Editor’s Note: Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: In a sparsely populated, socially distanced House Chamber, Joe Biden gave his first address before what was called a joint session of Congress. The applause echoed through the hollow, more-than-half-empty chamber in an eerie reminder of the dark times we've been through over the last 14, 15 months, as the 46th president checked off all the things he said he has overcome in his first 100 days, reverting to a highfalutin’ rhetoric we've come to know.
Joe Biden: The worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation, America is on the move again … We've stared into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain, and we the people did not flinch … We have to come together to heal the soul of this nation.
Tim: Soul of this nation -- in the hands of Joe Biden, who intends to use those hands to reach into your pockets to the tune of around $6 trillion.
Joe Biden: The American Jobs Plan will put engineers and construction workers to work, building more energy efficient buildings and homes … My American Families Plan guarantees four additional years of public education of every person in America … We need to ensure greater equity and opportunity for women. And while we're doing this, let's get the paycheck fairness act to my desk as well. And by the way, while you're thinking about sending things to my desk, let's raise the minimum wage to $15.
Tim: Sure. What the hell. The national debt is already approaching $30 trillion, so while we're at it with the Monopoly money, why don't we just go ahead and force businesses to raise wages to a point where they either cut jobs or go out of business? And Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) called Biden out in the GOP response to the president, starting with public schools.
Tim Scott: Our public schools should have reopened months ago. Other countries did. Private and religious schools did. Science has shown for months that schools are safe. They spent almost $2 trillion on a partisan bill, that the White House bragged that it was the most liberal bill in American history. Only one percent went to vaccinations, no requirement to reopen schools properly … Another issue that should unite us is infrastructure. Less than 6% of the president's plan goes to roads and bridges. It's a liberal wishlist of big government waste.
Tim: Scott is no doubt a rising star. More on him in a minute. But in the meantime, the vice president, who appears in public infrequently except when issues of race are involved, has famously been assigned to head up this president’s salvage operation at the southern border where illegals have entered the country at the highest rate in 20 years since the new administration took office and summarily reversed the border policies of Donald Trump. But Kamala Harris has yet to even visit the border. And she made a very strange remark that led to a question from the only reporter who seems to ask hard questions of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki -- Fox's Peter Doocy -- which elicited a strange response.
Peter Doocy: Vice President Harris says that she's not gone to the border yet because we have to deal with COVID issues. What is she referring to?
Jen Psaki: Well, I would certainly have to ask her team about that specifically, but I would tell you also that her focus is not on the border, it's on addressing the root causes in the Northern Triangle. And that's why the majority of her time has been spent on working at a diplomatic level.
Tim: Oh, okay. So the answer to the border crisis is to get at the root causes of the problem in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador? In other words, let's fix the problems they have, which leads to refugees leaving their countries, who become our problem -- as if Harris can step in and take care of the problem. Most likely, she's offering massive increases in foreign aid as, shall we say, an inducement to these Northern Triangle countries to straighten up and fly right.
But news comes regarding another part of the world, Iran, where a top Iranian official has been caught on a leaked video claiming John Kerry, current climate czar and former secretary of state under Barack Obama, shared military secrets about Israel with him during the Trump administration. A slew of Republicans is calling for Kerry's resignation, and Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid it down.
Mike Pompeo: While I was briefing President Trump, Kerry was briefing [Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif on intelligence that related to Israeli operations. I hope that's not true. John Kerry needs to come forward. Secretary Kerry needs to speak to the American people and explain to them why he was meeting with Zarif. We know he did that. He's admitted as much. What was he talking about? We believe that he was absolutely telling the Iranians, "Hang on. This pressure campaign. The power that's being exerted by America against you, it'll be over. We'll win this election. It'll just be four years, you can hang in there. Don't for a minute negotiate with the Trump team." And so Secretary Kerry has got an awful lot of explaining to do.
Tim: None of which is likely forthcoming, but then the elite media will likely provide John Kerry with all the protection he needs to stay on the job and continue commanding the climate.
And at the same time, they will go hard and unfairly after conservatives who look like rising stars. A couple of weeks ago, 60 Minutes tried to take apart Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And now a prominent Washington newspaper is raising doubts about the black Republican senator who delivered the response to Joe Biden's address to Congress, Tim Scott, specifically questioning his claims about his forebears, and picking cotton, and just how poor they really were. And they used the old yellow journalism technique of casting doubt without clear evidence, which the second-ranking House Republican Steve Scalise (LA) says is actually evidence that the left is scared of Tim Scott.
Steve Scalise: There's nothing that scares the left more than a conservative African-American leader who's gaining respect nationally on his own, not pushing the false narrative of the left, but talking about individual opportunity. Tim Scott was the one who authored Opportunity Zones. And I'm sure they'll try to now fact-check that. Go get it. The fact that they're going after him shows how scared the left is of him. And they should be scared of him because he's a great person and he's a rising star in our party.
Tim: Most informed observers believe Tim Scott will throw his hat into the 2024 presidential ring along with many other Republicans, unless, of course, Trump runs again.
But the kind of smears the left is unleashing on the rising stars from the right proves what? That it'll do anything to win? That it'll lie, cheat, and steal? That it'll promise one thing and deliver another? No, that's common to politicians of every stripe. Instead, the famed actress and activist Rose McGowan, who knows of what she speaks on the issue, goes a big step further, saying she believes the Democratic Party has become a cult.
Rose McGowan: I grew up in a cult, and it was a very famous cult called Children of God. It gave me the ability to see the control and the propaganda machine. And I do believe Democrats, most especially, are in a deep cult that they really don't know about and aren't really aware of. And I leave the Republicans alone more because I do respect people more that are like, "This is what we are. This is what we're about. This is what we're against." Whereas I find the Democrats are really pretty much almost against all the same things, keeping a system in place that is for so few people and benefits so few, but they masquerade as helpers.
Tim: It's called false virtue signaling, which the left has seemed to perfect as an art form. But is there no one on the left who can speak beyond the woke base and appeal to both the woke and unwoke among us? Well, if you're like me, you gave up watching the Oscars years ago, but there was one speech worthy of note this year because it came from a leftist receiving a humanitarian award and calling for a stop to the hate from all sides: actor and producer Tyler Perry.
Tyler Perry: My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment. And in this time, and with all of the internet, and social media, and algorithms, and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us would teach our kids, and not only to remember, just refuse hate. Don't hate anybody.
I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican, or because they are black, or white. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. And I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle. No matter what's around the walls, stand in the middle. Because that's where healing happens. That's where conversation happens. That's where change happens. It happens in the middle.
Tim: The middle. The center. The question is, can, will, the center hold in these times of tribal warfare?
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