'The Ingraham Angle' on the state of the US economy

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How to crater the US economy

Laura Ingraham reveals the biggest problem no one is talking about.

This is a rush transcript of "Ingraham Angle" on September 20, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: In the meantime, let not your heart be troubled. The "INGRAHAM ANGLE" is next. We'll see you tomorrow night.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: I'm Laura Ingraham. This is the INGRAHAM ANGLE from Washington tonight.

As YouTube kicks users off its platform under the guise of COVID misinformation, the left and the media cheers as if it's all long overdue. Glenn Greenwald tells us what the censorious tendencies are really about.

And do you remember when being a maverick in the Senate mattered? Well, now that the mavericks reside on the left, the media is lashing out. Senator Josh Hawley responds to that.

But first, how to crater the U.S. economy. That's the focus of tonight's 'Angle'.

Today is National Manufacturing Day. Did you know that? And the White House issued a proclamation marking the occasion and it mentions correctly that American manufacturing is essential to our economy. It employs over 12 million Americans directly and many more indirectly and it noted how many manufacturing jobs were upended during the pandemic, 578,000.

The proclamation also points out that these losses and other factors adversely affected our supply chains. Supply chain disruptions left our nation short of life-saving protective equipment, ventilators and other essential health equipment at a time when we needed it most.

Well, there's the rub. When we import so much of what we need in use from steel to pharmaceuticals, plastics, computer chips, we leave ourselves susceptible to huge economic headwinds. And during COVID, it ended up being a matter of life and death.

Now, Biden talks a good game about helping rebuild our supply chains and supporting American jobs in manufacturing, but his policies are having the opposite effect. Have you tried buying a refrigerator lately, a car, anything with a chip in it? Even simple parts for something like a broken lawnmower, snowblower?

Imagine what the companies manufacturing these goods are going through. Take a look at the situation at the port of Los Angeles. Dozens of tankers loaded half a million containers worth of goods and materials are just sitting off the coast waiting to be unloaded. This is what it looks like when a labor shortage meets massive under investment in infrastructure. We got a lot of people sitting on the sidelines out there too.

Now, they simply can't keep up with the demand. If you're manufacturing something, you need the parts, you need the elements of it. So then what happens? Well, orders are slowed dramatically, some orders are canceled altogether. And then profits end up plunging. Employees are laid off or their benefits are cut. Productivity is hampered and then economic growth, that's eventually hurt.

So everybody knows what's happening, but few are willing to talk about how we got into this supply chain hole, and how we can dig ourselves out of it. The hollowing out over decades of our manufacturing and industrial base is one of the main drivers of the problem.

Businesses following Washington's relaxed trade policies before Trump offshored their operations to maximize profits by paying lower wages for labor. That's what they were able to do overseas.

Now, Democrats and globalist Republicans alike cheer this as a win-win for American companies and consumers who get cheaper stuff. In fact, conservatives scoffed at those of us who warned about destroying blue- collar jobs.

This column written just four years ago in National Review by Kevin Williamson is a prime example. He wrote, "One of the great enduring stupidities of modern economic life is the belief that buying American is somehow beneficial to the United States as a whole. Does buy American create or protect American jobs? Almost certainly not."

Now, it's difficult to imagine a more misguided view of things. But there you have it. So being reliant on Communist China for anything critical to our survival is moronic in the short and long term. And most Americans are now coming to understand this fact.

Now, Biden didn't create this supply chain problem, but his policy sure won't fix it. Watching Democrats today twist themselves into knots over their multi-trillion dollar spending bills. How many trillions here? How many trillions there? What can we agree to? Well, we see how clueless they are about all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): The reconciliation bill is about the priorities that are getting funded. We obviously want childcare that is universal.

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): We have a generational obligation, a historic obligation to address climate change, to transition from fossil fuel combustion to clean and renewable energy.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The reconciliation bill was a combination of my service in Congress because it was about the children. The children, the children, the children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: They have no idea how wealth is created. In fact, the children know more than they do. How to build a strong middle class, how to get people back to work, how to get people to want to work again? They don't even think about what things like this mean. Why Texas is doing better than New York? Does Nancy ever think about that? Why Florida is outpacing Illinois?

How about why businesses are leaving states like Massachusetts for Tennessee? That's what gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson just announced, they were doing.

Did the Democrats even care? It doesn't seem so. They think money grows on trees. Their answer to everything is to borrow and print more money, raise taxes, and regulate industries into the dust. We had a booming economy less than two years ago. We had record low unemployment. And we had no inflation and China was back on its heels.

But none of those good outcomes brought us closer to the progressive political goals of discrediting capitalism, demonizing wealth creators, and encouraging Americans to become ever more dependent on the government. Biden had some decent instincts on the value of Made in America when he visited that Mack Trucks plant in Pennsylvania.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In recent years, Buy American has become a hollow promise. And my administration is going to make Buy American a reality. We will be expanding my Made in America initiative to help cities, towns, and tribes get a better deal when they buy a Made in America product.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: But his administration is being hijacked by the same globalist forces that dug the hole that we're in now. He's turning our China policy over to John Kerry, essentially. That was a very bad omen. Kerry's just a foolish globalist married to a billionaire invested heavily in China.

Meanwhile, Biden's war on oil and gas is going to hurt any effort to bring back manufacturing to the United States. To do that, to bring manufacturing back, we need a dependable energy sector that absolutely must include traditional sources, unilateral disarmament on energy. That's what those senators were talking about, that's what Kerry wants. That's only going to strengthen China's hand - be a drag in our economy.

And we know the CCP will do whatever it takes to keep their factories running, no matter what. As the Wall Street Journal notes, "Permits issued by the Interior Department for drilling on federal land declined 171 in August from 671 in April." That's a 75 percent drop in permits.

And liberal states are also walking the progressive plank. Just this week, the companies behind the 116-mile Penn East pipeline plan that would have brought crucial natural gas supplies to New Jersey called it quits. Why? Well, legal battles with environmental radicals. That's why, and of course, the state of New Jersey.

The cumulative effect of the left's energy policies has been to destroy the energy independence we achieved under President Trump, and then forced American families and small businesses to maddening levels of price inflation at the pump.

The national average price per gallon of gas is a seven-year high right now. The price is an entire dollar higher than just last year. The price of natural gas is double what it was last year. So heating bills could be 30 percent higher this winter.

Now, if that fact alone doesn't wake up the voters of New England, who have sent nine Democrats, plus lefty independents like Bernie Sanders and Angus King to the U.S. Senate. I don't know what will.

Here's the bottom line. Everything the Democrats are doing is discouraging investment and job creation in the United States. And at the same time, it's going to encourage, it's going to prompt inflation. We need to end the attacks on our energy sector, fully reopen the economy without these mandates, stop the crippling taxes and regulations that push businesses overseas, and stay out of disastrous trade pacts like the Trans Pacific Partnership.

If we keep going down the path, we'll end up with a combination of unnecessary high unemployment and rising prices, just like we had in the days of Jimmy Carter. Looking at all of this, I can say one thing, elections cannot come soon enough. And that's the 'Angle'.

All right. Joining me now is Mike Liberatore, President of HPK Industries, made in the USA manufacturer based in upstate New York. Mike, thank you for joining us. Now, you don't rely on imported products. How did that prepare you for the past 18 months better than most?

MIKE LIBERATORE, PRESIDENT, HPK INDUSTRIES: Well, Laura, my business was started in 1985 by my father. And then I joined in '86. And ever since the mid 80s, we had a domestic supply chain. So we always purchased all of our raw materials and any essential components from companies located in United States.

INGRAHAM: So you didn't have to go to - you didn't have to go hand in hand to China or India, or the Philippines in a pandemic to get essential items for your business delivery? What is your business?

LIBERATORE: My business is manufacturing PPE.

INGRAHAM: Oh, ok. So you're the only one up and running when the pandemic hit essentially?

LIBERATORE: Yes. In the United States, I was the only company that actually manufactured all my products in the United States. Now, I would say it was over 99 percent of the PPE comes from China and other Asian countries. So when the pandemic came about, I had millions of pounds of PPE fabric in my warehouses here in upstate New York. So we were in a unique position, because I had the raw materials. I had all - everything that I needed.

So my business really exploded during 2020. So my workforce went - tripled my workforce, tripled - I purchased a new building. This was done with the help of the state of New York and the former governor. But we were able to really expand and get our production up, increase our employment, and we supply critical PPE to the major semiconductor companies, computer companies, pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, research companies. We - all the companies that needed it, and we currently continue to do so.

INGRAHAM: People hear about this debate. And they say, yes, we kind of get it, but it's so much cheaper to buy it overseas. And Americans just don't want to pay anything. They don't want to pay what it's going to cost to have an American made product. And to that you say?

LIBERATORE: Well, if you're going to shut down your production and your production brings you in revenue of a million dollars a day, so you save the 50 - you save the $1,000 and some PPE and you lost a million dollars in your production. It just doesn't make sense.

So we've been able to identify the customer base that wants a domestic supply chain, doesn't want to take the risk, and actually got burned during COVID. We stepped in when the global companies could not supply the customers PPE.

INGRAHAM: Mike, this is just a lesson to other American companies. And it keep at it. Don't give up when the going gets tough. And the American voter has to hear this. I hope people learn their lesson after this pandemic. But this battle will continue. Thank you.

And building a sustainable supply chain here in the United States is a foreign policy and domestic sustainability issue. Now, we saw, of course, during the pandemic, how few resources, few products I should say were made here, which of course then hurt our response.

Now, we're seeing how the ravages of a global inflationary crisis make it more expensive to heat your home, buy groceries, even buy Christmas presents. So it seems to me that it's time for the federal government, that they played a role in rebuilding American industry.

Here now is someone, who's seeking to do just that, Republican Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty. Senator, while the Democrats are still haggling over their multi-trillion dollar waste of our money, instead of focusing on manufacturing centers back to the United States. Why is this issue now beginning to resonate of Made in America?

SEN. BILL HAGERTY (R-TN): Well, Laura, you did a wonderful job of laying out the rationale for what's hollowed out our manufacturing sector over the past couple of decades. And, Laura, it's been policies on both the Republican and the Democrat side that have done it. But things changed in 2017.

When President Trump came into office, we finally had somebody that was willing to stand up to Communist China. And you know how they compete. They steal intellectual property, they heavily subsidize industries, they block and limit access to their own markets. They don't play by the same set of rules.

When President Trump stepped up and made a real difference there, he also made a huge difference here domestically. He made the United States a much better place to invest and create jobs. I'm talking about deregulation, making his energy independent, as you pointed out so clearly. The Tax Act of 2017, that set off a boom here in America, a blue-collar boom, that brought more and more jobs back from overseas. Companies began to de risk their supply chains from China. It had begun before the pandemic hit us.

INGRAHAM: Well, Senator, what they're saying now - what they're saying now is, oh, don't worry, because they're all these solar panels that are going to be made in the United States and wind turbines. Do you buy that?

HAGERTY: Laura, not at all. We know where those wind turbines and solar panels are made. This is advantage right back to China. They kill our energy industry here, again making us more vulnerable to countries that do not have our best interest at heart. China wins in this scenario.

INGRAHAM: Jen Psaki wants everyone to believe, Senator Hagerty, that Biden's - he's totally in control of the whole supply chain issue. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have a very aggressive and ambitious supply chain effort to address challenges we're seeing in the supply chains. We also were impacted, our supply chains around the world were impacted a great deal by Delta. And we're working in part to address and help many countries recover from COVID so that we can get supply chains up and running.

I will note that we look at our relationship with China and all the components through a comprehensive package.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Senator, what? First of all, what is that? How is that going to solve the problem when the cost of energy and - is going up, and inflation is going up? How are we going to be able to do this with the supply chain?

HAGERTY: Their policies are absolutely cutting the exact wrong way, just as you say. They make us less energy independent. They make us more vulnerable to countries like China for our energy source. They incentivize unemployment. They do everything they can to create more government dependency and give people less rationale to go back to work. That's why we have this employment shortage across the nation.

Now, they're talking about taxing American corporations and job creators to a point that no one will want to move their capital here. They're going to incentivize jobs moving yet again back overseas with the policies that they're putting forward.

INGRAHAM: But the IRS agents that they're going to hire and the bank surveillance they want to do, Senator, how's that going to work for us?

HAGERTY: Feels a lot like Communist China surveillance, doesn't it? They're going to [ph] insert themselves in every aspect of American lives. People don't want this. My constituents are letting me know very clearly. They are deeply concerned about the overreach of this administration.

You talk about the financial transactions and the oversight there, think about what happened just this year into the Biden administration when the IRS released private taxpayer information to ProPublica. No one's paid the price for this, yet they're putting confidential taxpayer information not to attack their enemies. The public's very concerned about this. And the last thing we should be doing is giving them even more access to our private information.

INGRAHAM: Government is their growth industry, Senator. It always will. Thank you so much. Good to see you.

HAGERTY: Thank you. Great to be with you, Laura.

INGRAHAM: And YouTube just took extraordinary steps to ban accounts that it claims are anti-vax. Well, the celebration from the media and the left, it's been all over the place, very widespread. It tells you all you need to know about who really supports corporate censorship now. Glenn Greenwald has reaction in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Democrats plan to ensure that companies end up enforcing Biden's vaccine mandate is to bankrupt the ones that don't. Now, buried deep in the Democrats' 2400-page spendorama is a provision enabling a tenfold increase in OSHA fines.

Now, if passed, Biden would be able to slap companies that defy the vaccine mandate with fines as high as, this can't be right, is this enough zeros, $700,000. And that's for each violation. Here now is Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, Fox News contributor.

Professor, OSHA - OSHA is going to protect us in the workplace, I say, and they're going to do all the right things for the American people, this agency. But this could put businesses under with these fines. Any legal challenges arising from this and could they be successful?

JONATHAN TURLEY, GWU LAW PROFESSOR: Well, first of all, from a policy standpoint, this is in line with that old naval order that the floggings will continue till morale improves. The Biden administration went through this care period where they're offering money, if you take the vaccine. Ohio was offering a million dollar lottery. It didn't get people in through the doors. So they've now gone to an all-stick approach. But this thing would really bludgeon many businesses out of existence if they got their way.

And the thing is, it's not up to the businesses. A lot of people are preferring to walk away. I talked to a doctor this weekend of a major hospital on east coast. He said 20 percent of his doctors and nurses are saying that they won't get the vaccine. And he, sort of, threw up his hands and said, I don't know what we're going to do. We can't fire 20 percent of our staff without having serious problems in this hospital.

So it's not clear how this is going to play out. But the courts are likely to uphold it, because the constitution doesn't protect you from bad policies. That's what elections do. So if Congress wants to set its course on this road, you can do so. I think the courts, there'll be challenges. The courts may look at whether this is just confiscatory. But for the most part, Congress gets a lot of deference and they're allowed to do a lot of stupid things.

INGRAHAM: Explain how the Jacobson case of more than 100 years ago governs, or it could be - I mean, it could be differentiated from this current pandemic, given the changes in medicine, given natural immunity, the lethality of this virus for most people. Could that be overturned at the court?

TURLEY: Well, Jacobson will only take you so far. That was the case in which the Supreme Court said that a state could impose a vaccine mandate. President Biden is going back and forth as to whether he has the power to do the same thing directly. He's clearly being advised that he cannot, because he cannot, the federal government does not have that power.

That's why they decided to go through OSHA to say that vaccines are needed for workplace safety. But there are still some problems, Laura. First of all, Governors like New York and in some of these federal agencies, there's a question as to whether they will recognize religious exemptions, particularly on the state level, that could lead to serious challenges. Courts could overturn, in part, that type of mandate.

Then there's the issue you mentioned, which is natural antibodies. Many people have said their doctors told them not to take the vaccine, because their natural antibodies after recovering from COVID are as higher than what they would get from a vaccine. Now, courts are going to have to look at that, look at the science and whether that's true or not. But there's an issue there for judicial review. And it hasn't really been tested that thoroughly.

INGRAHAM: Yes, well, the science definitely shows that broad and durable immunity accrue after exposure to COVID. But this is going to end up at the court. Yes, Jonathan?

TURLEY: Yes. Sure, Laura.

INGRAHAM: Yes. Oh, well, I can't wait. We'll have you back then. Jonathan, great to see you.

TURLEY: Thanks, Laura.

INGRAHAM: And it's not just the Biden administration, big tech also looking to punish vaccine dissidents. YouTube has begun purging all videos and accounts that they determine in all their examination, spread misinformation about vaccines. And not just about COVID vaccines, but all vaccines.

Facebook has apparently already been doing this for months. And the media gatekeepers of modern liberalism are downright giddy about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Today, YouTube did something that might very well save a lot of lives.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anti-vaccine misinformation has always had a huge home on YouTube. It's just like for over a decade, anti-vax creators have flourished there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They can choose to either be pro-science or anti- science. And they decide to be pro-science and anti-death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Does that apply to other issues like abortion? Joining me now is independent journalist Glenn Greenwald. Glenn, this isn't just though about silencing vaccine skeptics, is it?

GLENN GREENWALD, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST: No, the censorship that is being practiced by these tech monopolies is rapidly increasing across all of these platforms and covers, virtually every political topic that we debate in. It's so ironic where I was just listening to those people celebrating the censorship of alternative views on the grounds of science.

Science is about debating and questioning all kinds of hypotheses and letting the truth emerge from that debate. This is the opposite of science. This is mandating that orthodoxies and pieties be ingested and that no challenges or questioning of them be permitted. It is not just anti- scientific for that reason. But it's incredibly despotic.

I mean, our history of the pandemic from the start has been that our authorities have said things that turned out not to be true, whether with good intentions or not. And they want to make it, so that you can no longer challenge those authorities when it comes to any of our most crucial debates.

INGRAHAM: Well, think of what science used to be in favor of. Eugenics, lobotomizing people that had mental issues. I mean, there's all sorts of things that scientists were saying, good. We had scientists in Nazi Germany, who thought a lot of things were appropriate to do, experiment on people and so forth.

I mean - so once you start doing that, I think you're right, this goes way beyond this current debate. But folks over at MSNBC, Glenn, Rachel Maddow, she's somehow able to infuse YouTube's move, or it's a - take it together with Russia. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: The company is facing blowback and threats about this new policy from among other places, the Kremlin, because the Russian government has been using its propaganda networks worldwide, to gleefully spread anti- vaccine disinformation all over the Democratic West. Because they are just that concerned for our health.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Never heard her talk about China in this manner, which where the virus actually started, Glenn. But on one level, I guess the fanaticism has to be respected.

GREENWALD: There is such an irony here, Laura, which is that people like her have been fixated, obsessed monomaniacally with the Kremlin for the last five years. And one of the things that the Kremlin does is they ban dissent. They use these platforms, these technology platforms, to ensure that only their views can circulate. China does that as much as anyone. And these are their allies, their likeminded comrades in that effort. They of course think that they are superior morally and intellectually to what Russia and China are doing because they are doing it in your best interests, but the tactic is the same.

And this is the thing that just disturbs me the most is there's always going to be censors in society. That's just a natural human impulse, to try and silence other people. That's why there's a free speech guarantee the Constitution, the founders knew that would happen. The role that journalists are supposed to play is supposed to be to defend free discourse. That's why the free press is in the First Amendment. And the most twisted thing in our society is that it's journalists leading the way, and not just celebrating this tech censorship, but demanding more and more of it.

INGRAHAM: And Glenn, they're also not questioning what's happening in places like Australia, where police are literally beating people in the streets who disagree.

GREENWALD: They want that here. They want much greater enforcement of their will. It has nothing to do with science anymore at this point, obviously. On the one hand, they will say, and I agree, that if you are vaccinated, you are no longer really a risk from COVID, and then in the other claim that if you're unvaccinated you pose a threat to vaccinated people, which is entirely contradictory. What they want is social control. They crave what's going on in Australia. They look at that and they say that's what we should be doing to our political enemies.

The problem for them is that a lot of unvaccinated people aren't just Trump supporters and deplorables, but also African Americans, Latinos, people on their side, and they don't know quite what to do with that.

INGRAHAM: Glenn, it's great to see you. Thank you for being here.

And remember when the media used to love maverick John McCain? Are they giving Manchin and Sinema the same treatment, though, with bucking progressives as they are? The answer might not surprise you. Senator Josh Hawley is here on that in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Remember when being a Senate maverick was really cool? All the accolades from the media? Well, John McCain wore that mantle for years, and all he got was adoration from the media on the left, perhaps none greater than when he delivered his infamous thumbs down, skunking Trump and the Republicans efforts at overhauling Obamacare. Do you remember that?

But now that Senators Manchin and Sinema have put themselves between the American people and the $3.5 trillion effort to remaking the entire country, the idea of maverick doesn't seem great after all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D-IL) SENATE MAJORITY WHIP: Now it's time, I would say, for both senators, make your mark and close the deal. What is it that you want?

REP. RO KHANNA, (D-CA): Why did Senator Sinema create this deadline that if we don't do something on Thursday I'm going to walk? Who legislates like that? She's a first-term senator.

JOY BEHAR, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": These people are destroying the country, in my opinion. Manchin and Sinema must be brought to task.

(APPLAUSE)

BEHAR: They are the enemies right now of democracy.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST": You also have two Republicans in the Democratic Party who are making problems for the Democrats, and that's Manchin and Sinema.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: That's your opinion.

LEMON: No, they are Republicans, come on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Joining me now, Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. Senator, I guess you've been kind of moved to the side for a moment as the most unpopular senator in Washington. They are not getting a lot of accolades now.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY, (R-MO): No, they're not, although the idea that they're Republicans is ridiculous. But I'll tell you what, here's what this shows, Laura. The far-left extremists have completely taken over the Democrat Party, I mean completely. And if you don't capitulate to them, they will come after you, they will steamroll you, they will try and destroy you, and they are willing to do that even if you've got the word "Democrat" after your name.

What they really care about is you agreeing with them and agreeing to bow down in front of their agenda, and that's what they want right now. And of course, I'm not going to do that. I hope that Manchin and Sinema stand firm. At the end of the day, we've got to go out there and present an alternative because, as you said, what the Democrats are trying to do, what the left is trying to do, is completely remake this country.

INGRAHAM: What is amazing about all of this, you heard that one Congressman say this is no way to legislate. How do you legislate like that? And I would like to turn it right back on him and say how is this a way to legislate, when you go to one guy and you say what's your price tag, without even talking about what's actually in this bill, whether it's going to lower the standard of living of most Americans with a tax on oil and gas, et cetera, et cetera, or whether it's going to raise the standard of living of most Americans. That's not even being discussed. It's just the price tag, which, again, that's not a way to legislate. What is our country need? We need growth and jobs. That's what we need.

HAWLEY: That's exactly right. And it shows you that the Democrats are really desperate. I think that's the other takeaway here, Laura. They know that the president is in a free-for-all. They know that this is a man who led us into abject disaster in Afghanistan. He humiliated this nation with his disgraceful evacuation and abandonment of American citizens in Afghanistan. He's led us into disaster at the border. He is somebody who clearly is not up to the task. And now the Democrats are frantic. They are frantic to jam through their unpopular agenda, and they're willing to do just about anything to get there.

INGRAHAM: Well, Cori Bush, she's a congresswoman who represents the St. Louis area, she has her own thoughts about this process. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CORI BUSH, (D-MO): The compromise was the $3.5 trillion. So if he -- if he needs -- if he just wants to talk to some at about it, come talk to me, and I will tell you what it's like to not be able to pay for your childcare, to not be able to pay for your medications and your rent at the same time.

It is unconscionable that he can stand puffed up and hold the line on something that hurts people now, and to say that I will toss you some crumbs right now and then hopefully you can say you ate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh, my gosh, Senator, I don't even know what to say about this, at this point. Democrats literally have no idea how the real world works, how you create jobs, make a payroll, what does it mean to hire a new workforce. It just money does literally grow on trees, and you just give it away to people and their life is going to get better.

HAWLEY: How but the fact that right now you've got working Americans who are paying the inflation tax that these Democrats have created every single day. People are paying more money for food. They are paying more money for gas, they can't afford to get their car repaired. Why? Because inflation is out of control thanks to the Democrats and their socialist spending. And they want to make it worse.

So you talk about hurting working families, hurting working people. The Democrat agenda is nothing but grinding them down in favor of what, their far left woke politics. That's who wins in this, Laura. You know this. It's the far left wokies (ph) who are the ones who are really behind this $3.5 trillion agenda. They want to remake this country. That's what this is about.

INGRAHAM: Are we going to call them wokies (ph), Senator? That's actually really cute.

(LAUGHTER)

HAWLEY: Pick your poison.

INGRAHAM: I haven't heard that before. I like that. It's like walkie- talkies -- wokies (ph), I like that. I'm going to use that from now on. I like that better than wokesters (ph). Senator, good to see you tonight, thanks so much.

HAWLEY: Thanks for having me.

INGRAHAM: And the White House wants you to believe these are outliers, these polls, but unfortunately poll after poll is revealing a very inconvenient truth for Biden -- he's lost America's trust. Tom Bevan, Jason Chaffetz will be here, they are going to explain what's driving it and why a rebound may not happen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And again, I will just conclude by saying this is a process, and it's going to be up and down. That's why I don't look at the polls. Not a joke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: For his sake, I hope he is telling the truth, because poll after poll over the past two months has shown that America is losing faith in President Biden, and contrary to the White House's wishful thinking, it isn't temporary, and it isn't only because of the horrifying Afghanistan debacle. Jobless claims are up for the third straight week as inflation roars. Thousands of migrants are pouring over our borders with an estimated 60,000 more Haitians on their way. So Biden hasn't defeated COVID as he promised on the campaign trail, and his mandates are growing more unpopular by the day. A new Trafalgar poll shows two-thirds of likely voters oppose firing workers who object to the vaccine.

Joining me now is Tom Bevan, cofounder and president of Real Clear Politics, and Jason Chaffetz, FOX News contribute, former Congressman, and host of the podcast "Jason in the House." Good to see you, gentlemen. Tom, as we lay out these crises top to bottom, which one of them do you think produces the most -- the visceral emotion among the voters against Biden?

TOM BEVAN, COFOUNDER, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: Well, in the short term it was Afghanistan. We saw his numbers plummet across the board, particularly as they watched what happened. But I think in the long term, Laura, the one that is actually going to produce the most political, potentially adverse political effects for Biden are his policies surrounding the economy. If inflation continues to roar, if the economy does not come back, we continue to see high jobless numbers, that's what's really going to hurt the Democrats at the polls next November and Biden in 2024, because that's what -- voters are seeing that in their everyday lives, and to the extent they continue to see that or it gets worse, Democrats will pay a price for that.

INGRAHAM: Now, Jason, beyond this inflation issue, Biden's handling of the border continues to drag him down. This new Ipsos poll shows that just 33 percent approve of his handling of the border, 66 percent disapprove. Jason, Republicans over the years have told us that a more lax border policy, more generous migration, immigration policies are wildly popular, even though Gallup's polls of this show that it wasn't wildly popular. What is this telling is now?

JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, first of all, he put Kamala Harris in charge, and we haven't even really seen her other than the airport stop-by. People can see for themselves. You've got all these people coming across their country. The one poll number where she's actually -- where they are both doing pretty well as with Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and people who want to come here illegally. With that segment of the population outside the United States, they are doing pretty well.

But with Americans, they sympathize with the Border Patrol, they don't want to have these COVID-ridden outbreaks coming into their towns. These people aren't even tested for COVID, for goodness' sake. And they are coming here illegally. It's just -- the American people, that's not what they signed up for. The border was under control until Joe Biden changed the policy, and now it's not.

INGRAHAM: It's purposeful at this point. I think we all can see that.

And, Tom, a little detail inside that new YouGov poll I think should have the White House and Democrats pretty worried, because it found that Biden's approval among independents was underwater by 22 points. And other recent polls, as I think you know, have found similar really bad numbers. So how big a deal is this, Tom, eight months into the presidency, eight-and-a-half months, independents are fleeing?

BEVAN: Yes, it's a huge deal because independents are going to be very decisive in elections. And I think one of the things that the Biden administration is fighting right now both with what's going on Congress and, as Jason just mentioned come at the border, is they are trying to keep support among Democrats. Right now he's got 85, 90 percent among Democrats. But he's taking flak from the left because of his immigration policies, they are not permissive enough. And right now he's trying to get this bill through Congress. If it doesn't go through, he's going to lose support among progressive Democrats, that's going to drag his numbers down even further.

So the Biden demonstration is really caught trying to sort of cater to the left-wing of their base because they are not -- they've lost were Republicans from the get-go, and now they've lost independents, they are losing them more and more. And so that leaves them -- really, they can't afford to lose any support among Democrats.

INGRAHAM: And, Jason, let's say they end of getting some $1.5 trillion reconciliation through, let's say that happens, something like that. Who knows what's going to happen? Let's say they get it. Do you really think that's going to change much for Biden and the Democrats in the midterms, really?

CHAFFETZ: No, I don't. And it was sold on a lie, it was the idea that it was all paid for. It's 100 percent paid for.

INGRAHAM: Free.

CHAFFETZ: It's not paid for. Yes, it's not free. It's going to be paid for by the American people with the tax that is imposed through inflation. You're going to have massive regulation because you're going to grow government. The more you grow government, the more regulators you're going to have. And the government is not going to suddenly operate better. It's not like the highways are going to get better or education is going to get better. It's just going to be government flush with money, and that hurts the average American. There's a proper role of government, but it's limited. If not unlimited like Biden and Harris see it.

INGRAHAM: Tom, do you agree with that? If they get something through, will that give them much of a bump?

BEVAN: I don't know that will -- look, it's not going to hurt them, again, because it will keep support among Democrats. Democrats will be happy they got something through. If they don't, they will lose support among Democrats.

But again, I will go back to -- if they do get this passed, if it doesn't result in actual, tangible results for the American people in their day-to- day lives, and in fact if it makes them demonstrable worst by fueling inflation, then I think it will, in the end, hurt the Democrats and hurt President Biden.

INGRAHAM: Yes, prices are going to be going up. Wait until they get those heating bills this summer -- this winter, excuse me, in New England. Tom, Jason, thank you.



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