CLAY: “Darth” Biden came out and spoke to everyone and he’s got a cold. The economy has more than a cold. It still can’t recover. Jobs numbers missed by a monstrous margin. Expectations among economists were for 573,000 new jobs to have been created in the past month. Instead, we ended up with 210,000 new jobs.

The anemic recovery of Joe Biden continues. Nearly 4 million people who were working before covid have still not returned to the job market. And really, while Biden is trying to take credit for the declining unemployment rate, what we have created is two different economies: Red-state America, which is thriving (I’m going to give you the data on that in short order), and blue-state America, which continues to flail.

It is not getting people back to work because of the failed economic policies of the Democratic Party. The numbers are stark. I will share them with you shortly. But first, let’s hear from President “Darth” Biden. You can hear it in his voice. He is sick, and he’s trying to defend the fact that America’s back to work, as he said. Here’s cut one, Joe Biden just a little bit ago, trying to defend the incredibly anemic job numbers.

BIDEN: This year we can reflect on an extraordinary bit of progress. Our economy is markedly stronger than it was a year ago, and today the incredible news that our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2%! At this point in the year, we’re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. Simply put, America, America’s back to work, and our jobs recovery is going very strong.

CLAY: All right. This is obviously a lot of flimflam and fluff from Joe Biden because the reason why people are going back to work is because we had an artificial unemployment rate in the first place. We told them, “You cannot work,” and we forced people to go home with the worst decision, I believe, in modern American policy — maybe ever, certainly in my life, but at least since Vietnam — when we shut down schools.

When we made so many of the moms out there listening to us right now and dads responsible for kids who couldn’t go to school because they should have all been in school. We should have never really shut down schools in retrospect. But if we had, we should have only shut them down for about two weeks. All of this is readily apparent to anybody who looks at the data, and the data is also clear on the difference between red-state America and blue-state America when it tends to come to people going back to work.

But you heard how bad “Darth” Biden sounded there. He was asked about whether or not he was sick, and this is what he said. We can play cut two.

REPORTER: First of all, Mr. President your voice sounds a little different. Are you okay?

BIDEN: I’m okay. I have a test every day, a covid test. They’ve been checking for all the strains. What I have is a 1-1/2-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop, and he’s been kissing — anyway, but it’s just a cold.

CLAY: I don’t know where he’s been kissing. Biden finally decided he didn’t want to answer that question. But larger context, Biden has got a cold. He blames it on his 1-1/2-year-old grandson. That’s why he sounds so bad. What is going on, though, in terms of these economic numbers? Reading from the Wall Street Journal, they have a great editorial today, “America’s Two-Track Jobs Recovery,” where they talk about the difference.

We discussed this quite a bit on the show, and I know many of you feel it, that essentially what’s happened with covid is red-state America has gotten redder and blue-state America has gotten bluer. That means that all the people out there that are curled up in the fetal position terrified to leave their apartments, double and triple masking, afraid that they will not be able to protect themselves from covid.

The Democrats played up on all those fears, all those neuroses, all those total anxiety-ridden people across the country who don’t know how the understand and rationalize basic risk. They did that because they needed to drag Joe Biden across the finish line. Remember Joe Biden said he was going to cure the country basically of covid, that he was going to end covid.

Now more people have died under Joe Biden’s administration in 2021 than died under Donald Trump’s administration in 2020. That’s significant because of course Joe Biden said any president who is responsible for 200,000 deaths shouldn’t be president anymore. Now Joe Biden, by his own logic, is responsible for over 300,000 deaths. But these numbers are stark.

Nine states have unemployment rates above 6% right now. We just told you the number has dropped to 4.2% nationwide. California has a 7.3% unemployment rate. That is tied for the highest in the nation with Nevada, 7.3%. New Jersey, 7%. New York, 6.9%. New Mexico, 6.5%. Connecticut, 6.4%. Hawaii, 6.3%. Michigan, 6.1%, and also Alaska, 6.1%. Do you know what all eight of those nine states have in common?

They all have Republican governors. Eight of the nine. Eight of the nine states that have the highest rate of unemployment in the country have Democrat governors. They have not allowed their people to go back to work. Alaska is the only state there that has a Republican governor and also has a high rate of unemployment. The others all have Democratic governors. Now, think about the opposite.

There are states right now that have some of the lowest unemployment rates on record since 1976. West Virginia, 4.3%. Georgia, 3.1%. Oklahoma, 2.7%. Utah, 2.2%. Nebraska, 1.9% unemployment rate. A lot of other states. Alabama, 3.1%. Montana, 3.1%. Indiana, 3.3%. Almost all of those states are Republican states with Republican governors that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Why is all of this wildly significant?

Because Joe Biden is taking credit for an economic recovery that is actually being stifled by his own policies. The states that are recovering and getting back to normal are the red states. The states that are drags on our national economy are blue states. One of by big beefs for a while has been the impact that covid is going to create, and some people are even convinced and take it to the next step and say, “Hey, this is why one day we might end up with another Civil War.”

I don’t believe in that, but what’s happening is the state policies are being driven by covid, and I see it in my own home state of Tennessee, which is basically a wide-open free state like Florida, Texas, Georgia, all the red states, especially in the South. People are flooding into the states from California, from New York, from Illinois, the Chicago area in particular, and they’re not flooding into the state and bringing their politics with them.

They’re flooding into the state because of the politics that already exist here. The economic policies, the school policies that are being put in place in the red states are bringing massive amounts of talent into red states. Combine that with the number of people out there who can now work remotely. The housing market is so white hot people are cashing out of their homes on the East and the West Coast and they’re moving to places like Texas, Tennessee, Florida and more.

By the way, Texas, Tennessee and Florida? Not to give a sales pitch, but we also don’t have state income taxes in those states. Elon Musk just relocated Tesla down to Texas. Think about what 16% for state and local income tax means for somebody who is fairly wealthy in California in terms of relocating to a state like Texas, Tennessee or Florida, where there is no state income tax.

The same thing is happening in New York. Look at how many of these big hedge fund guys who suddenly have realized we have all the tech that we need. All I have to do is make sure I have a good, functional internet and I can run my private equity fund/my hedge fund, from Florida just as easily as I could from New York or Connecticut or New Jersey.

In fact, that’s why the new mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has said one of the first things he’s going to do is fly down to Florida and try to persuade all the hundred millionaires and billionaires who are rolling out of the state of New York in favor of Florida to come back, and guess what I think he’s going to find out? They ain’t coming back. They like the weather in Florida.

They like the fact that they pay a lot less tax. They like the fact that their governor isn’t insane. They like the fact that their kids can go to school and not wear masks. I don’t believe we’re headed towards a Civil War. I think that’s hyperbole. But I do believe we are headed towards a major national re-sorting where red becomes redder and blue becomes bluer, and guess what?

I’m awfully happy to be in a red state right now. I would be pulling my hair out as a parent if my kids were still having to wear masks to go to school. I would have been pulling my hair out last year if my kids weren’t enrolled in school and weren’t going in person. I would have moved out of California or New York or Illinois or any of these other mindless, insane, covid-lockdown states.

I believe that’s what’s going on, and that’s why we have right now — as the Wall Street Journal said in its lead editorial today — a “two-track jobs recovery.” Every single time the unemployment numbers are coming out, it becomes more and more readily apparent — clear to everyone — Joe Biden and blue-state economic policies are failing, and everybody in the red states knows it and that domination is going to continue to grow.