When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment.
It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients.
But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.
I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.
Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I've been making the case, it seems to me, that there is a deterioration, a more precipitous decline of Joe's cognitive state.
Let me play some of the more bizarre moments and gaffes from his trip to Kansas City.
I'm right here.
Now he's a county executive in Jackson County, president of the business as well.
You know, I mean, this guy's done it all.
Look, look, we're in a situation where we've known that our infrastructure had problems for a long, long time.
Under the leadership of mayors like, you know, our mayor here.
This is the United States of Mayor, for God's sake.
Today, the average price you're paying here in Kansas City is below $2 a gallon, $3 a gallon, down to $2.90 a gallon.
20% down from since a month ago.
Not exactly coherent.
Not exactly something that anybody can get behind.
Gas prices up on average almost $1.50 a gallon nationwide.
You know, this idea that it's down two whole cents today.
Or Don Lemon, it's down maybe even a nickel.
It might be up to a nickel.
It's down.
Well, what about the increase?
What about the fact that Roy Murdoch had a great column, 38% increase in energy dependence under Joe Biden since he's taken office?
You know, the average American family will pay between $500 and $1,000 more this year just to heat their home.
More Americans are buying more wood than ever as a means of trying to lower the costs of heating their home this winter.
Then we're going to get numbers tomorrow on inflation.
I am told to expect the worst, that this 31-year high of inflation is going to continue.
We're going to get a real CBO scoring of the build-back better new Green Deal socialist mess.
And it's going to come in like Penn Wharton and all these other studies when you eliminate the accounting tricks, which Democrats have been using, when you eliminate the sunset provisions that they're counting on that are a myth to begin with.
It's going to be four, four and a half, nearly $5 trillion, which hopefully will give Joe Manchin of West Virginia a reason to say, I told you, no way, I'm not supporting it.
Anyway, joining us, former Speaker of the House, New Kingrich, his new book, by the way, is Must Read.
It's Beyond Biden, which we now have to start thinking about.
I'm not even sure watching him every day if he's going to make four years.
I mean, are we going to have a 25th Amendment crisis, constitutional crisis in the country?
And then, God help us, that means Kamala's president.
Anyway, Mr. Speaker, welcome back.
Congrats on the book.
It's on Amazon.com, bookstores all around the country.
Well, thank you.
And we are beginning to think about Beyond Biden.
But, you know, Kamala Harris is actually weaker than Joe Biden.
I mean, he was at 38% approval about 10 days ago.
She was at 28%, which may be an all-time record for vice presidents in the first place.
I beg to correct the speaker.
The poll that came out last week had Joe at 36%.
I'm sorry, 36%.
I think you have to correct me the other day on TV about that.
My brain just forgets.
My brain is a bitch.
Listen, we're all entitled to an occasional Joe Biden moment, as long as it's not every minute of every day.
Well, let me give you two new numbers then.
There's a poll that came out this morning where they said two Democrats, who would you like to see run in 2024?
Only 22%, said Joe Biden.
Let me guess.
Kamala, 12%.
She was something like that.
So here you've got a sitting president with three out of four members of his own party hoping somebody else will run.
And in another poll that's just being released this morning, Rasmussen, they said, do you think that the Biden administration's policies are socialist?
53% yes, 23% no.
The rest undecided.
So it's beginning to sink into the country that big government socialism doesn't work and that that's what we're faced with from Biden and from Schumer and from Pelosi.
And I think they're just going to get steadily weaker all the way up to the election, which I think they're going to lose on historic scale.
Let me make a prediction that I pray to God that I'm wrong about.
With 175,000 troops mobilized by Vladimir Putin on the border with Ukraine, the aggressive maneuvers of China flying into their fighters into Taiwan airspace and talk of reunification, I predict Putin will invade Ukraine.
I predict that President Xi, after the Olympics, will, quote, reunify, meaning take over Taiwan.
Am I saying that Americans now need to get ready to be at war with Putin and Xi and China and Russia?
No.
But I don't think Joe has any means, any standing whatsoever to deal with what are serious, significant national security crises that are on the horizon now.
Well, look, I mean, you've got a Secretary of Defense and a Chairman of Joint Chiefs whose major commitment is not to winning a war.
It's to turning the Defense Department into a woke social club where everybody says the right things and has the right mindset, even if they're incompetent and can't fight.
You have senior officer after senior officer, the head of the Space Command just a couple days ago, said the Chinese are making progress at a rate twice as fast as ours.
We have had no reforms to catch up with them.
This is a major crisis in our ability to sustain.
Remember, space for us includes all of our weather channels, all of our cell phones, just an amazing number of assets that are sitting out there that are vulnerable because we've never really designed them to survive against a real enemy.
Meanwhile, as you point out, the 175,000 troops on the border of Ukraine, there are a lot of practical things we could be doing.
We could be getting the Ukrainians first-class weapons designed to offset the Russian capabilities.
We could be helping arm some of our NATO allies.
We could be making sure that there would be a multilateral task force.
The British have already sent 600 troops just as a show of commitment, not that they would stop the Russians by themselves, but they're sort of saying we're going to draw a line in the sand and we're going to send our professional military to help keep that line.
I would be willing to send military equipment, but not troops.
But I think the greatest weapon in our arsenal is something that you understand very well, and that is energy.
I mean, given the Nord Stream 2 waiver to Vladimir Putin makes Russia the hostile regime that it is and Putin the hostile actor that he is rich again, and it also creates dependency of our Western European allies on him.
So that takes away any leverage.
You know, we could take back that leverage tomorrow and start providing the energy that our partners and our allies need.
Well, you know, Trump understood this, and Reagan understood it.
Reagan followed a policy of driving down the cost of oil to such a degree that he bankrupted the Soviet Union.
The only thing they had to sell was oil.
And as the price kept dropping, they literally couldn't finance their system, and it just fell apart.
If we were to aggressively go back to something that you will remember, I wrote a book about and we did a joint project on about drill here, drill now, pay less.
And I did a book on gasoline at $2.50 a gallon, infuriated Barack Obama, who attacked me publicly for it.
But if we had that as our goal again, the amount that that would cripple Putin's ability to be adventurous would be remarkable.
And there are things like that we can do that aren't military that send real signals of strength to the Russian system.
We could also, frankly, cut off all their ability to use the interbank system, which means they can't get their money out.
And we could indicate to all of their oligarchs that the second they cross the Ukrainian border, we're going to freeze every oligarch's investments in Western banks, which would be such a huge financial threat that I suspect all of them would pressure Putin to be.
And not one thing that you mentioned here has anything to do with the weapons of war.
It would disincentivize them from their geopolitical ambitions here.
You know, two things that you mentioned that are very crucial and two things that you have been focused on.
I think between you, there's a contest between you and Donald Trump and seeing the threat that is the communist Chinese way ahead of everybody else.
Because now with hypersonic missiles and talk of reunification and lecturing the U.S. and Japan that will be obliterated, you know, people seem to forget that.
You've been ahead of the curve on the danger of China, but you also have been ahead of the curve on how critical it is for our economy and for national security reasons to be energy independent.
The one president that got us there was Donald Trump, and we were a net exporter of energy by the time he left office, energy independent.
In his final months before he left office, we weren't importing a single barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia.
Now Joe's back to begging Russia and OPEC.
Look, if Trump were still president, there would be no Russian troops massing on the border, and there would be no Chinese aircraft flying over Taiwan.
It's just literally that simple because they knew that he was tough and they knew that he meant what he said.
And I think they think that Biden is sort of just a joke.
I mean, how can you have the president fall asleep in public during an international conference and not think that that sends a signal to tough guys like Putin and Xi Jinping that this guy can be taken?
And so I think they're going to keep pushing him and pushing him until either he is pushed in a corner and has to react or he just gives up.
I mean, I can imagine a circumstance where in the end he would say a few unpleasant words and Russia would be in Kiev.
And I can imagine a circumstance where he'd say a few unpleasant words and the Chinese communists would be in Taipei.
But in both cases, the long-term collapse of our people believing in America would be a worldwide crisis.
People since 1941 have felt they could rely on us and we were the major source of stability on the planet.
And to the degree that you end up with a president too, lacking in strength and frankly, I think probably out of touch with normal everyday reality, it's really dangerous for the whole planet.
Quick break more with former Speaker of the House Newt Kingrich's new book is now out in bookstores everywhere beyond Biden.
It's also on Amazon.com, Hannity.com.
When news broke earlier this year that Baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment.
It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients.
But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.
I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.
Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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And I'm Ted Cruz.
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Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
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The continued former Speaker of the House, now author of his brand new book just out, Beyond Biden.
It's on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, now bookstores everywhere.
What do we do with this aggression of China and flying fighter jets over Taiwan airspace, the Uyghur minority Muslim population and forced labor camps and all the other human rights atrocities that they're involved in?
And they have the Olympics coming.
And Joe's answer is a diplomatic boycott.
Now, I'm not a boycott person.
And those athletes that have trained for two decades of their life, I'm not just willing to willy-nilly just say, oh, sorry, never mind.
Sorry you trained so hard.
Good luck.
Maybe you can try in four years.
Because I'm not willing to be a dream killer in that sense.
But the reality is the world is ignoring all of it.
NBC will air it.
All these big American corporations are helping to make China rich again.
And now with the energy policies of Biden, he's making Putin rich again.
Well, look, I think our strategic policy with China ought to be very straightforward.
We ought to think through the regulatory and tax policies that move virtually everything that's manufactured out of China back to the U.S., starting with things like computer chips.
We don't want to be vulnerable there.
We should provide the maximum sophisticated weapons to Taiwan and give them an ability to defend themselves that would just make it prohibitively expensive to the Chinese communists to try to invade.
And you could do that.
I mean, I think the best line was one that Admiral Stabrita said.
He said, we want to turn Taiwan into a porcupine where it's just too expensive to attack it.
And we could be doing that right now.
We could be flying in first-rate defensive equipment and equipment that could reach into China.
In addition, I think we want to indicate to the Chinese that if they continue to be this aggressive, we're going to methodically take their economy apart.
I mean, they're an extraordinarily export-dependent country.
They know, and this was the whole base of Deng Xiaoping's policy starting in the late 80s, they know that if they get into a serious recession with millions of people unemployed, that the entire political structure may break apart.
I mean, they're not operating from strength.
They're operating from a very short time horizon because their one-child policy in the next two decades sets in.
They become the most rapidly aging country in the world.
They lose their workforce capabilities and about two-thirds of their water supply is polluted.
I mean, there are a lot of things in China that aren't 10 feet tall, and you don't have to run and hide, but you have to be intelligent about taking it apart.
I mean, that is probably the most sophisticated and the smartest analysis I've heard on how to combat China from anybody.
And again, we're not lifting a finger.
There's no war that we're talking about here.
There's no American conflict that we're discussing.
Let me say in all fairness that my co-author of the book we did on Trump versus China, Claire Christensen, spends seven days a week tracking what's going on.
And then she makes me sound a lot smarter than I would be by myself.
Yeah, well, I think you're pretty smart as a historian, professor, and former Speaker of the House.
So your credentials also kick in here at some point.
The book is Beyond Biden.
It's in bookstores everywhere.
We have a link on Hannity.com, a link on Amazon.com.
It is maybe one of the best books Newt's written about now moving this country forward.
Getting beyond Biden begins in November of 2022.
Anyway, Mr. Speaker, thanks for being with us.
If I don't talk to you, have a great Christmas, and we'll be in touch.
Take care.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Quick break.
Right back.
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All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
Regardless of what Mitch McConnell has done by creating another opportunity for the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling without using the reconciliation process, tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.
Tomorrow, we're going to get two sets of numbers.
We expect at noon tomorrow that we'll get the CBO scoring.
That's the Congressional Budget Office, supposedly nonpartisan.
What we're told is the gold standard, scoring the Build Back Better New Green Deal socialism without the accounting tricks that the Democrats demanded in the first scoring that still resulted in a massive increase to our debt and deficit.
This scoring will remove sunset provisions that are basically phony accounting where Democrats say, well, we're only going to do this program for one year, which we all know is a lie.
We know that once they get it into law, it's in perpetuity and it never goes away.
Now, Joe Manchin has been talking about how inflationary this would be.
And we get one other number tomorrow, and that's going to be the inflation number.
We're now at a 31-year high.
If it continues to be high, which I would predict it probably will, and doesn't show any signs of being, quote, transitory, their favorite word, then I would imagine that this could be the ticket for Joe Manchin to get off the Build Back Better New Green Deal Socialism Express, and the bill can die in the U.S. Senate.
That's what I'm hoping for.
Here's Manchin speaking yesterday, criticizing the bill in its current form.
Listen.
So sorry to interrupt, but if I could say one thing: the bill started out, they said it's $6 trillion.
And they said we cut it down to $3.5 trillion.
And now they say, well, Joe, you've been in there and you've just said it can't be that big, and we just got to look at it.
Now we're down to anywhere from $175.
I think it came from the House at 2.2.
They didn't change anything.
The only thing they changed was the amount of time they're going to pay for it.
So if we're going to tell you we're going to raise revenue and taxes and make some changes, we've got three major changes in this Build Back Better that we should all be very careful what we do.
There's a major change in our tax structure, major change.
There's a major change basic in the social services that we provide.
And there's a major change in our whole approach to climate and the energy sector.
That's major.
We get any one of those wrong when we're in trouble.
Big time.
And West Virginia's economy, as we all know, is very reliant on energy.
And his home state is being hurt by these new Green Deal climate change fanatic policies.
So it's going to be very interesting to hear the one guy I want to hear react to the inflationary indicators.
And, of course, the CBO scoring is Joe Manchin.
All right, let's go to John is in Massachusetts.
John, glad you called, Serg.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Sean, longtime listener.
Thank you for taking my call.
Thank you.
I'd like to talk about the Olympic Games from the athletes' perspective.
I was in the 1976 Olympics as a U.S. Olympic team member in rowing.
And I first got involved in the Olympics early in my youth when I watched the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with the U.S. winning a gold medal in rowing.
That instilled in me the ideal of the Olympic Games and wanting to go to the Olympics.
I trained for 12 years.
You know, I go back thinking about the original ancient Greek Olympics that went on for 1,200 years.
And I think all Olympic athletes are idealists in a way.
We all want to attend the Olympics, and over 200 countries go to the Olympics.
And we sit in the Olympic village around a table in the cafeteria visiting with gymnasts from Ukraine and rowers from Russia.
And we strive for that peaceable assembly of athletes from around the country.
And then politicians will politicize the Olympic Games.
And in Montreal, we had 34 countries boycott.
But in 1980, Jimmy Carter boycotted Moscow along with a bunch of our allies.
66 countries boycotted Moscow.
Los Angeles was retribution in 84, and 18 countries boycotted.
But with all these boycotts, Russia still, you know, we boycotted Russia because then.
Well, let me ask you a question because I tend to agree with you.
I don't think people understand the amount of work that goes into becoming a professional athlete, an Olympic-style athlete.
What was your sport again?
rowing okay rowing is you know and i would imagine in crew um it just so happens where i live this There's a lot of people that do crew and practice around Oyster Bay in Long Island.
And I watch them, and I'm amazed at the amount of work that they put in.
How many tens of thousands of hours did you probably put in leading up to the Olympics to get you to that level?
I rode the equivalent of two and a half times around the world, and I ran the equivalent of one and a half times around the world.
So here's my problem.
I'm not willing to hurt people like you and the athletes that have worked so hard.
Now, I'm going to be honest, although, you know, people, that's such a good sport.
It's such an amazing sport.
I love it.
I'm not the biggest fan of the Olympics for other reasons, but my feelings don't matter here.
This is an opportunity for people to showcase American dedication to athletics and sports.
And unlike other countries, we have pretty strict rules as it relates to HGH and steroids and artificial means of enhancing one's strength.
As I'm sure you're very well aware, you were probably tested a million times.
I'm just guessing.
We were competing against the East Germans who were always blood-doped.
And you're right, Sean.
You know, we need to bring down the cost of the Olympic Games.
We need to have a better approach.
The IOC needs a better approach for selecting countries where they should compete.
Well, that's where I blame the IOC.
The IOC, we've known about China's human rights violations forever, and they gave it to China anyway.
And a lot of this is political.
And, you know, if we start putting pressure on NBC and start putting pressure on all the advertisers, you know, that has the same net effect of, you know, basically boycotting it and not allowing U.S. athletes to go.
I'm not willing to do that.
But, you know, on the other hand, you need a president that's willing to take a stand for the Uyghur minority Muslim community that is now in forced labor camps.
And it's nearly 2022.
There's got to be some retribution for how they treat people, human rights violations that should be long dead and gone in this world.
And nobody wants to take a stand.
A boycott has never changed a world event.
All it has done is hurt the athletes from the countries that were held back, ruined their lives in many cases.
And the Uyghurs, it's a very bad issue.
The threat of China going into Taiwan is a very bad issue.
They may go in after the Olympic Games.
Whether or not we boycott, whether or not we boycott.
And yet the Olympics should be held up as an example of how nations come together in peace to compete and to discuss and to hold an event.
We need to bring the cost of the Olympics down.
LA was picked in eight more years because Boston opposed the Olympics for the disruption.
France failed.
They ended up with China because there are very few other alternatives for other countries to step up and spend the billions of dollars.
It's a fortune to do it.
I think there are other ways to do it.
It doesn't have to be so big and as grand and as expensive as they currently make it.
There are facilities around the world where you can have specific sports competitions that people would be interested in.
Anyway, your perspective is amazing.
John, I'm glad you called and you give us a lot to think about.
Quick break, we'll come back right back to the phones.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment.
It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients.
But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.
I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.
Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down at Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.