The Banking Meltdown Continues - Transcripts

But now the federal government has basically suggested that if you put your money in a bank that is supported by the FDIC, then you are going to get back all of your money. So all the people who had put their money in Silicon Valley Bank will be able to get their money out. But that doesn't actually solve the entire problem as we're about to discuss in just one second. Because here is the bigger, bigger problem. The people who are not going to be bailed out here are the Silicon Valley Bank investors. All of those investors are probably going to just take it. And that's true for a large number of these regional banks. If a regional bank goes under, the depositors will probably be bailed out by the federal government but all of the investors will not be bailed out by the federal government. And here lies the problem if you're looking at the sort of future of where the economy is going over the next two years. The big problem is that if you are an investor when you're looking at this formula, and the formula is that depositors are being insured. And so, what that means is that the banks are now going to take outside risks, or they have been taking outsized risks for years. And you are not going to get bailed out.

What's your first move as an investor? It is to pull your money out of any bank that you think has taken a risky Well, what that means that these banks are then going to have all of the investment capital pulled out of them. And that means they're going to have a real problem raising new capital. In order to do things, if their stock price drops and they issue new stock in or raise new capital, they're not going to bring in as much money as they normally would have. And if that happens, then let's say, you have a bunch of depositors who are going to have to for example pull their money out of the bank, your depositor, you put your money in the bank, take your money out of the bank because the economy is getting rough, right? You got stagflation that is set in, You've got stagflation that said you need to pay your employees. You take some money out of the bank. The problem is the money that you put in the bank isn't just sitting in a box with your name on it at the bank. The bank lends that out or to invest it, as it turns out, in bonds. Now the bank has to fill that back in. You call in the money and the bank doesn't have the money. They have a couple of options.

One is they can sell off some of their assets. The other is they can try to raise new money through new issuance of stock. If they cannot raise new money through issuance of stock, and if they cannot sell the assets because the assets are now at a loss, then they have a real problem on their hands banks start to go under. And that's precisely what we are starting to see, not just with regard to Silicon Valley Bank, but also with regard to a wide variety of banks, which is why bank stocks yesterday dropped like a stone. Signature Bank, of course, has now been put essentially into receivership. The Daily Mail reports more than $100 billion was wiped off US banks value today in a bloodbath on Wall Street sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Trading was intermittently halted on at least 20 regional banks as the velocity of money forced regulators to intervene. The big four of US banks were also drawn into the bloodletting. Citigroup's share price dived 7.45%. Wells Fargo sank 7%. Bank of America pledged 5.8%. JP Morgan fell by 1.8%.

But that's nothing compared to the regional banks. I mean, the big banks, everybody is sort of assuming that they've diversified their risk. Not only that, they are so big that if the government decides to bail them out, they will bail out everybody, including the investors. If you're a regional size bank, however, then the assumption by investors is that the government will come and bail out the depositors, but not you if you're an investor in that firm. If you're an unsecured investor in the firm, you could lose all your money. So people are starting to sell off their stock. And that's exactly what happened yesterday on the stock market. Among the worst affected regional banks were First Republic, it fell by 62%. Western Alliance closed with a loss of 47%. Key Corp dropped by 21%. All of that happened because, you know, despite the fact that Joe Biden had suggested that he had now fixed the problem. Former Trump White House advisor, Steve Moore, warned that SVP may just be the tip of the iceberg.

And he's not wrong about that because when you look at the unrealized losses that exist in the banking industry right now, it's a real problem. So the assumption by Silicon Valley Bank, to just review what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank wildly expanded its balance sheet from 2020 to 2022 because of the inflationary economy. Because the Federal Reserve decided to inject trillions of dollars liquidity into the system. Banks ate up all the liquidity. A lot of that liquidity went into tech companies, those tech companies, put their deposits down at Silicon Valley Bank. Now Silicon Valley Bank was looking around and said, where did we put this money? How do we invest this cash in some safe and secure? Well, how about US government bonds? That seemed pretty safe. I mean there's a guaranteed return at the end of term. What they didn't count on is the idea that at some point the inflation would run out of control and the federal government would start to jack up the interest rates.

As we discussed yesterday, when the federal government jacks up interest rates on new bonds, what they do is they tank the market for the old bonds, because let's say that you had an interest rate bond that was guaranteeing 4% over the course of the next 10 years. And now the interest rate on that bond is ranked 7%. you can't sell your interest rate bond that gets a 4% return, there's one on the market at 7% you have to sell it at a discount in order to equal to 7%. So the asset you bought that was worth a certain price is now worth a lot less money. Now, for a lot of these banks that wouldn't make a difference if they didn't have to liquidate the asset right away. But again, when the depositors start to draw out the cash, if you don't have the assets on hand, you have to liquidate in order to pay off all the depositors. And that's exactly what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. The problem is that that exact same problem exists across the industry. The Washington examiner points out, quote, fallout from the Silicon Valley bank collapse has directed attention to a $620 billion ticking time bomb in the banking system that has the potential to spell doom for the financial system. SVP's meltdown was partly caused by a chasm between its assets and what they were worth in the market. Eventually SVP sold some of those assets, spooking investors and triggering a run on the bank, but SVP isn't alone because banks across the United States are sitting on $620 billion in unrealized potential losses at the end of last year per the FDIC. That whole illustrates why authorities at the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the FDIC were so eager to stave off contagion or panic spread from SVP's demise across the banking sector.

The reason for this predicament is because the banks compiled a plethora of bonds and treasuries during times when the interest rates were near zero. Now the Federal Reserve has begun jacking up the rates in an effort to combat inflation, and that has caused a lot of those assets to plunge in value, as we've discussed. Again, higher interest rates means that new bonds are now more valuable and the old bonds are not worth nearly what they once were. A consequence of the $620 billion unrealized potential loss is that banks may quickly find themselves with less cash on hand than books might have suggested. So on the books, you have assets that are worth par value, but in the market, they're worth a lot less than that. You bought a bond for 950 bucks. It's theoretically worth 1000 bucks at the time that it matures. So really it should be worth something between 950 and 1000 bucks right now, but when a new bond comes onto the market and that new bond is for your 950 bucks it's gonna give you 1100 bucks. It turns out that your original bond is no longer worth between 950 and 1000, it's now worth much, much less because who's gonna buy that thing. And so all these unrealized potential losses, they would stay unrealized unless people start to draw down their money. And people are starting to draw down their money. Those unrealized potential losses become realized very quickly, and the investors are the ones who end up getting shafted.

What does all of this mean? Well, it does mean that centralized government banking policy has serious consequences for the rest of the economy, which is just another reason why you should diversify into precious metals like gold. Things are extremely turbulent right now. The stock market does not like turbulence. You needs to diversify at least some of your assets into a thing that is not controlled by the federal government, precious metals. I've bought gold from birch gold before. In preparation for uncertain economic times diversification is just a smart strategy. I'm not saying liquidate all your assets base and then sink it into gold bars or something, but you should diversify because that is indeed a smart strategy. Buy gold today and a free safe to store it in as well. Unqualifying purchases from birch gold Group And now through March 31st, they'll ship a free safe directly to your door. Just text Ben to 989898 at your free info kit on gold, claim eligibility for your free safe, then talk to one of their precious metals specialists, that's Ben, to 989898 today. Again, you got to protect your assets, and those assets right now are at the disposal of the federal government.

How about get some assets that aren't at the disposal of the federal government? This is the reason why gold has always been a hedge against inflation, uncertainty in the market, as well as government control of your asset base. Text Ben to 989898, get all your questions and answers from Birch Gold, and then invest at least a little bit of your money into precious metals with Birch Gold. Okay, so the market stress indicators have been reacting very sharply according to Yahoo Finance. Financial stress market indicators reacted sharply on Monday after the failure of three US banks within five days. State regulators actually closed down the New York based signature bank on Sunday two days after California authorities shuttered Silicon Valley bank, crypto focused bank Silvergate said last week it would also have to wind down its operations. So obviously that is freaking people out, but there is another shoe that is yet to drop. Okay, the other shoe that is yet to drop here is the fact that the Federal Reserve is trying to quash inflation. Remember, in the middle of all this, what caused a lot of this meltdown is the fact that the Federal Reserve injected trillions of dollars in liquidity into the system in 2020 2021, supposedly to combat epidemic in 2020 can make the case in 2021 absolutely cannot make the case that that's what the Federal Reserve should have been doing. They did it anyway. He by the administration did it in terms of trillions of dollars of spending. And so you got this inflationary spiral.

Because of the inflationary spiral, 40 year highs in inflation, the Federal Reserve has one tool at its disposal, and that is you increase the interest rates. You increase the interest rates to suck liquidity out of the system. And that brings down the inflation rates. There's only one problem. When you increase those interest rates, what is the side effect of that as we just saw with Silicon Valley Bank? Well, it turns out all your old bonds are now valueless, and so you have a bunch of firms who are holding bad assets on their books, and the same way that in 2007 and 2008, people had marked up real estate assets on their books, Oct, and all those went south. A lot of people are holding bad financial assets on their books. Old bonds and those bonds are losing their value the more that the Federal Reserve increases the interest rates. So now the Federal Reserve has coaught. They're going to catch 22. if they raise the interest rates, those bonds become less and less valuable, which means that banks have no backstop for their investors. Which means investors pull their money out of the banks, helping to sink the banking system.

If on the other hand, they do not raise the interest rates, inflation continues to rage out of control. Remember inflation is still raging at 7% in this country, which is more than three times what the normal rate of inflation is supposed to be, according to the Federal Reserve. They caught themselves in a trap of their own making. This is the biggest problem in the world when it comes to centralized banks having too much control over the economy. Mohammed Al-Aryan was the chief economist at Allianz. He has been saying for literally years on end that when the central banks are your chief form of economic policymaking, you end up with a real problem because everybody just tries to read what is in J Powell's brain or Jenny Ellen's brain or whoever's brain is supposedly in charge of the Federal Reserve and you have one person in charge of all of the levers of economic power, well, I can run out of control real fast, and that's precisely what happened here. They inflated the currency, they spent too much money, they did it between 2020 and 2022, everybody bought in thinking that the party was gonna go on forever, and then the party did not go on forever. And the problem is now that the consequence, now everybody's getting the hangover, now that the hangover is coming there's the tough treatment of the hangover which is, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We are going to just soldier through this, right, which is the way you should do this. J-PAL, the Fed, they're gonna need to just, the Federal Reserve, they're just gonna need to cram through more interest rate increases, and then if there're banks that took bad risks, we're gonna have to put them into receivership, we're gonna have to sell them off. We're not gonna bail them out. We're gonna have other firms that are in better position, buy off those assets, which is how the market is supposed to work because if you don't do that, you end up with this massive moral hazard of people over, over, and over, and over again engaging in risky behavior.

knowing the taxpayer is going to bail them out. That's the way they should work. But the Federal Reserve, especially under Joe Biden, who's now running for reelection, they are deeply afraid of what happens. If they raise the interest rates, the economy could tank. It could have banks go under, more regional banks. You could have in serious, serious trouble. It could have something that looks more like a financial meltdown. You could have a snowball effect. When those banks start to go under, then liquidity really dries up. A lot of the firms that rely on liquidity in order to operate go under. They could have a serious, actual recession. So that's problem number one.

Problem number two is if you don't raise those interest rates, inflation continues to rage, and you get stagflation, which is what you have right now. Again, there's always a hangover. Gravity applies in the economic sphere, just as it applies in the political sphere, just as it applies in real life. There was a happy, weird moment in American history where there was a literal economic theory put forward by idiots like Elizabeth Warren. You could spend money endlessly with no consequences whatsoever. And it turns out that's nonsense. It's always been nonsense, it will always be nonsense. It may be a longer delay between when you spend the money and when the consequences are felt. You may have a long delay between when you binge drink and when the hangover hits. But the hangover is coming. And you might think, for a brief moment in time, man, I don't feel the hangover yet, don't worry, it's coming. And right now, the hangover is here?

And the only question is going to be how bad it is. Again, Jay Powell said a week ago that the Fed might need to raise interest rates again at a faster pace, and this all follows bad policymaking by the Federal Reserve. Remember, Jay Powell sort of reversed course. He said, it looks like inflation is petering out. Instead of a 50 basis point increase in the interest rates, we're gonna do a 25 basis point rate increase. And the markets went crazy. Like, oh, look, it looks like inflation is over. Inflation, number one is, and then he started signaling that he got it wrong. So inflation is not over. And also you don't have the ability to raise the interest rates without bankrupting a bunch of these banks. It's a disaster area. Now the media are gonna try and play it as a Biden victory because that's what they always do.

Yeah, good luck with that. We'll get to more on this in a second first. In this economic climate, you may have noticed that you should actually be looking at your monthly expenses and you're figuring out what to cut, right? It's time to get a little conservative with how you spend your cash. This is why you should be checking out Pure Talk. Pure Talk saves the average family over $900 a year when they switch from Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. That is correct. You can save $900 a year on your wireless bill. Still enjoy that ultra fast 5G service. Get unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data for just 30 bucks a month. Pure Talk is so sure you're gonna love your service. They're backing it up with a 100% money back guarantee.

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go to puretalk.com, enter promo code Shapiro, save 50% off your very first month of coverage, puretalk.com, promo code Shapiro. Okay, so Politico is trying to play this as a win for Joe Biden. They have an entire piece leading the website at Politico saying how Biden saved Silicon Valley startups inside the 72 hours that transformed U.S. banking. A historic rescue of distressed industry came together rapidly. I love how when Joe Biden does a thing, it is historic. When we get historic inflation, it's not historic. When we get stagflation, that's not historic. It's only historic when he does something that the left-wing press likes, or they can try to play off as an actual victory. So the federal government, according to the Politico, would provide SVPs, depositors, with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty for thousands of venture-backed startups. Signature Bank would receive the same guarantee. Also, the Federal Reserve would single-handedly give all other similar lenders access to funds designed to keep them afloat and quell the panic brewing across the country.

And it almost didn't happen. Joe Biden began the weekend highly skeptical of anything that could be labeled a taxpayer-funded bailout, according to four people close to the situation who are not authorized to speak for attribution. I love this. I love that you have people close to Joe and like, oh, it was a gutsy call. A guy said a gutsy call. He really didn't wanna do it. He didn't care about doing it. Of course he's gonna do it. He's bailing, like since, when have Democrats been against bailing things out? I know they like to pretend they're against bailing things out, but they kinda like bailing things out. It means more government involvement in the economy. This is why the Occupy Wall Street Movement was always a lie.

It should've been Occupy DC if you actually cared about anything. It wasn't about Wall Street corruption, it was about DC sponsoring the Wall Street corruption. The Tea Party was protesting in the right place. Occupy Wall Street should have been occupying Kay Street. According to Politico, this would be a serious political risk for the president, given that many of SVP's customers were startup entrepreneurs and investors. With so much money deposited in the bank that they far exceeded the federal government's $250,000 insurance limit. Signature catered in part to once high flying crypto investors. As officials worked through the weekend, they concluded failing to protect the bank's depositors could leave small businesses across the country unable to access money, needed to pay workers and keep their operations going. Okay, so Joe Biden did a presser yesterday. At nine o'clock in the morning, which apparently is a big deal, in which he blamed the bank failures on the Trump administration. Yes, it wasn't his massive inflationary policy or the massive inflationary policy of his federal reserve. It wasn't any of that stuff.

It was, wait for it, it was Donald Trump, of course. And it was Donald Trump, particularly with 17 democratic votes in the Senate, repealing certain parts of the Dodd-Frank bill. Here's Joe Biden blaming his predecessor

But not even Barney Frank believes that is to blame. The point of the 2018 law was to ease costly compliance burdens on mid-sized banks that made them less competitive with the giants, which benefit from lower cost of funding because of their implicit government backstop. Excessive Dodd-Frank regulation was driving more deposits to big banks. Before the 2018 law, most mid-sized banks had to comply with the same regulations as the big banks, but those wouldn't have prevented either bank's failure from their risk management mistakes. Again, that's the point. Nobody can actually point to the provision of Dodd-Frank that was relieved that would have stopped all of this. So, as always, this is Joe Biden just suggesting, as Democrats always do, that if the government had more control, this wouldn't have happened. It's because the government has control of the centralized spending policy in the United States that this happened in the first place. Again, even Barney Frank, the guy who does, his name is on Dodd-Frank. His bank went under in the middle of all of this. So, that's just a lie. It's just not true at all.

Joe Biden didn't stop there, by the way. He said, don't worry. We won't stop with this. We'll do whatever is necessary. Whatever is necessary is what we'll do.

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And as he has now caught his federal reserve in a vice grip between allow inflation to rise and allow banks to fail. And so here was Joe Biden congratulating himself

So where do people put that money? The answer is it's going to sit on the sidelines. Nobody knows where to put their money at this point, which means liquidity is about to dry up in a very serious way in this country. Joe Biden, when asked the serious question about why the banks are experiencing runs in the first place, which really be the question, right? Why are people taking their money out of the bank in the first place?

very often. But, you know, the president of the United States, says Jen Psaki, man,

Those are stupid ideas. The idea that you don't have to take care of your state, your actual shareholders, you take care of the world at large, take care of the stakeholders. You invest in idiotic green boondoggles because after all, the money is easy and cheap. So is wokeness to blame for what just happened? No, I mean, what actually is not to blame for what just happened. Wokeness is a predictable result of everybody else paying your bills for years on end with cheap and loose money from the Federal Reserve. Basically, there's a giant inflatable bag of cash and all of these all of these bank managers were able to jump from the third story of the financial building knowing that there's this giant inflatable bag of cash that could land on. Well, there's only one problem. The air allowed out of that bag gets real ugly And so now, in retrospect, you look back at all the stupid woke crap that they were doing during the last three years, you're like, oh, it's because of the wokeness. No, that was a symptom of the fact that the money was cheap and easy. Now, does that mean that the wokeness helped? Of course not.

They should have been a lot more conservative in how they approach both their investment strategy and how they approach their actual job, which is the banking. But it does make them look quite stupid. So, for example, you have this SBB video focusing on diversity that came out yesterday. Here's what that looked like.

I don't know why you're spending your money this way, Signature Bank. This is Barney Frank's bank, by the way. Here is some of their... This is a video they actually cut, the managers actually cut this video in which they sang parody songs about how they're not like the generic megabanks. Right, the generic megabanks

Well, it means moving forward into 2024 that Joe Biden, again, is going to be vulnerable. The economy is not going to be good. The systemic problems in U.S. banking and in the U.S. economy are not going to go away over the course of the next few weeks. They're going to remain quite serious. The Federal Reserve, again, they're caught between a rock and a hard place. The banks, many of them, are caught between a rock and a hard place. Liquidity is about to dry up. It's going to be very hard for, even solid companies, to find the liquidity they need to keep on operating. That means that Joe Biden has some very, very serious issues moving forward into 2024. So now would be an excellent time It's time for Republicans to take advantage of that.

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It's called Stolen Youth, how radicals are erasing innocence and indoctrinating a generation. When I read this passage, I wanted to delete every social media app I have and throw my phone away. Here's what they say. Quote, TikTok was the center of a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation, which uncovered how the app targets users with content revolving around sex, drugs, eating disorders and more, calling it an addiction machine. Investigators created 31 accounts registered to young teens and turned them loose to browse TikToks for you feed. The highly personalized never-ending feed curated by the algorithm. The article explained, quote, an analysis of the videos served to these accounts found that through its powerful algorithms, TikTok can quickly drive minors among the biggest users of the app into endless spools of content about sex and drugs. TikTok served one account registered as a 13-year-old at least 569 videos about drug use. Remember, this is by design. Radicals would like their children to be sick and corrupted. The good news is you can fight back if you know how Stolen Youth, how radicals are erasing innocence indoctrinating a generation that comes out today, order your copy on Amazon or wherever you get your books right now. Well, meanwhile, as the Republicans roll forward towards 2024, they're gonna have to decide which person is best positioned to beat Joe Biden in a general election.

And let's make no mistake. Republicans need to make that decision, okay? The decision is not about which candidate you love on a personal level. The question is who beats Joe Biden? Thinking any other way would be an exercise in foolishness. Speaking of exercise in foolishness, there's a poll out from Pennsylvania right now, and it is showing Doug Mastriano in the lead in a senatorial primary against Dave McCormack. This makes no sense. Doug Mastriano just got his ass kicked in the gubernatorial race by Josh Shapiro by 14 points. So your plan is to renominate that person for a Senate seat? Like, do you like to win sometimes or is losing the only thing? Is losing on principle like a thing? This is a thing that we should keep in mind as we move forward to an actual presidential election that a lot rise on as it turns out.

And this brings us to today's episode

That sounds great. Also, you should have done that while you were the actual President of the United States. You can't run as an outsider once you have been the President of the United States. Right now, you're the ultimate insider. It's very difficult to run as the guy who's outside the system, when you had control over the levers of power. So he's been struggling to come up with some angle of attack on DeSantis. And it's been, I mean, first of all, DeSantis hasn't yet declared, that makes it particularly rough for him. But beyond that, he was hoping to crowd everybody else out of the field, it hasn't happened as of yet. And so he's come up with a couple of nicknames, right? He's been saying, Rhonda Sanctimonius, Rhonda Sanctimonius. Well, one problem with the Rhonda Sanctimonius thing is that he doesn't actually understand what the word sanctimonius means. I'm not kidding.

According to the Washington Post, question on whether he regrets endorsing DeSantis when he ran for governor in 2018. Trump replied, yeah, maybe. This is precisely the wrong angle. Precisely the wrong angle. Like if you want to win again, and you're running against DeSantis, what you say is, I'm super glad I endorsed DeSantis. He's been wildly popular. The reason that Florida had the popular Rhonda Santis is because of me, right? That's what he should say. He should try to grab some of the credit for Florida's achievements. Instead, his plan is to rip down DeSantis. Trump said he nicknamed DeSantis, Rhonda Sanctimonius. In reference to the lack of gratitude, he claimed that DeSantis had shown after Trump bolstered his political rise.

That's not what the word sanctimonius means. Sanctimonius is not referred to a lack of gratitude. I wanna find the actual dictionary definition so that you, okay, the dictionary definition is, making a show of being morally superior to other people. That is not a lack of, like what? I guess in order to give a nickname, you should have to understand the word you're using for the nickname. And we should start with that. But that wasn't, okay, all of that is just silliness. Here is where things get very dicey for Trump. Because he will use anything at his disposal to attack his opponents, up to and including Ted Cruz's father shot JFK and his wife is ugly. Because he will do anything. That means that he sometimes just attacks randomly from like the far left. So here was Donald Trump talking down the transformation of Florida, that again, he could help take credit for.

He could be saying, it's because of me that Ron DeSantis became governor of Florida. It's because of me as president of the United States that Ron DeSantis was able to keep Florida open. Another President would have crammed down national mandates. I didn't, Ron DeSantis was able to do what he was able to do, because I didn't do that thing. He could say all that stuff. He's not saying all that stuff because he wants to go after DeSantis personally. And so he then decides to take the stupidest angle, which is that Florida is badly run or something. Or that it was run amazing before Ron DeSantis got here. Here was his video yesterday.

So that dog ain't gonna hunt. No one believed that Florida was like a giant magnet in the way that it has become under DeSantis. So that is a weak attack. And I'm sorry, praising Charlie Crist. No one should ever praise Charlie Crist. No one. There is no rationale for praising Charlie Crist. Then Trump tried another line of attack. He tried to compare Ron DeSantis

DeSantis for his part is doing a smart thing. DeSantis is saying I'm going to basically just ignore this. DeSantis is holding Trump out here the way that I hold my six year old son when he's in a really bad mood and swinging his arms and holding him out here. Here's DeSantis answering some questions about this on Fox.

Meanwhile, some criticism is arising for DeSantis. That is, you know, at least half interesting. Not like he's like power is not Charlie, like actual interesting criticism. So Tucker Carlson issued a series of questions to a wide variety of Republican candidates, ranging from the fake Rama Swamy to Donald Trump. That included Mike Pence, DeSantis, Kristi Noem from South Dakota, Greg Abbott, Tim Scott, Chris Christie. The one that drew the most attention was the answer about Ukraine. So the question was, is opposing Russia and Ukraine a vital American and national strategic interest? Trump said no, but it is for Europe, adding that European allies should be paying far more than we are or equal, which is not totally wrong. DeSantis wrote, quote, while the U.S. has many vital national interests, securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration's virtual blank check funding of this conflict for as long as it takes without any defined objectives or accountability distracts from our country's most pressing challenges. He argued that peace should be the objective and that the United States should not send F-16s and long range missiles to help Ukraine move into offensive territory against the Russians.

So a lot of people on the right lots of more interventionist sides of the right were upset with this because they're saying, well, it is a vital national security interest of the United States to continue to push this war. But what DeSantis is doing there is actually fairly smart politics. He's actually kind of mushing it a little bit to be perfectly frank. He's mushing the answer, because what he is saying is that you actually have to have an achievable goal. What is the achievable goal there? If peace is the achievable goal, then you have to decide what that peace looks like if what we have now is a territorial dispute over the Donbass or Crimea. you're going to have to draw a middle line and figure out exactly how to achieve that middle line. If what you are saying is that you think that there is no territorial dispute, which no one says including the Biden administration, and then this war only ends when Russia pushes, when Russia is pushed out of all sovereign Ukrainian territory, then you would have to fund them all the way to the wall, but even the Biden administration is not willing to do that. So to stance is coming under fire for that. It is interesting that the Republican party has decided to sort of take a middle line on a lot of this material, and that's going to be the line going forward, questionable as to whether that would still be the Republican line if, for example, Joe Biden were not president of the United States. At this point, what is clear is that Joe Biden doesn't have a plan that's been leading from behind, and I think that's helping to muddy the waters a lot when it comes to Ukraine. Meanwhile, while the Republicans battle it out over 2024, Joe Biden continues to be as radical as it is possible to be.

Remember that time where he proposed that he was a moderate? And he stayed silent on certain topics. He had Elizabeth Warren, if you recall, during the 2020 primaries, suggesting to a nine-year-old that transing the kids was good. Remember that? Well, now Joe Biden is saying the same exact sort of stuff. It is amazing how radical he has gone on the social issues, and this does open a wide door for Republicans if they wish to reach out to blue-collar voters who, again, are traditionally very un-woke and don't like a lot of the social values that are promoted by the people who are at the tippity-top of the social strata in New York and San Francisco. So here is Joe Biden. This is an insane thing to say. It's one of the more insane things Joe Biden has ever said, which is saying a lot because he said a lot of insane stuff. So Joe Biden was trying to attack Ron DeSantis in an interview with The Daily Show, one of our great news sources, of course, and he talked about how it was, I quote, I kid you

And this guy is the moderate. By the way, it is perfectly obvious and it's becoming increasingly obvious over time that all of this is totally insane. When I say insane, I mean the treatment of people who have gender dysphoria as though a surgical or hormonal mutilation is going to fix the problem. There is no evidence that this is the case. Like that is not going to overall change the rate of suicidal ideation, for example, the lie that you either trans your child or you have a dead child through suicide is not true. The data are not there to back it. At best, you can say it's experimental. That's the best you can say about this, the best. And the downside is that if you watchfully waited a small child, for example, 80 percent minimum are going to grow out of this. And as we, by the way, increase the number of kids who are experiencing gender confusion, that number would actually increase if you actually did watchful waiting, because a huge majority of the children I would assume who are now engaging in gender confusion are not actually suffering from long-lasting gender identity disorder, gender dysphoria. In any case, I mean, there's an actual article from The Daily Caller from Dr. Susan Bradley, Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in child gender dysphoria treatment. She just came out against affirming children's transgender identities and putting them on puberty blockers.

That was a practice she was once involved in. She said we were wrong. They're not as irreversible as we always thought. They have longer term effects on kids growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth, but it doesn't matter. Joe Biden has an agenda and the agenda is the total androgyny of human beings. And again, I love that he's using the same sort of argumentative model that was used for homosexuality in 1996, which is the kids are they're born this way. I'm sorry. Kids are not born transgender. That's not a thing. Kids are not born in the wrong body. This sort of weird Cartesian dualism in which left engages about this stuff is wild. But again, this is part and parcel of Joe Biden's wild social leftism.

He is not a moderate in any way, shape or form. So Joe Biden, also in the same interview, decided to tell what is my favorite Joe Biden story. I love this story. This is the story where he explains that he first became in favor of gay marriage when he was like, hey, do not a senior in high school now. Some of you may own a calendar. If you do, I wish you to turn back that calendar to the year 1959, because that's when Joe Biden was a senior in high school. Joe Biden was born in 1942 like we were still at war with Japan when this guy was born. And, and there were still three more years of that war to go when he was born, which means he was a senior in high school in 1959-1960. Here's the story he tells about how he became in favor of marriage in 1959 slash 1961, literally no one was in favor of saying he was just a forward thinker, which is why he spent the next five decades backing traditional marriage in the face of same-sex marriage. Literally five decades. He voted over and over and over in favor of things like the Defense of Marriage Act. He, in rhetoric, backed a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage.

But don't worry, he is now retconning history. He's going back in time. 1959 is when he decided he was in favor of gay marriage, and he's going to

As a father of three, having watched my wife push babies out of her three times, and soon to be my fourth time. I can tell you there will be, you know, physical issues that arise from You know, our physical issues do not arise when you don't actually have to do that because you're a dude. Paternity leave came from the idea that you need to provide extra support to your partner because your partner has undergone a physical trauma. People who judge took two months off, which means we get to joke about him. So the White House is very angry at Mike Pence for making a joke about, about this at the Gridiron Club Dinner. Now, the Gridiron Club Dinner is a comedy routine and Mike Pence made a joke at a comedy routine. His joke was that Buttigieg took maternity leave after he and his husband adopted newborn twins. so he should have said, Paper, to leave and said, Am attorney. He said, Pete is the only person in human history, and then he said, Trains started going offline and Presidents started falling from the sky, said, Pete is the only person in human history to have a child, and everyone else gets postpartum depression. That's called a joke. This prompted the White House, to suggest that it was homophobic. Quote, this is Karine Jean Pereira, world's most untalented press secretary.

The former vice president's homophobic joke about secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline. No he didn't. No, he didn't how's he treating women? What did that have to do with women suffering from post-partum depression guys? It's called a joke and I like when you guys pretend the jokes don't exist so you can laugh so that you can yell at People but it's not really a thing But again, the reason that Joe Biden continues to be the person they need on that wall Is because the person backing him up is Kamala Harris now one of my favorite stories that's happening right now Is the fight between Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris in which I root for casualties So back at the end of January Elizabeth Warren was on GbH news and she stopped short of endorsing Kamala Harris as the VP on the ticket

You'd be floating above an ocean. It was good times. The environmental doomsayers having to go back and then recapitulate all of their predictions is one of my favorite things. I really do enjoy it. Okay, time for some things that I hate. Oh, there are so many things that I hate today. So I discussed yesterday the Oscars and the fact that everything everywhere, all at once, all the time, forever in all eternity in the multiverse, that that movie won best picture. And I said I was kind of Luke cold on that particular picture. And one of the points I made online, it's drawn an awful lot of flack. As I said, in five years, no one will watch that film. And so that's a prediction. I will not delete that prediction.

I think that prediction is true. In five years hence, we'll look at the numbers and we'll see how many people are still watching everything everywhere, all at once, forever, for all time. I think the answer is going to be nil. And I think I have a good track record on this because let me point out that no one has actually rewatched a single film awarded best picture since about 2007. No one. In fact, let me name for you the films that have won best picture over the course of the last 15 years. And you tell me if you have ever rewatched any of them. So 2021's winner was Coda, or as we like to call it, Disability Oscar bait. And I'm going to give some alternative titles. The movie's fine. I enjoyed Coda. Not worth watching twice.

Or how about 2020? Francis McDormand poops in a bucket. That's that's Nomadland in which Francis McDormand poops in a bucket. Has that been a big rewatch for you? Pulling that one out of the DVD stack lately? And putting that up on the stream where you got to watch Francis McDormand poop in a bucket 2021? Nope. I didn't think so for 2020. How about rich Korean people should be murdered? AKA Parasite. 2019. Rich Korean people should be murdered.

I know a lot of people are like, I love Parasite. Just love that movie. Really? When was the last time you watched it? Was it 2019? Perhaps. Like when it won best picture. How about 1950s racism and homophobia is bad? AKA Green Book. How many people actually watched it at the time? How many people are watching it now? Are you like pulling that one out?

Streaming Green Book are you? Or how about the worst best picture winner of all time from 2017? I f**ked a fish. That one. That's a big winner. The Shape of Water. Yes. The worst. Maybe. Forget worst best picture winner. Worst movie of all time. I mean that one is definitely in competition.

Have you pulled that one out? Have you rewatched it? I'm just explaining why. My prediction that no one will ever watch everything everywhere all at once forever for all time across the multiverse again. AKA immigrant Asian families must accept lesbians across the multiverse. Like is anyone going to watch that again? I have serious doubts. And the reason again I say that is because no one has ever watched the best picture winner in the last five years later. Any anyone that has won in the last 15 years. Just going back in time here. How about Growing Up Gay and Black in Miami? AKA Moonlight 2016.

You were watching that. How about Journalists Star Awesome? That's Spotlight from 2015. How about Art? That's Birdman. Has anyone ever seen Birdman again? It existed for a brief moment in time during the Keaton Renaissance and then it was just gone. How about Slavery Was Bad? That was 12 Years a Slave. Right? 2013. Again I'm not saying all these movies are bad.

I'm saying no one's ever rewatched any of them. How about Argo? Remember when Argo was a thing? AKA Jimmy Carter wasn't that bad. Remember that one? Yeah like no you don't. You don't. How about The Artist? Rewatching that one are you? The Artist? 2011 best picture winner. Literally the only one of these movies I've ever watched even two years beyond its sell by date was The King's Speech from 2010.

The Brits can be good if they're fighting Nazis. That was the last time we allowed such a movie to win Best Picture. There was also War is Bad which was The Hurt Locker 2009. The first five minutes of the film were great. The rest of it I don't even remember any of it. And then Slumdog Millionaire won in 2008 AKA We're Not Nominating Dark Knight for Best Picture. In fact that was such an egregious non-nomination that the Academy Awards then expanded its Best Picture category to 8 to 10 films you recall. In order to get more popular films nominated and not a single one has won since then. You want to know why the Oscars are failing guys? It's because you won't nominate films that people like to watch, that people enjoy watching and don't feel obligated to watch. I understand that people are pretending right now to like everything everywhere all at once forever for all time. Some people may like it.

I have some real doubts about that one. Okay final thing that I hate here. So this is legit the weirdest video I have seen. I want to say that it's the weirdest I've ever seen but that's not true. I've seen so many weird videos in the last like two years. I'm going to say this is the weirdest video that I've seen this month. This is a very weird video. So Drew Barrymore apparently has a talk show. I don't know why she was the cute little girl from E.T. That's the last time she was good in anything. So Drew Barrymore now has a talk show. I know why people want to hear her talk, but apparently it's a thing.

And she had on the greatest hero of our time. And that hero, of course, is Dylan Mulvaney, a dude who has had surgeries and dresses as a woman and pretends to be a girl. It got super weird. Super weird. Here we go.

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