Ep. 2005 - AUDACIOUS: It’s JD VANCE for VP!
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Well, folks, President Trump is back. He is better than ever. Absolutely electric opening to the RNC. He had announced his VP pick a little bit earlier in the day. We'll get to that in just a moment. But President Trump did an epic walkout at the RNC. And here is what it looked and sounded like. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Astonishing applause, obviously they're playing Lee Greenwood because that's his walkout song. He's shaking his hand to the crowd, waving his hand to the crowd. He has his ear bandaged because obviously he was shot in the ear. And there's a bit of a look of wonderment on his face as he's walking. This is a man who's grateful to be alive and knows that his place in history is very much both secure and a further place is in the offing, depending on if he is able to win this race.

But the look on his face is something different from President Trump. It's something that you don't normally see from President Trump. You can see a cutaway to his son with tears in his eyes, Donald Jr. He climbs the stairs up to the area where he was sitting. The crowd is going absolutely insane, obviously. Absolutely electric moment there from President Trump. Again, if you're not moved by it, I'm not sure that you've been watching politics long enough because these kind of moments don't happen in politics very often.

So just an extraordinary opening to the RNC. And if you don't believe that the emotional weight is with President Trump in this race, not sure which race you're watching at this point. Meanwhile...

The day was taken up with news about Donald Trump's VP pick. Yesterday afternoon, he announced his selection of his vice presidential nominee. It is Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio. It's an audacious, a confident pick from the former president of the United States. And he's making that pick because he believes he's winning. It is that simple. This is not a strategic move.

pick. This is not the sort of pick that is designed to say when you Virginia, which is what Glenn Youngkin from Virginia likely would have done. It's not a pick that's designed to do outreach to Hispanics is maybe a pick of Marco Rubio would have done. It is a pick that is both designed to shore up the blue wall in

in favor of red in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and more importantly, I think for Donald Trump, it's designed to enshrine his policy legacy as a shift away from traditional conservatism. And we'll get to that in a moment with J.D. Vance. Trump's statement, the one that he put out on Truth Social says, quote, after lengthy deliberation and thought and considering the tremendous talent of many others,

I've decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great state of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, summa cum laude, and is a Yale Law School graduate, where he was editor of the Yale Law School and president of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.'s book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a major bestseller and movie,

As a champion, the hardworking men and women of our country, J.D. has had a very successful business career in technology and finance. And now during the campaign will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond. Again, that last sentence is the one that matters the most there. He's name checking Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, right? Those are the three states that Trump is hoping to win with his pick of J.D. Vance.

Now, the truth is he actually doesn't need J.D. Vance to win those states. In fact, in Ohio, the last time Donald Trump ran, which was 2020, which is when J.D. Vance actually was running, J.D. Vance has only been in the Senate for about five minutes. Donald Trump has outrun J.D. Vance in the state of Ohio by a couple of points.

So that means that J.D. Vance actually underperforms Trump in these states. It's really not about that. It's about Trump wants a bulldog and he wants a very high IQ bulldog. As we'll discuss in a moment, J.D. Vance is the highest IQ person maybe in the United States. J.D. Vance is quite brilliant. Obviously, the Yale Law School Association demonstrates that Hillbilly Elegy is, in fact, a tremendously written piece of work.

I had the opportunity to interview J.D. about that book back in 2021 when it was made into a movie. Donald Trump continues, quote, "'As vice president, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help me make America great again. Congratulations to Senator J.D. Vance, his wife Usha, who also graduated from Yale Law School, and their three beautiful children, MAGA 2024.'"

And again, it is a it's a fascinating move and it is a bold move by a president who believes that he is winning. And there's a reason that Trump believes he's winning right now. The swing state polling from YouGov finds that Trump is currently up nine in Arizona, five in Wisconsin, six in Georgia, three in Pennsylvania, two in Michigan, five in Nevada and four in North Carolina. That is an extraordinary set of polls for Donald Trump. And the only one of those polls that seems to even be within spitting distance is maybe Michigan.

Wisconsin plus five is a big number for Donald Trump. How much of that is about Trump and how much of that is about Joe Biden? We'll get to that in a moment.

J.D. Vance was introduced on the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday afternoon. He came down to the strain of Merle Haggard's America First, which I think was a signal because J.D. Vance is famously rather isolationist when it comes to his foreign policy, certainly with regard to Ukraine. America First was actually a sort of isolationist ballad that was written in 2005 to rebuke the Bush administration. So the fact that J.D. Vance entered to the strains of that is somewhat telling. Here is what it sounded like. Do you know what I'm doing?

And J.D. is incredibly young. J.D. is younger than I am. J.D. is 39 years old. Again, he is extremely smart. He's really, really articulate. He's an excellent writer. He's an excellent speaker. And that is presumably why Trump picked him. Also, he's a Trump loyalist and an absolute bulldog. When it comes to any debate between J.D. Vance and Kamala Harris, he is likely to clock her into next week, which I think is one of the appeals right here.

Now, Vance is again, he's been very aggressive on the campaign trail in favor of President Trump over the last year or so. He's only been in the Senate for about 37 seconds. As I say, he only joined the United States Senate in 2023. He won a competitive GOP primary in 2022. And there was an open Ohio Senate seat that he ended up winning relatively narrowly in 2022. So he's only been in the Senate since 2023.

With that said, his story is quite fascinating. He grew up extremely blue collar in Ohio. And then he wrote a very famous book called the Hillbilly Elegy. Hillbilly Elegy was a massive bestseller that was, it was turned into a movie much later.

That was directed by Ron Howard. The critics ripped it up and down. Now, in 2016, when you wrote Hillbilly Elegy, it was seen as sort of the Trumpian book. It was the book that explained the rise of Donald Trump. The central thesis of the book was effectively that there were a lot of people who had been forgotten in the middle of the country. People had been left behind in the middle of the country. And what he wrote, here's some of the quotes from Hillbilly Elegy, which tells you sort of where his head is at with regard to how he believes people ought to think about work and work ethic.

Now, as we'll talk about in a moment, that contrasts somewhat with his sort of industrial policy. He's very much on the interventionist economic side of the Republican aisle.

He favors government interventionism in terms of subsidies and regulations, very much like President Trump supposedly did back in 2016. Trump didn't actually end up implementing a whole hell of a lot of that. I assume that J.D. Vance, if he were president, would. Here's what he wrote in Hillbillyology, quote, What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. And the message of the right is increasingly it's not your fault. You're a loser. It's the government's fault.

He also says,

But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There's a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government. And that movement gains adherence by the day. Now, again, Hillbilly Elegy originally came out in 2016. At the time, Vance was quite anti-Trump.

The Democrats are, of course, already noting this as though this is some sort of great revelation. It turns out that many of us actually were not huge fans of Trump in 2016. J.D. Vance, like me, did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and now, of course, is a major supporter of Donald Trump, as I am.

Listen, not everybody was a fan of Trump in 2016, and that's changed. But here's something I'm definitely not a fan of. That is inflation, Joe Biden's inflation. And that is why I rely on PeerTalk. PeerTalk is half the cost of other big phone providers. You might be thinking, what exactly is the catch? There's no way PeerTalk can offer unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data for just 20 bucks a month.

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Here's what J.D. Vance actually wrote about Donald Trump in a text in 2016. He said, I'm not surprised by Trump's rise. I think the entire party has only itself to blame. We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower income, lower education white people. And I've been saying for a long time, we need to offer those people something and help maybe even expand our appeal to working class black people in the process or a demagogue would. We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party's collective neglect.

I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a-hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad and might even prove useful or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging? Now, people are focusing on the last part there, but you can see hints even in the first part.

that what he wants to do is offer something to the white working class, particularly in the Rust Belt states. And that has grown into a sort of full-blown interest in industrial economic policy. This is one of the areas where he has wide differentiation from traditional sort of economic free market conservatism. First of all, we should point out that he's been asked directly about those comments about Trump. His answer is very much the same as mine, which is Trump surprised him and he was wrong. Here we go.

You've got to respect the American people enough to just level with them. Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn't think he was going to be a good president. Brett, he was a great president. And it's one of the reasons why I'm working so hard to make sure he gets a second term. I think you should when you when you're wrong about something, you should change your mind and be honest with people about that fact. So, again, that seems like a pretty good excuse. Not only that, it's a good move by President Trump because, again, it's embracing the fact that he has brought more people into the tent. Certainly.

Now, on economics, again, he is quite heterodox on economics from sort of traditional free market republicanism. So on trade, for example, he has been very much in favor of tariffs. He suggested a much more aggressive approach to protecting domestic manufacturers if Trump wins the second term. Now, Trump was aggressive on tariff policy with regard to China, largely for national security reasons. But Vance is much more aggressive in terms of actual domestic protection for manufacturers.

And here's J.D. Vance talking about tariff policy just a couple of years ago. We haven't heard a lot of specifics. I mean, there's been ranges of a 10 percent to 60 percent tariffs. Do you know what the plan is? Well, look, I'm not going to speak for Donald Trump, but I certainly agree that we need to apply some broad based tariffs, especially on goods coming in from China and not just solar panels and EV stuff. We need to protect the

American industries from all of the competition. Because here's the thing, Margaret, the reason China beats us, it's not because they have better workers, it's because they're willing to use slaves to make things there. We want American workers to make this stuff at good wages. Okay, now again,

The case that he is making right there is true about China, but it can also be extended out in principle to pretty much anything that protects certain sectors of American domestic manufacture. That's a point that he made to me in 2021. So again, I interviewed J.D. Vance back in 2021. It's really a fascinating interview. You can go check it out over at YouTube. And we explicitly discussed industrial policy. Here is what J.D. Vance Beardless at the time had to say about industrial policy at that point.

I do think the economic piece of it is important, especially if we understand that the economy is not just the way that people provide for themselves materially, but they also sort of need that community that comes along with a stable job and good work. And I also think at a fundamental level, we have to meet people where they are, right? So it's one thing to say to people, well, you've got to go get a U-Haul. You've got to move to where the economic opportunities are.

that's fine for some subcategory of people. I think some people are going to want to move. But if in reality, a lot of people don't want to leave the homes that made them where they are, maybe they're willing to move a few hours away. Maybe they're willing to move 45 miles up the road, but they're not willing to sort of drop everything and move from West Virginia to San Francisco. I think we just have to accept it.

That's how people are. Even if Kevin Williamson may not like that that's how people are, that is a fact of life. And so we also have to, if we care about people, and I think all of us do, we have to accept that we have to try to rebuild some sort of real economic and manufacturing base all over the country. But we also have this very discreet idea that while the government shouldn't be controlling the American economy, we should have as a policy indicator

consensus of view about what we want the economy to be, what we want the market to be able to produce, and to put a little bit of a thumb on the scale to make that possible. So on a generalized level, I obviously disagree with that, as I made clear in that interview, where actually both of us were beardless at the time. A much more free market than JD is, but he's an excellent and intelligent expositor of his position on these issues.

On economics, he's made common cause from time to time with Senator Elizabeth Warren. He's cheered on Federal Trade Commissioner Chair Lena Kahn. These are all sort of, for free marketers, notes of caution, but they are also significations that Donald Trump believes that his industrial policy, the kind of policy that he's espoused,

for his entire career, actually, is backed by J.D. Vance. Again, J.D. Vance is much more of an ideological pick than a sort of clever political pick. If Mike Pence is a way for Donald Trump to shore up his support with evangelical communities, there's no sort of political similarity there with J.D. Vance, at least not clearly. Because as I said before, Donald Trump seems to perform pretty well in the blue wall states without J.D. Vance. Now, I will say, politically speaking, this does raise the possibility of Donald Trump being able to break into

more private union-based communities. And this has been something that a lot of Republicans in blue-collar states have wanted to do for a long time. They want to say there shouldn't be a stranglehold on union politics by Democrats. So, for example, the head of the Teamsters,

actually came out his name is sean o'brien and praised jd vance after the pick on fox news jd vance the short time that we've worked together i mean he's been great on teamster issues um he is supporting co-sponsored an airline manufacturer and bill that uh addresses outsourcing of critical uh airline maintenance to china he's also supported um uh

paid sick leave for our railroad workers. You remember that situation a couple of years ago, when they weren't getting sick time, he stepped right up. He's also been very vocal and supportive of holding employers accountable who try and skirt their obligation under an independent contractor model known as DSP.

So the Teamsters have actually even signified that they may not endorse in the race, which would be a massive loss for Joe Biden. Well, new horizons are opening up for the Republican Party electorally, particularly in those blue wall states. It would be dumb to ignore them, but you know what's not dumb? Getting life insurance. Getting life insurance will give you peace of mind knowing if something were to happen to you, your family could cover their expenses while getting back

Thank you.

That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.

Again, on economics, Vance is very heterodox. He has signaled his possible willingness to hike taxes. In some cases, he has spoken out in favor of breaking up some of big tech, for example.

suggesting that bias in big tech is a major problem. Again, that is sort of an open debate inside the Republican Party right now. So very heterodox. I'm using the word heterodox advisedly here because, again, Trumpism has never really been fleshed out as a full-scale philosophy. Vance comes the closest of any of the candidates to actually doing that. When it comes to foreign policy, I think you can best describe Vance not as an isolationist, but more as a realist. I think that's probably how he would describe himself. Now, that takes...

rather interesting turn when it comes to the two major hot conflicts in the world right now, one in Israel, obviously, and one in Ukraine. He looks at those two conflicts and he sees heavy American interest in Israel. He does not see heavy American interest in Ukraine. So when it comes to Ukraine, he is famously anti-Ukraine aid. He wrote a piece back in April titled The Math on Ukraine Does Not Add Up. This is for The New York Times, in which he suggests that there are three reasons why there shouldn't be any more aid to Ukraine. The first reason is that you

Ukraine will not be able to do with the aid what they need to do. Second is lack of American military capacity and the notion that we are going to be overdoing it, that essentially if we ship them more military aid, then we are emptying our own stockpiles. And finally, the basic idea, which is that we should be spending money at home and not spending money abroad. Now, again, I think that last idea there is the most flimsy because that's always true for any conflict, literally any conflict.

It's not an excuse for not having a foreign policy. I also think it ignores the actual American interests in, say, preventing Russia from taking over the world's breadbasket and then putting itself on the borders of a multiplicity of NATO states.

If you don't want an arms race in Europe, then presumably a level of aid sufficient to allow Ukraine to repel Russia from a full scale win would be the thing you're looking for. But J.D. has made clear in interviews before that he actually doesn't care what happens in Ukraine, which is a very strong statement and one that I would love to see J.D. actually flesh out a little bit more. This is back when he was a candidate. I think it's ridiculous that we're focused on this border in Ukraine. I don't I got to be honest with you. I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.

He doesn't care what happens to Ukraine one way or another. It's a very strong statement. Now, again, what he actually ends up with at the end of his New York Times piece is something that looks very much like what I would say or what Trump would say, which is you support Ukraine up to the point a peace can be reached with an eye on the off ramp.

He finishes by saying the White House has said time and time again, it can't negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace. Now, again, I would agree with that so long as there's any flexibility in negotiation shown by Putin. In fact, I've been agreeing with that since Henry Kissinger said it like two months into the Ukraine war.

The call for a full-scale withdrawal of aid in the face of continued Russian aggression, however, is not likely to lead to a negotiated end in Ukraine. It is likely to lead to a further continuation of the conflict. And when it comes to Israel, however, he does see strong American interest in Israel. He spoke at the Quincy Institute, which is a sort of paleo-con conversation.

Institute, meaning isolationist. And he spoke there about Ukraine, but he also spoke about Israel. And there he differentiated between the two. And he spelled out what he thinks are America's interests in maintaining enough aid for Israel to be able to destroy Hamas and then to broker a peace deal with the Saudis that would create a regional security bloc.

I think we have a real opportunity to ensure that Israel is an ally in the true sense that it's going to pursue their interests. And sometimes those interests won't totally overlap with the United States. And that's totally reasonable. But they are fundamentally self-sufficient. And I think the way that we get there in Israel is actually by combining

the Abraham Accords approach with the defeat of Hamas that gets us to a place where Israel and the Sunni nations can play a regional counterweight to Iran. Again, we don't want a broader regional war. We don't want to get involved in a broader regional war. The best way to do that is to ensure that Israel with the Sunni nations can actually police their own region of the world. And that allows us to spend less time and less resources on the Middle East and focus more on East Asia.

And again, that is a very solid realist case. And the realist logic that Vance is bringing is actually not full-scale isolationism, as he makes clear right there. I, too, would like to see pretty much everybody off American aid. The point of American aid is to foment American interests. And as Vance puts forward there, there are, in fact, American interests in a stable Middle East that aren't going to require us to intervene every five seconds or so. And meanwhile, on immigration, he very much mirrors Donald Trump's feelings on immigration.

Just last week, he was slamming Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, on illegal immigration and talking about its impact on the economy. When you hear sort of your colleagues and other economists outside of the Fed talk about the influx of immigration and the fact that it, I think, admittedly has put downward pressure on wages, it's

Okay, so obviously that has put some downward pressure on inflation, but it also puts downward pressure on the wages that people earn to pay for their families. Why do we see that as a good thing? Or maybe that's wrong. Maybe the premise is fundamentally incorrect. But why do so many economists treat an influx of new labor as a good thing,

If labor is constrained, labor supply is constrained, doesn't that lead to rising wages for American workers? So we're not, I'm not certainly not trying to put a value judgment on it. I will say that this is all happening over the last couple of years in a context of an extremely tight labor market.

Okay, so again, he's pointing out there that if you want increasing wages, then you can't undercut the labor base. Now, again, I don't think that's a particularly great argument against immigration. I think that there's a very strong cultural argument that you actually have to screen people so that you don't have a massive influx of people who aren't engaged in American taxpaying, who aren't engaged in American culture or the thoughts of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, for example. But that perspective obviously matches up incredibly well with the perspective of President Trump.

Obviously, J.D. Vance's perspectives on immigration, they match Donald Trump's, and Donald Trump has been very concerned about the social unrest connected with illegal immigration. Speaking of social unrest, as crime rates climb, securing the safety of our family is more crucial than ever. I'm about as pro-Second Amendment as it gets, but the thought of using lethal force, well, it's not ideal for everybody. This is why you need to check out Berna.

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Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump's wall. They censor us, but it doesn't change the truth. Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country. This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border.

No child should grow up an orphan. I'm J.D. Vance, and I approve this message because whatever they call us, we will put America first. Now, again, that's a very Trumpian message. And that just underscores exactly why Trump picked him. Now, the thing that comes out of all of this is that J.D. is super smart. J.D., again, incredibly articulate. When you see him in these clips talking with anchors on television, he's not going to get bested. He's not going to freeze up. He is not somebody who tends to bank on sort of peculiar things.

ticks or anything like that.

J.D.'s a very talented guy, and there's a reason that Trump picked him. He's also incredibly young. He provides a next generation to whatever America first ends up being. And again, the question I've always asked about Trumpism is, is there a Trumpism or is there only Trump? Again, Vance is the best expositor of Trumpism if there is, in fact, a Trumpism. Now, politically speaking, this does open up some attack lines for Democrats. As I said, J.D. Vance is a bold and audacious pick specifically because he is not a conventional pick and also because he doesn't actually open the map any wider than it otherwise would have been.

Picking, say, Glenn Youngkin would have provided very few places for Democrats to grab onto. Picking J.D. Vance allows for the materialization of attacks that Trump has been able to avoid. So you can't really attack Trump on policy specifically because he's so vague. There is no philosophy there for J.D. because he's thought a lot of these things through. And because he has said so many of these things out loud, that is going to allow Democrats to attack him with more alacrity than they would another candidate.

So again, politically speaking, he is not the best pick. He may be the best pick in terms of, again, providing a future for Donald Trump's philosophy beyond Donald Trump. He will certainly be the best attack dog that Trump could have picked. As far as opening the map or providing less vulnerabilities for a Democratic opponent, that's not what he is there for. So Van Jones over on CNN, he did a good job, I think, of retailing what the Democratic line of attack against J.D. Vance is likely to be. Here it is.

This is a scary dude. Scary dude. Because if you were hoping that after this near-death experience, we're going to have a kumbaya convention, this is not a kumbaya pit.

And so this would signal that Donald Trump is planning on doing a lot of hard governing. He's got somebody in there who's a pit bull. He's an attack dog. He went to law school. He's going to be in there making a whole bunch of stuff happen. So if you're worried about the Project 2025 and all type of stuff, this is the guy that's going to really keep you up at night. Right. So J.D. Vance's scary hatchet man is going to be, in fact, the pitch.

Now, what's weird is that the Democrats are trying to attack him from the left on these issues, which is very strange. So Joe Biden put out a tweet saying, here's the deal about J.D. Vance. He talks a big game about working people, but now he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich. I don't intend to let them. And if you're with me, pitch in. That is a super weak T. General Malley Dillon.

put out a Biden campaign statement saying Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6th, bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law no matter the harm to the American people. As Trump's running mate, Vance will make it his mission to enact Trump's Project 2025 agenda at the expense of American families,

This is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors, railed against the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for millions with preexisting conditions, and has admitted he would not have certified the free and fair election in 2020. Billionaires and corporations are literally rooting for J.D. Vance. They know he and Trump will cut their taxes and send prices skyrocketing for everyone else over the next three and a half months.

We'll spend every single day making the case between the two starkly contrasting visions Americans will choose between at the ballot box this November, the Biden-Harris ticket, who's focused on uniting the country, creating opportunity for everyone in lower-end costs, or Trump vans, whose harmful agenda will take away Americans' rights, hurt the middle class, and make life more expensive, all while benefiting the ultra-rich and greedy corporations. So again,

That is going to be the line of attack. And Biden-Harris HQ put out a very scary picture, ooh, scary picture of J.D. Vance. You can see it's badly lit from below. Ooh, so scary. And then they put out the tweet, Trump has selected far-right MAGA extremist J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance is a 2020 elections denier, supports a national abortion ban, and voted against IVF access. And that is going to be the line of attack. And because Vance is a new face and not a particularly moderate one,

He is going to be a chief target for Democrats. Now, is that going to be enough for Democrats? I have serious doubts. I have very serious doubts that's going to be enough for Democrats.

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One is that he is going to continue to just try and throw money at people. So he is now presenting the president of the United States. Remember, he still exists. Remember Joe Biden? I know we forgot about him since Saturday. But the old senile man is still there purportedly running the country. It's actually probably Joe. But supposedly he's still there. Well, he has a new pitch. His new pitch that he is proposing today is to cap rental costs nationwide. Now, this is insane. There's no actual there's no actual.

economic benefits of this. You can't just cap increases in rents nationwide without drastically reducing the supply. Rent control has failed literally everywhere it has ever been tried. There are entire swaths of New York that were burned during the 1970s because of rent control, because it turns out that when you can't increase rent to keep up with costs, people just abandon the upkeep on their apartments or burn them down for the insurance money.

But Joe Biden is now proposing that nationwide. So he's already tried paying off college students and ex-college students by alleviating their student loan debt illegally.

Now, according to the Washington Post, Biden's plan, which would need to be approved by Congress, calls for stripping a tax benefit from landlords who increase their tenants' rent more than 5% per year. The measure would only apply to landlords who own more than 50 units, which represents roughly half of all rental properties. It would not cover units that have not yet been built in an attempt to ensure the policy does not discourage construction of new rental housing. That's idiotic. Of course it will discourage new rental housing. If I'm about to build a 60-unit place, that just means that it's going to kick in a year from now when I raise the rent 6%.

It requires congressional support, which means that he's going to yell at Republicans about not doing it. But the proposal itself is idiotic. It is presumably illegal. I mean, it's certainly a violation of the takings clause to simply say that people are not allowed to increase the rents consummate with the market. He's trying to do this in Nevada because rents have been rising relatively steeply in Nevada.

But if he believes that he's going to tamp down inflation in housing costs by essentially destroying the new supply of housing with rent control, he is out of his mind. But again, there's not much mind left there from President Biden. So that is prong number one, try to pay people off. And it's not going to work very well. Prong number two was declared Donald Trump a scourge to democracy. The problem, of course, is that after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday,

That line of attack should be off the table for him, because after all, when you keep saying over and over, as we've been saying, when you keep saying that somebody is Hitler, that that person is going to end democracy, that the election of that person is going to literally end the country, there will be no more democracy, no more elections. Then people might take that the wrong way and go and try and shoot the president in the head, for example.

And Joe Biden himself supposedly recognized this. You'll recall just yesterday on this program, when we discussed President Biden going to the Oval Office and giving a six minute speech that he barely was able to read from a teleprompter that was misaligned with his eyeline.

in which he declared that it was time to cool it down. Take it down, not just cool it. And what I said at the time was, I didn't believe him. And the reason I didn't believe him is because he didn't say one phrase, including me. He should have said, we don't need to take down the temperature, including me. And instead he said, we don't need to take down the temperature, including you. Which is effectively blaming Trump for his own attempted assassination.

Well, if you thought that Joe Biden was going to be honest about his own role in all of this, wrong you are, wrong you are. So first, Karine Jean-Pierre made this absolutely clear. World's most untalented White House press secretary. She was asked about calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy. Will you keep saying that? And she said, of course, we'll keep calling. Of course, we're going to do that. Like, you think we're going to give up our central the central thrust of our political campaign?

The view is that Trump and the MAGA Republican agenda is a threat to democracy. So how do you get that message across while bringing the temperature down? How is that phrasing going to be replaced? Is it going to be replaced? Well, look, what I can say is this. We have our differences, and it's okay to have our differences. And it is okay to speak to someone's record, to speak to someone's character. That is...

That is the difference of, that is important to be able to do to show the American people what you're all about. We're just going to continue to denounce violence. It is important to do that, forcefully be against violence. Political violence has no place in America. It should not be. It does not have a place here. The president's going to continue to be very, very forceful about that. But we have a difference of agenda.

That is the truth. Okay, so the difference of agenda also includes continuing to maintain that your political opponent is going to end democracy. In just one second, we are going to get to President Biden, who again, himself, he is failing. He's falling apart. He did an interview with Lester Holt. It was going to be the most...

forward to thing of the week. And then, of course, all hell broke loose on Saturday. And I have a vice presidential pick on the Republican side and it's the RNC. But if you remember all the way back to the middle of next week, the thing that everybody was waiting for was this latest interview with Lester Holt, because we were going to find out yet again whether the president of the United States is

is senile. Well, we found out all right. First, folks, let's break it down. Trump and Vance locked in for 2024. Now is the time to show America why our ideas are the ones that can save the country from the left's disastrous agenda. These aren't just any ideas. These are the principles that will propel Trump back into the White House this November. And we definitely need President Trump in the White House, of course.

At The Daily Wire, we're not just talking about conservative values. We fight for them every single day, but we need your help to do that. If you love our collection coverage, if you've been following it, if you need the updates, if you need every twist and turn covered, and if you need us fighting for you for a very limited time, we are offering 47% off your annual membership with our special presidential deal, because he's the 47th.

president, we hope. You heard that right. 47% off annual memberships. With that membership, you get access to everything on censored shows, ad-free content, podcasts that actually make you smarter, news that isn't filtered through the left's propaganda machine. This is your chance to fight the left and build the future and join us. Those aren't just words. That is our mission. And we need you on board. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Join the fight right now for 47% off. Well, as we were saying, President Biden, he was supposed to do an interview with Lester Holt.

over the weekend and then was going to air this week. Well, finally, the interview has come out. It was going to be another referendum on whether he can continue to maintain his run. And that's all been put on hold. As of last Friday, there was a lot of discussion about whether he was going to be forced from the race yet again, because every Democrat looked at him and they said he is senile. He is losing. He is down in all the swing states. By one poll from the Wall Street Journal, he's down six nationally to Donald Trump, which is a disaster area poll for him.

Right now in the RealClearPolitics polling average, he is down nationally to Donald Trump in the five-way by 4.1 points. That is the poll, the five-way that includes RFK Jr., for example. Worth noting, by the way, RFK Jr. did in fact stop by the RNC yesterday to meet with Trump. We are not sure what that is about at this time. Maybe it is Trump brokering with RFK to drop out of the race and throw him his support in return for, say, EPA administrator or something, which is really what I assume RFK Jr. would like to do.

But because of the disaster area that has beset Biden, there's been a lot of talk about replacing him on the ticket. That all went away when somebody tried to shoot the former president of the United States in the head. It just overshadowed everything. But Biden's back and he sounds worse than ever. So here was Joe Biden with Lester Holt. And he was asked by Lester Holt about his rhetoric. This ended up being filmed after, of course, the assassination attempt. Here we go.

Well, let's talk about the conversation this has started. And it's really about language, what we say out loud and the consequences of those. You called your opponent an existential threat on a call a week ago. You said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye. There's some dispute about the context, but I think you appreciate that word. I didn't say crosshairs. I was talking about focus on. Look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was there's very little focus on Trump's agenda.

Yeah, the term is bullseye. It was a mistake to use the word. I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye. I meant focus on it. Okay, pause it. Okay, so this is actually, this criticism of Biden is the least...

is the least useful one. I mentioned this in the aftermath of all the focus on the bullseye comment. It was really stupid when they applied it to Sarah Palin. The reason he is making a differentiation here, you should know, between bullseye and crosshairs is because Democrats tried to blame Sarah Palin for the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords by a complete nut whack job in Arizona. They blamed a Sarah Palin map that put a crosshairs on Gabby Giffords' district as a swing district that required Republican investment.

So he's trying to differentiate by saying that Sarah Palin presumably somehow incited violence, but he did not by using the word bullseye. Again, that's very silly.

But the main thrust of this particular interview from Joe Biden is going to be what I said it was, which is everyone else's rhetoric is responsible, not mine, which is kind of amazing given the fact that his entire campaign has been run on the basis that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. So dire, so deep, so threatening that you must elect a non-sentient 81-year-old man to the presidency so that he cannot fill out his second term. It continues with Lester Holt. And again, he sounds just awful.

Focus on one is on his policies focus on the number of lies he told in the debate focus I mean, there's there's a whole range of things that look I'm not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one I'm not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election I'm not the guy who said that one except the outcome of this election automatically you can't only love your country when you win and so the focus was on

what he's saying and, I mean, the idea. But have you taken a step back and done a little soul-searching on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced? Well, I don't think—look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything because it may incite somebody?

Look, I have not engaged in that rhetoric. That's a lie. My opponent is engaged in that rhetoric. He talks about there'll be a bloodbath if he loses. Okay, pause it there. Again, this is the part where you know he's so full of, he's so full of, I mean, truly, unbelievably full of. I mean, when he says that he wants the country to come together, it's time to unite and everybody needs to take it down. And then he specifically asked, have you ever said anything? Like anything that you think is over the top? I was like, no, no, I haven't.

We literally did a litany of things that he had said on this show on Sunday in our emergency show after the assassination attempt. Like last week, he said that Donald Trump would be a dictator. That's a lie. When he says that Donald Trump called for a bloodbath, again, that is a lie. That is an overt, absolute, full-scale lie. Donald Trump never called for a bloodbath. He said that if Joe Biden was reelected, there would be an economic bloodbath.

which is just a normal colloquial term, meaning there would be a bad economy. And Joe Biden knows this. But again, the shtick here is that Donald Trump is effectively responsible for his own assassination. The only person whose rhetoric has been over the top is Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats have been fully above board. Joe Biden in his own person has been nothing but the apotheosis of kindliness and gentility. That is in Joe Biden's mind. That's why I don't believe him when he says he wants to take down the temperature.

And I've been saying for years that people should stop saying on both sides that if the opponent gets elected, it's the last election because it's total crap. It's not true. But Joe Biden says that he says it like every single day. And then when asked by Lester Holt after the assassination attempt, if he's going to stop saying it, he's like, nope, I'm going to keep saying it because he is a threat to democracy. So pardon me if I take with a giant iceberg sized block of salt.

Your contention that it's time to lower the temperature. I don't believe you. I think you just mean the Republicans should shut up and you should be able to keep saying that Mitt Romney is going to put black people back in chains. Tea partiers are terrorists and Donald Trump is Hitler. That's what I think that you mean, Mr. President. Just vile stuff here from Joe Biden. Here we go. He's going to forgive all the, actually, I guess, suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to go to jail because of what happened in the Capitol building.

I'm not out there making fun of like when I remember the picture of Donald Trump when Nancy Pelosi's husband was hit with a hammer going talking about joking about it. This is just pathetic stuff from him.

And you make the case that Donald Trump ought to lower the temperature. I think Donald Trump might make that case actually this Thursday night. But Joe Biden refuses to lower the temperature because the minute he does, this election is over and he knows it. The only way that he can somehow jigger himself into office is by pretending that the threat on the other side is so unbelievably dire that if you don't elect him a warm corpse to the office, that it will be filled by a person who is likely to unleash CLC six to kill his political opponents.

And meanwhile, by the way, they never stopped marching. So outside the RNC, there were marchers outside the RNC. Were they lowering the temperature, Mr. President? Were they lowering it? I didn't hear that because they were chanting outside the RNC in Milwaukee about how the Republican National Convention was filled with KKK members, you know, members of the absolute party of evil. Here are some of those marchers outside the RNC. ♪♪

They are chanting, no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA, while carrying Palestinian flags, the flag of an actual fascist state. And it is a fascist state. They have an election even in the West Bank for 20 years. Insane stuff. One of the march organizers outside the RNC was asked about the attempted assassination on Trump. And the organizer was like, wait, why would we oppose assassination exactly? You guys aren't going to answer whether you condemn the assassination or not. Why would we? It has nothing to do with us. Do you condemn it?

It has nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with us. Do you condemn an assassination attempt? Yes, the answer is yes. I don't understand why you would avoid the question, except that you know that your answer is not that you actually condemn an assassination attempt.

This is the full scale left attempt. The full scale left pitch on Trump's assassination is that he's responsible. It was a suicide that he attempted to commit suicide with his own rhetoric or that his rhetoric got so out of control that he incited somebody on his own side to kill him or somebody on the other side to kill. But it could only have been Trump because left wingers are allowed to say whatever the hell they want. And right wingers are the only ones who are unhinged. Here is Charlemagne, the God who does his own show, hammering Trump after somebody tried to shoot Trump in the head.

We are all adults in this country. Okay, big boys, big girls. We can condemn political violence and what happened to Trump on Saturday night and also talk about the dangerous rhetoric that Donald Trump has spewed that got us here. Okay, so again, they're going to try and blame it on Trump. That's the whole point. So if the true-pronged strategy from Joe Biden is bribe people and then blame Trump for his own assassination, good luck. I mean, how exactly do you shift the narrative in this race? It's very difficult to say.

It's very, very difficult to say. That's particularly true because Joe Biden is no longer sentient. And that's the other aspect of this Lester Holt interview. It is not just that he said some pretty terrible things. It is that he is not with it at all, at all, at all. So, for example, Joe Biden was asked in this interview about his Secret Service director who should obviously be fired. It turns out that that is a firing offense when you allow a presidential candidate to get shot in the ear.

In a clearly preventable situation, we are now learning that the shooter was on the roof for full on half an hour or something before the Secret Service saw him, according to reports. And Joe Biden was asked about the Secret Service director. He doesn't even know she's a woman. He doesn't even know that. Here we go. Is it acceptable that you have still not heard at least publicly from the Secret Service director? Well, I've heard from her. But have you heard from her publicly? No.

Publicly, I've sat down in a situation downstairs, Secret Service, the FBI, the national security agencies, the Homeland Security. He doesn't even know it's a woman. He says with him and Lester Holt has to correct him with her. He's so out of it. And then Lester Holt committed the grave and unpardonable sin of mentioning that Joe Biden has some fitness issues. And here was Joe Biden's very, very angry response.

Where are you?

On this. Why didn't the press ever talk about that? 28 times it's confirmed he lied in that debate. I had a bad, bad night. I wasn't feeling well at all. And I had been without a big, I screwed up. I just asked a question because the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen, you're not on the same. I'd have to say I was there.

I had to see it. I was there. By the way, seriously. He's a moviegoer. He won't answer the question, but why didn't the press talk about all the lies he told? I haven't heard anything about that. We have reported many of the issues that came up during that debate. No, you haven't. We'll provide you with them. God, he's so creepy and weird. He's so creepy and weird. And then he was asked whether he's going to do a second debate. He's like, nope. Second thoughts on the second debate here.

Mr. Trump has said he's giving you a chance to redeem yourself, basically the idea of engaging in another debate. We're going to have another debate. Yeah, you're going to have one in September that's on the books. Would you be open to doing one in the next few weeks? I'm going to debate him when we agree to debate, and I'm going to debate him in September. But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then, is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

I'm on the horse. Where have you been? I've done 22 major events. And thousands of people. Overwhelming crowds. A lot happening. I'm on the horse. What I'm doing is going on the horse. We're in a car. We're on a cow. I don't know. My faculties. That I don't need notes. I don't need teleprompter. I can go out and answer any questions at all. No, you can't. Oh, my gosh. Well, you can see why Democrats are thinking about getting rid of that guy.

Alrighty, coming up, we'll get to the question of will Joe Biden stay or will Joe Biden go? Because there's still people pushing for him to go. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.