Tucker Carlson: This is what economic disaster looks like
Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls out the Biden administration for sending billions of dollars to Ukraine while Americans suffer with record-high inflation on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
When we say good evening, we mean it and tonight, we want to send a special, as they say on talk radio, shout out to our most loyal and faithful viewers. We love you. We appreciate you. In fact, we think of you as all little tacos and your children as taquitos and not just tacos and taquitos, but also enchiladas and chalupas and everything else on the Taco Bell menu. That's how we think of you.
So, the good news is America at this stage is getting a lot more amusing. The bad news is it's also getting a little scary. So today, in the second category, the government announced that inflation has once again set a year-over-year record. But now we're used to this. If you buy anything, you already knew it was happening. Boy, did you. But there were parts of today's Labor Department report that were not expected by anyone. In fact, they were bizarre. They seemed to defy the most basic rules of economics, but first, here are the raw numbers. This is from a Fox News report today.
CAROLINE SHIVELY, FOX NEWS: Inflation cranked up a whopping 9.1% in June, the highest yearly jump since 1981. The Consumer Price Index, released Wednesday morning, showed the price of necessities far outpacing raises. The price of gas is up almost 60% year over year. Rent went up 5.6% over last June and food at home and dining out, increasing 10.4%. If you break it down to just groceries, the annual jump was 12.2%. That includes eggs up 33% and butter up 26%.
So, the biggest annual spike in inflation in more than 40 years. That's the headline. But if anything, it understates what's actually going on. The reality of it is worse than that. During the Carter years, when inflation famously hit 14.6%, wages were still going up. As Pew put it in a recent analysis, "During the high inflation years of the 1970s and early 1980s, average wages commonly jumped seven, eight, even 9% year over year" and that makes sense. There's more money in circulation. It's worth less, but there's more of it. But that is not what is happening right now and that's the weird thing.
According to the Labor Department report today, "Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6%, seasonally adjusted from June 2021 to June 2022. The change in real average hourly earnings, combined with a decrease of 0.9% of the average workweek, resulted in a 4.4% decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period." 4.4% average decrease in earnings. This is what economic disaster looks like.
Americans are making less money at exactly the moment when everything they buy from gas to groceries is more expensive and not just a little more expensive, a lot more expensive. Here's the big picture. The average American household income this year is about $87,000.
Today's inflation numbers means the average household is losing nearly $8,000 a year just from inflation. By the way, that's using the government's cooked numbers, the 9.1% inflation number, which is derived from the intentionally deceptive consumer price index (CPI), so the real number is actually higher than that. Rising inflation with falling wages. This is very bad, and as we said, it's also very weird. How weird? Well, here's one measure of the strangeness. The price of gas is now much cheaper in Mexico than it is in the United States, and that's why so many Californians are now driving across the border to fill their cars.
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Now, why is this happening? That does not make sense. Oil prices set on the international market. But apart from a few outlier websites like ZeroHedge, which not coincidentally the left is always trying to shut down and censor, no one seems to be asking that question. We do know that gas prices in Mexico are so cheap that the Mexican government is encouraging more Americans to cross the border to refuel their cars.
"Right now," said the president of Mexico this week, "a gallon of regular cost $4.78 average on your side of the border, while in Mexico, it cost $3.12." So, you have to ask yourself if we're paying more for gas because of Putin's price hike, why isn't Mexico paying more for gas because of Putin, too? Why is inflation up when wages are down? This doesn't make any sense. So, if you want to answer those questions, you really have to look at government spending.
Last month, Mexico's government did not follow the Biden administration's lead in sending the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China. They did not do that. Instead, here's what Mexico did. They spent $2 billion in subsidies to keep gas prices lower for consumers. In other words, the government of Mexico in the middle of a drug war is taking better care of its citizens than Joe Biden is taking care of his citizens and that is shameful, but it doesn't mean Joe Biden is ignoring the needy.
In the very same month, the gas prices shot beyond the reach of people, people aren't taking trips because of gas prices, Joe Biden, in the name of democracy, signed a $40 billion aid package, not for you or any other American, but for Ukraine and that money, Joe Biden says, is just the beginning. It's part of our unlimited commitment to funding Ukraine's corrupt and authoritarian government. Here's Biden.
CNN, MSNBC, CNBC REACT TO JUNE INFLATION NUMBERS: 'NOT GOOD NEWS FOR ANYBODY'
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event to celebrate passage of the "Safer Communities Act," on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 11, 2022. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo)
REPORTER: "For as long as it takes." Does it mean indefinite support from the United States or Ukraine, or will there come a time when you have to say to President Zelenskyy that the United States cannot support his country any longer? Thank you.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes. We are going to stick with Ukraine and all of the allies will stick with Ukraine as long as it takes.
REPORTER: The war has pushed prices up. It could go as high as $200 a barrel, some analysts think. How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?
BIDEN: As long as it takes. Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.
Future generations will look at that tape and many tapes like it with their jaws open. As long as it takes! Whatever the cost for Ukraine! As the American economy heads toward total destruction, Ukrainians are dying in large numbers, who's winning? Well, Ukrainian oligarchs, they're getting richer, much richer. Since January of this year, the Biden administration has sent about $8 billion just in so-called security assistance alone to Ukraine. That would include missile systems, howitzers, ammunition, radar systems, etc., etc.
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Now, defense contractors are making a ton from this, and that's why they have lobbied for it so hard, but you have to ask, once we send these weapons to Ukraine, where do they go then? What happens to them? These are sophisticated and deadly weapons systems. Well, no one knows where they go. No one's keeping track. U.S. officials, Biden administration officials have admitted that to The Wall Street Journal and we're quoting: "Once U.S. equipment material is handed to the Ukrainian government U.S. officials said they have little direct knowledge of where that material goes. They rely instead on the Ukrainian government for such information. The administration has not agreed to allow American military troops to conduct some oversight into that country."
Huh?
So, you send billions to Ukraine in the middle of a war, and then you don't bother to find out what happens to it? What will happen to these weapons? Well, the Czech defense minister knows he has said these weapons, some of them will be smuggled out of Ukraine, "It's hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling. We didn't achieve it in the former Yugoslavia and we probably won't avoid it in Ukraine."
This is lunacy. If you wanted to make Eastern Europe dangerous and unstable for generations, ensure that war continues and many more die, this is exactly what you would do. You would treat Ukraine like we treated Afghanistan, but that's just the beginning of the money we're sending. On top of all of this security assistance, now, the head of USAID, that would be Samantha Power – she's never left, she's still here, amazingly, after wrecking the world – she's announced we're sending $4 billion more to Ukraine to pay off that country's budget deficit. Wouldn't that be nice if Samantha Power decided to pay off our budget deficit, if anyone decided to help us? But no, no one would ever do that.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law legislation that could punish journalists with up to 15 years in prison for reporting so-called "fake" news about his military invasion of Ukraine. (Yuri Kochetkov/Pool)
So, your tax dollars are now paying the salaries of Ukrainian government bureaucrats. In all, your Congress has approved more than $50 billion for Ukraine. That includes $7 billion in food assistance and health care, along with $9 billion for economic support, whatever that means. There's also $2 billion for refugee assistance. So, just as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and I don't know, half a dozen other countries, we're sending bales of $100 bills into a war zone and hoping they find the right pockets.
Again, this is nuts. And yet leaders of both parties agree we have to keep doing it, much more of it.
Dozens of Democrats in Congress just signed a letter pushing the administration, as if they needed to be pushed, toward the International Monetary Fund, a total of $650 billion in new funding because Ukraine and on top of all of that, Congressman Adam Kinzinger just proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act calling for another hundred million for, "Ukrainian military pilots and associated personnel." Kinzinger is the guy who thought the ghost of Kiev was real.
Now all of this is necessary. It's mandatory. We must, according to members of both parties, because we must defend democracy. Now we're not picking on Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a Republican state, but we want to show you this tape. He just sat for an interview with Charlie Kirk and explained that we have to send an unlimited amount of money to Ukraine. Why? To "fight back against communist intrusion for the cause of freedom because Vladimir Putin is evil." Watch.
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CHARLIE KIRK: What amount of money is too much to send to Ukraine because we just did $1.7 billion more? Where is the line because we're up near $56 billion now?
SEN.CRAMER: Sure. Well, I don't know that the line is a dollar amount, Charlie. I think each request or each requirement, each demand, each circumstance requires its own discovery, if you will. I don't think we should do a whole bunch necessarily at one time. I think that we should do smaller tranches just for the purpose of renegotiating, you know, reassessing. The price of letting Ukraine fall to Russia, to the United States taxpayer and to the cause of liberty, I think is very, very high.
Yeah. Fighting the communist menace. These people never update their talking points. Senator Cramer invokes the cause of liberty and that's a phrase we strongly support. That's an idea we strongly support. That's why we're in favor of unfettered free speech. That's why we oppose vaccine mandates. But you have to ask yourself, what does the cause of liberty have to do with Ukraine? Well, very little. Last February, the Ukrainian government shut down opposition media. Then they arrested the leader of the main opposition party.
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Now, President Zelenskyy has decided to combine all television stations in Ukraine into a state-owned propaganda ministry in order to combat "misinformation." Now, what is that? Well, I'll tell you what, it's not. It's not the profile of a free country. Not even close. The cause of liberty. May those words burn in your mouth. "Oh, but we have to," they tell us," because Putin is worse. He's the worst person in the world." He's a communist, says Senator Camer, who plans to conquer the globe.
You don't have to like Vladimir Putin to see how absurd this is. Putin's a communist now. Really? How communist is Vladimir Putin? Is Vladimir Putin more or less communist than, say, Sandy Cortez? More or less communist than say Joe Biden's domestic policy team? Is he more committed atheist than they are? Is Putin throwing Americans in jail for attending political rallies at the Capitol? Is he trying to confiscate the rifles from your bedroom? Is he sterilizing children in the name of trans liberation? Whatever his many faults, no, Vladimir Putin is not doing any of that.
As for his apparently limitless international ambitions, ask yourself, is Vladimir Putin recolonizing Africa right now? Is Vladimir Putin trying to build military bases in the Caribbean and South America? No, he's not, but another country is. That would be China, Joe Biden's patron. Putin wants Crimea. He may succeed in getting it, but it is China that is on its way to controlling the world. Here's a graphic we saw today that illustrates the point.
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These are the relative sizes of the players in the global economy. The numbers are from the IMF. As you can see, the world is completely dominated by the economic power of China and the United States. As of today, our two economies roughly equal in size, though thanks to COVID, China is quickly pulling ahead. That is a problem. In fact, that is the biggest problem in the world by far. Nothing comes close because the Chinese empire will not be like our empire at all.
So, where's Russia in this? How does it fit in? Well, get your reading glasses, because Russia is a footnote. It's not irrelevant, but it's close to irrelevant.Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's. The Italians, in other words, are in a better position to take over the world than Vladimir Putin is.
This entire conversation is insane. Anyone who takes it seriously is a fool, and anyone who doesn't see the red flags is probably dishonest. The most dishonest, the most power-hungry people in the United States are the very ones yelling the loudest for a war with Russia. That would be Joe Biden. That would be Nancy Pelosi. That'd be Chuck Schumer. That'd be Adam Schiff.
These are the people telling you that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal bent on world domination. Why are they saying that? Why are you suggesting Vladimir Putin's going to take over Europe? That's not true, but why are they saying it?
Well, there's a reason, a reason that has precisely nothing to do with saving lives or making Ukraine a better country. Again, red flag, anyone? And yet somehow Republicans don't see it. They don't seem curious about why the worst people in America are for an endless war with Russia. In fact, apart from Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few other Republicans in Congress, they are all in. Whatever Joe Biden wants in Ukraine they support. Here, for example, is Lindsey Graham with his little friend Richard Blumenthal, that would be Connecticut's most famous Vietnam War hero. Here they are together.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: This picture ought to tell you something about America right now. There's bipartisan support to defeat Putin, to call him out as a pariah and a war criminal.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: When we get back, we're going to try to get the Senate, as a whole, to pass the resolution, hopefully leading the way for the administration to label Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism in the category of Iran, Syria and North Korea.
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Defeat Putin. Will that improve your life? Is it improving the lives of the Ukrainians right now? No, it's not and yet every person who has been on the wrong side of every foreign policy decision going back 40 years is on the same page and that, of course, would include John Bolton, the former national security adviser, who by the way just admitted on national television that he has personally engineered coups in foreign countries. Wait, we're not for democracy? Apparently not. John Bolton isn't. But wasn't democracy the whole point? Were those coups state-sponsored terror? No one's asking. No one's calling John Bolton a war criminal. Instead, here's what they're saying.
JIM CRAMER, CNBC: Biden studiously avoids doing the one thing, though, that could really bring down the price of crude. He needs to arm the Ukrainians to the teeth so they can quickly beat Russia and put the war to bed. Can we make Ukraine safe for agriculture? Sure, but we might have to set up a no-fly zone in the western part of the country, which Biden doesn't want to do. He doesn't want to create a no-fly zone because that's American fighter planes firing at Russian ones and it's a hop, skip and a jump from there, nuclear war. I understand that. By the way, I think there's a very good argument for that, but a no-fly zone is, while extremely risky, it is the best way to get food inflation under control.
Wait, what? I tuned in to find out whether I should buy Cisco on the dip and you're a foreign policy expert now. The American economy is in serious trouble. It's heading south faster than anyone anticipated, but instead, you flip on CNBC and the geniuses are talking about World War III, and they're not the only ones. So, if you want to know how big this has become, how ominous this is, in the absence of attention from the rest of us, we've kind of slept walked up to this point, you should see this. This is from the city of New York, our largest city. This is a public service announcement reminding the 8 million residents of New York they could soon be nuked.
WOMAN: So, there's been a nuclear attack. Don't ask me how or why. Just know that the big one has hit. Okay, so what do we do? Step one: get inside fast. You, your friends, your family, get inside. Stay inside. Shut all doors and windows. Have a basement? Head there. If you were outside after the blast, get clean immediately. Remove and bag all outer clothing to keep radioactive dust or ash away from your body.
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What? Now, if you were drinking beer and that came on TV, you'd think maybe she was giving you advice on what to do if your basement floods or if there was a heat wave. Then you get to the part where she says "radioactive dust" and you snap to it. Radioactive dust? You're suggesting that someone might lob a nuclear weapon into our largest city? What? Why the chirpy tone? What the hell are you talking about?
How do we get so close to nuclear war that the city of New York is telling me to wash the radioactive dust off my pants? This is total lunacy. This is crazy. Why are we doing this? Because Putin's bad and he's going to take over Belgium?
Because nobody has said anything and because the Republican Party has collaborated with the nutcases in the Biden administration, we have reached the point where some chirpy lady on TV is telling you to prepare for the deaths of tens of millions of Americans. Wake up.
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