The Biden Disaster: GDP Shrinks 1.4% and Joe Looks Lost

CLAY: We begin with what I think has to be the top-line story as a part of the larger economic failure in the Biden administration. “Unexpectedly…” It’s amazing how “unexpected” all the bad economic news is, Buck. You never hear unexpected good news on the economy under Joe Biden.

The expectation among economists who forecast these things was that our economy was going to have slowed substantially in the first quarter, but instead, it has actually shrunk. We have moved into negative territory by 1.4%. Combining with that 8.5% inflation is a disastrous economic situation to be sitting at here in the Biden administration.

Let’s listen to Maria Bartiromo announce this news and react to it a bit.

CLAY: Here’s what I would say in general: Buck, I think it’s unfortunate. I feel like it’s likely we’re going to hit a recession. We just hit one quarter of negative growth. We wouldn’t hire Joe Biden to be employed in any way on our radio show. I wouldn’t hire him in any way to work at OutKick. I can’t imagine that most of you would hire him to work anywhere at your places of business if you were in charge of hiring.

And he’s just getting worse. I want to play this quick clip for you of Joe Biden talking about how he’s gonna hold Vladimir Putin accountable. Listen to this and remember how much they talked about Donald Trump and the 25th Amendment. There was nothing that was this bad, and it just keeps getting worse.

BUCK: It did seem like the computer program there ran into some interference for a good second, and we keep seeing this. And it’s worth reminding everybody that under the Trump administration there were entire news cycles devoted to, “Donald Trump has to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment.” Donald Trump was going around do two-hour rallies off the top of his head getting everybody laughing, fired up, making witty comments, one-liners.

Donald Trump didn’t look like somebody had pulled the power plug in the middle of the speech about every other day. That’s actually not what was going on. But they were also, at some level, just lying about what the 25th Amendment is. To them it’s just, “Get rid of evil Republicans.” To us, it’s someone’s not actually of sound mind does not have the cognitive abilities to do the job.

But I think, Clay, this morning when the numbers came out, obviously Biden addressed the American people as he gave his speech. They’re tired of excuses. It’s just excuse after excuse. You can go back and do a timeline of what we’ve been told specifically on the economy for many months now, and it would show it. On inflation it was, “Oh, inflation’s not gonna even happen. It’s not gonna be bad.”

CLAY: “Transitory.”

BUCK: That it was transitory, and then it was going to be short duration, and then was Putin’s fault, “It’s the Putin price hike,” and they keep shifting the explanation for things. And I think that people are just tired of the excuses. And it’s reflected in the polls. Biden didn’t get elected saying, “I’ll restore the country to a place of recession and division and high crime and a dysfunctional, wide-open southern border!

“The biggest war in Europe since World War II!” None of the things that were promised… We were promised tranquility and prosperity and an economy that grows from the middle out, not the top down. I remember all the talk of Build Back Better. I remember all the talk. None of that stuff has been accomplished at all. No serious person looks at this and says, “Yeah. You know what?

“The Joe Biden move? That was a good decision.” I mean, for the wokesters, of course, just “not Trump” was enough. But for people who want to know how difficult is it gonna be for them to pay their mortgage, how rough is it gonna be to look at the price of their groceries when they get to the checkout counter, to fill up the gas in their car? What’s gonna happen in their computers?

Are they gonna be safe? Are they gonna be able to go in to their place of work and know that there are policies that are meant to help and make easier their pathway economically instead of just taking and redistributing? It’s just a big failure, Clay. I mean, they can try to spin it a million different ways. It’s all excuses.

CLAY: It’s all excuses, and if you watch that video — and I would encourage you to go check it out now that Twitter at least somewhat is starting to embrace marketplace-of-ideas dynamics, you watch that video, Buck, of Joe Biden trying to say “kleptocracy” and there’s a moment where his eyes — you can almost freeze it and you can see a panic as he’s somewhat realizing that he doesn’t know what’s going on.

It’s not a comfortable feeling for anyone. It is the look that almost every single one of you have seen on a loved one at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, somewhere when someone that you love is starting to lose control of their mental faculties — and they, on some level, recognize it.

Even if you don’t like Joe Biden, you go back and look at videos of Joe Biden from even ten years ago when he’s speaking, certainly from 20 years ago, it’s a different person. It really is, Buck, a different person. And it’s not enjoyable in any way to have the leader of the Free Werld virtually incapable of strong mental processing, when effectively we hire a president for judgment. And Joe Biden doesn’t have the ability to judge anymore. So who’s in control? And all of our foes see this, Buck. Vladimir Putin’s watching this. China’s watching.

BUCK: Do you think that if this got to a point — and to be very clear, I wish this on literally no one, certainly including Joe Biden. But if his health deteriorated to the point where he had to be moved around in a wheelchair and aides had to largely speak for him, do you think the New York Times would say, “Joe Biden’s still a steady hand on the economy”?

I wonder how far they’re willing to keep the charade going, honestly. Look at what they’ve done with covid. Look at the madness that they’re willing to embrace for ideological and partisan ends. I’m not even sure what it would take for them to admit. I’m wondering: What is the outer limit of their willingness to prop up Joe Biden, who is clearly not a responsible choice for president of the United States right now?

I think there be a lot of people would say, “Joe’s still all there. He has to have Psaki talk for him and they wheel him around.” I think that that’s where we are. I think there are a lot of people that would do that.

CLAY: Just think about how often the leaking from inside the Donald Trump White House was a front-page news story in the Washington Post and the New York Times, always unfavorable for Trump. If we are seeing in public these kind of diminutions in mental faculty, in physical ability… Even sometimes you watch Joe Biden walk.

Turning around and maybe trying to shake hands in awkward ways with people that aren’t there. We’re seeing this in public, Buck. What percentage of Joe Biden’s White House tenure is for public consumption right now, 5%, 2%? He’s hardly ever in front of the general public. Think about what everyone in the West Wing is seeing on a regular basis.

Think about what Jill Biden is seeing on a regular basis, “Dr. Jill Biden,” we’re always told. She has to be seeing her husband deteriorating directly in front of her eyes. You could even see it at the White House Easter Egg Roll — and, Buck, this was a big discussion for a while, was the idea:

“Oh, Joe Biden is going to hand off the presidency to Kamala Harris. This is not…” I don’t think that they want to do that because Kamala is somehow even more incompetent than Joe Biden, and she has control of all her mental faculties. She’s just an awful leader.

BUCK: Did you see — I think it might have been Brit Hume from Fox who shared this out, or maybe it was Byron York at the Washington Examiner — that Joe Biden had promised Kamala Harris lunch once a week as the vice president? It’s happened twice, folks.

CLAY: (laughing) Yes.

BUCK: Once a week would be 52 times a year. If he had gotten even to like 20 if it was once — if it was once or twice a month — I would say, “You know what…?” But twice is an indicator of there’s not warm relations between the Biden and Harris camps. That’s for sure.

CLAY: And so I think they’re going to try to ride out Joe Biden, but take away politics from the equation. Democrat, Republican, independent, we all suffer from an incompetent and dementia-riddled president, which I really think if you look in this man’s eyes…

Just get on Twitter right now and you look at that video; pause it. There is a clear moment where you can almost see the panic in his eyes that he doesn’t seem to know where he is when he’s trying to say kleptocracy in that audio that we played for you. The video is even more damning than the audio that all of you heard.

All of our adversaries, Buck — you know this — are watching this, and they are taking advantage of his incompetence. And we don’t really even know who is the person that is actually guiding the country right now from the White House? Who is running things?

BUCK: Can I ask you…? We can come back to this if you want. I was thinking about this. Who is the most competent person in this Biden administration at the top level? Who do you point to and say, “You know what? I may disagree with this person on some things I may not see the world the same. But this is a serious person with serious judgment.” I cannot think of one off the top of my head.

CLAY: It’s a great point, ‘cause even if you hated Trump, for instance — and we can talk this more — I think most people recognize that Barr, his attorney general, was an incredibly competent legal mind.

BUCK: He had already been the AG before. Anyone who knows the legal world in D.C. says Bill Barr is a top lawyer. Just so you know. That’s the reality.

CLAY: You may disagree with his interpretations of the law or his application of the law, but you don’t disagree with his overall competence as a steward of the Department of Justice, if you are a legitimate lawyer.

BUCK: I think Merrick Garland has shown himself to be a partisan hack and he’s deeply disappointing.

CLAY: That’s what I’m getting to.

BUCK: Yeah. Even in the DOJ side, you’d hope that… Attorney General Eric Holder under the Obama administration was a left-wing partisan hack who abused the powers of the DOJ. I’m just saying, there’s no one I look to and I say, “At least that person in the room with Biden helping Biden.”

CLAY: It’s a great point. Today is the NFL Draft out in Vegas. If you had to draft someone in the Biden administration… Remember, they claimed they were gonna be the adults. If you had to draft someone in the Biden administration to actually make decisions…? It’s such a great point, Buck, ’cause I’m sitting here racking my mind trying to think, “Who would I want?”