supporters of other Democrats who are like, why does this guy get this free pass in this sort of thing?
[01:08:48]  And in a general election, he wouldn't have this.
[01:08:50]  But I think the most like, there's a part of me that would actually like to see a, say, Ron DeSantis versus Gavin Newsom presidential race.
[01:08:57]  One, because we'd have two non-geriatric options.
[01:09:01]  But second, I think I really love the idea of here is the Florida vision for what American life should be.
[01:09:07]  And here's the California vision for what American life should be.
[01:09:10]  And I think that you look at California.
[01:09:13]  It has been run by Democrats for a very long time.
[01:09:16]  You can argue Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2003 or so, but basically he was not terribly far to the right.
[01:09:23]  And I would look at California and it's a wide variety of problems.
[01:09:27]  Crime, homelessness, extraordinary economic inequality, people being priced out of their homes and their houses, and extraordinarily high cost of living, fights between agriculture and business and environmental regulation.
[01:09:41]  All these different things.
[01:09:42]  Look, if you're wealthy, California is a great place to live.
[01:09:44]  Everybody loves the weather.
[01:09:45]  Everybody, the beautiful coastline, all these great natural resources.
[01:09:48]  And some of these are resources that cannot be transferred to another state.
[01:09:52]  You can't move California's Central Valley Farms.
[01:09:54]  You cannot move a hydroelectric plant.
[01:09:57]  But you are seeing more and more, for example, film production moving up to Vancouver.
[01:10:01]  California's tax environment is just not competitive for this sort of stuff.
[01:10:05]  Big tech moving out of Silicon Valley.
[01:10:07]  Some of it went up to Seattle, which is not that much better, but a lot of it, the old joke, the joke that everybody seems to be moving to Austin, right?
[01:10:13]  There is this recognition that California was this vision for the way things ought to, the way people ought to live.
[01:10:19]  And yet there's this minor, minor issue that nobody can afford to live there.
[01:10:23]  Well, that's a big catch, you know, when it comes to this vision of what California is supposed to be in the California dream.
[01:10:30]  And I think a Ron DeSantis type could make an argument.
[01:10:32]  Other than the fact that nothing works, your state is doing great.
[01:10:36]  Miami is the new Silicon Valley.
[01:10:38]  There's anarchy in the streets and there's human feces on the streets of San Francisco.
[01:10:42]  Other than that, it's great.
[01:10:43]  And you know, this kind of the sense of where Florida always seems to lead the country and people relocating to it because they know low tax, really no state income tax, a very low tax rate, a very dynamic economy, great weather if you look past the hurricanes.
[01:10:59]  You don't have to shovel the snow.
[01:11:00]  You know, like this is kind of this dynamism.
[01:11:02]  It's excitement there.
[01:11:04]  And I think that, look, I think for the conservatives, this would be like probably, you know, here's our vision of what America ought to be and what America could be under our philosophy versus theirs.
[01:11:14]  And I think that would work out pretty darn well for conservatives.
[01:11:16]  But of course, the big challenge for, well, we know what the big challenge is on the Republican side.
[01:11:19]  They've got a sitting Democrat as president who won't say he's not running.
[01:11:23]  Then they've got a black woman in the vice presidency in a group, a party that's obsessed with identity.
[01:11:29]  So it'd be really tough to toss her aside for a white guy out in California, some white rich guy nonetheless.
[01:11:37]  So they'll have to deal with that.
[01:11:40]  If Biden chooses, here she has the answer where she said she was definitely running.
[01:11:45]  And then she said, if Biden runs, she'll be running as his running mate.
[01:11:49]  I think Harris would be better off if she simply said, you bet I'm going to run if Biden isn't running.
[01:11:55]  I am the heir apparent.
[01:11:56]  I'm a heartbeat away.
[01:11:57]  And anybody who Democrat who wants to try to take this from me is welcome to try.
[01:12:01]  I will, you know, whoop their behind in the Democratic primary.
[01:12:04]  By the way, I don't know if she would, but I think the, you know, the way she talks about it, she talks about it scared as if she had, say, flamed out in the 2020 Democratic primary, which she did.
[01:12:14]  She knows she's always been, you know, more appealing in theory than in practice.
[01:12:20]  Okay, but on the GOP side, and I know a lot of Republicans are excited about Ron DeSantis, not to mention, you know, the other conservatives who are likely to run.
[01:12:28]  But, you know, you've got the 800-pound gorilla and the gorilla keeps saying, I've made my decision.
[01:12:34]  He just keeps taunting, titillating, you know, teasing.
[01:12:37]  He can't say it too early, but it seems very, very clear that Trump is going to run.
[01:12:41]  And so, okay, Trump will run.
[01:12:43]  I don't think DeSantis will be scared out of a primary against Trump.
[01:12:46]  I think DeSantis thinks he's got enough momentum on his own.
[01:12:48]  And I just heard about some other fundraisers he was doing on the down low with some very, very rich people who on the Republican side who would like to back him.
[01:12:55]  So he's not going to step aside.
[01:12:57]  I don't think he will.
[01:12:58]  And that means, how do the Republicans win?
[01:13:00]  Because even if DeSantis gets the nomination, what, Trump's going to go quietly away?
[01:13:05]  He's just going to say, okay, I lost.
[01:13:08]  And it's DeSantis's and now I'll back him.
[01:13:10]  Oh, sure.
[01:13:11]  That sounds just like him.
[01:13:12]  He'll run as an independent.
[01:13:14]  He'll be a spoiler.
[01:13:15]  He'll do to the Republican race what he did to Georgia and the Senate.
[01:13:19]  So is and yet if Trump gets the nomination, he's fraught.
[01:13:25]  You know, yes, he's the strongest in a lot of ways, but he's also the weakest in a lot of ways.
[01:13:28]  There's a lot of baggage that some of these other guys don't have.
[01:13:31]  So it's a very tough situation for the Republicans when we're talking presidential politics.
[01:13:36]  Forget 2022.
[01:13:37]  I'm talking 24.
[01:13:38]  Yeah, no, I was going to say that it is very, my guess is if DeSantis were to win the Republican nomination in 2024, I expect Trump would respond to it the same way he responded to the 2020 general election.
[01:13:53]  Well, I really won.
[01:13:54]  The vote was fixed.
[01:13:55]  There were Venezuelan hackers.
[01:13:57]  There was bamboo in the ballots used in Arizona.
[01:14:01]  Look what Sidney Powell says.
[01:14:02]  Look what Lynn Wood says.
[01:14:04]  And you can never lose legitimately.
[01:14:07]  And yeah, the possibility of him running spoiler third party or something like that does seem pretty likely.
[01:14:11]  I do think there is a chance that that might make certain guy.
[01:14:17]  There's certain guyhard Trump supporters who will never abandon him.
[01:14:19]  But I think if he basically looked like he was about to torpedo a successful Republican presidential bid against Biden, against Harris, against Newsom, against someone else who would be four more years of this, this high inflation, this open border, all the problems the country is experiencing right now.
[01:14:39]  I think that would get a lot of Trump supporters really mad at him if the perception is that Ron DeSantis had won it fair and square.
[01:14:44]  I don't know.
[01:14:45]  And I got to tell you, I don't know if you're right.
[01:14:47]  I've never been a Trump supporter, but I know a lot of Republicans who voted for him twice.
[01:14:51]  And their attitude is, you know what?
[01:14:54]  I'm glad for what he did.
[01:14:55]  I'm glad for the Supreme Court nominees that he put forth.
[01:14:58]  I'm glad for the tax cuts, increased defense spending.
[01:15:01]  But you know what?
[01:15:02]  We got to focus on the here and now.
[01:15:03]  And he lost in 2020.
[01:15:05]  He looks like a maniac.
[01:15:06]  He keeps ranting about all these crazy conspiracy theories.
[01:15:09]  We got to get Biden out of there.
[01:15:11]  And we can't let, you know, somebody's ego get in the way of this.
[01:15:14]  So I don't.
[01:15:15]  And also, we've seen polls here and there indicating that DeSantis is competitive.
[01:15:21]  I think it'll be, I think there's a certain number of Republicans out there who are who voted for Trump twice, but who want to be, just want to move on, just want to.
[01:15:29]  Okay, but wait, let me interrupt you.
[01:15:31]  Let me let me interrupt.
[01:15:32]  I know, I know you're right, but that's almost beside the point.
[01:15:35]  The question is whether there's a large enough segment that's diehard Trump only that would spoil the Republicans' chances, no matter who it is, if it's not named Trump, if he's not named Trump.
[01:15:45]  It's not about whether lots of Republicans don't want Trump.
[01:15:48]  It's about is the diehard Trump faction big enough to ruin it if the GOP selects somebody other than Trump.
[01:15:55]  And I'll just give you a couple of small anecdotal things, but my assistant Abby, she's like my little sister and my assistant, all in one.
[01:16:01]  She was traveling down, basically driving south on the Eastern seaboard with her husband and came to this little town.
[01:16:10]  And she sent me the signs all over.
[01:16:13]  They've labeled themselves Trump Town, Trump ice cream, Trump hot dogs, Trump everything.
[01:16:19]  Like he's not even running.
[01:16:21]  He hasn't been president in a couple of years.
[01:16:23]  Like this, this group is not going to back Ron DeSantis.
[01:16:28]  And when Trump says he cheated, it was rigged, they are going to believe him the same way as they have believed everything that he has said because they trust him.
[01:16:41]  It's a special relationship.
[01:16:43]  I mean, the guy here on the Jersey Shore, whose store I've gone into and I've talked about this on the air, you go into his store and literally he has like F Joe Biden flags all over the store and let's go Brandon everywhere and like how you need to buy your guns now and like I mean no never, there's not going to be a Ron DeSantis for these people.
[01:17:06]  So I I see ruination and despair on the Dem side and I can see it coming on the GOP side too.
[01:17:13]  Yes, the forecast is indeed cloudy, with the chance of ruination and despair uh, heading into 2025 and beyond the phenomenon you're describing on there about those southern towns it's not just the south I would say I was in Bucks County shortly before election, that's, in Pennsylvania, shortly before election day 2020, and I was traveling with my wife and my kids, as if you think they're celebrating a holiday called trumpness, because everyone's got not just the yard sign, they've got the yard sign and the flag and the thin blue line flag and you know, one person had, you know,
[01:17:43]  the hat on the the doorstop.
[01:17:45]  I mean, it just was every single you know indicator.
[01:17:49]  I am a Trump voter and you know, but it probably makes it very easy for the get out the vote crowd.
[01:17:53]  Okay, that one we can count on.
[01:17:55]  We don't need to worry about that guy at all.
[01:17:56]  Um I, I do think.
[01:17:58]  Yes, you are correct.
[01:18:00]  The one thing that I kind of wonder could be at play.
[01:18:02]  You know, this is well down the road here.
[01:18:04]  So, as we got close to election day 2016 or closer to election day 2020, people who had had all kinds of problems with Trump looked at the prospect of four years of Hillary Clinton, or they looked at the prospect of four years of Joe Biden, and they held their nose and they said, you know what I want?
[01:18:18]  Supreme Court justices who are going to overturn Roe Versus Wade.
[01:18:22]  I want folks to.
[01:18:22]  You know I want.
[01:18:23]  I know what I want.
[01:18:24]  Trump's going to give me a lot of a bunch of what I want.
[01:18:27]  I get nothing if I vote for that um, and I don't want to vote third party or independent or write in somebody.
[01:18:33]  I do wonder, if it comes down to Ron De Santis versus somebody else, how many of those Trump voters who've got the flag, who've been in all kinds of stuff and they know, in the end, that it's basically, you know, do you want DeSantis or do you want either four more years of Biden or four years of Kamala Harris, or four years of Gavin Newsom or some other Democrat?
[01:18:50]  I mean, they're all going to be liberal progressivism in one form, one variety of flavor or another.
[01:18:55]  I get your point.
[01:18:55]  I do wonder.
[01:18:56]  But you have to factor in it.
[01:18:58]  You're literally looking at that four years.
[01:18:59]  I get it.
[01:19:01]  I get it.
[01:19:01]  But you have to factor in Trump non-stop.
[01:19:04]  He's a loser.
[01:19:05]  He's been a loser for a long time.
[01:19:07]  He looked what he did to, you know, like that's how Trump is.
[01:19:10]  You think he's going to be any kinder to a DeSantis or a Ted Cruz or whoever it is, Anuji?
[01:19:14]  I don't know.
[01:19:15]  It could be, but I do think that there's a difference between the Trump of this era, let's say post-January 6th, than previous ones.
[01:19:22]  And one of the things that look, Trump, for whatever his flaws in 2016, was talking about the wall.
[01:19:27]  He was talking about jobs being shipped overseas.
[01:19:29]  He was talking about concerns that were, you know, on the minds of lots of kitchen, all people are talking about around kitchen tables all across the country.
[01:19:37]  Now, Trump talks about 2020.
[01:19:38]  I don't want to say quite exclusively, but clearly that is his biggest issue.
[01:19:42]  That's true.
[01:19:42]  What most of his social media and it's really about, can you believe what they did to me?
[01:19:47]  Can you believe what an injustice this is to me?
[01:19:50]  How they stole the election from me?
[01:19:51]  You know, it's very self-it's very pest-focused and it's very personal focused.
[01:19:56]  It's not focused on here's what I'm going to do to save your family from the ravages of inflation, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:20:02]  Well, an interesting dynamic with Trump right now is he's attacking Nancy Pelosi for going to Taiwan.
[01:20:08]  And so is Joe Biden.
[01:20:11]  They're agreeing on something, Jim.
[01:20:13]  National Review, where Jim works, is on Pelosi's side.
[01:20:17]  My head's going to explode.
[01:20:18]  Like all the weird alliances are fractured and unclear.
[01:20:23]  And that's where we will pick it up right after this quick break.
[01:20:26]  More with the one and only Jim Garrity.

=== China Military Threats to Pelosi (09:44) ===

[01:20:47]  So now we get the news that Nancy Pelosi will go to Taiwan on her trip overseas, and she was asked not to do it by the president.
[01:20:56]  Top Democrats came out and said don't.
[01:20:58]  And reportedly, even the Pentagon said, please, please don't.
[01:21:01]  We have a policy with respect to China and Taiwan of strategic ambiguity where we're not supposed to really say what we want and kind of stay out of it.
[01:21:10]  But everybody knows we don't want China to take over Taiwan, invade Taiwan.
[01:21:16]  Even though the president has explicitly said, if you invade Taiwan, we're going to back them militarily, which is not so ambiguous.
[01:21:21]  Okay, so she says, I'm doing it.
[01:21:24]  And I actually didn't know about her history actually going to Tiananmen Square shortly after it happened and like speaking up for human rights.
[01:21:32]  So good on her for that.
[01:21:34]  And I'm, I'm kind of inclined to side with you guys on like, why shouldn't she go?
[01:21:40]  Like, why should we be letting the Chinese tell our speaker of the house, whatever you think of Nancy, where she can and cannot travel with a congressional delegation?
[01:21:49]  We're the United States of America.
[01:21:50]  Like, shut up, sit down.
[01:21:53]  We'll do what we want.
[01:21:54]  But then I don't want another war.
[01:21:56]  And China's little nuts.
[01:21:58]  And they do very provocative things when you upset them.
[01:22:01]  I don't know.
[01:22:02]  So, why did you guys side on the in the place of she should go?
[01:22:07]  Sure.
[01:22:08]  Well, it's worth noting.
[01:22:09]  None of us are used to being in the position of praising Nancy Pelosi.
[01:22:13]  Right.
[01:22:13]  And I was kind of struck by, I went through the comments on my piece.
[01:22:16]  I know people say never read the comments, but I often do.
[01:22:19]  And, you know, we have a very right-of-cender conservative readership, and all of them kind of had this same tone of, I can't believe I'm saying this, but go, Nancy, go.
[01:22:27]  The editors did put forth an editorial that said Nancy Pelosi must go to Taiwan.
[01:22:32]  And no, it did not say underneath and stay there.
[01:22:36]  We are kind of in this bizarre state.
[01:22:38]  And I think it is fair to ask.
[01:22:40]  I've seen this from Alipundit over at Hot Air and a couple other commentators, which are basically in the vein of what do we get out of this?
[01:22:47]  It's very clear what Nancy Pelosi gets out of this.
[01:22:49]  No house speaker has been traveled to Taiwan since Newt Gainrich back in the 1990s.
[01:22:55]  And she probably almost certainly is not going to be speaker starting in January next year.
[01:23:00]  So, if she wants to not quite make history, but have this as a capstone to her career as speaker of the house, I think most of us would say, fine, she should go do that.
[01:23:08]  At minimum, once she decides I'm going to do this, and China says, oh, no, no, you better not.
[01:23:14]  And they even some of the more hyperbolic and hyperactive state propagandists say, well, you know, if she goes, it's seen as a she'll be traveling on a military plane that's a military, U.S. military attack on Chinese territory and, you know, frothing at the mouth and all that.
[01:23:30]  By the way, the Chinese are doing some defense projects in that era.
[01:23:34]  Just to jump in, one Chinese commentator said we'll have the right to shoot it down.
[01:23:38]  So, I mean, that was just a commentator.
[01:23:40]  It wasn't the actual government.
[01:23:41]  It is state-run TV.
[01:23:42]  So go ahead.
[01:23:43]  That person doesn't set policy.
[01:23:45]  But between that and the Chinese military saying, well, we'll be doing exercises in the area.
[01:23:50]  The chances of Nancy Pelosi's plane getting shot down, they're not high, but it's greater than zero.
[01:23:55]  So beyond everything else, Nancy Pelosi, good for you for exhibiting a certain amount of physical courage and bravery making this trip.
[01:24:04]  But I think as you kind of alluded to there, Megan, it's absolutely once China says you can't do this.
[01:24:09]  We have to say, yes, we can.
[01:24:10]  We're a sovereign country.
[01:24:12]  We make our own decisions about where our elected leaders wish to go.
[01:24:16]  They do not have a right to blockade or to attack those flights or anything like that.
[01:24:20]  I don't think China is going to shoot at the plane.
[01:24:23]  Dear God, that would be a terrible escalation if it did.
[01:24:26]  I think they'll probably find some other way to rattle the saber and/or mess with the U.S. in one form or another.
[01:24:36]  After COVID-19, what are they going to do to us that could be that much worse?
[01:24:40]  Sometimes I feel like.
[01:24:41]  But all in all, look, once they made this an issue, well, then we can't back down.
[01:24:46]  Otherwise, I think it was, you know, there were some Democrats who told Nancy Pelosi not to go, but one of the Senate Democrats who said she should, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, another guy I'm not used to praising, said that once China gets a veto over whether U.S. officials can visit or not, well, then they do control Taiwan.
[01:25:03]  And then the next question is: so, what happens if they say don't send U.S. diplomats to Taiwan?
[01:25:08]  Don't send U.S. commercial flights to Taiwan.
[01:25:11]  One of the more intriguing options, by the way, was the suggestion that Nancy Pelosi should travel to Taiwan on a commercial flight.
[01:25:19]  That way, it's not a U.S. military flight.
[01:25:21]  You don't give the Chinese any excuse to declare that that's a provocation or something like that.
[01:25:26]  But I think once, you know, Pelosi says she's going there and China says, no, you can't, you have to.
[01:25:31]  Otherwise, we're basically saying that China can bully us out of doing things that we want.
[01:25:35]  And I'm pleased to hear that as of this conversation, it sounds like she's going there, and that the Biden administration, which has said, no, no, this isn't worth it, don't bother.
[01:25:44]  I think it was a terrible stance for Biden to take.
[01:25:46]  He had apparently this long conversation with Xi Jinping a couple of days ago.
[01:25:51]  For him to have a talk with the Chinese leader and then say to Pelosi, don't go.
[01:25:55]  Boy, it makes him look like an errand boy for the Chinese or something.
[01:25:59]  It makes it sound like China is dictating terms and we're accepting them.
[01:26:03]  So I don't think this is going to escalate into World War III.
[01:26:07]  If I'm wrong, then as the, you know, as we, as we all die in a fireball, you can tell me I was wrong.
[01:26:13]  You can say, see, I told you so.
[01:26:15]  But all in all, I think this is, you know, it is a demonstration of whether we are a sovereign country and whether we can visit allied nations.
[01:26:24]  Yes, but I think the other point this illustrates is that strategic ambiguity was never a particularly wise policy because it requires you to pretend, oh, there's one China.
[01:26:34]  We're just not going to say which one it is.
[01:26:36]  And I think everyone kind of recognized that if this policy ever had a usefulness, it doesn't work with a more aggressive and bellicose China that we are seeing under Xi Jinping.
[01:26:47]  No, it sounded like the Chinese leader threatened us a bit on that phone call, like, be careful.
[01:26:52]  I can't remember what the threat was.
[01:26:53]  With some of the effect of you, you know, play with the big dogs, you're going to get bitten.
[01:26:57]  Something my team will remind me.
[01:26:59]  But it was fairly, you know, it was a fairly innocuous threat, but coming from him, maybe not so much.
[01:27:05]  And then Joe Biden said, don't do it.
[01:27:06]  And it reminded me of something of all people.
[01:27:09]  Andrew Schultz, the comedian who was hilarious, was on the show a couple of Fridays ago.
[01:27:13]  And he said, he wasn't exactly a Trump fan, but he could appreciate aspects of Trump.
[01:27:17]  And he said, you know, like, I loved it.
[01:27:19]  I think it was like the G20 when you see, you saw Trump emerging from behind all these no-name world leaders who no one's ever seen and no one would ever recognize on site.
[01:27:29]  He's just like shoving them out of the way, like hand on the shoulder, shoving them back, shoving that one back and putting himself the front.
[01:27:34]  And he was like, yeah, we're the United States of America.
[01:27:37]  F that.
[01:27:38]  We're going the front.
[01:27:39]  You know, step aside.
[01:27:41]  And in a way, this is kind of like that moment.
[01:27:43]  I mean, Biden didn't get the memo, but I can also see that whole crowd that's been very, very anti-our involvement or our assistance to Ukraine saying, why poke the bear?
[01:27:56]  You know, we got enough conflicts going on.
[01:27:58]  This is not our fight between Taiwan and China.
[01:28:01]  You know, just keep your nose clean.
[01:28:03]  America first.
[01:28:03]  We got our own problems to worry about.
[01:28:07]  Yeah, I mean, my first question for everyone is, oh, it's not our fight.
[01:28:09]  What does it matter?
[01:28:10]  Where does your stuff in your cell phone come from?
[01:28:12]  You know, Taiwan is really important for chips.
[01:28:15]  And we just passed legislation because of the great chip shortage and things like that.
[01:28:20]  Look, I think I cannot help but strongly suspect that the bellicose tone we see from China, it'd be hard to, you know, could, you know, if Trump had been re-elected, would they be taking the same stance?
[01:28:32]  Possibly.
[01:28:33]  But I have a tough time believing China didn't watch the withdrawal from Afghanistan and didn't watch the, well, it's only a minor incursion, Biden's statement about Russia and Ukraine and various other statements where basically, no, Biden saying, we're going to make Saudi Arabia into a pariah.
[01:28:48]  And then, you know, after two years of higher oil prices, he heads over to Riyadh and does the fist bump.
[01:28:53]  And, you know, I strongly suspect in a lot of world capitals, Joe Biden is seen as a pushover.
[01:29:00]  I've mentioned his age.
[01:29:01]  I mentioned the sense that he's always kind of been a weather bean with whatever his party wanted.
[01:29:06]  And I just kind of think that they look at this guy as somebody who they can intimidate, who they've got a plate full of problems and low approval ratings.
[01:29:16]  And heading into midterms, the last thing Joe Biden wants is another conflict, another problem.
[01:29:21]  And it's a sense that Joe Biden will do whatever it takes to get along these days.
[01:29:26]  I think unfortunately, if this worked, I'd be more open to it.
[01:29:30]  I think the lesson you saw in the Biden went to Riyadh.
[01:29:36]  He says he brought up the Khashoggi murder.
[01:29:39]  The Saudis said that he did not, which is, you know, troubling.
[01:29:42]  And this general sense that the Saudis basically rolled him because they said, oh, we'll speak up for you at the next OPEC meeting.
[01:29:49]  And we came home with nothing.
[01:29:51]  Meanwhile, we bent the knee and bumped the fist.
[01:29:55]  Yeah, the exact quote is: according to Politico, Xi warned Biden that the U.S. must abide, must abide by its quote one China policy, adding, quote, those who play with fire will eventually get burned.
[01:30:07]  Okay.
[01:30:08]  So that's where it stands.
[01:30:09]  She's supposed to spend one night there.
[01:30:12]  And I trust in the military, which is taking her there to protect Nancy Pelosi and make sure she comes back safely.
[01:30:19]  But you never know with the Chinese, you know, they're going to lie in wait.
[01:30:21]  They're going to do something to her when she gets back.
[01:30:23]  I mean, it is a risk.
[01:30:24]  There's no question.
[01:30:25]  And so we have to keep our eyes on it.
[01:30:27]  Let me shift gears and spend the limited time we have left on media.

=== Parroting Great Economy Claims (08:11) ===

[01:30:31]  Okay.
[01:30:31]  Because I know you talk about it a lot.
[01:30:33]  And the media messaging, we started with Peter Schiff on, are we in a recession?
[01:30:37]  Yes, we are, according to Peter.
[01:30:39]  But according to the Biden administration, we're not.
[01:30:41]  And according to the media, we're not.
[01:30:42]  So the media goes along.
[01:30:43]  The media, you remember when we used to be watchdogs and truth tellers and skeptics, and we didn't just go along with whatever messaging we got from a Democratic White House in particular.
[01:30:52]  Listen to them now.
[01:30:54]  My team put together a butted soundbite of them parroting, parroting exactly these Democratic talking points.
[01:31:01]  Listen.
[01:31:03]  A lot of people think that, oh, if you have two consecutive quarters of GDP declines, that in and of itself is a recession.
[01:31:10]  No, that's not the definition.
[01:31:12]  One way that people define a recession is not the official definition of a recession.
[01:31:18]  That's why the U.S. economy is not. technically in a recession right now.
[01:31:21]  We're looking at this and we're hearing about recession.
[01:31:23]  It's almost like a buzzword now.
[01:31:25]  You know, we're all talking about a recession.
[01:31:27]  I think we need to be talking about a recession.
[01:31:29]  We should all be very careful about even using the word recession.
[01:31:32]  You can't really even officially use that until the National Bureau of Economic Research declares it a recession.
[01:31:37]  But if you say it too loudly, people start to worry.
[01:31:39]  Are we in a recession?
[01:31:40]  And does the term matter?
[01:31:43]  No, we are.
[01:31:44]  And then no, it doesn't.
[01:31:45]  It in fact is not a recession in any technical sense.
[01:31:50]  Wow.
[01:31:51]  Pretty amazing.
[01:31:51]  Paul Gregman in the New York Times there at the end.
[01:31:53]  No, it doesn't matter.
[01:31:54]  It doesn't matter.
[01:31:54]  We're not anyway.
[01:31:56]  You know, the first thing when they say, well, you can't really tell if it's really a recession unless you hear from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
[01:32:04]  Okay, in December 2008, right?
[01:32:06]  You know, Lehman Brothers, Wall Street crash, beginning of the Great Recession.
[01:32:11]  The NBER looked at it and said, oh, you know what?
[01:32:14]  We had one and it started in January.
[01:32:16]  We actually peaked February, right?
[01:32:18]  We peaked.
[01:32:18]  The economy peaked in January and we've actually been in a recession for 11 months.
[01:32:23]  So the NBER can take nearly a year to actually make its official declaration.
[01:32:28]  So those of us who are living in the now and who get who can't wait a year will have that sense of, well, actually, the other thing is when they say, oh, it's not the official definition.
[01:32:38]  I think to the average American, the term recession is basically a synonym for economic bad times.
[01:32:43]  And so if you ask people, are you going through economic bad times?
[01:32:45]  They probably say, hell yeah.
[01:32:46]  You know, if you looked at gas prices, have you looked at my grocery bill?
[01:32:49]  Have you looked at my rent?
[01:32:50]  Have you looked at my mortgage?
[01:32:52]  I don't even get me started on my 401k.
[01:32:54]  It just got demolished.
[01:32:55]  Most people say, yeah, we're in economic rough times.
[01:32:58]  Now, is it unusual that we have low unemployment?
[01:33:01]  Yeah, that's kind of unusual.
[01:33:02]  This is a little bit different from what we're used to seeing during a recession.
[01:33:07]  But my colleague Kevin Williamson laid out this very good point.
[01:33:11]  You think, okay, well, it's not a recession because unemployment is low and things are good for workers.
[01:33:16]  Well, wait a second.
[01:33:17]  American workers are working really hard.
[01:33:19]  They're working a lot of hours.
[01:33:20]  They're getting the take-home pay, but the take-home pay doesn't go as far because inflation was 9.1%.
[01:33:26]  And oh, by the way, Kiplinger says we should expect it to be in the ballpark of 9% for the rest of the year.
[01:33:31]  So if workers can't afford as much as they used to and they're working as many hours, then how is this a thriving economic environment for workers?
[01:33:38]  It's not.
[01:33:39]  This is not a great economy.
[01:33:41]  If it was a great economy, we'd have the 5.6 million unemployed would be heading into the 10.5 unfilled jobs right now.
[01:33:49]  We've got this all of our people who talk about the inflation and the effect of, oh my God, how much are you paying for gas?
[01:33:57]  People like will share on Facebook, at least in my neck of the woods in Northern Virginia, I found a place that's less than $4 a gallon.
[01:34:04]  And they're like, oh, where was it?
[01:34:05]  Where was it?
[01:34:05]  Like it's, you know, people talk about driving 20 minutes out of their way to save a couple of cents per gallon.
[01:34:11]  People exchange stories about grocery bills and how much, you know, oh my God, I went there the other day.
[01:34:15]  It was $45 just for one bag of groceries.
[01:34:18]  So this is something that people feel down to their bone marrow, right?
[01:34:21]  This is what people talk about.
[01:34:23]  So the idea that Paul Krugman can say, I looked out my window and everything looks fine.
[01:34:27]  You know, there's something, there's certain things you can spin the public on, but you cannot Jedi mind trick them into believing that they're doing better than they actually are.
[01:34:37]  And I just got to find it fascinating that you've had this, you know, rule of thumb, if you want to say this commonplace definition that was used almost every other time for the last 40 some years.
[01:34:46]  But now all of a sudden that it's happening a couple of months before a midterm where Democrats are expected to do badly.
[01:34:51]  It's just so it's like one of those magic eye things, Megan.
[01:34:54]  You just can't see whether it actually is a recession.
[01:34:57]  It'll take us months to figure out if this is a recession.
[01:35:00]  People are doing, they know they're not doing that well.
[01:35:02]  Well, I do worry that after the midterm elections, however they shake out, we're going to see, who knows?
[01:35:09]  Maybe they're going to have to admit at that point that we're in a recession, but we're going to see the COVID restrictions come back because we're going to be going into the winter months and we're going to see more vaccine mandates resurrect and more mask mandates resurrect.
[01:35:21]  And even if they lose, you know, the Democrats are going to be feeling empowered to push these policies that they think are really popular, whether it's green energy or it's COVID mandates or what have you, because they still control a lot of state houses and state legislatures and so on.
[01:35:33]  They're not going to lose every position of power.
[01:35:35]  They are going to lose the House.
[01:35:36]  I mean, I don't think any reasonable person predicts otherwise.
[01:35:40]  The Senate, less clear, but now we see their messaging, Jim.
[01:35:44]  Roe versus Wade was not secure in the hands of Republican appointed Supreme Court justices.
[01:35:51]  Gun rights have been restored in a way that is threatening the very safety of the country.
[01:35:57]  The gay marriage could be in danger next.
[01:36:00]  Interracial marriage, all the nonsense that they've posited after Roe.
[01:36:04]  And on top of that, we've gotten Build Back Better, also known as the Inflationary Relief Act, eeny tiny BBB, passed.
[01:36:12]  And we've got the CHIPS Act passed where we're bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States.
[01:36:17]  And, you know, where we did all of our COVID relief and we're back.
[01:36:20]  Like, that's going to be the messaging going in.
[01:36:22]  What they do after concerns me.
[01:36:25]  But the messaging going in, you can't deny it's getting better for them.
[01:36:29]  It's getting better than it was six months ago.
[01:36:31]  Oh, yeah.
[01:36:31]  So does it change your calculation on their chances with respect to the House and certainly the Senate?
[01:36:36]  Yeah, I think it's entirely possible that when the last votes are counted in, you know, in November, Democrats kind of look around and say, ah, that wasn't so bad.
[01:36:47]  My suspicion is that, yes, Republicans will win the House.
[01:36:50]  You may not see a giant 40-seat swing like you're used to seeing in 2014, 2010, 1994, those past Republican tsunami years, in part because Republicans are starting it just under parity.
[01:37:03]  They only need, I think, six seats right now.
[01:37:05]  And the other point is that through redistricting, there are, first of all, all the low-hanging fruit has pretty much been picked already, and there just aren't that many competitive districts.
[01:37:14]  I've heard when Biden's approval rating is so low, I have a hard time believing you're not going to see a significant amount of Republican gains.
[01:37:22]  But the question is, if they gain 20 seats, does that seem, will that be seen as a big win or will it be seen as something of a disappointment?
[01:37:31]  On the Senate, I'll be honest, I'm really worried.
[01:37:33]  I think you've got some seriously underperforming Republican candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia might get carried over to victory by the general economic state of the country and people's worries and stuff.
[01:37:47]  But, you know, I don't think some of these, I don't think I'm offering any giant revelation that Walker has been underwhelming as a candidate.
[01:37:55]  I know questions about JD Vance about his fundraising and whether he's going out and doing enough campaign events and things like that.
[01:38:01]  I mean, every Republican candidate out there should be running like they're 10 points behind and not counting on the national political environment, not counting on Biden's low approval rating to get them elected.
[01:38:13]  And I hear from enough Republicans like that.
[01:38:14]  I'm not seeing that.
[01:38:15]  These guys act like they're 10 points ahead and everything's going to be fine.
[01:38:19]  You know, will Democrats have a bad year?
[01:38:22]  Sure.
[01:38:23]  I do think things like the Bro v. Wade will stir up the Democratic grassroots a little bit, get their enthusiasm up.
[01:38:29]  But really, I think Republicans could end up kicking themselves, having a good year, but one a year that should have been much better.
[01:38:35]  Yeah, you can't take anything for granted.
[01:38:38]  And plus, we still have, I think it's 99 days from today until the midterms kick off.

=== Thanks for Listening (01:34) ===

[01:38:43]  So anything could happen.
[01:38:45]  Jim Garrity, always a pleasure.
[01:38:47]  Thank you so much.
[01:38:47]  And again, great job last week.
[01:38:49]  Haven't checked out the Editor's podcast.
[01:38:51]  You are missing out, because it's a great group and and in good hands, being led by Jim Garrity last week.
[01:38:56]  Thank you, Megan.
[01:38:58]  Uh, tomorrow two of our favorites are joining us.
[01:39:00]  I feel like my team gave me a great lineup for my week back from vacay.
[01:39:04]  Victor Davis Hansen is with us.
[01:39:06]  My, he's so brilliant.
[01:39:08]  He's like with all due respect to all parties, he's the new Charles Krauthammer.
[01:39:11]  Like what he says I just hold on to and I repeat it to myself and I think about it later.
[01:39:16]  He's that kind of commentator, as you know, if you've heard him, and the hilarious Adam Corolla, who is his own sage of southern California and Uh, will have a lot of thoughts for us.
[01:39:26]  There's this whole view controversy that I want to get into with him.
[01:39:29]  Don't miss any of that.
[01:39:30]  Tune into the show, download the Megan Kelly show on Apple Pandora, Spotify and or Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast for free, and go to youtube.com slash Megankelly if you want to see a picture of the snake I caught or the bear that buzzed by my little thatcher.
[01:39:44]  It was actually kind of fun video.
[01:39:46]  Thanks in the meantime for listening, for watching, and we'll do it all over again tomorrow.
[01:39:52]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.
[01:39:54]  No bs, no agenda and no fear notice, no Call for so much good.
[01:40:12]  30 gigabytes for about 200.
[01:40:16]  Won't call it Hall Merryndum.