CLAY: There remains, unfortunately, the ongoing cloud of incompetence surrounding the Biden administration. As we are speaking to you, the stock market — having one of its worst weeks ever — is down 123 points again today. It has been a real drubbing that the stock market has been taking as our overall national economy tries to come to grips with the overall inflation rates — and I would just say this, Buck. I think we’re already in a recession. This is my prediction.
It didn’t get a great deal of attention, but if you looked when we had the three-quarter point interest rate hike that happened earlier this week, the Fed lowered its second quarter predictions on GDP to zero, 0.0. The growth rate had been .9%. It wasn’t actually a sterling growth rate. But if they are now forecasting 0.0%, effectively, which is what they are, in other words, just barely avoiding a negative number, it feels to me like we are probably already in a recession.
We know that in the first quarter GDP went down. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP is a recession. Buck, I think we’re in a recession. I want to play you this audio because Joe Biden finally did an interview and he talked with the AP in the Oval Office, and he said that a recession is not inevitable. I think, unfortunately, we’re already in a recession. Let me play cut 7 here for you as CNN is even interacting here with what is going on and saying it definitely feels like we’re already in a recession.
BUCK: I’m sorry, but the Biden administration, Clay, doesn’t get to have it both ways. Six months ago, nine months ago, Biden himself was pointing to the stock market talking about how it was just a function of Build Back Better. “Just spend another five or six trillion and we’re gonna get ourselves out of the ditch, the doldrums we had been in.” No, it turns out that the decisions they made have had a dramatically negative impact on the economy and now they want to tell us that it’s cyclical, right?
So six months ago Biden saying, “Look at the stock market, I’m amazing,” and now the stock market has just gotten crushed. You have less money in your 401(k), in your retirement accounts or your stock account in general than you did when Biden took office. So that’s 18 months of gains wiped out. And they want to tell you this has nothing to do with Joe Biden.
It just reminds me very much of the explanation they give now for the high price of gas which of course is the Putin price hike, greedy oil suppliers, greedy refiners. All this is crap and nonsense. It’s worth reminding people that six months ago, Biden was saying it was a great economy boasting about the jobs, boasting about the stock market and now we see it’s all fallen apart. And 18 months ago, Biden was talking about how, if he could, he would ban all fuel, all gas, all oil. Oh, yeah.
BUCK: Clay, can he make it any more clear that he hates the fossil fuel industry — at least when he wants Democrat votes?
CLAY: Can you imagine how bad that montage is gonna play in many different jurisdictions right now, many different places as people are getting ready to go to the polls? We’ve talked about what a Red Wave would look like or what a Red Tsunami would look like, and I can’t imagine when you’re paying over $5 for a gallon of gas that attraction to any voters out there is going to be remotely positive to Joe Biden trying to now say, “Oh, we’ve gotta increase oil and gas exploration!
“We’ve gotta do more drilling,” when he ran on the idea that he was going to stop that from happening. So it’s not just that Joe Biden has bad ideas. It’s that his ideas are so bad, they make everything worse. And this is why they’re panicked right now, because we’re rapidly coming up on July. Everybody’s on their vacations right now during the summer. So many people have saved up for the past couple of years ’cause of covid related issues; people are out there more than they have been in a long time.
And when you’re driving your family around and you are paying $5 for a gallon of gas, it is just an absolute kick in the teeth to people out there. And again, from a parenting perspective, what it really does is you don’t get to take your kids to the movies, you don’t get to take your kids out for dinner like you ordinarily would. You may not even be able to take a vacation like you would hope to be able to do; buy presents, as we come up and start to think about birthdays and all the holiday season which isn’t that far away. This is an unmitigated disaster, and it strikes people every single day all day long when you’re looking at the price of gas.
BUCK: And I think the Biden White House compounds everything that you’re talking about, which is the pain that people are feeling economically that’s there. They can talk about eight million jobs or whatever all day. The fact of the matter is that people are feeling financially stressed, the markets have turned, and we are probably already in a recession; it’s just not official yet. We’ve been talking about a recession here for months. But on top of that, there’s something so dishonest about the Biden administration with regard to all this.
Which is why I think playing back clips of what Joe Biden running for office was saying about the gas, the fossil fuel industry, and how that affects the price of gas now is obvious, right? They did everything they could to show the environmentalist left that they are hostile to the fossil fuel industry, and now the price of gas is high, and they say, “Oh, we didn’t do anything!” When Donald Trump was in office Democrats — and I know it was mostly about Russia collusion, which was a lie.
But Trump would say, “I want to do the following,” or, “Here’s what we’re doing,” and Democrats could — and did, obviously – say, “That’s bad, we hate that, whatever.” But at least there is a clarity among Republicans with, “We’re gonna cut taxes,” or, “We want to build a wall,” or, “We’re gonna do Remain in Mexico, “whatever it may be. With Democrats, it’s a game. They get what they want under a certain promise and then when it’s disastrous, it’s, “We never wanted that! We didn’t think this would happen.”
BUCK: Think about this. Getting rid of Remain in Mexico, look at the southern border now. Defund the police, look at crime in major cities. Open air drug markets in places like Portland, look at the level of overdoses in cities and nationwide last year. Spending too much money? Look at inflation. They try to separate cause and effect, and people aren’t buying it because it’s so obvious, right? It’s not a question of, “I have a policy preference, they have a policy preference and we’re gonna argue out what could happen in the future.” We’ve seen the results!
CLAY: And that’s why it’s going to be, I believe, such a devastating Red Tsunami because, to your point, they made disastrous policy choices. Some of the most disastrous policy choices in America history — I really do believe that — particularly with defund the police, certainly as you’ve just said with be what’s going on at the border, the money that they spent. What’s amazing is everything is coming home to roost so rapidly because their choices were so awful that there was wasn’t…
To your point, you could sit around and argue about, “Hey, what should the corporate tax rate be?” and it might take five, six years to figure out what the exact impact is of a corporate tax rate increase or decrease, because that’s how long the economy sometimes takes to put all this in motion. We were just starting to see, for instance, the benefits of the Trump tax cuts when covid hit.
We had the best economy in the history of the United States in February of 2020 as all of those Trump economic policies were starting to roll into place. Buck, it only took 18 months of the Biden administration for all of the disastrous early-day decisions of Joe Biden, the chickens to proverbially come home to roost, and everything to fall apart. He’s the worst president in any of our lives.
BUCK: I think one of the most illuminating recent historical examples we can look to or a way that we can lay this all out, we’re 18 months into the Biden presidency and we’re being told that the economy is not Biden’s fault.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: I remember we were 18 months into the Trump presidency. Do you remember what they were saying? “The Obama economy.”
CLAY: Yes.
CLAY: Remember, they tried to sell us on the idea of “the Biden Boom.”
BUCK: OH yeah.
CLAY: If you read the New York Times in the first six months of Joe Biden coming in to office, remember we were up here in July of last year, it was gonna be a Hot Vax Summer! “Look at how incredible Joe Biden is doing getting the covid shot rolled out! Look at how the economy is booming! Look at the stock market!” As you pointed out, Biden now doesn’t want to talk much about the stock market, but he was certainly bragging about what had happened in the stock market in the early days of his administration.
And now the consequences of the disastrous policies they have put in place have arrived. And suddenly that Biden boom talk has vanished. And I really do legitimately believe that we are in a recession right now. I think when we get the second quarter GDP numbers, I believe they’re going to be negative, and that will officially count as a recession. Now, how long lasting is it gonna be? Can we come out of it in the third and fourth quarter as we move through 2022? I don’t know. I do know voters are not gonna have any of that data because we’re gonna get the second quarter GDP and people are gonna look around and say, “Holy crap. Things are awful. We’re in the middle of a recession.”
BUCK: I almost have more respect, in a way, for John Kerry, the climate czar, than all the other top White House economic advisers, spokespersons, and the rest, ’cause at least John Kerry is like, “Look, peasants, gas is expensive, but we’ve got a planet to save.”
CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.
BUCK: At least he pretty much says it. The rest of them all run around, “Oh, what do you mean? We love fossil fuels. Oh, so you want the industry to expand for the next five to 10 years and really…?” What really should be asked… Hey, are you listening, Doocy, over at Fox? This would be a great one to throw out there, if you could, buddy. Ask the Biden regime, “Would you like to see two years from now a 15 to 20% increase in fossil fuel production?”
CLAY: That’s a great question.
BUCK: Whether that’s even possible or not is irrelevant, but would you theoretical like to see that? ‘Cause anybody right now, they’d say, “Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding? That would be a miracle, of course.”
CLAY: As much as we can possibly produce.
BUCK: They will not say it or say, “When Biden’s running for reelection, would he feel good about a 15% increase in domestic fossil fuel production?” Wouldn’t that be a cool thing that heaped want to run on? Will not say it.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: Absolutely not do it ’cause they’re frauds and they’re lying to all of you, but you know that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BUCK: I want to know what lever Biden is using to stack the malarkey that high. Welcome back to Clay and Buck. You’re hearing him now say, in the same sentence, the reason… There was so much… Clay, were you taking, like, notes as we go with what was wrong there? There was so many in such a short thing. He says global inflation — our inflation is worse actually than other developed countries that you compare us to — that it’s Putin’s fault and he’s bringing down the price with every lever he has. A month ago we are being told there really are no levers for the president. So which one is it?
CLAY: It’s also, even though his arguments are bad, every time it feels like we play audio for Joe Biden, his communication skills seem to have declined. Even just listening to that audio — and I know the left wingers are finally starting to ask questions about his competence. Even on CNN, you got the Don Lemons of the world and the Van Joneses of the world sitting around saying, “There’s legitimate questions about his cognitive abilities.”
But when you hear him talk, I just feel so much like you’re at Thanksgiving and you have an elderly relatively that is no longer in control of his faculties, and that’s what it sounds like. And the worst part about this is we’ve got a guy who couldn’t manage a corner gas station. Couldn’t! Couldn’t do it. Joe Biden could not do the job that you and I are doing, Buck, right now talking to everybody out there for three hours. He could not do it.
And he’s got the most important job in America right now. So all of the challenges that we face and all the things that he’s already created a disaster with his Bidas touch that has blown everything up, he doesn’t have the ability to fix any of this. And, frankly, I’m not even sure he has the ability cognitively, Buck, to even understand what’s going on in the country right now.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: — that maybe it’s subconscious, but they would rather the suffering continue. They just don’t want the political consequences for the suffering that’s going on when it comes to the economy and to the price of gas.
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